THE EXIGENT SEASONS — 16 of 20

Part 6 - Final Resolution

Instead of pathing while the location of the player is the Future:

end the story finally saying "Your people's future is decided."

The chatty final score rule is listed instead of the print final score rule in for printing the player's obituary.

This is the chatty final score rule:

say "You reviewed [score in words] ending[s] out of a possible [maximum score in words] before you embarked on your final path."

When play begins:

choose row with a final response activity of amusing a victorious player in the Table of Final Question Options;

now the final question wording entry is "read a not-very AMUSING explanation of how this game came about".

Rule for amusing a victorious player:

clear the screen;

say "[paragraph break][paragraph break]Personality quizzes were a frequent feature of the early days of social media. One variety based on a popular trading card game would offer you a series of questions with five answers each, and it would then tell you which of the game's five colors you were. Then, an expansion to the game released in 2005 made two-color pairings more popular, and suddenly all the quizzes with single-color outcomes were passé, and all of the quiz outcomes were color pairs instead.[paragraph break]I loved the [italic type]idea[roman type] of these quizzes, but I found their execution disappointing: they were too simple and too obvious! Giving five answers to each question made it trivial to predict how you were shaping your final result on a question-by-question basis, and a better quiz would make four-, five-, or even [bold type]zero[roman type]-color outcomes possible, yet rare. I believed that I could make such a quiz.[paragraph break]Ultimately, this game was the result: it has exactly ten questions in which I present each combination of two colors out of the five. You may choose one of the two presented colors, or you may choose neither. Each selection impacts the rankings of the thirty-two endings: five single-color endings, ten two-color endings, ten three-color endings, five four-color endings, the single five-color ending, as well as the colorless ending. Once you've made every selection, I throw the lowest-scoring endings in the trash and leave you with the ending that best fits the selections you made.[paragraph break](A thirty-third ending was added just for the cheaters, since I find thirty-three a more satisfying number than thirty-two.)[paragraph break]If you'd like to see this for yourself in another playthrough, say a word or power (such as [bold type]ABRACADABRA[roman type]) to open your mind's eye to the magic that underlies this story."