	Boy, do I have a big problem!  I'm coming into the final stretch of the
game (in design terms).  The first playable version of the game is due in just
17 days.  I have to put in the last main features of the game in the next 17
days.  There are only three main features left: options screen, endgame
handling, and final work on random events.  The options screen and the endgame
stuff should take less than a week between them, so I'm in pretty good shape,
right?  Well, not quite.
	The random events feature was initially intended to be a kind of 
souped-up "Chance" or "Community Chest".  I would dump odd little stories
on the player that would require some sort of response from him.  I had
figured that these would be nothing more than short (500-word) stories with
some sort of kicker ending.  For example, my first prototype random event
had you bumping into a character in a doorway.  What do you do, the event 
demands to know:  1) wait to see what he does; 2) step aside and say, 'After
you.'; 3) demand that he step aside; 4) push him out of the way.  You pick
an option and the software then calculates any changes in your relationship
resulting from your action.  
	Sounds simple, right?  Ah, but I cannot resist the temptation to
tinker.  First there's the problem that stories are written around a single
character.  What a waste!  I come up with a sneaky keycode system that allows
the software to use ANY character in the story, replacing names and personal
pronouns to match the character.  Then my consultant points out that I need
an acknowledgement of the player's actions.  If the player in the above story
decides to push the character out of the way, that character should either 
punch him out or step aside, depending on his temper and willfulness.  OK, so
I need some sort of computational capability controlled by ASCII files.  I
come up with a software interpreter based on a virtual programmable calculator.
My format for stories starts to get complicated.
	You think I'd be satisfied, wouldn't you?  Well, there are still
problems.  I need ways to make the stories more repeatable.  What will the 
player think when he encounters a story the second time?  I need to make that
second encounter interesting.  My original plan had been to stuff the disk
with 200 stories and accept the fact that any story encountered a second time
will be boring.  But now I am thinking that maybe I can wring more play-value
out of each story if I can just make each story more plastic, more adapatable.
I spent much of this morning going over possibilities with my friend and 
confidant Dale Yocum.  There are so many exciting opportunities here!  For
example, I could build a story as a skeleton of sentences that lay out the
basic events of the story, but included within the skeleton are reference to
various "skeleton-filling-out" sentences that can be filled in with sentences
from a global dictionary of sentences.  These "filling-out" sentences can
provide the information that is specific to the player and the character with
whom the story takes place.
	What I'm talking about here is a story generator.  This is exciting!  
But how can I tackle this at this late stage of the game?  So here's the big
dilemma:  do I stay on schedule and accept the current primitive random events,
(and call my next game "Stories from the Computer") or do I take the plunge
now?