I had the impression :
- mc wants to be friendly and "good" -> K4
- mc/player has read Macchiavelli and uses it -> K6
It's not so simple. If you have a loaf of bread, you give it to your friend & you die of hunger. Is that good or stupid?
If you have a job, you denied someone else that job. Is that evil? If you come 1st in class, you knocked someone else off from having that joy/honor.
Now go dystopian level extreme with this logic.
In fact you can be kind & still get k6.
You just need to be prudent & logical instead of being a brainless white knight.
Like if you take the food to preserve your strength & take the deal to stay on good terms with the guards, you can be kind to Zach(slave+=1).
You just need to have some self preservation instinct.
You can see this from Dominique. She's relatively kind, but still knows how to make things work to her advantage.
Similarly, you need to be intelligent when dealing with Elena, not good/kind or evil.
It's not good to be too kind, especially in a cruel world.
Rather, using the circumstances to one's advantage when navigating unfavorable situations should be something the MC displays after Callista's tutelage.
I don't know what Callista taught mc.
In the end all the crucial decisions (good vs evil, dom vs sub, ...) are made by the player and not mc nor Callista.
Exactly. Hence you cannot judge Callista's tutelage or MC's aptitude by the outcome.
But the available options/possibilities tell you things.
For example, a tenth grade student can score between 100 to 0 depending on their aptitude & attitude.
But when a 9th grade student with no inkling of the curriculum takes the test, the upper range decreases to what can be accidentally scored with zero knowledge.
Similarly, you can see the upper limit(k6) as the high aptitude MC trained by Callista the board is so wary of.
The best case scenario k6, is the combination of the best possible factors like Callista's tutelage, MC's aptitude, character & leadership aura, etc.
The worst case of k4 is the opposite, where the MC's overall skills & his worth is set lower by the players decision, allowing the story to flow into the sub route.
If MC didn't have certain skill levels and/or knowledge, then his possibile range should've been lower than k6.
Just like there's no option to kill everyone in prison & run away as MC doesn't have abilities like laser eyes, or guns or whatever.
Choices define the range of the possibilities.
Like if this was a femdom only game, the male MC could only have been a 'worthless slave' with no dominance or leadership skills & those possibilities would not appear within the choices.
In short, the players choose to set the MC's character/skills/preferences (like Dom/sub) etc.
But the available range tell what else could have been possible within the confines of the story's narrative.
This is how you can extract information about the possibilities from a player choice. Even though the player chooses differing choices, what can be chosen is still decided & restricted by the creator within the confines of what the story allows.
