I’m currently in the process of making a game of my own and require some tips on how to write a gender-selectable RO.
The problem is that, I think the personality between the male and female version would be very different due to their circumstances.
Do you think I should just decide on one gender for this character, or maybe I should streamline their route so it doesn’t become too different between the genders?
There can be a time and place for gender-selectable ROs, but I am personally very strongly of the opinion that going out of your way to flatten out a character’s background and story to make their gender indistinguishable is always the worst option in cases like this. It does a disservice to both your worldbuilding and the character themself—if gender realistically should make a difference to their experience in life, based on the gender roles of your setting, then it materially matters to the story you’re trying to tell with them. It shouldn’t be glossed over.
If you do feel you have the creative capacity to write two different versions of the character based on gender, and you think you can manage the added workload, and it interests you to do so, it could be an interesting way of exploring gender dynamics in your world and adding replay value.
But if not, I think it’s better to just set their gender in stone. Honestly, this is usually my preference in general, for other reasons, but not everyone will agree on that.
At the end of the day, what you really have to consider is what the best thing for the character is. Tell the story you want to tell with them, and if you can make that work with gender selection and want to do it, great—if not, don’t compromise on that.
I agree with what @CorvusWitchcraft said, and I would also suggest that you consider how many ROs (or at least how many gender selectable ROs) you have in your project. If you have a large cast of gender selectable ROs, it’s probably not feasible to work in the distinctions between the different gender versions of the characters. On the other hand with a small cast, you might be able to implement different versions of the ROs without becoming overwhelmed.
Personally, I have always preferred ROs to have a set gender. But if you are already thinking that the male and female versions would be very different, then you probably don’t want to go the route of making them indistinguishable. The best advice I can give you is to stay true to your characters. If you feel their gender makes a difference to who they are, then write them that way.
If you are familliar with Fate’s retelling of Camelot, then its basically that with Prototype Arthur and Artoria. The RO in question is the “Hero” character that defeats you, the “Demon King” at the start of the story. In this case, the Male RO is merely a stoic hero, whereas the female version is downright cold. A subtle difference…
Personally, I don’t think a large selection of ROs is actually good for a Choicescript game. Quality is usually better than quantity in these games.
I haven’t finished the character concepts yet, but I’m thinking of including 4 ROs.
Initially, I was thinking of making them all gender selectable, but I don’t think I want to write all that, so only the Hero is gender selectable, whereas the rest is set for their gender.
In that case, I would also think about the ratio of genders you have going on. If you have 2 guys and 1 girl, then it would make sense to make the hero gender selectable. But if you have 2 girls and 1 guy, then I don’t think anyone would argue with you gender locking him. If you somehow have all girls or all guys then that’s a question of whether or not you just want to have a targeted game
Either way, I think it’s best you don’t streamline the character to make them simpler.
I agree with what @CorvusWitchcraft said.
To elaborate and expand on a few points:
I think gender matters in most stories. Unless your story is taking place in some utopian fantasyland or far future egalitarian society, people are treated differently based on gender in many different situations, and it would have some kind of effect on their life.
An author glossing over gender annoys me - if you are just swapping out pronouns it feels like the choice of gender is cheapened. Even in a society where both genders are supposed to be treated equally - that doesn’t mean other genders are treated the same.
These contrasts are where you can have a lot of fun as an author or a reader. In a story set in a medieval style world, a RO who is a knight is going to have an entirely different vibe based on what gender they are. A male knight might have had to work hard to achieve that status, but it wouldn’t have been as hard as if they were female. That romance option being a woman means the character has challenged gender-norms for their society, had to prove themselves over and over, and is likely hyper-vigilant of their abilities or competence being challenged.
Gender-selectable ROs are nice - but only if you are willing to do twice the work and write two different versions of the character. If you are just going to swap pronouns, don’t bother. Instead, just gender-lock them and write the compelling character you have in your head.
I think @ThomB has managed this exceptionally well with his Evertree Saga. Honourable mention also goes to Ortega from the Fallen Hero series.
And it would certainly shape their behaviour in those situations, but that’s not the same thing as their personality.
I disagree that there’s no point in doing gender-selectable characters if there aren’t significant differences in how the characters are written. I enjoy when gender-selectable characters result in less gender-conforming looks or behaviour.
It is also a useful way of providing a large pool of characters to fit a player’s romantic preference without having to write a very large cast of characters. An underrated aspect of it as well is that players can play with a full roster of female characters if they want, for example, which isn’t typically seen; or even nonbinary characters if the author chooses to include them in the selectability.
Either way, a little distinction between gender-selectable characters goes a long way - I saw Malin recently say that for all that people talk about the Ortegas feeling very distinct, there’s not actually very much changed between them. I don’t think there’s a need to write totally different personalities - if you’re finding yourself doing that, I’d recommend writing separate characters as that’ll bring more breadth to the story.
I agree that their personality wouldn’t necessarily be radically different (and shouldn’t be, if it is going to be the same character), but a lifetime of having their behavior shaped in different situations would certainly have an effect.
But the author should make at least an acknowledgment of that less gender-conforming look or behavior when appropriate to the story, right?
As a reader, I don’t need a big deal to be made of it, but I feel like the author has paid attention to the details if they make small changes or additions based on gender. If the plot has a killer targeting young women and your RO is a young woman, that should come up in whether or not they are walking home alone. The end result may be the same - the RO as a female isn’t going to become a victim on that walk anymore than the male version of that RO - but it would make narrative sense for the characters to bring it up and for the RO to either express that fear or dismiss the fear (depending on personality).
That’s true. I think Mass Effect with a female Commander Shepherd and Ripley in Alien are good examples too. Both are essentially acting in roles written for the character being male and the characters actually become richer for the contrast.
I want to be clear that when I said I prefer the author write “two different versions of the character” I didn’t mean in terms of personality, because a character is their personality. I meant in all the little narrative details like my killer example above. Basically, I don’t want the author to forget or gloss over the gender of the RO in situations where it would matter.
Absolutely! I agree with the examples you’ve mentioned and I do think that there’s a lot of additional richness that can be gained from using details to make a character feel more fleshed out. For example - regardless of the world in which it’s set, a male character with a shaved head and a female character with the same hairstyle will be perceived differently by readers (and possibly by people in the world depending on applicable beauty norms).
That said I also think it’s possible to overemphasise gender differences and what feels like it “makes sense” for one gender or another.
I’d love to see more games in which a male character gets the “rare female knight” treatment, dealing with other characters’ preconceptions about them being in a role more expected for a woman - whether those preconceptions match ones in real-world societies or whether it’s an invented culture with different kinds of gender roles.
Most of which happens in their head and is something the MC wouldn’t know of, unless the MC is experiencing the same thing anyway (that young woman in your example probably already has a lifetime experience of calculating the risks of walking home alone, probably completely unknown to her male friends), unless the story focuses heavily in those situations that are different, and if it does have that much focus on the RO, then why aren’t they the MC?
(I mentioned personality because that’s what the OP asked about.)
I’m not sure I’d call that kind of thing “two different versions of the character” any more than I would call it two different versions of the character if the deciding factor for the example killer was, say, whether or not they’re wearing green. Two variants of the scene, sure, but that’s not the same thing in my opinion. It’s good reactivity, but I’d say it’s ultimately still the same character.
Your mileage may vary, of course.
Agreed. I think it’s worth dwelling on which aspects of a character are innate personality vs which are circumstantial behavior based on social expectation. The key to writing a gender-selectable RO, in my opinion, is understanding how to keep the character’s internal traits consistent while allowing their external expression to vary based on social experiences and pressures.
Using the serial killer example: if the female version of the character is openly expressive about her feelings of anxiety for her own safety, while a male version of the character is outwardly stoic despite experiencing anxiety over the safety of others–that seems like consistent characterization if they are in a society that expects women to be expressive and men to be stoic. Both characters look different from the outside and have slightly different perspectives, but they’re experiencing the same emotional reaction and displaying a similar level of social conformity.
If, however, the female character reacts with indifference, carelessness, or reckless behavior - while the male character is still keeping up his socially-acceptable veneer of stoicism to cover his anxiety - then you’re looking at two characters with different emotional reactions and different levels of social conformity. It’s a level of separation that indicates they might be truly separate people.
But also if they were both openly worried, or both stoically silently anxious, they would still be the same character because that would just be who they are.
I’m probably not using the correct terminology for what I mean - I think @valence better expressed what I mean below.
That’s the opinion I was trying to convey, albeit awkwardly. Thank you.
Hmm. That’s true, but again, in regards to the narrative I think even the same personality may express different reactions depending on personal risk.
The killer example came to me because it came up in a recent IF story I read, and I liked that the author didn’t treat the scene the same with both genders, since one gender was explicitly at personal risk, while the other would, (according to the information the characters had at the time), presumably be absolutely safe walking home alone in the dark.
But, again, @valence said what I meant. I want the author to show reactivity to a character’s gender in the narrative and with details where it is important. I wouldn’t expect a gender-selectable RO to have a different personality depending on gender - that would be weird. I do expect the author to put in some thought and modifications to the narrative and the reactions of other characters to the different gendered versions.
Doing this can actually be necessary to keep other characters consistent in personality. As one last example, take a lecherous nasty man who the player has to interview with their RO. This other character is known to demean and make inappropriate comments to women, so if the RO was a woman and the man didn’t comment on it, it would feel like an oversight or mistake on the author’s part. Now, a male RO in the same situation may (and probably would) respond in the same way as a female RO, in accordance with the RO’s personality, but the other character in the scene would not treat them the same.
I tend to make the MC gender neutral and gradually make them different. Doesn’t have to be too different.
Just enough for the player to know that this is definitely a woman im playing as.
Add some advantage check traits if your advanced
You can express different worries and do different things on the side, and still express them the same way.
Honestly I doubt it in most cases (maybe when the RO is aggressive enough that they just punch without thinking), if we’re going with the “they have different lived experiences that shape their behaviour” premise, but I am totally rooting for that hypothetical woman RO now and want to see her as MC instead.
Also I hope the woman version of the character would have something else going on for her as well and not just be there constantly to be threatened, while the man variant gets to do cool stuff.
This was a question about what to do when a specific character isn’t expressing themselves the same way across two (specifically male|female) branches of their route. Based on the context, I assume that the circumstances mentioned were related to the character’s gender and some sort of inescapable social factors at work in the fictional narrative. But that is an assumption; it could be wrong.
Anyway, I didn’t intend to imply that the behaviors in the example were any reflection of the actual capabilities/complexities of three-dimensional human beings. Or even the sum total of possible characters who could be cast into that situation.
But the OP wanted to know if they needed to drop gender-selectability from an RO’s route because their branches were feeling too divergent.
I took off with that example only to suggest that sometimes just changing perspective on what motivates a character’s behavior can help clarify how much divergence is really happening and how to look at things in a way that unifies the two branches back into a consistent characterization.