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So, you're writing a storygame. Obviously, the main draw of a storygame is the way the story can change based on what you do, your choices and items and skills and stats and so forth. To that end, I have a list of ways YOU can write your storygame!

1. The Classic Split

This is a classic for many reasons. It's really simple! You have a choice (possibly hidden and based on a stat that is hidden), and depending on what happens, they head to one story path or the other.

2. The Ordered Switch

This is a variant on technique #1: The player chooses in WHAT ORDER they can do two things in, perhaps with a bonus for a "right" path, or something unique happening based on the order. For example, The Hero in a fantasy CYOA has to choose between assisting the rebels in the coastal city of Seaton, or defending Fort Talregera, and after they finish one, they go and do the other. You get a party member from one who assists in the other once you're done (So, if you go to Seaton, the water mage Kyrie can help defend Talregera with the hero, or if you go to Talregera, the knight Brighton can assist the rebels in Seaton with the hero).

3. The Sidequest

This is an option objective that you have to choose to do, and while it may act as a trigger for later events, choosing not to do it or finishing it drop you off at the same point. Think of it like a piece of string with an ant on one end- you can stretch the string out and have the ant walk across it lengthways (doing the sidequest) or bring one end to the other and have the ant get there faster (skipping it).

These are just a handful of techniques you can use to create paths and splits in your stories! Critique these tricks, remix them, come up with your own in this thread!

Yes indeed, a CYOA has choices, and the choices can make the plot do different things!

Let's have a discussion about this.

I'm so glad that you agree with me. Truly, a wonderful thing.

Ignoring the tortured analogy with the ant, I always do like to see stories including sidequests or otherwise optional bits. They can offer some breathing room between the major plot stuff and have some small effects on the story going forward. It's nice seeing a story reacting to your choices even if not always in a major way.

And if you get the player used to the story being structured this way, you can hit them with some major life changing thing and branch off a new major path right when they're not expecting it.

Of course an issue might be that there's no visible difference between 'side quest' and 'main path', a link is a link after all, and that may lead people to complain the story in on rails. Although there are plenty of ways to get around that I suppose, such as having a specific 'quest giver' NPC or even outright labeling the pages to make it clearer what's going on.

Not sure we even have any games on the site that had a lot of side quests, even though by definition it's more of an RP style thing so wouldn't be as apparent or easy to fit in a regular story.