Personality Traits

Hello, I’ve been an active reader of hosted and cog games for many years. I’ve read and purchased too many games to count. (I’ve read nearly them all and about 30 games purchased). My very first game I believe was choice of the dragon. Anyways that’s just a quick look into me, I want to talk about personality traits. Now, this isn’t going to tell you how to write your stories and no way of writing is wrong, I’m just here to put my 2 cents in and to offer my own perspective.

I write this because I’ve seen so many games lock you into a certain personality, which in my opinion isn’t realistic. An introverted person can speak up, a cold person can be completely warm to those close to them, a confident person can act shy. Instead of calling them traits, we should call them tendencies and shouldn’t lock choices based on them.

Now, I believe in the potential of personality tendencies and this is my take on it. First, I want you to consider that we all wear masks. What does this mean? It means we all act different depending on who we interact with. This is something you should consider when writing any character, including side ones. We connect deeper when a friend invites us to their house because we act different at home than we do for school or work. We are showing them a side to us that isn’t typically public and that little personal trust goes a long way. Consider having the main character act different in different circumstances as well, it’ll make them feel more human

Second, let’s talk about motivation. A character with a certain personality tendency going against that should be a big deal. Usually, depending on why they went against their personality, the reaction should be concern or appreciation. Why would one go against their personality? For a loved one, to get what they want, because their judgement is clouded; this should be taken into consideration.

Finally, let’s talk about what I think is the full potential of personality tendencies is. It will be a challenge, and you might need to grow as a writer and as a person. Writing different characters needs you to see all perspectives, not just your own. I believe the full potential is to change the narrative of your games. An introverted person sees the world differently than an extroverted person. I would highly recommend looking into the 16 personalities (but remember these are tendencies as well). Changing the perspective of the character based on their personality is interesting and makes your game replayable. Other characters can react if they make a choice that differs from their chosen tendecy and gives choices more weight. You as the author might have to think a little more about if the choice is important enough to go against personalities. Of course there are choices that would never go against any personality that you can choose as well.

Anyways this is just my 2 cents. I hope at the very least I have given you something to think about. The best thing of writing is that the author’s personality always leaks into the story which makes all stories as unique as the person that wrote them.

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Personal philosophy when writing is this:

Personality traits are there for flavortext and inform the other characters’ reaction to MC. But there’s always a base personality to even allow for the plot to happen (obviously). Trying to accommodate all possible personalities would just lead to text bloat and in many cases even make the plot unfolding nonsensical if not impossible.

As you, indeed, can not go from ‘hey, that’s my personality type’ (which, btw in and on itself is pseudoscience) to ‘oh, character X would think like this’.

So the best call, I’d say, is to have personality stats be flavor that acknowledges some things, but never put personality entirely before storytelling.

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I actually haven’t seen a lot of authors lock out options based on personality stats - or if they do, it’s only for extremes of personality. One thing I’d actually like to see more often is stat checks in connection with personality, not to determine what options are available, but to determine whether the character succeeds based on just how much it goes against the grain. (A generally blunt person may find it worthwhile to be tactful sometimes, but a person who prides themself on their lack of tact may find, when the time comes that it’s to their benefit to tell the truth in a gentle manner, they’ve simply never developed the skill of doing so effectively.)

I definitely agree with you that it’s great when authors use personality stats to modify the narrative in such a way that the character’s distinct worldview shines through. It’s not necessarily simple to pull off, but the effect is definitely worth it.

P.S. I’m sorry to pick on you a little, but I kinda have to say something about “An introverted person can speak up…” Please note that introversion is not the same as shyness. Plenty of introverts have no trouble whatsoever speaking up, and there are plenty of extroverts that struggle with it.

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I know, that’s my own personality leaking out XD

I think this was more common in older games. Sergi was quite prone to do that, for example. In general things have gotten better at it, but some authors still go and equal e.g. being soft-spoken with being a coward/not a great leader or planner.

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I’m not saying all personalities. That would be insane. But I agree with your conclusion. All I’m saying is a few different perspectives based on major personality traits and taking some things into consideration. It probably was older games, I’m not sure, as I’ve said I’ve played a lot

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Absolutely agree!

Especially since I often end up having to think far too much about stats. I’m personally someone who can act very different based on circumstances and the people around me. I often play “kind” characters, but can combine that with being rather harsh when I deem such a reaction appropriate. I hate it if the game punishes me for acting the way it fits my opinion/ judgement/ own personality.

While I definitely know what you mean, personally I absolutely loathe personality stat checks. Because I firmly believe if you want to determine a success by stats, then stick to skills, choices made earlier / in that scene or something similar.

Just because one tends to be, for example, more stoic, it doesn’t mean you are incapable of approaching a situation or a person in a gentle or empathetic way. Or just because you are always kind and gentle, it doesn’t mean you can’t express your opinion in a passionate and angry way.

It can happen that it’s so unusual to your usual self, that you fail at expressing yourself. But why not track that with a skill instead, establishing whether you’re e.g. eloquent and thus in general good with your words, regardless of your emotions at the moment?

I’d prefer it if other characters might react surprised or question what exactly triggered such an usual respond regarding your usual behavior … But I don’t really think that personality and skills are that closely related.

I always feel like games punish me for not sticking to the same tonality in every single choice when they determine success by personality stat checks.

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I wholeheartedly agree and is partially why I wrote this.

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Great perspective! Personality as ‘tendencies’ rather than rigid traits makes for more dynamic and realistic characters. Plus, adapting the narrative based on personality sounds like a cool way to add depth and replayability.

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Unless there’s some tangible benefit to the failure, that’s effectively the same as having “locked personality”. Because what player in their right mind is going to pick the option which leads to a failure instead of one which they’ll pass? (that is, one the game has determined to be their “personality type”) They’re getting painted into a corner either way.

Which is why i don’t think it’s something worthwhile as a mechanic. From comments of various players it also seems to be quite disliked, for aforementioned result.

That’s why i started the reply with “unless there’s a benefit to the failure”. And typically, there isn’t any, or nothing that comes close to benefits from passing the check.

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Depends on the story, and what follows from a failure.

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Tangentially, how many personality stats (as in visible percentile meters) do you guys like to have? I had four in my first game, but I’m considering “updating” to five for my next project. Is that too many, just enough, or somehow too few?

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I’d say it may be a bit too much. With 5 stats any of them starts to get lost in the crowd, so to speak. There’s a reason the more mainstream games boil down their dialogue to “nice/mean/class clown” triangle.

Any extra personality type also increases both the number of options and the associated text variants that need to be written for the entire game. This is not a small amount of work.

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Especially if you’re not using them to branch the plot or gate outcomes…

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There is no answer for that. It depends largely on you and your story. It is simply a tool in your toolbox. If you can utilize a lot effectively for your narrative then by all means. If you don’t think you can utilize them effectively then don’t.

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Or in other words. Ask. Can this add to my story or does it take away from the story

Interesting topic.

For myself, I’m afraid I follow the philosophical route that some actions and dialogues will be more difficult depending on a person’s personality and that people do have personalities that become more locked in overtime, and I try to make my games to follow this up to a point. I like that option to for separating out the player and the character and giving more agency to a character, in hopes of making the prot and the other characters seem more like they have a life of their own. Certainly plenty of room for different philosophies on this, though, and I find the idea of personality as tendencies interesting.

That sounds like a fun middle ground to this debate. While I won’t go that route for my current games, as it would be far to much work to redo things at this point, I can see the appeal. I wonder, if a prot failed or succeeded on this check, do you feel it should adjust that quality in their personality under these scenarios, or would that remain static? Probably plenty of options there.

I’d agree that there’s no right or wrong answer to this, though I think target audience might change a little depending on how many you want to include. Some people love games to be fairly complex, others like simpler games. I’d think the type of project might also further define how many might be ideal, depending on what your trying to model with the character and their universe.

Mostly irrelevant, but for myself I think I usually try to have around six or so. fsix and Havenstone do have a point that it does get a bit tangled with each new stat variable; the coding certainly does get harder and more exhausting. But I’m of a mind that at least a few players prefer the higher amount of modeling.

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Thank you for offering your own perspective and considering mine. If it were me and I wanted to separate the character and the player, i would do what many games here do and just forgo the personality stats because then there should only be one personality; the character’s. If you want the player to be acting as themselves in a role then you would use the personality stats. This is my personal opinion.

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I respect your view and think there are many different paths and philosophies on this, but in fair refute, I think you will note the contradiction in your statement: for the only personality to remain as the character’s then there isn’t really any separation as there is only one. My thoughts and philosophy are for those games, game creators, and players that want both agency for the player AND the character. I once more respect that some will want different game styles, but for myself I’d find it kind of less interesting if one or the other are completely removed from the picture, in terms of agency and potential, though there is certainly plenty of room between all these stances of game structure; some games, like Witcher, have you play a preset character with strong motions towards a given personality path, while others may give you a role that may also restrict some aspects of personality but not all, and then there are more free rang games, where personality and options might be more or less boundless. Interestingly enough, I think for the most part the more aspects of personality are left to the player, the more complex the game will be to create, though at least by the dominant methodology for the last couple decades I think that’s been a cornerstone. Though perhaps time are a changing