Anyway...
Nothing pisses me off and breaks immersion for an interactive story more than this common mistake I see in these interactive stories. At least, I see it as a mistake. I can excuse terrible spelling. I can excuse iffy sentence structure. I can even excuse stories that are only a few pages long before the author got lazy and quit.
But I can't stand it when people make me play god in their interactive stories. It's terrible. Stop doing this.
For those of you who don't know what this means, let me give you an example of how I usually see this shit go down.
You enter the dungeon with sword in hand. The air is cool and misty. You see before you a set of two doors. Which door do you take?
>The door on the left.
>The door on the right.
This is generic on purpose so bare with me.
But, so far so good. You give the player a set of believable choices based on what they know.
So say we choose the door on the left.
You begin to approach the door on the left. It's locked.
>You try to pick the lock.
>You look for clues as to how to unlock the door.
Still okay. Let's say you pick the option to try picking the lock.
You start to pick the lock.
>The door suddenly opens to a naga attacking you.
>A hungry succubus eats you while you aren't looking.
>The other door opens.
WOAH NOW HOLD THE FUCK UP. DO YOU SEE THE PROBLEM HERE?! This right here. This pisses me off. Option one spoils what's about to happen before it actually happens. DON'T FREAKIN' DO THAT!! Meanwhile, the second option is taking control of something completely unrelated and just happening out of nowhere, and again, why do I have control of that as a player?! As for the third option, HOW?! Just, HOW??!!? What correlation leads to that causation, and even if it does, WHY THE FUCK IS IT A CHOICE FOR ME? I have no control of the other door! I am not using my telekinetic powers open the door! If I was, it wouldn't say "the door opens" it would say "YOU OPEN THE OTHER GODDAMN DOOR!" This is crap! These options are crap! The story is immediately ruined! You've soiled it! My immersion! MY IMMERSION!!!
Disclaimer: Sarcasm does not translate into forum text very well. For those who can't tell, the rage above is meant to be humorous, not a sincere reaction of abject fury. This would be a very silly thing to get that angry about.
Okay, so, being serious for a moment, this is a really bad habit I see a lot of writers doing with interactive stories, and it just ruins the experience for your readers. There's two reasons why this happens. One, the author thinks he's being nice and giving flexible options to his readers. You're actually doing the opposite, so if that's your goal, stop doing this. The second reason why this happens is the author is an indecisive dope who can't decide what they want to happen, so they decide to be lazy and make the reader choose instead. Dude, just flip a coin or something. Pick an option and stick to it.
People aren't reading your story to build their own story. If that's what they wanted to do, they could just sit there and daydream, or write their own story instead. They're reading an interactive story so that you can bring them on an adventure based on the choices they have within the world. They don't want to write their own story, they want to be immersed in yours. If I am an adventurer going through an ancient dungeon, looking for hidden treasures, I should have absolutely no control of anyone but myself. Therefore, don't give the player "God Options" that control their environment or other characters. If I were to do this in an RP, where I control the other player's character, it would be called godmodding and nobody would want to play with me. You're basically forcing the player to godmod and that just sucks the fun out of it for them because now nothing is a surprise to them.
Here's how to improve this passage. Let's revisit the previous options.
First, the entire last page is junk. Throw it out. Let's go back to the page before.
You begin to approach the door on the left. It's locked.
>You try to pick the lock.
>You look for clues as to how to unlock the door.
Okay. Now, as the author, you have to decide. What option leads to what outcome? You want a hungry succubus in your story, and you want a naga in the story, and for whatever reason you want them both to possibly appear right here. So, here's what you do instead.
Say we pick the lock.
You start to pick the lock. As the door finally becomes unlocked however, you're met with the hiss of a startled naga in the shadows! You try to back away, but it's too late. She lunges forward, and swallows you whole into her tailgut.
Now you can add other options for the character to get away, or you can end the story here, but the point is that now the player isn't in control of what happens other than their own personal choices.
But let's go back, and say we chose to turn around instead of picking the lock.
You turn around to search for clues, but as you turn, you are shocked to see that a succubus had followed you in. She's too close for you to stop her before she pushes your head into her drooling mouth. She begins to scarf you down alive.
Once again, the player doesn't get a choice of what the world does to them. They only get the choice of how to react, or what they can do next. Maybe they can struggle, or maybe they have some special potion that can save them, or maybe this is a game over screen. The author provides the options of what the player can do... not the options of what happens next.
That's how interactive stories are supposed to be done. This is a choose your adventure genre... not build your own adventure. At least, that's how I have traditionally seen them done, and frankly, I don't understand how one could enjoy them any other way. It defeats the point, in my opinion.
So I argue, stop using "God Options" and start making decent stories. Bad spelling, bad plots, bad sentence structure, all of that can be forgiven. Just don't ruin your story by making it uninteresting to play in the first place. At the very least, stick with the format the author is using for the story already, and don't screw with it.
EDIT: One thing that has been discussed in this thread so far is that these "god options" are given so the player knows what they are getting into... but if I gave you the ending of a Star Wars movie so you could "know what you're buying a movie ticket for" wouldn't that just be spoiling the movie? What you can do instead however is foreshadowing. I didn't show that in my example very well above, but how I'd improve it to include foreshadowing is the player hears hissing behind the door. I'd also cut out the succubus just attacking you out of nowhere unless something earlier hinted that if I stay too long the succubus might eat you.