I'm looking at creating a fairly complex choose-your-own adventure style of game, but I'm looking for a technique or method to help with the game design.
It will be a multi-branching story, and at times the branches will fold back in on themselves, and your major actions will be remembered and items will be collected. For example, if the player goes to the swamp and the forest before going to the castle he has picked up a dinosaur bone, killed a unicorn and grown an extra arm. If a player gets to the castle via the caves and the crypt he has picked up a bicycle and a strange smell. Now when developing puzzles for the castle I don't want to create a situation where two impossibilities are requires, for example - an extra arm and the smell are needed to kill an ogre.
Other than documenting the events and items very very carefully is there a process, a technique I can use in a spreadsheet or a piece of software that can help me?