The avatar of the player is also a Drama Princess character. But instead of automatically choosing opportunities as goals, the filtered list of opportunities will be presented to the player (in a dynamic button bar as in The Endless Forst e.g.). The player will then choose an opportunity as goal for the avatar.
I’m not sure if we should inform the player about the current level of the relationship with the object and the position of a certain opportunity compared to it (i.e. more or less intimate). It might be more fun for the player to “go on instinct” and choose with imagination.
I briefly considered only offering two buttons to the player: more or less intimacy. But the lack of knowing what the avatar was going to do, reduced the agency of the player too much, in my opinion. I think it’s better to know what you tell your avatar to do (and not be certain of the impact).
The player’s avatar will also broadcast opportunities for the other actors to choose from. This means that NPCs can initiate interactions that force the avatar to respond in a certain way. E.g. when the avatar broadcasts “slap me”, it will repond by falling backwards after another actor has achieved this goal. Ergo, as a result of broadcasting opportunties, the player would loose control over the avatar momentarily once in a while.
Some opportunities come with multiple ways to respond to them. These multiple ways could be offered as choices in the player’s interface. But only if the action allows for some time to pass before responding. Responding to a kiss by slapping the actor or kissing him back should happen quite quickly after the initial kiss.
Perhaps we should simply select the opportunities that an avatar broadcasts very carefully. These should be either actions with a single immediate and logical response or actions to which the response can happen at any time, while the other actor waits for it.
Or we forget about the idea of multiple responses altogether. To make life simpler. 🙂