For what it's worth, variables are also used in stories. They allow you to track decisious without creating a whole new branch. And I personally felt the CHYOA guide explained variables fairly well. Have you read it?
If you don't know what it does, how do you know that it is annoying?
I think targetthyself means he doesn't like reading game stories and doesn't know how to write with variables. However, before I read the Chyoa guide, I thought the reader was supposed to keep track of the variables by hand making them both confusing and annoying.
Well, I could add a paragraph to the CHYOA Guide, though that wouldn't help with that issue ^^
Well, depending on implementation, there wouldn't even be a use for the story map as there is only "one" branch.
The back button just doesn't work due to a known bug. The reason for that is the structure of the save games. As soon as the structure is changed, the back button should work as expected.
You can always continue just at the point where you stopped reading the last time. Your progress will be saved. So you can read two chapters today, one tomorrow and another one in three days.
If you don't need to do calculations with your variables, you could directly use them in the chapter by stating
{variable name}