Some thoughts on Roleplaying, Immersion and RNG

[GodspeedYou]

After Wandering Nobles came out I decided to give a try to the Hereward the Wake campaign and see the custom made content. After playing two campaigns seeing the mini-Struggle, I came to believe there is a flaw in how this particular content approached dynamic storytelling, and thinking about it some more, I figured that this flaw is actually present in a lot of content in the game (in a lot of Event-driven content, to be precise), and this game's approach to creating dynamic storytelling could be improved with a few key changes, and thought to write a feedback thread about it and start a discussion on how to improve both the role-playing and strategy sides of the game.

Exhibit A: Hereward the Wake

The campaign starts with out with an Event that invites you to return to England in the wake of the Norman conquest, followed by you arriving to find your brother being murdered by Normans, which is part of the actual Hereward’s legend. I think these two Events are good at getting the story rolling and setting the stage. After this, England enters a mini-struggle (which suffers from lack of a proper UI, so you don’t really have a way of knowing how it works or how it’s going besides occasional pop-ups) where Hereweard gets random pulse Events where he fights Norman knights (among other things) and this brings the level of “Resistance” in England up.

And here’s the main problem with this: You rely on waiting for random Events to happen to bring stuff forwards. There is little to nothing you can proactively do to influence Resistance or bring about your fight against Norman knights. Most of the time, 10 years will pass and you will at most get 2 Events. I played two Hereward campaigns where I died of old age and the conflict fizzled out without this building up to any satisfactory narrative – it was just a few random Events that didn’t influence what was otherwise a very standard Landless adventurer gig. There was even an Anglo-Saxon Populist revolt in the meantime that did not tie into it or automatically call me to join it, or even influence Resistance at all.

Here’s my suggestion for improving this: Imagine if, instead of relying on Events, you had an “Ambush” Scheme you could run against Norman knights and Lords of your choice which, if successful, gets you to attack and fight them (and they could have a Scheme about hunting you down as well). This way you’re getting involved in the story and making things happen instead of just waiting for Events to happen to you. The general idea of this Ambush scheme could be expanded to a general guerrilla warfare mechanic for landless rulers. Also, make sure Hereward is automatically invited to join any Populist Revolt that happens, and make Populist Revolts interact with Resistance and Pacification in some way.

And this brings me to the main criticism of a lot of content in this game: It relies way too much on RNG to bring about dynamic storytelling, and does so in a way that robs players of the agency necessary to get immersed and make dynamic stories happen, so it ends up just creating pop-ups that feel like they get in the way of what’s actually interesting (hence the recurrent complaints about "Event Spam"). Random events are a good way to represent things that happen to your character (such as meeting robbers on a road, or going against someone on a Tourney, or being bothered by someone at a Feast, etc), but are not a good way to represent actions that are narratively framed as something your character decided to do (after all, If I am my character, why did I need a random Event I had no way to bring about to allow me to make a choice? Why couldn’t I decide it on my own?) never mind things that act as strategic choices (you can't satisfyingly plan something if the steps of the plan need unreliable RNG to even be available).

My suggestion is to take this as a core design principle: The ability to make a role-playing or strategic choice should never be locked behind a pulse Event, they should be placed behind Interactions, Schemes and Decisions instead. Here’s some examples to clarify what I mean exactly:

Exhibit B: Diarchies

I think the skeleton of the Diarchy/Regency system in the game is very good, but it’s missing a critical component to make it really work, and that is agency. I don’t know if you have ever tried to run a palace coup as a regent, but if you have, you quickly found out that it’s an incredibly slow and ultimately boring affair. Why?

Because, as passive Scales of Power gains trend to 50/50, and because the Swing the Scales interactions always cancel each other out, the only way to actually increase your Scales of Power is waiting for lucky Mandate Events. That can and probably will take at least 20 years of in-game time, so, in literally every single conceivable situation, you are much better off simply Claiming the Throne and creating a Claimant Faction instead. There is little you can proactively do to obtain more power for yourself and undermine your rival, save not forgetting to Swing the Scales every 2 years (just to see your rival do the same right after).

What would I suggest instead? Something that looks like this:​

• Give the Regent the ability to expend a resource (such as Prestige, and also gain Strife) to replace people in Court Positions and Councilors.​
• Make one’s passive Scales of Power gain depend on how many Friends and Allies they have in Court Positions and in the Council (and be undermined by Rivals).​
• Increase costs of “Swing the Scales” interaction but lower the cooldowns to six months.​

This way, the act of being a power-hungry Regent would consist of scheming to befriend or ally people who have important positions at Court, as well as place friends and allies at Court and drive off enemies. It would be a game of Intrigue and Diplomacy to see who can outmaneuver the other to accumulate power, instead of a waiting and “hope for a lucky Mandate Event” game.

Exhibit C: Many, many Lifestyle Events

Quite a lot of Lifestyle Events are framed as “something your Character decided to do”: Running a Census, publicly executing criminals, scheming against Courtiers, drilling troops, etc. But why should my Vlad the Impaler role-play character need to wait for an Event which might end up never happening to play as himself? Why are a bunch of political decisions involving Realm management locked behind having the luck that they spawn for you?

My suggestion: Make a “Practice your Lifestyle” Decision, that allows you to pick one among many of those Lifestyle Event Decisions at your pick, as long as they’re things that narratively should be fully within control of your character.

One could complain that this would be OP as everyone would just pick the best Choices and take infinite Decisions, but there are other ways to balance it. This Decision could have a Cooldown, many choices could be locked behind certain Traits/Perks/Traditions/Tenets, they could cost Stress, Prestige, Piety or other resources, etc.

Exhibit D: Friends & Foes

This DLC presented you with a lot of new Events involving interactions with other Characters, such as randomly deciding to sabotage a Rival or being sabotaged by them, to numerous interactions with Friends. But once again I ask: Why do I need a random Event to tell me to sabotage my Rival’s marriage? Why can’t I proactively do it myself? The Events that involve stumbling upon a Rival in a Tavern are perfectly OK, but besides this one, why do I need to rely so much on luck to interact with others?

Imagine if there was an “Antagonize” Scheme, where many of those Events where you choose to prank or bully a Rival in a way were placed, and if successful that Scheme made your Rival terrified of you (among other consequences that make narrative sense). And imagine if there were many more Character Interactions you could have only with your Friends and Family (It’s weird that the “Share Secrets” Interaction is locked behind a Dynasty Legacy restricted to Iberia, gossip is a very general human interaction that should be a key part of Intrigue gameplay!). If you feel this would be OP, remember there are other ways to balance it as per Exhibit C.

Exhibit E: Legends

Ironically, the main proactive choice you have in this Mechanic (choosing a Legend Protagonist) is the one thing that doesn’t make sense to be a choice (why can my character do a great action worthy of a good story… and then attribute the Legend to a random uncle?). In all other ways, you can’t choose what you want to go on the Legend and “embellishing” it consists of waiting for Events again. I don't have any suggestions for this mechanic to share right now (and I believe Paradox already has plans for changing it anyway), but hopefully this helps explain one of the reasons why it wasn’t well-received: It’s just more Events that feel that they get in the way of the actually good stuff, it feels spammy.

Exhibit F: Death Events

I generally liked the idea behind the Death Events, but I think they were poorly executed, and they received so much opposition from the playerbase they got nerfed to death very quickly. The very first time I had an Omen Event it was one where IIRC my character started going for a swim on a river or lake (and years later he drowned). When I first saw the pop-up saying that my character chose to do that, my immediate gut reaction was to think "No, I didn't". There was no choice I made to cause this to happen or that could prevent it from happening.
My suggestion would be for the Omen Event to be framed as something like "You get the idea to start doing X. Do you choose to do so?", with the option not to (thus avoiding potential Death Event) causing Stress and/or costing some other thing.

The other flaw in this mechanic, unrelated to the general subject of this thread, was how all-or-nothing the Events were. It was "80% chance of Death, 20% chance of going completely unscathed". It the consequences were more granular, with, say "5% chance of Death, 10% chance of being Incapacitated, 15% chance of being Brutally Mauled, 25% chance of Severely Injured...", it would have been better balanced, more realistic/immersive, and would have attracted much less ire from the playerbase.

I’m sure many players could think of other areas of the game where things that should narratively be under your control consist of a waiting-and-RNG game.

Thank you to whoever read this post to the end.​

 

[X_FloW]

Another thing I'd like to add to the random harm events is on paper the idea is very cool and I wish dying of old age isn't the death cause for 90% of my characters, but they kinda seem arbitrary, they could make them relate to your traits more, i.e someone with high prowess and athlete trait is more likely to accidentally die from falling from a horse or swimming or whatever. A gluttonous person is more likely to choke to death or have a sudden fatal heart attack, a shy or reclusive person is more likely to burn to death from a fallen candle in their chambers, etc...

Still, even with their one dimensional implementation, I find it really unfortunate how harshly they have been nerfed even with the highest setting, I get like 1 event in an entire campaign.

 

[EndymionDreaming]

This is the core of what's wrong with the game - it can't be a story builder if you don't actually allow narratives to form.

I think partially so much could initially be improved by focusing on your actual court and vassals first and foremost

Why are so many events creating characters? It ruins narratives. You should naturally interact more with your own court, your own vassals.

The thing that ruins my immersion immediately is any kind of event with a foreign king somehow in my bathhouse, or any of the number of silly events.

CK2 somehow had more immersive events with fewer words, yes, it got silly but it felt more believable for a character to believe he saw Odin, or to become possessed and believe they were the sword of Jesus.

I don't need funny events every 10 minutes, or yet another haha poopoo meme, even if they were based on real events.

It's not impossible, games like rim world manage with fewer events.

I'd start with just reducing the verboseness of the majority of events, and increase the potential options. Interact with the same characters more, and provide longer term consequences for doing so. If you snub a knight of a victory, let them reference it on a later event. If you flee a battle, an ally should in return refuse to help.

You don't need advanced AI, Warband managed with barely anything, and made the world feel more alive as a consequence.

 

[GodspeedYou]

The thing that ruins my immersion immediately is any kind of event with a foreign king somehow in my bathhouse, or any of the number of silly events.

One Event from Legends mechanic that I particularly dislike is the one where your character is looking into a pool having an existential crisis, when suddenly a foreign ruler appears saying he has traveled far just to hear the Legend. Not only does it make very little sense in and of itself, but the first time it happened I was visited by a King that had -100 Opinion towards me as I had just conquered lands from him. Why would that guy care about some chronicle I'm spreading? How did this enemy of the State even get into my property unannounced?

Events need to make more strict use of the Travel mechanic and ensure they fire for characters who are on the same place of the map more often. Stumbling upon a Rival who happens to be from the same Realm and is somewhat near me is fine (daily life things like short travels, social events, council meetings and etc are abstracted, you can suspend disbelief for that as long as they are in principle plausible), but an Event involving a character who should be on the other side of the world is a bit much. As a whole they need more strict conditions for picking characters and need to be written to be more plausible.

CK2 somehow had more immersive events with fewer words, yes, it got silly but it felt more believable for a character to believe he saw Odin, or to become possessed and believe they were the sword of Jesus.

This is another important point about CK3's approach to Events that I didn't mention but that also add to their "spammy" feel, I would consider it the #2 biggest problem with the way CK3 approaches Events. CK3's Event writing tends to be long and detailed, and also full of highly specific descriptions which makes them not only repetitive but break any suspension of disbelief when you see them for the 7th time.

There was a CK2 Event that went:

A small kitty is demanding your attention.
1. Pet the kitty.
2. Allow the kitten to follow you home.
3. Kick the kitty.

An equivalent Event on CK3 will go something like this:

You are walking through the busy streets of [Capital] on a sunny afternoon when you hear the faint "Meow!" sound. Looking down, you quickly see a small grey cat meowing and looking at you, and soon he begins affectiously headbutting your legs while purring softly. "Haha, I think this kitten has taken a liking to you, my lord!", says [Random Courtier].
1. Pet the Cat
2. Adopt the Cat.
3. Kick the Cat.

Which is not to say Events in CK2 couldn't get very long and even very detailed (I don't have enough experience with CK2 to make a comparison between the two games on this front), but my point is that CK3 gets too specific in its writing. There are ton of Events that attribute some very specific direct quote to a particular character, which wouldn't necessarily be so bad if you weren't sure to see that Event again and again... Is everyone in the world constantly repeating the exact same dialogues and going through the precise same experiences again and again?

A more abstract approach to writing the relevant Event information could make them generally more to-the-point and even improve their immersion in the meantime. I understand why the writers prefer the more specific approach (writing abstract and impersonal Events and asking the player to fill in the blanks is certainly more boring work for them), but given the RNG-nature of how Events are presented to you, I don't think it works that well.

 

[ray243]

After Wandering Nobles came out I decided to give a try to the Hereward the Wake campaign and see the custom made content. After playing two campaigns seeing the mini-Struggle, I came to believe there is a flaw in how this particular content approached dynamic storytelling, and thinking about it some more, I figured that this flaw is actually present in a lot of content in the game (in a lot of Event-driven content, to be precise), and this game's approach to creating dynamic storytelling could be improved with a few key changes, and thought to write a feedback thread about it and start a discussion on how to improve both the role-playing and strategy sides of the game.

Exhibit A: Hereward the Wake

The campaign starts with out with an Event that invites you to return to England in the wake of the Norman conquest, followed by you arriving to find your brother being murdered by Normans, which is part of the actual Hereward’s legend. I think these two Events are good at getting the story rolling and setting the stage. After this, England enters a mini-struggle (which suffers from lack of a proper UI, so you don’t really have a way of knowing how it works or how it’s going besides occasional pop-ups) where Hereweard gets random pulse Events where he fights Norman knights (among other things) and this brings the level of “Resistance” in England up.

And here’s the main problem with this: You rely on waiting for random Events to happen to bring stuff forwards. There is little to nothing you can proactively do to influence Resistance or bring about your fight against Norman knights. Most of the time, 10 years will pass and you will at most get 2 Events. I played two Hereward campaigns where I died of old age and the conflict fizzled out without this building up to any satisfactory narrative – it was just a few random Events that didn’t influence what was otherwise a very standard Landless adventurer gig. There was even an Anglo-Saxon Populist revolt in the meantime that did not tie into it or automatically call me to join it, or even influence Resistance at all.

Here’s my suggestion for improving this: Imagine if, instead of relying on Events, you had an “Ambush” Scheme you could run against Norman knights and Lords of your choice which, if successful, gets you to attack and fight them (and they could have a Scheme about hunting you down as well). This way you’re getting involved in the story and making things happen instead of just waiting for Events to happen to you. The general idea of this Ambush scheme could be expanded to a general guerrilla warfare mechanic for landless rulers. Also, make sure Hereward is automatically invited to join any Populist Revolt that happens, and make Populist Revolts interact with Resistance and Pacification in some way.

And this brings me to the main criticism of a lot of content in this game: It relies way too much on RNG to bring about dynamic storytelling, and does so in a way that robs players of the agency necessary to get immersed and make dynamic stories happen, so it ends up just creating pop-ups that feel like they get in the way of what’s actually interesting (hence the recurrent complaints about "Event Spam"). Random events are a good way to represent things that happen to your character (such as meeting robbers on a road, or going against someone on a Tourney, or being bothered by someone at a Feast, etc), but are not a good way to represent actions that are narratively framed as something your character decided to do (after all, If I am my character, why did I need a random Event I had no way to bring about to allow me to make a choice? Why couldn’t I decide it on my own?) never mind things that act as strategic choices (you can't satisfyingly plan something if the steps of the plan need unreliable RNG to even be available).

My suggestion is to take this as a core design principle: The ability to make a role-playing or strategic choice should never be locked behind a pulse Event, they should be placed behind Interactions, Schemes and Decisions instead. Here’s some examples to clarify what I mean exactly:

Exhibit B: Diarchies

I think the skeleton of the Diarchy/Regency system in the game is very good, but it’s missing a critical component to make it really work, and that is agency. I don’t know if you have ever tried to run a palace coup as a regent, but if you have, you quickly found out that it’s an incredibly slow and ultimately boring affair. Why?

Because, as passive Scales of Power gains trend to 50/50, and because the Swing the Scales interactions always cancel each other out, the only way to actually increase your Scales of Power is waiting for lucky Mandate Events. That can and probably will take at least 20 years of in-game time, so, in literally every single conceivable situation, you are much better off simply Claiming the Throne and creating a Claimant Faction instead. There is little you can proactively do to obtain more power for yourself and undermine your rival, save not forgetting to Swing the Scales every 2 years (just to see your rival do the same right after).

What would I suggest instead? Something that looks like this:​

• Give the Regent the ability to expend a resource (such as Prestige, and also gain Strife) to replace people in Court Positions and Councilors.​
• Make one’s passive Scales of Power gain depend on how many Friends and Allies they have in Court Positions and in the Council (and be undermined by Rivals).​
• Increase costs of “Swing the Scales” interaction but lower the cooldowns to six months.​

This way, the act of being a power-hungry Regent would consist of scheming to befriend or ally people who have important positions at Court, as well as place friends and allies at Court and drive off enemies. It would be a game of Intrigue and Diplomacy to see who can outmaneuver the other to accumulate power, instead of a waiting and “hope for a lucky Mandate Event” game.

Exhibit C: Many, many Lifestyle Events

Quite a lot of Lifestyle Events are framed as “something your Character decided to do”: Running a Census, publicly executing criminals, scheming against Courtiers, drilling troops, etc. But why should my Vlad the Impaler role-play character need to wait for an Event which might end up never happening to play as himself? Why are a bunch of political decisions involving Realm management locked behind having the luck that they spawn for you?

My suggestion: Make a “Practice your Lifestyle” Decision, that allows you to pick one among many of those Lifestyle Event Decisions at your pick, as long as they’re things that narratively should be fully within control of your character.

One could complain that this would be OP as everyone would just pick the best Choices and take infinite Decisions, but there are other ways to balance it. This Decision could have a Cooldown, many choices could be locked behind certain Traits/Perks/Traditions/Tenets, they could cost Stress, Prestige, Piety or other resources, etc.

Exhibit D: Friends & Foes

This DLC presented you with a lot of new Events involving interactions with other Characters, such as randomly deciding to sabotage a Rival or being sabotaged by them, to numerous interactions with Friends. But once again I ask: Why do I need a random Event to tell me to sabotage my Rival’s marriage? Why can’t I proactively do it myself? The Events that involve stumbling upon a Rival in a Tavern are perfectly OK, but besides this one, why do I need to rely so much on luck to interact with others?

Imagine if there was an “Antagonize” Scheme, where many of those Events where you choose to prank or bully a Rival in a way were placed, and if successful that Scheme made your Rival terrified of you (among other consequences that make narrative sense). And imagine if there were many more Character Interactions you could have only with your Friends and Family (It’s weird that the “Share Secrets” Interaction is locked behind a Dynasty Legacy restricted to Iberia, gossip is a very general human interaction that should be a key part of Intrigue gameplay!). If you feel this would be OP, remember there are other ways to balance it as per Exhibit C.

Exhibit E: Legends

Ironically, the main proactive choice you have in this Mechanic (choosing a Legend Protagonist) is the one thing that doesn’t make sense to be a choice (why can my character do a great action worthy of a good story… and then attribute the Legend to a random uncle?). In all other ways, you can’t choose what you want to go on the Legend and “embellishing” it consists of waiting for Events again. I don't have any suggestions for this mechanic to share right now (and I believe Paradox already has plans for changing it anyway), but hopefully this helps explain one of the reasons why it wasn’t well-received: It’s just more Events that feel that they get in the way of the actually good stuff, it feels spammy.

Exhibit F: Death Events

I generally liked the idea behind the Death Events, but I think they were poorly executed, and they received so much opposition from the playerbase they got nerfed to death very quickly. The very first time I had an Omen Event it was one where IIRC my character started going for a swim on a river or lake (and years later he drowned). When I first saw the pop-up saying that my character chose to do that, my immediate gut reaction was to think "No, I didn't". There was no choice I made to cause this to happen or that could prevent it from happening.
My suggestion would be for the Omen Event to be framed as something like "You get the idea to start doing X. Do you choose to do so?", with the option not to (thus avoiding potential Death Event) causing Stress and/or costing some other thing.

The other flaw in this mechanic, unrelated to the general subject of this thread, was how all-or-nothing the Events were. It was "80% chance of Death, 20% chance of going completely unscathed". It the consequences were more granular, with, say "5% chance of Death, 10% chance of being Incapacitated, 15% chance of being Brutally Mauled, 25% chance of Severely Injured...", it would have been better balanced, more realistic/immersive, and would have attracted much less ire from the playerbase.

I’m sure many players could think of other areas of the game where things that should narratively be under your control consist of a waiting-and-RNG game.

Thank you to whoever read this post to the end.​

I think even seduction rates is shaped by random events and encounters. So this is why the game is always eternally having so many seduced and cheating spouses.

 

[FortressofRain]

The thing about role playing...is that role playing and choices should matter. But that implies planning and thought out outcomes and story threads by the developers. RNG is sorta the antithesis to that - just saying.

 

[EndymionDreaming]

One Event from Legends mechanic that I particularly dislike is the one where your character is looking into a pool having an existential crisis, when suddenly a foreign ruler appears saying he has traveled far just to hear the Legend. Not only does it make very little sense in and of itself, but the first time it happened I was visited by a King that had -100 Opinion towards me as I had just conquered lands from him. Why would that guy care about some chronicle I'm spreading? How did this enemy of the State even get into my property unannounced?

Events need to make more strict use of the Travel mechanic and ensure they fire for characters who are on the same place of the map more often. Stumbling upon a Rival who happens to be from the same Realm and is somewhat near me is fine (daily life things like short travels, social events, council meetings and etc are abstracted, you can suspend disbelief for that as long as they are in principle plausible), but an Event involving a character who should be on the other side of the world is a bit much. As a whole they need more strict conditions for picking characters and need to be written to be more plausible.


This is another important point about CK3's approach to Events that I didn't mention but that also add to their "spammy" feel, I would consider it the #2 biggest problem with the way CK3 approaches Events. CK3's Event writing tends to be long and detailed, and also full of highly specific descriptions which makes them not only repetitive but break any suspension of disbelief when you see them for the 7th time.

There was a CK2 Event that went:


An equivalent Event on CK3 will go something like this:


Which is not to say Events in CK2 couldn't get very long and even very detailed (I don't have enough experience with CK2 to make a comparison between the two games on this front), but my point is that CK3 gets too specific in its writing. There are ton of Events that attribute some very specific direct quote to a particular character, which wouldn't necessarily be so bad if you weren't sure to see that Event again and again... Is everyone in the world constantly repeating the exact same dialogues and going through the precise same experiences again and again?

A more abstract approach to writing the relevant Event information could make them generally more to-the-point and even improve their immersion in the meantime. I understand why the writers prefer the more specific approach (writing abstract and impersonal Events and asking the player to fill in the blanks is certainly more boring work for them), but given the RNG-nature of how Events are presented to you, I don't think it works that well.

no I completely agree with this - Adventurers especially has made this really abundant, why is the same exact tavern in northern Iceland, Germany, Mongolia etc?

Just remove the amount of words and focus on being more personalized, I don't need paragraphs on why I'm visiting a tavern or a castle, but it would be nice to have a sentence on entering a busy yurt, or a crumbling and desolate castle if the control and growth is low. Use the buildings that are in the actual place! Why should the tribe have a tavern if they don't even have a meeting hall built!

All of this would just make the world feel alive without needing paragraphs upon paragraphs.

Same with legend, I have never read a legend after creating it - this could very simply be fixed by removing the whole fake legend and just saying my actions!

You could still say that I was chosen by God, or that I'm descended from killers of dragons, if I hunted a dangerous leopard or bear, or won a massive battle - people would still see these things as legendary

Battles like Agincourt weren't made legendary because King Henry downed a whole keg of beer, I'm already doing legendary actions, so actually use them!

You don't need complicated AI, just let me feel some player agency in creating these legends.

 

[GodspeedYou]

I think even seduction rates is shaped by random events and encounters. So this is why the game is always eternally having so many seduced and cheating spouses.

Yes, one problem is that there are many Events that make characters become Lovers in the background, and some of these Events don't check for things like characters being Chaste, characters being Soulmates with their spouse, and all the other things the normal Seduction scheme checks. This is a bit of a problem.

The thing about role playing...is that role playing and choices should matter. But that implies planning and thought out outcomes and atory threads by the developers. RNG is sorta the antithesis to that - just saying.

I don't think RNG is necessarily the antithesis to it - Events, when used correctly, can do add some spice to the dynamic stories generated by the other mechanics. One example: In my first playthrough I attended a Feast, and had an Event where my daughter was revealed to have a lover (she was Lustful so it checks out). Her husband, who was Sadistic, imprisoned and executed her. I immediately declared war on him and got my revenge.

This was a good story that emerges from the game's mechanics with the aid of an Event. The problem is when the Events are not well-done and instead of representing things that happened to your character that no one has control over, they try to be the characters story entirely. This approach simply doesn't work.

 

[FortressofRain]

I don't think RNG is necessarily the antithesis to it - Events, when used correctly, can do add some spice to the dynamic stories generated by the other mechanics. One example: In my first playthrough I attended a Feast, and had an Event where my daughter was revealed to have a lover (she was Lustful so it checks out). Her husband, who was Sadistic, imprisoned and executed her. I immediately declared war on him and got my revenge.

This was a good story that emerges from the game's mechanics with the aid of an Event. The problem is when the Events are not well-done and instead of representing things that happened to your character that no one has control over, they try to be the characters story entirely. This approach simply doesn't work.

In my experience and from the feedback I've encountered on this forum...it would seem your story is the exception to the rule. Most of the time the events don't line up with character traits in any way, nor do the predetermined conclusions/choices you pick from.

I'd really appreciate if this (congruence) was in fact the case more often.

 

[GodspeedYou]

no I completely agree with this - Adventurers especially has made this really abundant, why is the same exact tavern in northern Iceland, Germany, Mongolia etc?

I did notice the Adventurer and the Wandering Nobles Events in general doubled down on this issue with writing.

In my experience and from the feedback I've encountered on this forum...it would seem your story is the exception to the rule. Most of the time the events don't line up with character traits in any way, nor do the predetermined conclusions/choices you pick from.

I'd really appreciate if this (congruence) was in fact the case more often.

This story happened a long time ago (it was my literal first playthrough ever, not counting the tutorial), and I noticed things like that have become rarer with time. I believe that as more Events have been added over years they haven't always been as strict and consistent with Event conditions so incongruities accumulated with time.

 

[FortressofRain]

...they haven't always been as strict and consistent with Event conditions so incongruities accumulated with time.

It's hard to stay immersed when "your character" decides to form a rivalry with or better yet seduce..."your character".

Ok though, the second one of seducing yourself is quite funny.

But really though, the simple lack of some common sense trigger checks or bugs are immersion breaking and just rushing though unpolished or unfinished code seems undignified.

Which is why I want code fixed and optimizations before major expansions. After Roads to Power, I don't know if I can handle more bugs that manifest more often becuase...more characters. =/

 

[Dayvit78]

Exhibit D: This is exactly what I was talking about. Currently, NPCs basically only have two things they can do: Seduce or Murder. This is why my intrigue tab shows 20 murders schemes (while seduce schemes are hidden).

We need to give more for them to do so they don't act like psychopaths all the time. I like your antagonize scheme because it can be linked to a rework of seduction tree. We don't need a whole tree for seduction. Change half of it to stress related things. And then antagonize would be a scheme to inflict stress or injuries. Or conversely, you can have a reduce stress scheme for people you like.

I can't comment on each of your other points, but since they added the scheme mechanic, there are so many other schemes that can be added to give players AND NPCs stuff to do instead of war, murder and seduce.

Note: They might say, well what about all the activities? All those cost money and courtiers don't have money!! Schemes are free.

 

[FortressofRain]

Note: They might say, well what about all the activities? All those cost money and courtiers don't have money!! Schemes are free.

Kidnapping and ransom schemes, theft or heist schemes, impersonating long lost relatives or adventurer schemes, promoting wrong culture or religion, there is so much more to be done with intrigue...esp for npcs. I wish it would get a little more love. Torcherer is cool and all but most courtiers won't be capturing anyone often enough to utilize some of these things.