Most of what you’re asking about here comes down to creating, setting, changing (also setting), and displaying variables.
I know you mentioned being hesitant about guides, but you’re going to need them to get started. Choicescript is easy peasy, I promise, but you do have to get familiar with the language first.
This is the famous A Basic Tutorial. Read through it. You don’t have to understand everything all at once, but it will be good to get familiar with the terms and basic ideas. In particular, spend some extra time with the variables section.
I also strongly recommend using CSIDE for development. You can find the website, the forum post, and some info in the dev tools section of A Basic Tutorial. Plenty of people don’t use it, but I find it really great for testing, simple to get the hang of, and beginner friendly. The CSIDE tutorial and test project(s) are really going to help you see how things work together in a way that reading through “regular” tutorials and guides might not (because it allows you to start writing a little of your own code).
Again, I know that amount of info may seem overwhelming, but that’s the amount of info you’re going to need (and want) and it’s already there, streamlined, accessible, and put together in a way that makes sense, so you should take advantage of it. And really, it’s the same exact information we’d be giving you here. Anything I say about, for instance, how to create, set, and display variables is going to be very similar in length and content to what the wiki already says about it.