Overview
Branch merges fail when they erase. Two branches converge at a scene, and the scene is written as if the branches never diverged. The player who saved the village and the player who burned it both arrive at the same siege, and the siege plays identically for both. The village is never mentioned again. The merge erased the branch — and with it, the player's choice.
The Branch Merge & Reconvergence prompt builds convergence points with three properties: (1) state-aware merging — the merged scene reads the state vector and adjusts its content based on the accumulated differences between branches, producing a scene that plays differently depending on the path, (2) selective erasure — some differences are preserved (mechanical effects, NPC disposition, available resources) while others are gracefully retired (specific dialogue references that would be awkward after the merge), and (3) merge justification — the story provides a reason why the paths converge (a shared threat, a common location, a forced alliance), preventing the merge from feeling arbitrary.
What you get: - Merge point catalog with state-aware content variations - Selective erasure rules (what persists, what retires, what transforms) - Merge justification system (why branches converge at this point) - Merge validation protocol (detecting erasure merges) - State-aware scene writing template - Merge frequency model (how often branches should converge)
Built for: narrative designers and game writers who need branching stories that stay manageable — without making the player feel like their choices were forgotten.