[quote=Dudebro Pyro][quote=Nudraxon]I feel that the whole "This is a very bad idea. Do not do this" warning is becoming a bit overused. When it is used for options that are only bad from a narrative standpoint, it lessens the effect for truly bad choices which will permanently damage your character (i.e. Seeking).
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I personally think consequences almost solely matter from a narrative standpoint. You pay material costs all the time, most people will go to the menace areas all the time, and it’s easy to regrind almost anything (that isn’t worth more than a few hundred echoes) or get back out of any menace area. Is gambling for a yacht a Bad Idea? It has severe and expensive material consequences, unless you get very lucky. In that sense, the entirety of Seeking can be viewed as just a storyline to "buy" the Knock, just as long as you turn around (not turning around might well be the one mechanical Bad Idea, and is certainly the only one I can think of). It’s an expensive Knock - much, much more so than, say, the aforementioned Yacht - but that doesn’t make it bad, just expensive.
So really, the only reason Seeking is considered "bad" is due to the narrative setting (and the option to literally render your character unplayable - but that’s a clear choice, so from a purely mechanical standpoint doesn’t matter when considering the rest of the storyline). Imagine if Seeking was framed as an epic and lengthy quest to obtain, I don’t know, a Condensed Crystal of Mountain-Light from the Garden that grants you as much life as the Presbyter himself and mechanically is a +4 BDR item - would it still be considered a bad idea? All the menaces and item loss could be framed as a consequnce of the dangers of going after an extremely rare and highly guarded artefact. It could retain all of its character-draining potential (mechanically), with the exact same reward (mechanically), but without the narrative backing, it would be hailed as an epic quest for a rare prize rather than a Bad Idea.
One way I might consider something a Bad Idea mechanically is if it takes away a unique item you can’t get back (or have to spend an inordinate amount of effort getting back - I wouldn’t want to lose a Cider or a Knock, of course). And yet even then, every three months a storylet appears that takes away three completely unique items that are only re-obtainable through Fate, with the reward almost always being an ordinary tier 6 item (and some lore), and almost everybody waits for these storylets with impatience - because of the narrative framing playing it up as a Good Idea and a natural thing you’re expected to play through.
edited by Dudebro Pyro on 8/1/2018[/quote]
I was thinking of the "bad idea" near the end of The Rat-Catcher, in which you can give up a valuable companion and damage all of your stats for exactly zero mechanical benefit. I picked that option, and don’t regret it one bit. I loved it not just for the vague but intriguing lore it offered, but also because it gave the feeling of seeing something that I wasn’t meant to see, which is very rare in a game where you know, on some level, that everything you are "discovering" was actually put there deliberately for you to find. This is what I think the "This is a bad idea" warning should be reserved for: choices which are a bad idea from both a narrative and mechanical standpoint, and provide no upside except to satisfy your own perverted curiosity. Which is also how I view Seeking (I don’t plan on taking the Knock). In these cases the warning is just that, a warning for players who don’t want to lose progress or for bad things to happen to their characters to stay away. (For example, there’s that one option in SMEN that halves your watchful stat, with no guarantee of even advancing SMEN.)
By contrast, in this story, taking the "bad" ending gives you a pretty valuable companion, with the only downside being your potential revulsion at what has happened to you (and, to be clear, I loved this ending). I think for options such as this, it would be better to hint at the bad things to come in the regular text of the option, rather than using the fourth-wall-breaking bold and italics text to issue a warning.