Dev Diary: Action System

Hi! I'm Lucas, creator of Historia Realis: Rome.

For this relaunch of the dev diaries, I'm going to cover the core mechanic of Historia Realis: the action system, which is the beating heart of the game. It was designed to replace the usual event system in similar games.

The problem with event systems

Most strategy games use events, pop-ups that interrupt your game and ask you to make a decision. Those are alright and sometimes necessary, but there are a few problems with them:

• ːsteamthumbsdownː Randomness: They are generated through a random number generator that spawns an event just because. Also, the outcome of the event is often random; you have a % chance to succeed.

• ːsteamthumbsdownː Repetition: The first time you see the event, it's pretty cool. The second time, you already know the drill. By the third time and beyond, you already know the best option and auto-click it.

• ːsteamthumbsdownː Interruption: They stop whatever cool thing you're doing and interrupt you with something else.

• ːsteamthumbsdownː Isolation: They are mostly detached from each other and from other systems in the game. Event chains try to fix this, but just bring more repetition and interruption.

The action UI

Solution: the Action System

The action system in Historia Realis is quite different. Instead of events randomly appearing, characters take actions to accomplish pretty much anything in the game. Want to learn to ride a horse? Take an action. Want to get married? Take an action. Want to become Emperor of Rome? You guessed it, take an action.

Requirements

That doesn't mean you can do anything with a single action. Sometimes, you need a sequence of actions. That is because most actions have Requirements. So if you want to take the action of Become a Stoic Sage, you're going to need to Learn Stoicism first.

Effects

For example, Learn Stoicism would give you the Stoic trait. That's one effect of the action, and that trait unlocks new actions because it's a requirement for other actions. However, you might get the trait in its negative form if you fail the action.

You get a Clumsy Dog if you fail to Get a Hunting Hound

Failing an action is always consequential. You "fail forward", an idea that comes from tabletop RPGs such as Apocalypse World. For example, if you fail your action to get a dog to help you with your hunting, it's not that nothing happens. You get a clumsy dog. Now you might have to put your dog down, or someone might poison your dog, or any number of things might happen. But it's not nothing. You fail forward, the state of the game changes and creates new opportunities, even in failure.

Supporters and Opposers

How do you fail? There are two sides to any action: supporters and opposers. Supporters want the action to succeed, while opposers want the action to fail. Any action you take is socially tested; that is, you never act alone. Whatever you do, other characters will join your action supporting or opposing it, and you can support or oppose theirs too! You can always try to influence the simulation. And the outcome of your action is based on your ability to gather support and avoid opposition.

There are very impactful consequences to supporting or opposing the actions of other characters, and ways to influence the outcome of actions, but I'll leave that for a future dev