Notes from the workshop: choices describe what she does

A rule from the Perpetūra workshop, since a few of you asked about choice design.

Every choice in the game is a concrete action, written in her voice. Burn the letter or keep it. Stay outside the gate or knock. Say his name or say nothing. What you never see is "go to a route" or "pursue the scholar" or anything that names the machinery. The game knows about routes; she does not, and the choices belong to her.

The companion rule: a choice must be answerable from what you have actually read. If your version of a scene never showed you the letter, you will not be asked about the letter.

Why hold the line on this? Because a labelled choice is a menu, and a menu asks you to pick an ending. An action asks you to do something, and then you live inside what the doing makes. Nobody hands you the ending in advance. That is most of what choice means.