Forgiveness Ratings

The Forgiveness Rating measures how much freedom the game gives you to screw up the story. For example, in some games it's possible for the main character to die by doing the wrong thing, while in others there's no way to kill the main character. But dying is only the most obvious way to "lose" in IF. In some games, you can get yourself into a situation where you can go on playing forever, but you'll never be able to win because of some irreversible action you've taken. For instance, the game might let you lock your keys in the car, or it might let you discard or destroy a vital object that you'll need to solve to a puzzle much later in the game.

The Zarfian forgiveness scale was proposed by Andrew Plotkin on rec.arts.int-fiction to classify games according to whether they make unwinnable situations possible, and to what degree:

• Merciful - You can't get stuck, and the main character can't die. It's impossible to permanently lose an object that's required to win the game. The game will always remain winnable no matter what you do.
• Polite - The main character can die, and it's possible to lose vital objects or otherwise make it impossible to win, but it's immediately obvious whenever you've just done something that makes the game unwinnable. This means that you can always immediately UNDO to get back on track.
• Tough - You can get stuck or die, but it's immediately obvious when you're about to do something irrevocable. (You might not be able to anticipate that a particular action will make the game unwinnable, though - only that it will be irreversible.)
• Nasty - You can get stuck or die, but it's immediately obvious after the fact when you've done something irrevocable. (Again, though, you might not realize that an action made the game unwinnable - just that the action was irrevocable.)
• Cruel - You can get stuck or die, and you can do so by an action that you didn't even realize was irrevocable after doing it.