Hello! I’m in the early stages of planning a choice game where the player character is a newly-created artificial human living on an island in space with other artificial beings and your creators. I’m stumped on what stats I could make and how to make them come into play over the course of the story.
Currently, I have four stats: Loyalty (how loyal you are to your creators), Autonomy (how good you are at acting on your own), Maturity (haven’t figured out how to define it in a story-relevant way yet), and Innocence (also haven’t quite figured this one out, but it starts out high in the beginning because you’re a fresh creation).
I feel like there needs to be more, and I need help figuring out how to make them directly affect the story aside from basic “some options aren’t available if you are above/below this amount of a stat” type conditions. Do any of you have any suggestions or advice for what I could use and how? I plan to stick mostly to personality-type stats more than action-type stats (like strength, intelligence, speed and so forth).
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I’m assuming Innocence is meant to be a spin on Morality? As in high innocence, the less likely you are to commit immoral deeds? I would advise against innocence as a trait though, because if it’s meant to revolve around your personality, then innocence is kind of self-serving. You can only lose innocence, you can’t somehow get it back for whatever reason. Morality would be more of a sliding scale and would be more immersive in the long run. But it’s your game, you might have a plan for that.
You don’t actually need that many stats; too many is often tiresome, but I think roughly 4 to 6 would be a good number. If I had to give a potential off the top of my head, it would be something similar to Amiability; are you an A.I. that desires a good relationship with humans and their fellow A.I.'s and is pleasant, respectful, attentive etc., or are you an A.I. who says and does what they want without regard for others feelings? This might be good because you could tie it into Morality in a clever way; they might be charming but completely immoral (like a psychopath) or they could not give a damn what anybody thinks of them but still be a nice (person?) at their core.
Just potential ideas, but it might get the ball rolling somehow.
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Innocence was meant less along the lines of immoral deeds and more along the lines of how little you’ve seen of the darker side of what’s going on, though I definitely understand your point. It does seem a bit silly to put it in when it basically can only decrease. I was also considering putting in something like that amiability stat, thanks for reminding me.
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I agree with @Sherlock221B and the maturity would be how you act against things in a more mature matter to display this, i should hace mature suggestive parts so you can display being mature accurately. where the character can choose to be innocent or not. But like @Sherlock221B it should be your MC personality, therefore how your MC responds to different situations they go through. And if you want to set it up like that in the beginning you should put the MC in situation when younger or so and depending on what the player choose you can either be innocent or mature. And throughout the story you innocents can be strip (decrease) as you maturity will increase on how you act to different things.
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@SamiFire
You could make Innocence some kind of mental HP, and if it reaches 0 the MC becomes insane and the game ends. You could also use it like cynicism/idealism in the Dragoon Saga, the reader would get a different description of how the MC sees the world depending on the level of Innocence.
Since the MC is an artificial human you should add a Humanity stat hat works like in Choice of Robots.
And since the MC lives on an island with others, add Social stat to determine how good they are at interacting with them.
And an Introvert/Extravert stat to determine how the MC behaves generally.
The Humanity stat could be a nice touch, but in CoR you didn’t actually play as the A.I., so it would have to function differently in some way. It is a cool thought though.
You might look at Blood for Poppies and glem some ideas.
Well, of course it wouldn’t be the MC’s robot acting more or less human but the MC themselves, but it could work the same way. If it’s low the MC behaves like a machine and if it’s high s/he acts more like a natural human being.
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I don’t think stats are absolutely necessary in all story-games. And, you shouldn’t have to force stats to fit into your story. Don’t write a game for the stats, write stats for the game. If you make a stat and it is never used, delete it.
Good stats to have a relationship stats and a person can be more or less likely to help you or talk to you based on the stat. But, you can always have characters like Bed Flanders from the Simpson’s that are nice no matter what or complete jerky characters.
You could have a creativity stat that lets robot build sand castles, draw, create other sentient bots.
You could have generic personality stats (nice/mean, timid/ brave, passive/lose cannon, etc.) that impact how others react to you.
For example, MC is looking for creator and sees sand bot building a sand castle on the beach. MC goes to ask sand bot if they have seen creator, but sand bot flees from MC because MC’s destroyer of sand castles stat is high. But, if MC had a high niceness stat instead, sand bot would reveal the location of creator and give MC ice cream. If MC has high intimidation, sand bot could cower in fear and then reveal creator’s location.
I’d have to know more about the plot in order recommend relevant stats.
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Honestly I like the idea of an Innocence stat that can only go down. It could make for some interesting gameplay mechanics.
However, you have to convey to the user the negative repercussions of having low innocence. This could be that you hear rumors of others who have “disappeared” due to their actions or knowledge.
Once it has been established that bad things happen when you have low innocence, the player might play the game trying to maintain a state of innocent bliss, even to the point of casting aside friends who have a lower innocence.
Alternatively they can work to uncover whatever horrors lie on the island while pretending to maintain innocence in conversations, or perhaps lead a rebellion against the creators.
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