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greatwyrmgold · 12 days ago

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One fun mechanic from CK2 that hasn't reappeared in CK3 yet is bloodlines. In CK2 (with Holy Fury), famous historical figures gain benefits that are passed on to their descendants. And your character can become one of those historical figures, if they do something legendary enough!

It's neat, and lots of people want to see bloodlines return in some form. I've been thinking about what I want bloodlines to look like in CK3.

CK2 Bloodlines: What to keep, what to change?

The biggest strength and weakness of bloodlines is their one-in-a-dozen-lifetimes nature. You have to dedicate a good chunk of your character's life to a certain path for most bloodlines, but the benefits you receive for doing so are significant and generally last the rest of the campaign. Moreover, you can't just keep picking up new bloodlines with each character; having one "created" bloodline precludes you from forging another.

But once you forge that bloodline, that's basically it. You have a passive bonus as long as you keep playing descendants of that same character. Once you've forged a bloodline on a character who successfully creates an heir, you're more or less done with that set of mechanics for the playthrough. You can try finagling some historical bloodlines into your dynasty, but that's about it.

Part of the problem comes down to how bloodlines are both significant and absolute. They need to be significant (and usually are!), which means that players being allowed to stack created bloodlines would quickly become OP, which means players can't be allowed to stack created bloodlines. And bloodlines are absolute; you either have a bloodline or you don't.

Another thing I like about CK2 bloodlines is that they're dynasty-agnostic. All* your descendants inherit your bloodline, not just your heirs! In theory, after a few generations one of your rivals or enemies might be able to use that potent bloodline you forged against you!

In practice, not so much. First off, unless you're pumping out lots of pretenders and mismanaging family relations, your descendants are probably going to be friendly with you and your heir.

Second, that asterisk. Most bloodlines created by a male character can only be inherited from one's father. If your super-crusader-king with a created bloodline marries off one of his daughters to a neighboring king, his daughter will inherit his bloodline but not be able to pass it on. If his grandsons get into a fight, only the patrilineal grandson—the one the player is almost certainly playing—gets to keep the bloodline.

Of course, just loosing that restriction causes its own set of problems. The AGOT mod allows most historical bloodlines to be inherited by both sons and daughters, while also giving a bunch of historical characters bloodlines. The end result is that most notable nobles in Westeros start with multiple bloodlines; therefore those bloodlines need to be nerfed to give upstarts like Littlefinger a fighting chance.

Again, part of the problem is that bloodlines are absolute. If you get anything from the bloodline, you get all of it.

Discussion Parameters

Let me assume that bloodlines are a central DLC feature, like the Royal Court. Something that Paradox could make a whole separate screen for (to hold all the player-facing information) without making it seem needlessly complicated. Assume that arbitrary amounts of dev time can be spent to make it work properly. That way I don't get bogged down in questions of "is this practical?" or "how would the player understand what's going on?" This is a fantasy imitation of a design document, not a full pitch.

CK3 Bloodline Overview

There are two big changes I'd make in CK3 bloodlines.

First, I'd make them something that you build and maintain over generations, rather than a one-and-done thing. Being the son of a great architect or a defender of the faith is something quite special; being one of his twenty-odd great-grandchildren, not so much. If you want people to continue respecting your bloodline, you need to act in accordance with it. But doing so allows you to enhance the bloodline. It's one thing to say your father was a great architect; it's another to say that you come from a long line of consistent architects!

Second, I'd add a few statistics that describe the bloodline in general and each character's relation to it. This adds a ton of complexity, but it enables solutions to the problems I have with CK2's bloodline mechanics.

A smaller change: I'd shift the bloodline benefits towards things that are clearly "how other people think about this character". Fewer bonuses to Prowess and plot power, more focus on opinion bonuses and Dread/Tyranny and Prestige/Piety/Renown. Ideally also special actions you can take to imitate your ancestors.

Bloodline Notoriety

(Far from the first word I'd use, but it's the best fit that isn't already claimed by an existing mechanic. Renown, Fame, Prestige, Glory—CK3 has a lot of mechanics relating to someone being well-known!)

Bloodline Notoriety is the overall notability of the bloodline. A count who erected one incredible castle and a king who built cathedrals across the realm might both forge architect bloodlines, but the latter bloodline would be more Notorious than the other.

Notoriety serves as a "power level" for the bloodline. A low-Notoriety bloodline provides minor benefits even to the Forefathers, while a consistently Notorious bloodline can provide noteworthy benefits even generations removed from the Forefathers. Some benefits could have a continuous increase of numerical significance, but others would need specific activation/deactivation thresholds.

Notoriety can be increased by the bloodline-forger or his descendants accomplishing sufficiently impressive deeds in the same field. The bloodline-forger and any descendants with sufficiently noteworthy accomplishments are known as Forefathers (or Foremothers when a female ruler does something Notorious).

The more Notorious a bloodline, the harder it is to increase its Notoriety. Deeds which could found a new (if minor) bloodline will be overshadowed by the giants standing in your past. If the player wants to keep boosting their bloodline's Notoriety, they need to equal or exceed their greatest accomplishments to date.

Perhaps Notoriety should also decay over time? Or at least it should be capable of decaying over time, if you neglect them? A few centuries after that count builds his Harrenhal, no one is going to respect his descendants' architectural abilities if they have completely failed to build anything new and let Harrenhal fall into disrepair. On the bright side, that means it's easier for future descendants to reinvigorate its Notoriety with a new Incredible Castle.

Congruence & Connection

Character-level statistics, determining what benefits any individual character can derive from their bloodline. These could probably be combined into a single statistic, if you needed to simplify the system, but I think it makes sense to keep them separate.

Connection is how close you are to the Forefathers. All Forefathers (and Foremothers) have 100% Connection, by definition; their descendants have less, and descendants of those descendants have less still, and so on. Maybe the first son of a Forefather loses 10% Connection, other sons lose 15%, and daughters lose 30%? And the first son's first son loses 10% of his 90% (81% Connection), and his other sons lose 15% of his 90% (76%), and so on.

(Obviously Foremothers treat their daughters like a Forefather's sons and vise versa. And if your bloodline has a mixture of both Forefathers and Foremothers, perhaps both genders of child will retain higher levels of Connection.)

This allows Bloodlines to proliferate farther, but it's biased a bit towards the descendants most likely to be player-controlled descendants of a player-controlled Forefather. If your super-crusader-king marries his daughter to a neighbor, that neighbor's kids and grandkids will have your super-crusader-king bloodline, but not as strong as the descendants controlled by the player.

The numbers are arbitrary, by the way. Connection could decay faster or slower, or be more or less similar between children. Maybe siblings of Forefathers (and thereafter their nieces and nephews) should get something.

And perhaps there would be other ways for Connection to rise or fall. Inheriting the same titles as your Forefathers might provide a boost, while having a Culture or Faith different from all Forefathers in the bloodline might inflict a Connection penalty.

Being descended from multiple Forefathers should also boost your Connection. But not too much, unless you want to encourage the incest memes.

Congruence is a bit messier. It represents how well you live up to your Forefathers' standards. Ideally, I'd like it to be as fickle as Stress—less significant, but not something that can be easily ignored.

I'd like your ancestors' Personality Traits to influence Congruence. (They probably shouldn't if Congruence and Connection are combined; I'll get there.) If the Forefathers were consistently Arrogant, then acting Arrogant would boost your Congruence a bit, but acting Humble would damage your Congruence. All's well if your current character is as Arrogant as Grandpa Harren, but if he isn't, there could be problems. If your character's personality traits are too unlike his Forefathers', he'll regularly have to choose between his own mental health and living up to his Forefathers' example!

Ideally, there would be some kind of system automatically assigning Congruence gains and losses to decisions which make characters with certain traits lose or gain Stress. Hopefully that's practical.

Anyways, this provides another incentive to make new player characters Forefathers. Not only do you have a chance to increase your bloodline's Notoriety, but you have a new set of personality traits to live up to. If both of your Forefathers happened to be Paranoid, your future characters will also need to act Paranoid! But if a couple Forefathers were Paranoid and a couple were Trusting, the Congruence impacts of not acting Paranoid should be eliminated. (Or at least reduced—paranoia is very stressful!)

In any case, it should be easier to lose Congruence by acting against Forefather traits than gain it by acting according to them. Luckily, you can build Congruence by doing things in accordance with your bloodline's reputation! Even if building a single new fortress isn't enough to boost your architect bloodline's Notoriety, it still boosts your Congruence, because it's something Harren would have done. And if you max out Congruence, further Congruence boosts will increase your Connection!

But by the same token, each type of bloodline has actions which make it lose Congruence. Some might even introduce new events so you have opportunities to lose Congruence. Do you give alms as freely as your Forefather, St. Jim the Generous, or do you dishonor his memory and reputation? If you bottom out on Congruence, it might damage your Connection; particularly egregious single acts might even damage the Notoriety of the whole bloodline!

Congruence and Connection collectively act as a personal "bloodline power level". If you act like your Forefathers and have a close blood relationship with them (or act so much like your Forefathers that your Congruence keeps overflowing), you can enjoy the maximum benefits allowed by your bloodline's Notoriety. But distant cousins and ones who act against the Forefathers will have much weaker bloodline benefits.

Congruence+Connection=?

You could merge Congruence and Connection for simplicity; I'd probably call that Congruence (because it sounds better and leaves the word "connection" open for future mechanics). But you'd have to lose out on the texture.

For instance: In my ideal writeup, Congruence is a fluid stat that rises and falls easily, while Connection is more static. If you combined the two, you'd have to drop a lot of the volatile Congruence modifiers; otherwise, the power of any individual character's bloodline would have less to do with their blood relations than how they personally acted. And dropping the volatile Congruence modifiers means the personality-based stuff has to go, so each bloodline's roleplay restrictions are based less on the specific Forefathers and more on the general bloodline category they share.

But it could be done. It wouldn't break the system, it would just drop some nuance. And that's not always the wrong decision, even if it's usually disappointing.

Multiple Bloodlines

Let's imagine that the architect bloodline we've been talking about was founded by the descendant of a saint. What then?

The chronologically first thing to note is that possessing any bloodline makes forming a new bloodline more difficult. Your already-notorious Forefathers cast a shadow over anything you do; to stand out in the annals of history, you need to do something even greater.

In game terms, if you have a bloodline, you need to do something more Notorious than any of your Forefathers to forge a new bloodline. A player who really wants to get several different and complimentary bloodlines on their player character can do so, but only with careful plans and pacing.

You can also get multiple bloodlines through eugenics selective breeding. I'm a bit conflicted on if separate bloodlines of similar types should merge—ie, if someone ends up with both the Blood of Attila and the Blood of Timur Timurid, they have one conqueror bloodline that has both Attilla the Hun and Timut Timurid as Forefathers. But that's probably too complicated and risks boiling bloodlines down to categories of buffs rather than pieces of history, so maybe they should remain separate, but with some kind of limitation on stacking bonuses. Like, if two separate bloodlines give +10 Attraction Opinion, maybe you only get +15 Attraction Opinion instead of +20. Encourage cultivating one of a couple of bloodlines instead of cramming as many historical figures into your family tree as possible.

Once you have multiple bloodlines, you...have multiple bloodlines. This comes with its own complications, especially if you have diametrically opposed bloodlines; if one bloodline's Forefathers are all peace-loving rulers who earned a reputation of kindness and fairness, while the other is full of power-hungry conquerors, it's hard to respect one bloodline without disrespecting the other.

It's also possible to become a Forefather for both of your bloodlines. If Jarrem has the blood of both St. Jim the Generous and Harren the Fortress-Builder, and they act both generously and architect-ey enough, they can become a Forefather of both bloodlines, with all the implications thereof.

If blending two bloodlines into one was a thing, this would be how you'd blend two different bloodlines into a hybrid bloodline of some kind. But I'm not sure if that would actually work, and also it would encourage people to game the system so their dynasty could earn the rarest hybrid bloodlines.

Anyways, that's basically all I got. I look forward to seeing whatever Paradox have in store for us if/when they come up with a Bloodline equivalent for CK3!

#crusader kings 2 #crusader kings #crusader kings 3

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