So I am finishing up the first area for the magic city, and I am thinking of how to organize it. At the moment you arrive in the city then just have a bunch of options where to go, some of the options are short(especially if you are not the right gender/familiar or not), and some much longer. So I was thinking you should be able to do more than one activity while in the city.
I was thinking maybe having a time like system. So you might have 10 activity points or something and the short actions take like one but then a really big action might take like 5 or something. Or I could just let you explore every area. I did think of just letting you explore every area until you decide to leave, but I am not sure if it makes the choices less meaningful if you are just going down the list, visiting them one by one.
I suppose it depends on whether you want the players to feel pressure to use time wisely, or if you want to encourage them to experiment and explore. Two somewhat different tones.
Maybe consider using escalating time costs.
So the 1st time you visit a location it costs 1 time, the 2nd costs 2 etc.
Some players could try a little bit of everything and visit 10 locations, others may want something specific and spend 4 actions in one location (1+2+3+4 = 10 time). As long as the complexity of the interaction matches the amount of time spent both types of players would see a similar amount of content.