The metaphor that made QBN make sense to me is a card/board game: If you’ve played Magic: the Gathering or Munchkin you know how each individual card might have statistics, a bit a lore, and choice options that happen when you play the card which can affect or restrict individual other cards, the entire game-state, and even the rules of play. Magic has resources (qualities) that can be tapped to fuel what the cards do, so they all have their own requirements. The randomness of card-draw mechanics serves as the game engine/GM offering opportunities to the player(s).
I had a learning curve with the Hybrid Choices extension. It felt backwards at first. I kept wanting to define choices that led to other pages; option A, B, or C. Instead, you work from the destination page and basically say “Shocking Surprise is a page. It is for page A. It is for page B. The default choice text is “Would you like a surprise?” Here is what the choice reads from page B. It is for blue pages (a kind of page), here is what the choice text says if this page is accessible from a blue page…” (That is very not the actual source text but those are the kind of things you can define.) But it is freeing because instead of a flowchart, you have every “storylet” available to be linked to from any other storylet that qualifies, and that can vary based on variable/qualities and changing game state.
The way Storynexus worked
I'll hide this because it's the stream of consciousness blathering I do
- The author creates storylet cards. Each has a title that’s usually the name of the card, body text, and an optional image. It also can be specified to live in a deck or out of play (can be presented by author rules but isn’t a card the player draws). Storylets can have choices. Cards/storylets could have effects instantly when drawn, or could be designated as a card the player can “hold” like their poker hand or inventory - representing abilities, attacks, spells, “a phone call you need to make” - each with it’s own rules and choices. depending on situation, a player could draw a card or use a card in their hand. Storylets could have base requirements that restrict them from being drawn or flipped - if your dexterity is above 5 you won’t ever flip or draw “You trip over your own feet and injure yourself, -1HP!”
- Choices have a title, body text, an optional image, and qualification rules that could be set. Choices can be invisible if not qualified, visible but not selectable if not qualified (with or without an explanatory hover text), or freely choose-able. The UI could show choice requirements automatically with their images (“This choice requires 3 Desiccated Rat” and “You must have Rat Titan’s Quest”) or the requirements could be hidden.
- Random chance choices could be created that had fail and success branches with separate quality manipulation equations and could also do the quality math and display “You have a 30% chance of succeeding…” The result branch might just twiddle qualities, or could trigger any card to be instantly played "You have lost a Hit Point! (Your HP has decreased to 5!) or offered (“Pick up the Strange Hinge”), or offer a deck to draw from “Collect 5gp” “Listen for rumors.” You could chain a narrative sequence of events with multiple storylets and choices.
- Decks were collections of cards, but could be organized to represent many things - encounters in a side quest with grinding, a “draw a random loot card!” deck, a penalty deck. Decks could flip one card or up to 3 (5?) at once, offer a choice of one or all of them before vanishing or be persistently on the board. I created a ticking clock/time progression mechanic by setting that the main deck flips three cards and there were several “The Hour Advances” cards which the player could only dismiss from the table by playing it which would advance time. They could choose not to advance time, but one of their spaces to flip cards was blocked. If they turned three Hour Advances cards up, they couldn’t draw again until they activated one of the cards to advance the time (which cleared all of them from the table).
- Locations weren’t quite what you’d think of in an adventure. They didn’t have to be a location, but “play spaces” like each one was a card table with different decks set up on it. If I had a location “Medieval Village” I could have multiple decks the player could choose to draw from: “Gossip with a Villager” “Search through the garbage for treasure” “Visit the trainer” “Visit the weapon shop” - or it could be conceptual with decks “Dream about the future” “Dream about the Past” “Dream about the Present”. Location basically offered configurations of multiple decks. The author could trigger a location change from any card.