Characters Should Be Distinct And Memorable

How Axioms makes you care about friends, spouses, vassal, and allies

Introduction

One of the things that really puts me off existing strategy games with characters is that the characters have no character. The vast majority of characters are replaceable by nearly any other character. Even in the case of vassals or potential lieges or marriage options you really only care about their claim and maybe one or two of their traits.

There are a small number of cases where you might vassalize a less “significant” character because they have “loyal” or something but that is pretty rare. In most games in the franchises with characters, and there are 7-8 of those and maybe 7-8 lesser franchises, different vassals or spouse options are pretty interchangeable. Additionally you rarely ever actually interact with them, either to make them vassals or to keep them loyal.

Fighting a war takes a very long contiguous amount of time whereas interacting with characters takes a very short amount of time for each instance and then you wait a long time before you interact with the same person again. This is actually on reason, complementary to my earlier post about maps, that some companies, who insist their games are not war games, are perceived to be war games. Because that is what you spend the largest contiguous chunks of game time on. I hear their most recent game sorta breaks that trend, except it does it in a bad, and accidental, manner, regarding the building menu.

Proportion Of Gameplay By System

One unique aspect of Axioms at the higher level is that, if things work as intended, you’ll be spending your time on all of the distinct major systems in an equally proportionate way. The amount of time overall and the amount of actually performing game actions should be relatively similar for warfare, economy, diplomacy, politics, social simulation, magical aspects, and then stuff like propaganda, designing buildings, engaging in the detail social occasions and so forth.

Of course player preference can shift the exact numbers. So if you really want to play with a focus on military gameplay you would be able to do like 10% logistics, 10% training and equipping, 10% building popular support, 20% fighting the wars, 10% stabilizing new territory, and then 30% handling the rest of the game.

That is actually part of the goal of the Attention System and Attention Points. Note that unlike RPGs and RPG adjacent games like Star Dynasties or XCom or w/e that have “action points” in Axioms you’ll have a few thousand Attention Points and various actions will cost anywhere from 10-20 to 100-200 to 1000 Attention Points. You’ll have way more than 5-10 actions a turn and Attention Points roll over somewhat turn to turn. I guess a better example is “Orders” in Old World? You’ll be doing 20-200 different things per turn rather than 5-20.

As an example aside from military a player engaging in Axioms as a webweaving shadowy character might be spending 10% of their Attention on the Propaganda system, 25% on the Intelligence Network, 15% on complementary public Social Actions, 10% on Social Occaisions, 20% on Conspiracies, and then the remaining 30% on all the other stuff that you need to have a basic amount of effort expended on.

Characters Interactions Should Be Central

In the vast majority of strategy games with characters, even those that are advertised as role play or primarily character based, characters are not as central as they should be. You are having meaningful interaction with relatively few, well under Dunbar’s number even, and your interactions are short and singular and typically you only interact with characters when you have some goal that needs a specific character.

You almost never, outside marriages that will eventually lead to inheriting land, maneuver characters into specific positions as part of a long term plan. And of course the NPC/AI characters don’t even have long term plans in a meaningful way. And you don’t, and usually can’t, engage in sophisticaed sequences of character interaction. You can send a gift or give a title that provides prestige/gravitas/w.e or maybe give land or a marriage. I think some games have generic actions like sway/boost opinion.

I can’t think of a strategy game that has Interests or Desires like Axioms does. Star Dynasties will let you throw a feast to celebrate a specific character but you can’t really engage in actions to boost the effect during the event. No game really has something like Axioms where a character loves dancing or singing so you can throw a ball or a concert at a feast.

Typically players will use the relatively limited actions right when they want something specific. Some Paradox games have a very limited friendship system but even in those cases you aren’t heavily incentivized to engage in social actions. You can finish a game of Crusader Kings or Imperator or Star Dynasties without even making a single “friend”. And “friends” in those games only have a few special interactions.

Characters Should Not Be Interchangeable

A famous criticism of many character based games is that making a character a councilor or a general or something typically doesn’t take into consideration anything but their “stat” for that specific position. I believe Imperator had a, very limited, mechanic for rogue generals which was driven primarily by the ubiquity of such situations in Rome. Even there it was often not a major consideration. And you couldn’t *really* play the patrician politics even in Imperator. You mostly took techs and engaged in blanket “concessions” to manipulate political parties and there weren’t a ton of these.

Characters in games where they are presented as important in marketing should actually make characters important. You should expend a large percentage of your game time and brain power to manage them. They should be memorable even without having insane stacked traits or other ancillary factors involved. And while you don’t quite need to smack headlong into Dunbar’s number you should have a minimum of 10 characters in a given campaign which you can call to mind even a couple years later.

Spawning a random “new” character to hold a city or castle or church or other bottom level land holding and then never caring about them again, and more importantly never caring about *any* characters below very powerful direct vassals is bad gameplay. Crusader Kings games literally run deletion passes on unlanded characters to clear them up because 95% of them are meaningless. Now you can’t avoid some number of useless characters but you should avoid characters who are obviously useless.

In Axioms there are attributes of characters that can be truly relevant aside from claims or heritable traits. You can pick a minor character with a personality and ideology very similar to your own or that of your family or faction and befriend them and raise them up and eventually use them for a variety of purposes. The interactions are deeper and the result of the interactions can create value. Creating life-long or generational friendships between individuals or families is actually possible compared to existing games.

In many games you have a simplistic and small council or various advisors or w/e. Axioms uses characters as military leaders and who leads a military unit matters. You might have to have officers/leaders of many more tiers than just 3 leaders per army or w/e. You’ll appoint logistical officers. You could make a mod without changing most mechanics to support the full Cursus Honorum and also the additional Roman military hierarchy.

They are used as administrators. Raising up a commoner or lower class noble can make you popular with that group. Appointing a variety of characters of a certain religion and/or race or picking a farmer can cause the associated groups to be happy. There are a variety of administrative positions with many tiers.

You might recruit talented mages, since Axioms is a fantasy game, or particularly favored priests. Axioms has a much more detailed upbringing system including things like tutors, trainers, pledged retainers/blood brothers as well.

Character Interactions Should Be Regular and Necessary

Part of the Axioms model for relationships is maintenance. Your positive and negative modifiers tick down over time. Well some of them anyway and many tick very slowly. But generally characters who are in your inner circle will expect some regular interaction.

Characters may even send requests specifically saying you haven’t interacted in a while and can you maybe go do hobbyX with them in the next 4 weeks or w/e.

For your spouse and kids depending on your individual personalities you would probably be engaging in some sort of social action every week or every other week. Turns are 10 day weeks in a 400 day year currently.

For key vassals you might do personal actions once every 4 weeks. This doesn’t include potential multi-target stuff like Social Occasions.

Additionally in order to make friends or strong allies or w/e I’d expect you to engage in 10-40 actions over 5-20 weeks. No just sending a single gift and hanging out at a single ball or feast.

In Axioms you have a lot of distinct interaction options and you have different sub-options based on you and the character you are befriending. Going on a ride in the country is more effective if both you and the other character know about horses or nature and if you both have fond feelings for horses or nature and you both like exercise or w/e.

You also have to figure out what other characters like. There’s some level of public knowledge about characters. So if 20 people in a 400 character social circle have independently learned that George likes dancing everyone knows. I’ll probably set a percentage like 5-10% for something to become common knowledge.

You can socialize with a person and basic social actions will uncover personality, ideology, interests, desires, and so forth. You can ask a mutual friend for their knowledge of a character if they like you enough. There may be a modifier where if everyone does the same hobby with a character it declines in value. Who wants to ride horses 20 times a week?

Character Interactions Should Have Variety And Purpose

As noted in a previous section there are a variety of playstyles and also a variety of actions that produce similar results. So a military focused player can do less socializing and more awarding land or loot to key vassals. Dark lord type players can focus more on blackmail or creating fear. Just like you can have a spymaster you can also have a schmoozer who socializes for you. Assuming you can keep him loyal.

Note that there are also tyrannical strategies and even special mind magic you can use in lieu of being a gregarious social butterfly. This creates internal unity at the cost of negative reaction from outsiders.

Finally you can employ propaganda to achieve various goals through the detailed Propaganda system. You can even combine military exploits with Propaganda to gain political compliance through a sort of “personal glory” strategy. Declare yourself the chosen of the gods or something and as long as you keep winning people will support you.

One other key feature of Axioms I don’t get to talk about much is “Commitments”. This can be as simple as a private personal promise, or could involve a public Oath/Pledge, or even involve magic in the case of a “Geas”. A promise is a social interaction where you commit to do or not do something. Depending on your personal and global “Trust/Honor” values(calculated by your honesty and reliability in the past) you’ll start with some level of Opinion boost. The default would be 5-10 and the minimum 0. I’m considering, since you don’t want to use negative values, having a sort of “more slowly advancing early growth” if you are known to be generally unreliable/untrustworthy.

Depending on the value of the “Commitment” made there will be a cap. You will slowly approach the maximum Opinion boost over time as you keep the terms of the promise. An Oath/Pledge is a public “Promise” and impacts everyone in “range” or everyone who has an interest. So pledges to a deity that are broken could have a lower negative impact or even a positive impact from the enemies and non-believers of that deity.

Oaths might have a subtype as well. So if you promise to not attack someone or somewhere a lot and always keep the promise future Oaths/Pledges of that type will start at a higher positive value.

Finally a “Geas” is a magically binding for a “commitment” that automagically creates consequences. Maybe you die or you are harmed or you lose attributes or w/e.

You can Promise something like marrying the daughter of a fellow member of a Conspiracy when you succeed, say in usurping a throne. Or that you will keep a Secret for a character or something. Basically commitments are similar to Treaties in most strategy games but the commitments you are making are different and usually more personal while Treaties are formal diplomatic pacts between states.

Closing

I often struggle to communicate how existing games, in my opinion, fall short in the character/social department. When I say that Imperator or Crusader Kings or Star Dynasties or Shadows Of Forbidden Gods/Shadows Behind The Throne has shallow or simplistic or limited character gameplay I’m often met with shock/disbelief or anger. Which surprises me because it seems so clear to me personally. I’m hoping this post can convey what I’m trying to say more effectively than my usual attempts.

There is a ton of open possibility space for character interactions in strategy and strategy adjacent genres that can heavily boost the verisimilitude of the experience of being a duke or king or general or religious leader, or even allow you to play as an archmage running a magic academy within a large living world in a Map&Menu game.

I could write a lot more high level paragraphs using Axioms as an example but this post is already pretty long.