I totally get what you’re saying. However, readers wouldn’t choose to be stupid. Rather, they would choose to do something ambitious which would lower their intelligence score a bit.
Some of the choices would simply be arbitrary because I’m not going to spend a lifetime figuring out what stat influences another. However, having every choice affect multiple stats would be key to making such a complicated system work.
There was another thread about one stat getting too much attention so that the others slowly degrade. I would probably come up with a dirty and quick formula for stats that affect one another. Perhaps if a choice is ambitious it will always affect certain others in one way or another. Maybe not true to real life, but that’s OK.
In the end, I will probably scale it down a lot. Just trying to figure things out right now.
I would have to rely on beta readers and forum peps because what frustrates people probably wouldn’t frustrate me so much.
If I can figure out a formula for such, perhaps opposing stats don’t need to be the way. I can keep some of it hidden in the background. The reader doesn’t necessarily have to know why certain choices are there and others aren’t, which they wouldn’t even know unless they play a second time.
Different stat combos could lead to a different kind of King. It wouldn’t be a pass/fail situation, but more like majoring in different kinds of leadership and seeing how the country responds.
You could have a whole host of bittersweet endings where things were almost perfect, but with hints that your reign won’t be sustainable. Then maybe a “true end” where you make the best possible decisions, and have your stats just high enough to recruit important allies.
A game that did that really well was Long Live the Queen. If you got to the end and were crowned, it was only the beginning; the fun was finding all of the variations on types of ruler to be/ways to die spectacularly. So the replay value was huge, just from different stats leading to different choices or paths.
Though it may be beyond me, I am envisioning a story arc that looks more like a tree, except that certain branches may curve back on themselves. Then near the end, choices would lead to a dozen different endings. Or more. Definite replay value.
Read through the thread on empyrean. I haven’t read it myself but it’s one where most people agreed the writing itself was great but there were concerns with the way some apposed stats worked against each other and it was released so you shouldn’t make your beta testers responsible for making sure the game works ok. You can use them ( I do) but they can also get tricky to do well especially if they’re locking people out of choices/paths
I put together a little stat test. I changed insight to intuition because that makes more sense as an opposite of experience. I also changed the opposite of morality to be tolerance. If you make decisions strictly based upon your own morals, you aren’t as tolerant of others’ moralities.
I recommend that you read the opposed stat vs. Single stat thread.
The problem with opposed stats is that often times the variables are not really opposite. Single stats basically accomplish the same thing (if you raise one stat, you can’t raise another) , but they are less negatively received.
As for what makes a good leader, charisma/ intimidation is the most important skill to make people trust/ fear and follow you. However, if I have advisors/ ghost writers or a figure head, I could simply be the brains behind the operations and not need people skills. Are we going to have advisors?
A leader needs defense or offense skills to prevent others from taking / using their country or products. Those skills could include strong military skills to kill internal and external opposition, people skills that include other countries protecting you in exchange for your oil or academic worth or other goods.
You should think about real life leaders and what makes them good or bad.
