I have been playing games, wips and beta testing games from choice of games, and the most problem I had that have stomped me time and time again when playing through the story, is personality stats, at first I was a total moron about the personality stats and I was just playing freely with no guidance but my personal opinion alone, which is what unknowly ruined my gameplay because I didn’t know at the time, there were stat checks for personality, I thought it was just to show how the people that the MC meet, how they perceived and reacted to the actions of the MC, which it does but as I gained understanding of these game, I started following the personality stats but it felt as if I was a machine doing what is restricted to what it creators ordered and not a human being of my own who once followed they own path, it was in 2025 that I just decided that I want to replay the classics and one of these classics was choice of a pirate, which made me feel like a human being, so I am curious what is everyone take on personality stats and how do you approach it, I also maybe doing this to find inspiration for a wip game, I wanna create
Honestly, I struggle with writing personality stats. I do have them in my story, because my natural inclination is to write the main character being happy and jokey (my own personality) but of course not everyone wants to play like that, some want to be serious and so on.
But I must admit I’m not doing very much with the stats, and even when I do I have way more choices that don’t have personality stats. I like to write very freely, so I find it constraining to just think inside the stats. Still, it’s necessary to remind me not to make the main character independently snarky and optimistic.
… So yeah, I don’t think I’m doing personality stats very well. They’re just functioning as a boundary for me. I don’t like to play with them either.
In my WIP, The Rise of Cthulhu, I have three opposed pairs of personality traits, and half of them came directly from H.P. Lovecraft’s The Call of Cthulhu. The first one that occurred to me was Curiosity vs. Ignorance (Ignorance coming from the opening paragraph of the short story). This can create an internal conflict in the character, as boosting your Ignorance often comes at the expense of investigating the mystery, but it’s also more likely to preserve your Sanity. Reason vs. Intuition was one I came up with myself. Audacity vs. Caution comes directly from the short story’s final line, where Lovecraft himself sets them up as an opposed pair. I’m still early in the adventure, so I haven’t actually done any tests against them yet (I’m only up to the early part of Chapter 1 so far, and you can get these stats to the upper 60s, or maybe 70 if you push it, by this point), but there are ample opportunities to shape them with your choices.
I dont write personality stats but instead personality boosts. Untouched as of yet since now Im writing an MC with a set personality.
The idea is to have a blank slate boosted by charisma or intellect. Speech pattern would subtly reflect that. Stoic is the baseline trait so to keep it, equalize charisma and intellect.
Well I don’t think I focus on the MC’s personality much. They started the story going through a terrible thing so the focus is more their reaction to that and how they are dealing with it in a way that most people would probably find valid (stages of grief). Then, I just have a lot of choices when it comes to dialogue and plans so the player can kinda determine the MCs personality that way.
I do sorta have personality stats, but it more determines how the MC talks (expressiveness, talkativeness) and how comfortable with affection they are (and extra stats to determine if the ROs are exceptions to this) that they set during an interlude just after the prologue.
I have never much liked personality stats that try to steer me in one direction or another in terms of gameplay. I can and will save scum and edit saves when that happens.
The personality for my MCs is usually just “me, but hotter, and more willing to beat someone’s ass.”
I will always go with “the personality that would make them the most interesting in relationship to the story”. Sometimes my MCs are little shits, sometimes stoic heros, nerds, manwhores… Whatever I feel fits the most with the setting they’re in
I haven’t written interactive novels or anything but in my current thing I’m primarily writing to turn my dreams into an actual coherent story, there are four protagonists at different time periods for the setting.
The one I’m currently writing follows a man named Marcus, and I haven’t really thought about his personality much honestly, but based on converting the dreams into writings I feel like his personality naturally develops and comes in through that considering how he interacts with the people around him, and his two primary love interests in the story. I wouldn’t really know how to describe him.
I like the approach to it because I’m not writing him thinking about his personality. It just naturally starts coming through based on his interaction with people in the story. I dunno. Probably doesn’t work for most things lol
(Also writing a male character is different for me since I’m gay as hell and usually focus on Yuri type stuff. lul)
I find that groups of characters in fiction are most interesting when there’s minimal overlap in “niches” or character tropes, where each character as a unique personality that makes it easy to differentiate them from the others in the group and to have the space to grow.
Just as an example, that’s why the trio of Luke (the idealistic but naive hero), Han (the cynical and sarcastic rogue), Leia (the fiery and sassy princess), and Ben Kenobi (the wise and mysterious mentor) worked so well as a quartet in the first Star Wars film. They’re all distinct characters who don’t step on each others’ toes while playing off of each others’ personalities excellently.
In the same way, I like to take a look at the main cast of an IF and try to figure out what the most interesting niche gap is that could be filled by the main character. I think it’s a lot more interesting to do it this way, because (for example), it’s not much fun to have two sarcastic wisecrackers or two naive idealists in a small group - they’re stealing each other’s dialogue!
That doesn’t mean, of course, that no traits can be shared between characters (Leia and Han both enjoy a verbal spat, which is a big part of why they work so well). In fact, casts work best when the characters have something in common with (almost) everyone else in the group, which allows them to have chemistry. Similarly, making the MC in an IF have chemistry with others in the group might mean taking a little bit from each of the characters so that they have something in common - in a way that feels natural - but the end result is still a unique character.
At the same time, for stories that have a more established and important backstory for the main character (like Bastard of Camelot or Sword of Rhivenia compared to College Tennis: Origin Story), I do also take into account the natural ways in which the backstory might affect a character, including traits from parents or family members.
So for example, for Bastard of Camelot, I’ve tried a few different personalities, but one of my favourites is a naturally kind and cheerful kid (which is taken largely from the Arthur side) whose defence mechanism growing up - due to the unfriendliness they face at Camelot - is aggressive sarcasm and biting wit (influenced by the Morgana side). At the same time, both sides are connected by the character’s general “energecticness”, which remains no matter how they’re reacting to a situation.
I really enjoy this approach because I find it makes stories a lot more cohesive to read and play.
That said, because I use this approach, it does annoy me quite a lot when stories have such a large and diverse cast that they essentially have no niches left to fill. When there’s already a genuine character, a sarcastic character, a kind character, a rude character, an idealistic character, a grey character, and so on, the main character just feels like an OC that doesn’t belong in the story, rather than like an actual character, because every character gap has already been filled.
This is unfortunately a fairly common problem with stories that have too many ROs or too big a cast - and can be one of the key things to make readers wonder, “why didn’t the author just write a book?”.
Just my two cents and a pet peeve.