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Let's say you're in a storygame where you decide to get really drunk. How annoying would it be for your drunkenness to result in all the choices available to you having missing and mixed letters so they're mostly incomprehensible?

Would you consider this immersion or annoyance? Or would you say it's unrealistic, because in real life you're a better driver when you're drunk?

Could also apply if your character gets roofied, punched in the head too hard, placed under a spell, or any number of situations where the cognitive ability of the character is impaired.

I would say that such a person has been incapicitated, lost their agency, and is no longer actually making decisions.

Something more along the lines of dysphasia might be more believable: the character can still think, but the ability to communicate has been lost. What s/he says comes out garbled, and written words that might provide needed information can't be read.

I used a comparable situation in one of my stories last year, in which the protag had been captured by island natives and was brought before the chieftain. He understood that he was being asked to make a decision, but because he couldn't understand the language he had no idea of knowing what the options were. I thought this was clever, but one reviewer did complain.

That language thing is similar to what I thinking of. But how did you do the choices? Did you leave them blank? Not have any?

The choices were in the foreign words. This is how it appeared on the page:

---

 

"I keia la? Apopo?" the king says again, but this time he is stepping backward to rejoin his wife.

"I keia la or apopo?" you say.

"Ke pihoihoi nei keia," the king says, once more gesturing to the guard.

The warrior grabs you by your shirt. "I keia la! Apopo! E koho i keia manawa!" His words land like spittle on your forehead.

"Just choose one," Gary says. "Before they get mad. It's either 'i keia la' or 'apopo.' Your guess is as good as mine which is the right answer."

It's frustrating being forced to make a choice when you have no way of knowing what the consequences will be.

__________________________________________________

• I keia la.
• Apopo.

 

 

And here was the specific complaint:

- The choice between two words I didn't know was a little frustrating. It was easily fixed by picked both choices, pressing back, reading the dead end first, and continuing, but still it was the classic "left or right with no foreshadowing" choice. Again, if there was a way to decipher the language I am very impressed and take this back, but I didn't sit there and think "I wonder if I can crack this language and understand it!" There was even a linguist you met that implied he figured it out, but never told YOU how to translate. You also die a page or two after talking to him regardless of choice... I will say that I can not think of a better way to write this scene, and it was very fun and well written regardless. I liked the story, but it did have these frustrating parts. 

 

I do respectfully disagree with this comment, although this is the only one I can recall that remarked on this one scene.

(The language, actually, is Hawaiian, and some web browsers may be able to offer a rough translation.)

I kind of figured it was Hawaiian.

If there were no fair choices that led you to deserve this predicament, I can see why someone might be annoyed, but for me personally, it's simply realistic. If your character doesn't speak Hawaiian, s/he doesn't speak Hawaiian. That's all there is to id. \_ -_- _/

If there's some other clue that can help, or if not that, then some eventual explanation of why what you chose led you to where you ended up, then I'd say it was entirely fair and simply immersive.

Strange idea to be sure.

It would be amusing/entertaining to some, while some would hate it or just get confused.

So basically about the same as any other option you might go with instead.

I think someone did something like that on an IS Story with the protagonist going insane and they mixed up the letters and choices. They probably were inspired by the Malkavainian path from that vampire game.

As for if it would be annoying or be immersive, it's going to mainly depend on how well the rest of the story is written, so I'd say if you feel strongly about trying out this approach then go for it, if you're just sort of toying with the idea and it's not playing a major part anyway, then don't bother.

I appreciate the feedback. The general consensus seems to be that what matters isn't really what you do in particular but rather whether or not your storygame sucks.

If there's an option not to get drunk, go for it. If no matter what, the reader will get drunk, you'd better make sure both paths are good. But really you should do that anyway.

It doesn't really matter what the player would do in real life so much as how you think the character would deal with it. If they would be a crazy confused drunk, then scrambling the choices might be a fun way to show that.