yeah. I'm definitely still breaking it down.

there's an initial branching topology that needs to be  setup to give people that don't go to the town a chance to have a unique identity.
but that opportunity is very limited early on because most series of actions external from the town will define you, so the only way to get multiple identities is physically branching pathways, but that's also not good. so only rely on that a little & make the distribution of it "statistical" (me guessing what people would do... which is most people wouldn't travel all the way across the field past the town just to be in the wilderness. they're going to take the water that's right in front of them).  the thing about being in the wild is that you can also do more "random things" like shout out "hello!!!" just to see if someone is out there. or you can climb a tree. all these events make a path very specific. (what's considered collapsing is completely subjective to the oracle & evident on what it will let pass)

I was gonna start the players off with gold. gold and a note. the note says "buy a gift for the festival tonight" they see this note after their first choice.
anyway. I was thinking that gold pieces can be left in the grass. and that you can stumble upon 1, and if you can keep searching and searching. that's the only way to make infinite identities that can actually leave the town. but you're defined by how many times you've searched for gold pieces. which is okay actually because we can make the amount you find in any given search "random/quantum" until you count them, which means there wont be a correlation to identities & the number of gold pieces they searched for. But this whole thing feels very cheap.

It is sensible to meditate. yeah. that's what I was thinking, but in the RPG sense it sounds very magical and like it will induce something. and having the option at the beginning with the other two makes it look like some kind of "axiom" in the same way that the town and the forest are to the game's overall trajectory. I am going to have the text that follows "meditate" change though.

I am gonna have
_Go to town
_Go to forest
_Survey the Area (the bullshit one to branch) -->
 
now, TECHNICALLY, more can be added, but the oracle is all about social consensus (originating from those who have sacrificed money & time in a pyramid contract, long story, it's an oracle solution)... so anything added to that initial choice list will be "very qualified" but it's important to get the initial topology "jump started". The oracle will begin to interpret some branches of that topology as requiring more branches (when you enter the gift shops in town) There are 4 corners to town, you have to look for a gift in this gift shop town, and I want at least the most basic movements coverd "choose a corner-> choose a shop-> get a detailed description of that shop that can be recycled for other ways people might arrive to this shop"
and the community-oracle will enforce everything from there.. There's a lot of "quantum ambiguity" when going to town, it's just gotta get "jump started" or at least recognized by the oracle what's required. manually doing every combination of 3 to 5 step movements and checking shops & exploring the town and what not is absurd. it's competitive story writing, so I have faith in the oracle & writers.
but this would be how you attack eden... go to  a shop and have the description say "you talk to the clerk, 'hey, this sounds like a pretty identity collapsing event doesn't it?' x-y-z-a-b-c and walk out"... so that means everyone that wants to get something from that shop, can't go there directly. or can't reach there by the same 2 or 3 step path that the original person took. (because a few steps is possible for anyone to take & is not an "identity collapsing")

identity potential going into the wilderness will be much more limited than going into the town. I want to make sure I give it a fighting chance to survive