Hey there, I can give you my personal take on some of your points:
-
I have ‘locked off’ some flavor text depending on a bunch of choices I implemented at the start of my own wip–so if for example the player chooses to be more charismatic they will act (I hope) witty when interacting with NPCs, opposed to being soberer if the player chose to be more serious (think Hawke from DA 2 and how their personality changed depending on the responses the player picked: sarcastic, genuine, or intimidating). In my experience as both writer and player, people don’t like to get locked off in more substantial ways (not being able to romance a character, not being able to choose to talk instead of fight) in these type of games since choosing and shaping the story is what we are all here for
-
I’ve seen wips in which NPCs are completely different people depending on what type of personality the player chooses for them (and I was blown away by the amount of coding and writing this author was doing), but my personal advice is that it isn’t worth it. You’ll be investing time and energy on something that isn’t all that important and probably will come back later to bite you in the ass when your story inevitably balloons up (it always happens, believe me) and you want to move the plot along but you still have to write 5 scenes with 5 different characters that are the same one. Probably you will end up liking one personality over of the others and chances are 95% of your players will like that one too, so yeah, just avoid this headache.
-
If what you’re referring to is gender-locking or gender-flipping a RO, then I think 4 or 5 ROs is the magic number. You can have a guy, a girl, 2 non-binary people, or change it the way you want. If you have less I recommend making everyone gender-flips so players have more options. Oh, and please don’t make one RO the one true option and the other(s) the jerk that at the end steals all the player’s money and kicks them to the curve, that’s frustrating
-
Think about the core themes, plots, ideas you are really interested in writing and branch from that, your game will grow on its own.
Pretty much, yeah. Also don’t let fear grip you; the idea is thinking about different ways people would react to a certain event, and then lay them out for the player to choose. If someone wants a different option they’ll let you know and you can add it if you feel it makes sense (sort of like GMing). People here are super chill and most of the time will ask for something rather than demanding it.
Best of luck!