One sentence:
The player walks and encounter a peasant who said he needs help rescuing a loved ones.
He follow the peasant and start walking alongside a blood trail. After a certain point, there is
bodies lying around. The peasant turn around and the player is being ambushed with enemies coming out of the forest charging at him.
Where:
in an open area of the forest
Trying to do:
Defeat the enemies ambushing you
Meaningful choice:
Once the fight is over, spare the peasant who asked for your help to potentially gain a reward
or slay him without mercy !
One Sentence:
Our player must approach the cart, but there are three lazy guards standing next to the cart which would overpower him if he attacked all three at once.
Where: In the center of the town.
Trying to do: Defeat the guards to get the needed key.
Meaningful choice:
You could try brute force, and you might (MIGHT) even win, but you’ll need to spend some heals (coming soon) afterwards. Or, you could get close enough to lure one at a time away from the cart. (These guards aren’t the brightest bulbs on the tree, and they don’t talk to each other much).
One sentence:
The player escapes from prison and must get to the outskirts of town where his friend is waiting to rescue him.
Where:
The village square and surrounding buildings.
Trying to do:
Stay alive, get to the outskirts of town.
Meaningful choice:
Go full Rambo and fight through the square filled with guards (The most direct route), or stealthily creep through a back alley.
Description: After encountering a small village where strange guards are prohibiting residents from entering the surrounding hills to hunt or retrieve their livestock, the player discovers a strange guarded entrance door in the side of a hill on the outskirts of the village.
Where: Up a hill on the east side of town.
Trying to do: Player desires to defeat the guards and access the entrance door.
Meaningful choice: Attack all the guards at once, or lure individuals away and attack each separately, or find a way to distract the guards and sneak into the entrance.
I actually did something entirely different and got it setup to work in a second project as I had to change the level area to reflect up multiple paths.
One sentence:
Help an NPC get his jewelry box back from the bandit who stole it.
Where:
Small clearing in the mountains
Trying to do:
Catch up to the Bandit, fight him and get the jewelry box.
Meaningful choice:
Chase after the bandit.
Choice 1: Take same path (slowest and bandit is likely to get away as he is slightly faster than you)
Choice 2: Take the path shortcuts to catch up to him (faster and fight him if you get within his wire-sphere radius)
Choice 3: Take path shortcuts and create distractions along the way to change the bandits escape path by walking into some triggers (fastest without battle - as he hits his head on a low lining branch drops jewelry box and falls off the cliff).
Can either keep jewelry box or return it to NPC for some reward or go back empty handed if choice 1 was chosen but get a followup moment for future reference.
Overview: The player reaches the outskirts of their home village, where guards are patrolling near the only entrance and must make their way through, into the village.
Location: Outskirts of the player character’s home village.
Objective: Defeat the guards and enter the village.
Meaningful choice: Attack all guards at once or lure them away and dispose of them one by one.
Moment design (based on a true incident that I was involved in Huntington Park California)
Overview: Player must free a kidnapped movie star.
Location: An industrial warehouse containing meth lab in Southern California
Player’s Goals: Find movie star and get her out of the warehouse while fighting level boss’s thugs
Player’s Choices: Fight thugs or lure them away to fight one at a time. Also can set meth lab on fire as a distraction, but should do it after finding movie star or else in danger of both player and star dying in fire.