CK3 Dev Diary #68 - Inspiration Never Dies​

As you may already know, artifacts are making a triumphant return in Royal Court. The artifacts themselves will be familiar to those of you who have used them in CK2, but how you actually get your hands on them will be slightly different. As such, I won’t talk much about the artifacts themselves for now, but I’ll be going over one of the major ways of how you will acquire artifacts.

Characters throughout the world can gain what we call an inspiration. Inspirations come about as a character is seeking to create something extraordinary, resulting in the character wanting to pursue the means of realizing their inspiration. They may want to write a great tome of knowledge, weave a tapestry, or forge a magnificent crown! There are many different kinds of inspirations, all resulting in various types of artifacts upon completion. An inspiration can be broad, such as someone wanting to merely forge a weapon, or very specific like a character wanting to forge a sword.

[Image of a character with an active inspiration]​

Inspirations only occur for landless characters. We want to extend the immersion of guests and courtiers by making them valuable to you even if you have no desire to push their claims, or use their skills as a councillor. Inspired characters will travel the world, from court to court, seeking a wealthy monarch to sponsor them and their creation. Realms with a high grandeur will be able to attract inspired characters more frequently than those with low grandeur. Granting them a higher chance at receiving skilled craftsmen that will be able to forge an artifact to meet your expectations.

Once an inspired character arrives at your court, you can choose to sponsor them by giving them the gold they ask for. A skilled character will demand larger amounts of gold, but will also yield better results in creating an artifact. Most of the time at least. No one is infallible after all. The skill that is relevant depends on the type of artifact they want to make. For example, a weapon and the quality it gets is dependent on the character’s Martial and Prowess skill. Writing a book, on the other hand, scales with Learning.

[Image of the Fund Inspiration interaction]​

After funding an inspiration, it will take some time for the character to create the artifact. During the creation progress various situations can happen, such as the character asking for better materials to work with. Below you’ll find such an example, in which my inspired character finds excellent material at the local market. Approve their request and pay for the material, and you’ll increase the overall quality of the artifact they’ll produce.

[Image of an inspiration event: Highest Quality]​

An inspiration gains progress similar to that of a scheme. You’ll gain progress depending on a chance each month, making the actual time it takes to complete vary. Once the inspiration reaches full progress, the character will approach you to present their creation.

[Image of an inspiration being completed]​

Mind you, this is not the only way in which you can get an artifact. Inspirations exist to serve as the most significant means of doing so, since they will generally grant you artifacts of a higher quality. You can still get artifacts by other means, such as getting them in events. I hope you enjoyed this brief look into how an artifact can come about. Stay tuned for more information regarding the Royal Court!

 

[Crosswire]

I don't play Dwarf Fortress, can anyone explain this connection people are mentioning?

Dwarf Fortress is an incredibly complex ascii-art game where you take seven dwarves and make a colony with them. One of the (many) things that can happen in the game is that the dwarves can get moods and wander off, gather all sorts of random material (including body parts from other dwarves that they murdered for them if the mood is bad enough) and create extremely random and overly elaborate artefacts. Sometimes they are even useful.

 

[Fenian]

Would be great if we could name our masterwork ourselves.

 

[Rovecsex]

have you considered adding character notes? sometimes you forget why a particular character is at your court, or he still has an undisclosed, but obvious secret

 

[Reaperdamo]

Maybe its just me, but in a game that is all about roleplaying your current character, to have zero chance of getting your own inspirations seems like a missed opportunity. It just becomes find the landless character with an inspiration with the highest relevant stat minigame.

 

[Salazard260]

Maybe its just me, but in a game that is all about roleplaying your current character, to have zero chance of getting your own inspirations seems like a missed opportunity. It just becomes find the landless character with an inspiration with the highest relevant stat minigame.

A good roleplay setup is one where even the character you play can't do everything on their own imo. You play as a ruler, who already rules their lands, leads armies into battle, seduces, murders etc other people, they're not going to be a blacksmith on top of that. Landless characters however have, well, more free time. It's great I think for roleplay to see characters who normally would have been just sitting there, moving around and doing there own stuff.

 

[Strigoi Tyrannus]

Should stewardship affect how quickly the item is created?

 

[Torredebelem]

Great!

Now for the all important question from a game play / game balance perspective: How does one lose artifacts?

 

[Riamus]

Great!

Now for the all important question from a game play / game balance perspective: How does one lose artifacts?

From DDs, the are stolen and can degrade over time.

 

[pengoyo]

I wonder if it would be better flavour wise to replace inspired with a modifier that marks them as a craftsmen with a particular speciality.

Mechanically it would be the same, you need to find a craftsmen (or women) who is skilled in the type of artifact you want to create.

But headcannon wise it makes more sense why your ruler can't create the weapon themselves. Because even if they are so inspired, you just don't have the same level of training as a craftsmen to be able to produce such a high quality artifact.

 

[Karlington]

I wonder if it would be better flavour wise to replace inspired with a modifier that marks them as a craftsmen with a particular speciality.

Mechanically it would be the same, you need to find a craftsmen (or women) who is skilled in the type of artifact you want to create.

But headcannon wise it makes more sense why your ruler can't create the weapon themselves. Because even if they are so inspired, you just don't have the same level of training as a craftsmen to be able to produce such a high quality artifact.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but I think it's the guest character who becomes inspired, not the ruler?

 

[Scanz]

will the characters be inspired to do something other than create artifacts ?

 

[pengoyo]

Correct me if I'm wrong, but I think it's the guest character who becomes inspired, not the ruler?

Correct.

I more meant that some people find it weird that your ruler character can't become inspired especially since they are the one that is commissioning the item (i.e. role playing a ruler who is inspired to commission an artifact)

So I was just suggesting changing the modifier on guest to be their role, rather than a mental state anyone could conceivably have.

 

[TravlingCanuck]

A good roleplay setup is one where even the character you play can't do everything on their own imo. You play as a ruler, who already rules their lands, leads armies into battle, seduces, murders etc other people, they're not going to be a blacksmith on top of that. Landless characters however have, well, more free time. It's great I think for roleplay to see characters who normally would have been just sitting there, moving around and doing there own stuff.

I like that it's something that unlanded characters do, to provide more interaction with them. It'd be nice, though, if it was something that happened more often for certain personality traits, rather than being purely random, as it seems to be. I'd like to encourage my children's artistic aspirations, especially the later born ones, not to mention identifying and sponsoring the promising children born to my courtiers.

 

[Tiax]

I like that it's something that unlanded characters do, to provide more interaction with them. It'd be nice, though, if it was something that happened more often for certain personality traits, rather than being purely random, as it seems to be. I'd like to encourage my children's artistic aspirations, especially the later born ones, not to mention identifying and sponsoring the promising children born to my courtiers.

I think that the fact that the characters are random wanderers who randomly receive inspiration means that this system doesn't really add any meaningful new interaction. I don't have a reason to care about the history of the guy who's making me a dagger, or to make him like me, or to carry out any sort of scheme or plot against him. For all I care, he's just a faceless dagger-machine who arrives unannounced one day and then disappears. I can't even try to build a long-term patronage relationship with him, because he won't be inspired after he pops out his first dagger. After that he goes back to being a random nobody.

 

[TravlingCanuck]

I think that the fact that the characters are random wanderers who randomly receive inspiration means that this system doesn't really add any meaningful new interaction. I don't have a reason to care about the history of the guy who's making me a dagger, or to make him like me, or to carry out any sort of scheme or plot against him. For all I care, he's just a faceless dagger-machine who arrives unannounced one day and then disappears. I can't even try to build a long-term patronage relationship with him, because he won't be inspired after he pops out his first dagger. After that he goes back to being a random nobody.

Maybe the maker of the artifact should provide grandeur to the court he/she's a part of? "Hey, that's the guy who made the ..."

Wouldn't solve all of your concerns, but would prevent the maker of an artifact turning into a random nobody afterwards.

I agree it would be nice if you had to make an effort to surround yourself with a court of artists/craftsman in order to have a reasonable chance at getting an artifact opportunity. Hence my comment about wishing the chance at this event was at least tied to certain identifiable traits. Even better if you could woo/kidnap such potentials into your service

 

[Skyfus]

Inspirations only occur for landless characters. We want to extend the immersion of guests and courtiers by making them valuable to you

I sure hope that high-skill inspired characters are affected by the first Erudition legacy, so as to give me more reasons to pick it

 

[Dathremo]

Should stewardship affect how quickly the item is created?

Stewardship stat is meant to reflect the management of the realm and other administrative tasks
A good steward would be up to their nose in books and accounts managing the minutiae of the realm, in meetings with councilors and advisors.

It would have absolutely nothing to do with crafting or creating items or artifacts except for something like being able to source rarer materials or being able to keep track of artisans or craftsmen
Its not like the average noble was taking years to learn a trade themselves and even if they did not sure Stewardship would be the stat representative of that

 

[Karlington]

I think that the fact that the characters are random wanderers who randomly receive inspiration means that this system doesn't really add any meaningful new interaction. I don't have a reason to care about the history of the guy who's making me a dagger, or to make him like me, or to carry out any sort of scheme or plot against him. For all I care, he's just a faceless dagger-machine who arrives unannounced one day and then disappears. I can't even try to build a long-term patronage relationship with him, because he won't be inspired after he pops out his first dagger. After that he goes back to being a random nobody.

I'm inclined to agree.

I think this is one of the issues CK3 currently has. During the development we were told that unlike CK2, where it felt like things happened almost randomly, in CK3 events would be tied to the actions of specific characters.

This sounded good. The problem is that the actual difference turned into this:
CK2: An event is randomly triggered, and we are informed of the event.
CK3: An event is randomly triggered, and we are informed of the event, and that the person starting this is character x.

So from the perspective of the player it's really much of a muchness.

I can't say I blame Paradox for this, though. While the information issues in the game could be satisfyingly solved with a system of message settings like CK2 had, this "character-drivenness"-issue isn't so simple to solve - I honestly can't think of a good way to solve it. Events will, by their very nature, have a randomness* to them. Attaching them to a particular character isn't really going to solve this, nor can I think of anything else that would. We're simply going to have to accept this.

*Except for those events directly triggered by the player or specific circumstances, of course.

 

[Beyond Disbelief]

I'm inclined to agree.

I think this is one of the issues CK3 currently has. During the development we were told that unlike CK2, where it felt like things happened almost randomly, in CK3 events would be tied to the actions of specific characters.

This sounded good. The problem is that the actual difference turned into this:
CK2: An event is randomly triggered, and we are informed of the event.
CK3: An event is randomly triggered, and we are informed of the event, and that the person starting this is character x.

So from the perspective of the player it's really much of a muchness.

I can't say I blame Paradox for this, though. While the information issues in the game could be satisfyingly solved with a system of message settings like CK2 had, this "character-drivenness"-issue isn't so simple to solve - I honestly can't think of a good way to solve it. Events will, by their very nature, have a randomness* to them. Attaching them to a particular character isn't really going to solve this, nor can I think of anything else that would. We're simply going to have to accept this.

*Except for those events directly triggered by the player or specific circumstances, of course.

It's certainly challenging, but for big problems like this it's not going to be solved by *one* idea.

Many features like inspiration are cogs in a much larger infrastructure (whether or not the design team is knowingly/deliberately doing so).

In your CK2 vs CK3 comparison scenario, the difference may seem subtle, but in the case of CK3 the piping and groundwork now exists. With the "infrastructure" of "this is who made what happened", future features can start focusing on fleshing out and making said characters more interesting.

 

[Erendir]

Day 0 mod: Inspiredis taken by a fey mood!