A Game of Thrones Dev Diary 2: Maesters, The Hand and The Night’s Watch
Hello all and welcome to the second of our dev diaries, which I’m sure will both excite and provoke some questions. I’m going to be talking about some of the things I myself have been working on, which in themselves are fairly minor parts of the game but when we add these, and other things the team are creating, into the game hopefully it will feel a lot more like Westeros.
So first I’ll say a bit about Maesters. At the moment, we have dropped the court chaplain position and replaced him with the Maester position:
(You may notice a Hand, i’ll come to that
)
The reason for this being is that Septons don’t seem to be nearly as important as a Maester in a Lord’s court and they do seem to be the ‘learned’ characters of this universe. This is not to say Septons won’t be featured in some shape or form in the future. This will also mean some of the job actions will need to be changed. At the moment I’ve changed the inquisition to a ‘Tutor Children’ action where there is a chance a random child will increase/decrease in skill each year, other job ideas would be appreciated!
A young character (with learning >10) may at any time request to go to The Citadel and receive a Maester’s training:
And then after a few years they will finish training and receive the ‘Maester’ trait (and the bastard/divested trait to exclude them from succession):
(Notice the cool targaryen hair, cabe’s handy work)
Then they will be sent to a random court where they will live out their lives in service to their Lord. That’s as much as we have on Maesters at the present time. I’m still trying to get some Archmaester events working (courtiers over the age of 40 are still being culled by the game
) and will probably add something for the selection of Grand Maester in the future. I also have some ideas for a plot to conspire with a Maester of your dynasty, but that’s for another time.
Now I’ll elaborate on that Hand of the King position you saw earlier. It’s basically a court position that can only be appointed by someone of King (In vanilla Emperor) tier rank. It’s quite a special position in that it gives more money and prestige to the holder and the relationship boost is greater. Someone on a certain forum also had the idea of giving this guy job actions that cover all the other council positions, the counter-balance being that they are half as beneficial/likely:
Again there is lots of scope for events/plots related to the Hand. I hope you’ll agree this small addition is very flavoursome
And now for the last part of the diary, The Night’s Watch:
The Watch is currently an open elective feudal realm, meaning it will be playable! However there won’t be much point at the moment as all Casus Belli’s have been disabled for them, they cannot attack or be attacked, mainly so we can balance the main realms without The Watch interfering. Our ideas for The Watch are still in the early stage so I’m sure there will be mechanics to simulate wildling invasions, re-manning castles and rogue Lord Commanders etc, which will hopefully make it a fun option to play. If you have any ideas on how we can do this don’t hesitate to contribute!
I’ll finish with a couple of pics to whet the appetite:
A Night’s Watch related event:
And a screenshot of The Reach, because the map is just so pretty:
