From routes to events?

[sciencewarrior]

For my second project, I'm considering making a stat-raising sim with a few more gameplay goodies, but I have no idea how to plan a story based on events. For those of you who went through it, how do you tell a cohesive story with a consistent theme based on disparate scenes? How do you foreshadow a scene that may or may not happen? Or give closure to a subplot that you don't know if the player will pursue?

[papillon]

Magical Diary has a giant stack of calendar printouts on which I map out when things happen. Some of those happenings are just for my own records and will never be seen by the player, others will vary based on where the player is at any time or what path they're on.

Depending on what the subplot is, sometimes there will be visible signs of it even if you weren't involved, they'll just be a lot more mysterious if you weren't actually there. That helps remind the player of the subplot's existence so that they can go hunting for the meaning of that scene in future playthroughs if they're interested.

You don't have to have perfect closure on everything in every playthrough!

[Greeny]

If you want to avoid plotholes, it would be a good idea to raise a flag of whether or not the player has seen an event or not every time. It can really break the mood when a character talks about or acts like the stuff that happened to them in an event they didn't witness. Hell, even super big budget games like Mass Effect and Heavy Rain had a few mistakes like that.