Introduction
It is important to note before we dive into the post for today that lots of the non-strategy mechanics in Axioms can actually be turned off and that includes the Gossip and Connections stuff. There will be a screen for a variety of game rules in this vein. “Magical or Mundane” is another game rule that toggles a massive web of game mechanics on or off. Whether you want to make an alt-history mod or a fully fictional world without fantasy elements this is the button to click.
With that out of the way Secrets was an originally unique Axioms concept that eventually made it into games by devs both minor and major who released projects during my long politics/EVE Online hiatus from late 2015 to 2021. It works similar to the versions in Star Dynasties or Crusader Kings but it at least still retains the unique detail and integration of iconic Axioms features and of course the impact Secrets have is modulated by tons of potential factors as far as the Opinion system. A Secret could be meaningless or massive depending on the “Consciousness” of the Character who becomes aware of it.
Gossip is a system that deals with the extensive variety of “imperfect information” in Axioms. You don’t automagically have a complete breakdown on every other Character or Population in the game. Attributes, Skills, Personality traits, Ideology spectra, personal Interests and Desires. These are the many parts of the “Consciousness” of a Character that affects the way they interact with the world and the different Actions you’ll want to take to move them to your personal rhythm.
For reasons of RAM and CPU performance limits Axioms can’t track each of these individually for each pair of Characters. Any given data about a Character will fall into 1 of 8 “Tiers”, the same way the general “Intelligence Network” information on Provinces and Populations is divided, and you’ll have access based on various factors.
“Connections” is a set of game mechanics related to interpersonal relationships. A Character will know you have some Desire, whether public or private, and if they like you or want something from you they’ll attempt to leverage that. You want a spouse? Well you can’t just roll up the giant automagical book of marriage candidates as you can in some games and filter them by detailed personal information. Your parent, sibling, close friend, or vassal/liege will consider what they know of your Consciousness and recommend potential spouses or allies or advisors.
Gossip
The way that Gossip works is that when you engage in interactions and occasions with other Characters where you have any sort of casual chat you’ll pick up new information based on what the other person knows that you don’t and vice versa.
As I’ve posted about before there are a variety of social Interactions in the game that achieve different things for Characters. Each Character has Skills and Interests such that different Interactions achieve different results based on the Characters involved. Often this is a minor amount of Skill progress and a variable small to medium Opinion boost.
These Interactions can then be modified further by context. Asking another character to Dance would create an Opinion Modification based on the skills of the two Characters, their Interest in dancing or lack thereof, their gender, and the context such as in a tavern or at a ball or perhaps a more casual musical event.
During appropriate Interactions and modified by Personality there’s some chance of gaining new Information on one or more other Characters. Two gregarious Characters having a one on one Gossip interaction for instance could generate a lot of new Information for both if they also often Interact with many other Characters.
You can ask specifically about another Character during Gossip Interactions and some other Interactions. You can even, as mentioned briefly in a previous design post, ask friends of another Character for information on a third Character. This would often be used in a romantic context.
Note that Axioms lacks art assets you might expect from a visual novel or dating game. It also lacks plot points and dialogue. So the experience is not really similar to visual novels or dating sims. You can build up stories and narratives in your head or not as you please, but the game is relatively dry and romantic interaction is not a primary focus. It exists to enable verisimilitude generally and to provide motives for non-minmax non-strategy gameplay.
Connections
Connections are not a gameplay mechanic but just a label I apply to a set of loosely linked mechanics for descriptive purposes. Axioms is a game about choice and focus. This is driven especially by the Attention Point system. You can’t do everything every turn. That is also why Axioms has a wide variety of heavily integrated systems.
When the player chooses to play a Character with a strong social focus they should have a very different experience to someone who plays as a general or a wizard or an administrator. Of course all of these roles in real life have certain things in common. Every player must handle social relationships to some degree. But you can swim in the shallows or dive to the depths.
A player who expends their Attention Point budget to develop their personal social skills and a wide variety of close friends and acquaintances from different spheres will gain significant benefits appropriate to that effort. Far more Characters will be able to offer recommendations for spouses or new friends or for characters to fit a specific social niche. Oh you want to be a military and administration reform focused social character? The more people you know and trust and who want to help you the more they’ll be able to point to other Characters with similar goals.
“Oh god Farnsworth won’t shut up about military history. No wonder he has no friends.” Obviously there’s no actual dialogue in the game but the other Character will have access to “Farnsworth’s” Interests, Skills and Attributes and thus be able to recommend him to you. “Charles trains in the barracks every morning with the guards”. Or at least he has a high value on his “Training” Interest and the facilities on his dad’s estate are top notch.
You’ll generally unlock information about a Character as you interact with them more, and they’ll also potentially have “public” oaths or vows or w/e related to things they care about. Plus you’ll have some level of natural information based on your family and their knowledge and your time as a child.
You can also engage in actual Intrigue if you have the capability to support a large Intelligence Network. So money, vassals, titles, and other aspects of a support base. A Character without material capacity could also have advanced personal capabilities for information gathering, rather than hiring others.
Depending on your game settings you could technically have perfect information on other Characters but of course they’ll have that as well. A sort of middle setting would involve playing only as an aristocrat and having all information discovered via Intelligence Network with only two “Tiers” of Public and Private Information.
Interests
I’ve touched on Interests before in the “Consciousness” post from April 2022 but it was relatively simplistic and mostly just a list of potential Interests. I might go back and edit a lot of the sections of that post to be more complete but for now I want to explain how Interests interact with Connections-related mechanics.
Interests are things that a Character is really, well, interested in. Some Characters will be very interested in martial things. Physical training, weapons training, tactics, strategy, perhaps logistics, and so forth. Others will have a focus on nature and plants. Herbs, alchemy, agriculture, forestry, animal husbandry, hunting, and such. Typically a Character will have a collection of related Interests and then a few distinct Interests.
Interests will be a bit clustered by society and shaped by circumstances. So a very literate society with a large middle/merchant class will have far more people interested in things related to literature. A martial tribal society will obviously have a much larger focus on combat Interests for Characters. Some Interests will be gender-linked. A male in a martial society will be extremely likely to care about something military related.
Female characters will actually also have a modifier here but it will be smaller. A female protagonist or secondary character who was interested in martial glory is a common fantasy trope so I want to support it. And of course a very small number of historical women were famous for their martial pursuits.
Characters will generate Interests based on their Attributes but accounting for the societal bias. So naturally stronger characters will be much more likely to pursue combat Interests for instance. Personality will be a factor as well. Personality itself has a random aspect at birth and then changes slowly over time based on childhood circumstances. Personality can change in adulthood but there is a high negative modifier that prevents fast and large changes in most cases. Personality can change through situational causes as well like being injured or falling in love.
When you are selecting an Interaction with some Character to achieve some goal you will want to look at their Interests to make sure you aren’t shooting yourself in the foot. Additionally people with compatible Interests generally get along better and you will increased your Dissonance if you too actively associate with Characters with very different Consciousnesses a great amount.
A single friend you have high compatibility with can slowly shift your Personality and/or Interests over time without raising your Dissonance too high but generally you’ll want to be careful.
Conclusion
The social simulation in Axioms is absolutely crucial to making the systems layered on top of it work in a both a fun and a believable way and indeed making things seem fair. When something unexpected happens that doesn’t mean RNG just rolled a natural 20 or natural 1 and shit on your game.
You have a degree of control over the details of the social simulation, and also other major systems, to customize the experience. Some people may prefer more traditional strategy and less Character Interaction. Of course the game is intended and optimized for the default settings but for many people the small to middling impact of turning off some game system is easily balanced by the relief from a set of mechanics that is boring or annoying to them.
The AI is designed to handle the changes from modifying the game rules and won’t be crippled even by significant changes. It is also the social simulation as a whole and not minor specific aspects that improve the strategy gameplay. So a reasonable number of toggles set to off will still provide a good experience. You’ll simply miss out on some of the anti-blobbing impact and capacity for simulating unique historical analogues, like the rise and fall of a polity like the Ottomans.