Axioms
Arcane
- Joined
- Jul 11, 2019
- Messages
- 1,521
For those of you who frequent strat/sim you know I post there a lot about a game I'm making. It was a bit of a tossup where to post it because it has extensive RPG systems and mechanics. You can technically play the leader of an adventuring party in the game even.
A lot of people on site don't read strat/sim and I wanted some feedback on some of the RPG stuff.
Specifically I am programming the Social Occasions system right now. Basically rulers in real life had to engage in a variety of stuff, including the stuff that the CK3 DLC Royal Court deals with, poorly IMO but woo shiny graphics, as well as Feasts, Hunts, Holidays and such. A lot of key parts of history happened as feasts or parties or councils or w/e.
Preface
________________________________________________________________________
So one thing I'm doing right now to build up to some videos of an pre-alpha game is getting the core aspects of the Social Occasions system up and running. I'm somewhat sad I didn't have my life together to launch in 2017 as I wanted when I started the project in 2013 because Social Occasions are somewhat similar to "Holding Court" in CK3. The implementation is quite distinct but it would have been a totally unprecendeted feature back in 2017.
https://axiomsofdominion.substack.c...vals?r=i2fsj&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web
That is the link to the previously released design blog on the topic though it is relatively high level.
Now that I'm actually writing the code I thought I might ask fans, or potential fans, if they had any thoughts about the actual implementation.
It is relevant for this discussion that Axioms is turn based. Social Occasions are planned in the Gathering Menu. You compile a list of Activities, send Invitations to Characters, and in the Invitations you describe the Activities that Character is invited to and you decide if they can have Family attend, or if you allow for Friends.
Social Occasions And Activities
_________________________________________________________________________
So first I'll talk some more about Activities. Events can contain a wide variety of Activities but nearly all events will contain a Feast. Feasts exist in games like Star Dynasties or Crusader Kings but they are relatively simple. In Axioms a Feast is in the abstract something like the Feast in Pathfinder: Kingmaker held by the Aldori Swordlord who gives you your chance to travel into The Stolen Lands and become a Baron.
Now obviously Axioms is not an isometric RPG and there are no character models. Perhaps the next CK3 expansion will let you use the 3D environments they pioneered in Courts in other events as well? That's what I'd do if I was their design lead. Events will take place in text menus. I suppose you could have an icon based system since TGUI is a fully functional GUI library. Something for modders maybe.
So for a Feast you assigned some Guests to the High Table to eat with you in the Invitations. Others will sit at the lower tables. You'll have a few Events at the High Table, simple procedural stuff not handcrafted with cute dialogue, based on your Standing with relevant Characters. Think like making Friends and stuff in Academagia or another menu based school/medieval sim game. Long Live The Queen, maybe. Generally the Feast is just about who gets to sit with the host and the quality of the preperations. Food, the Building it happens in, and perhaps Entertainment choices.
Follow the feast, or perhaps proceeding if I set Feasts to take place at the end of Social Occasions, you'll work through each of the other Activities at the Social Occasion. Sometimes you might only host a simple Feast. As noted in the Substack Design Blog post you also have events like Balls, Duels, Hunts, Tournaments, Religious Rites, and so forth. This is because Social Occasions represent anything from a humble Feast to a yearly polity/culture/religion wide Holiday Festival.
Axioms also has Grand Tours for newly crowned kings in the style or Majipoor or Karl Franz in Warhammer Fantasy. Depending on the society you may also have Courts that move around or you can do a Monarch's Progress, such as happened in history or under the Targaryens in A Song Of Ice And Fire.
Reasons For Social Occasions
________________________________________________________________________
If you read the linked blog post you know that polities in Axioms can have Social Calenders. Events which happen every year or every few years held by some leader, lord, or functionary. You might also have parties for Births and Deaths. Much like in your favorite fantasy or historical fiction novel invites are coveted and snubs and so forth have interesting social consequences. Holding an event on the day of a well known occasion hosted by another character could also get you into trouble. Additionally what event characters go to when forced to pick could have interesting ramifications. Typically only worlds that have progressed far into history, say 4000 years or more, would have lots of societies with complex social calenders with annual events.
Dances and Hunts and Tournaments typically have fewer events than Feasts and usually occasion specific ones. Social Occasions provide a unique chance to get in good with a specific Character. Host an Event Honoring someone specific, let them get the killing blow on the Hunt, Dance with someone, and so forth. Axioms has a very detailed Friend/Retainer/Long Term Relationship simulation and includes dynasties/houses/families/polities with decades to centuries long rock solid multi-generational relationships. Social Occasions ties into that system quite a bit.
Timeframe And Organization
_________________________________________________________________________
NPCs will also be doing things at these events independent of the player character. Social Occasions will tie into the Conspiracy system and general Espionage and even Propaganda. This system provides not only a rich gameplay experience even with just icons and buttons and text boxes, but it replicates historical systems and events and helps to allow for lots of things important to stuff like the rise and fall of the ottomans, without making blogging generally easy.
Each turn in Axioms will ideally be a 5-10 time period depending on what I fix it at at the end of development. Invitations go out one turn, come back the next, and the event happens on a third turn. Characters can go to a few events a turn if necessary. This may be a special variable in settings or it may be handled by the Attention Points systems.
Importantly events take both Resources and Wealth as well as Attention Points to organize. There will be some tradeoffs as far as delegation for events. Having a Spouse or Child or Relative or Functionary plan it could impact the perception and results. Characters will have to choose, to some degree, what they really want to spend their allotment of Attention Points doing. These do roll over in the current design. Maybe I'll cut it to half rollover based on play testing. In fact every mechanic and submechanic is subject to playtesting but I don't generally expect a lot of cuts or additions.
Impact And Integration
_________________________________________________________________________
As noted you can hold events for lots of reasons. A Feast could honor a character, a victory, a birth, or death, or a marriage. You can also hold events for Oaths and Vows(see the substack post on "Commitments") to lend them more weight and thus benefit for keeping or penalty for breaking. Sometimes based on your society characters will expect events for stuff and sometimes they'll be optional.
Social Occasions will typically provide a boost, when well organized and resourced, to Opinion and Respect. You might also gain Honor or Trust. These are discussed in the relevant post on my Substack with all of these in the title. For special cases you might also gain Fear. Aside from Opinion the secondary parts of "Standing" are subject to some shuffling. I might drop Trust or Honor or add Tyranny or Dread or something. Opinion is the primary part of "Standing" but the other Aspects are important to represent the impact of some actions and decisions properly and create an interesting world.
Many societies required Feasting and other Social Occasions as part of their system of leader Standing. Showing wealth and generosity and the supportof the gods and so forth. Similar Court/Justice and Festivals/Ceremonies were key to maintaining rule. This is because unlike the depiction in most strategy games, including those from Paradox, rulers were not autocrats. They needed the support of stakeholders. Whether that was tribal freemen or aristocrats or merchants or citizens/patricians and so forth. Even the pop culture representation of "godkings" was not super accurate historically.
Conclusion/Pitch
_________________________________________________________________________
Axioms takes the effort to limit snowballing and blobbing in an interesting and organic way seriously. Many of these elements were also key for diplomacy or espionage, for players who want to do something besides stab things. The most basic pitch of Axioms is what if you could play a ruler, or a non-landed character, who made their way through charisma or deceit or administrative talent. Social Occasions as a detailed, integrated, and powerful system are a key part of achieving that promise.
A lot of people on site don't read strat/sim and I wanted some feedback on some of the RPG stuff.
Specifically I am programming the Social Occasions system right now. Basically rulers in real life had to engage in a variety of stuff, including the stuff that the CK3 DLC Royal Court deals with, poorly IMO but woo shiny graphics, as well as Feasts, Hunts, Holidays and such. A lot of key parts of history happened as feasts or parties or councils or w/e.
Preface
________________________________________________________________________
So one thing I'm doing right now to build up to some videos of an pre-alpha game is getting the core aspects of the Social Occasions system up and running. I'm somewhat sad I didn't have my life together to launch in 2017 as I wanted when I started the project in 2013 because Social Occasions are somewhat similar to "Holding Court" in CK3. The implementation is quite distinct but it would have been a totally unprecendeted feature back in 2017.
https://axiomsofdominion.substack.c...vals?r=i2fsj&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web
That is the link to the previously released design blog on the topic though it is relatively high level.
Now that I'm actually writing the code I thought I might ask fans, or potential fans, if they had any thoughts about the actual implementation.
It is relevant for this discussion that Axioms is turn based. Social Occasions are planned in the Gathering Menu. You compile a list of Activities, send Invitations to Characters, and in the Invitations you describe the Activities that Character is invited to and you decide if they can have Family attend, or if you allow for Friends.
Social Occasions And Activities
_________________________________________________________________________
So first I'll talk some more about Activities. Events can contain a wide variety of Activities but nearly all events will contain a Feast. Feasts exist in games like Star Dynasties or Crusader Kings but they are relatively simple. In Axioms a Feast is in the abstract something like the Feast in Pathfinder: Kingmaker held by the Aldori Swordlord who gives you your chance to travel into The Stolen Lands and become a Baron.
Now obviously Axioms is not an isometric RPG and there are no character models. Perhaps the next CK3 expansion will let you use the 3D environments they pioneered in Courts in other events as well? That's what I'd do if I was their design lead. Events will take place in text menus. I suppose you could have an icon based system since TGUI is a fully functional GUI library. Something for modders maybe.
So for a Feast you assigned some Guests to the High Table to eat with you in the Invitations. Others will sit at the lower tables. You'll have a few Events at the High Table, simple procedural stuff not handcrafted with cute dialogue, based on your Standing with relevant Characters. Think like making Friends and stuff in Academagia or another menu based school/medieval sim game. Long Live The Queen, maybe. Generally the Feast is just about who gets to sit with the host and the quality of the preperations. Food, the Building it happens in, and perhaps Entertainment choices.
Follow the feast, or perhaps proceeding if I set Feasts to take place at the end of Social Occasions, you'll work through each of the other Activities at the Social Occasion. Sometimes you might only host a simple Feast. As noted in the Substack Design Blog post you also have events like Balls, Duels, Hunts, Tournaments, Religious Rites, and so forth. This is because Social Occasions represent anything from a humble Feast to a yearly polity/culture/religion wide Holiday Festival.
Axioms also has Grand Tours for newly crowned kings in the style or Majipoor or Karl Franz in Warhammer Fantasy. Depending on the society you may also have Courts that move around or you can do a Monarch's Progress, such as happened in history or under the Targaryens in A Song Of Ice And Fire.
Reasons For Social Occasions
________________________________________________________________________
If you read the linked blog post you know that polities in Axioms can have Social Calenders. Events which happen every year or every few years held by some leader, lord, or functionary. You might also have parties for Births and Deaths. Much like in your favorite fantasy or historical fiction novel invites are coveted and snubs and so forth have interesting social consequences. Holding an event on the day of a well known occasion hosted by another character could also get you into trouble. Additionally what event characters go to when forced to pick could have interesting ramifications. Typically only worlds that have progressed far into history, say 4000 years or more, would have lots of societies with complex social calenders with annual events.
Dances and Hunts and Tournaments typically have fewer events than Feasts and usually occasion specific ones. Social Occasions provide a unique chance to get in good with a specific Character. Host an Event Honoring someone specific, let them get the killing blow on the Hunt, Dance with someone, and so forth. Axioms has a very detailed Friend/Retainer/Long Term Relationship simulation and includes dynasties/houses/families/polities with decades to centuries long rock solid multi-generational relationships. Social Occasions ties into that system quite a bit.
Timeframe And Organization
_________________________________________________________________________
NPCs will also be doing things at these events independent of the player character. Social Occasions will tie into the Conspiracy system and general Espionage and even Propaganda. This system provides not only a rich gameplay experience even with just icons and buttons and text boxes, but it replicates historical systems and events and helps to allow for lots of things important to stuff like the rise and fall of the ottomans, without making blogging generally easy.
Each turn in Axioms will ideally be a 5-10 time period depending on what I fix it at at the end of development. Invitations go out one turn, come back the next, and the event happens on a third turn. Characters can go to a few events a turn if necessary. This may be a special variable in settings or it may be handled by the Attention Points systems.
Importantly events take both Resources and Wealth as well as Attention Points to organize. There will be some tradeoffs as far as delegation for events. Having a Spouse or Child or Relative or Functionary plan it could impact the perception and results. Characters will have to choose, to some degree, what they really want to spend their allotment of Attention Points doing. These do roll over in the current design. Maybe I'll cut it to half rollover based on play testing. In fact every mechanic and submechanic is subject to playtesting but I don't generally expect a lot of cuts or additions.
Impact And Integration
_________________________________________________________________________
As noted you can hold events for lots of reasons. A Feast could honor a character, a victory, a birth, or death, or a marriage. You can also hold events for Oaths and Vows(see the substack post on "Commitments") to lend them more weight and thus benefit for keeping or penalty for breaking. Sometimes based on your society characters will expect events for stuff and sometimes they'll be optional.
Social Occasions will typically provide a boost, when well organized and resourced, to Opinion and Respect. You might also gain Honor or Trust. These are discussed in the relevant post on my Substack with all of these in the title. For special cases you might also gain Fear. Aside from Opinion the secondary parts of "Standing" are subject to some shuffling. I might drop Trust or Honor or add Tyranny or Dread or something. Opinion is the primary part of "Standing" but the other Aspects are important to represent the impact of some actions and decisions properly and create an interesting world.
Many societies required Feasting and other Social Occasions as part of their system of leader Standing. Showing wealth and generosity and the supportof the gods and so forth. Similar Court/Justice and Festivals/Ceremonies were key to maintaining rule. This is because unlike the depiction in most strategy games, including those from Paradox, rulers were not autocrats. They needed the support of stakeholders. Whether that was tribal freemen or aristocrats or merchants or citizens/patricians and so forth. Even the pop culture representation of "godkings" was not super accurate historically.
Conclusion/Pitch
_________________________________________________________________________
Axioms takes the effort to limit snowballing and blobbing in an interesting and organic way seriously. Many of these elements were also key for diplomacy or espionage, for players who want to do something besides stab things. The most basic pitch of Axioms is what if you could play a ruler, or a non-landed character, who made their way through charisma or deceit or administrative talent. Social Occasions as a detailed, integrated, and powerful system are a key part of achieving that promise.
