Event Chains
At some point you will get the desire to implement a chain of events that tell a story. Maybe this story will include branching trees and different options for the player to choose. All modern paradox games have event chains in a some form or another.
They all have one incredible big problem. They tell stories outside the game itself. Ok this gets quite complex now.
There is a difference between:
- Fighting a war for a province that engages the player results in direct consequences that effect many aspects of the game.
- Getting an event that says your army is fighting and won the fight, and now you can either seize the province or don't.
The game can show stories unfolding over time but instead in tells a story. The main problems come from reactivity. When you fight a real war with a nation in lets say EU4/Stellaris you can interact with the war and the game world itself can interact with it. Other nations may give aid, or prepare for their own wars because you are busy fighting your own.
Now you might think, no problem my event chain will include all possible scenarios and current world state to account for everything! It will react and interact with the game world! In other words your event chain is playing the game?
Most players are not interested in your story that you want to tell. They are interested in their story. Most time invested in event chains is fruitless.
The other problem is that after the first time the event chain will lose its magic touch. How often do you want to here the same story over and over again?
But I Really Want To Tell a Story!
If you really want to tell a story, tell it through the existing gameplay features the player interacts with. No, a popup text box with some dialog option is it not. This would be true for a visual novel. To see an example for how to tell a story to existing gameplay features take a look at Homeworld 1/2 and Star Wars Empire at War Forces of Corruption.
If you have a 3D world with nations, provinces, armies, etc. Why do you need to use a text box to tell a story? You are more creative than that I believe you.
Interesting enough while Stellaris has event chain poorly implement with way too much text, they implemented in the first versions crisis that interact with the game world and tell a story same for the mid-game crisis. They are actually quite shallow but are a much, much better way to tell a story, because they are integrated into the game world and can be interacted with and they themselves can interact with the world. This is the part they should have fleshed out more instead of hard coding 20+ different event chains.