IF Seal: How can I handle a game without visible stats?
Hello... umm... IF seal.
I would be delighted if you would share some insights on handling a story that doesn't use much personality stats, or stats in general. I am mostly vying to give readers the options to react to each situation in a variety of ways instead of having personality stat checks (except being shy or not shy). It isn't that creating personality stats is difficult, just that I find that in real life, people don't have set personalities, but rather react situationally. I wanted to recreate that (which is why I have a bizzilion dialogue options for each interaction).
Dear Bazillion-Dialogue-Options-Writing Friend,
This is a lovely goal and is a great way of helping the PC feel responsive to the player's choices and feeling like they have a fleshed-out and more organic personality.
Here are some thoughts below:
One recommendation I have is to give the PC plenty of choices about how they feel about things, but also to give them a variety of attitudes when they take a physical action. "I clutch the knife nervously" vs "I swing boldly", etc. This helps the game feel more dynamic, and avoids it feeling like personality is only expressed through thoughts or dialogue.
I also strongly recommend keeping a close eye on, and tracking and responding to, the PC's responses to important things. A useful part of having a personality tracker is that it acts as shorthand, so the other characters would think of a character with 70% Shyness as generally shy and act accordingly. Obviously people behave differently in different situations, but in a game that can make life easier to write responsively. You can absolutely do that without a stat bar though, either with use of hidden stats or by recording the PC's individual acts and behaviour.
That may end up being more work... but in all honesty any game of this kind works best with tracking and callbacks of that kind anyway, so it's not a huge amount more.
Something you will also want to consider is the game responding to the PC coming across as inconsistent or chaotic. Again this can also be the case for games that track personality using bars, but if you're writing more flexibly, and not nudging the PC into certain behaviours based on their previous actions, you may be allowing the PC to act in wildly different ways in different situations. That can be a feature rather than a bug and lead to some excellent interactions, so don't be afraid of that!
For ChoiceScript and ChoiceScript-style IF, there tends to be more of an expectation of personality tracking, so I would also recommend showing off characters responding to the PC's emerging personality in early chapters to teach players how it's going to work and that they can trust that the game is "listening" to them and paying attention.
Finally, I would recommend trying out Blood Moon and the Thicker Than WIP, both by Barbara Truelove, which are excellent examples of statless, but high-stakes, games.
Best of luck with your writing, friend, especially with the bazillion options!