{ MOD } Birthright / D&D *Take II*

[Blood Royal]

( Picture ©1996-2007 Wizards of the Coast, Inc. )

The Birthright Mod (Take II, because the earlier attempt seems to have died out, so I started a new one).

Features:
-A total fantasy conversion for CK II, bringing the Birthright (Dungeons & Dragons campaign setting) to life
-A continent-sized map, 900+ provinces with 6 different races of men, in addition to elves, dwarves, halflings, giants, goblins, orogs (orcs) and possibly wraiths
-Thanks to Lonhaldar from the MEP Mod, we have custom portraits for elves, dwarves, halflings, and goblins/orogs (and possibly wraiths)
-A bloodline system derived in 6 godly flavors from when the Gods destroyed themselves at the monumental battle of Mt.Deismaar, and their powers seeped over the surviving combatants. Strenghts of the derivation range from tainted, minor, major, great to "True" - though only the twisted Awnsheighleen who gained immortality from absorbing the essence of their dark god Azrai are still alive at the 1526-date bookmark
-Speaking of which: Unique creatures known as Awnsheighleen, those who either fought at Mt.Deismaar and lived through the centuries, or those later descendants who became corrupted either by bloodtheft or by their natural inherited powers awakening
-Additional "Realm Magic" spells based on the Birthright campaign-setting rules
-Character classes based on D&D (Fighter, Rogue, Priest, Wizard, Sorcerer, Paladin, etc) ranging in levels from Amateur to Legendary
-Hopefully I can (with permission) adapt JordanDarkElf's duel engine to take into account these character class differences in duels. Fighter classes will be stronger at the lower levels, but to beat a legendary mage will take quite some skill - or extraordinary luck!)
-Better congenital (inherited) traits, as per the JasperClay mod of the same name
-Andddd anything else we can think of and manage to implement

The Team so far (in order of join-date):
-Blood Royal (Events, gameplay mechanics, history, characters, map, whatever needs doing etc... hoping to delegate much of the work!)
-LDRevolution (Anuirean characters, holy orders, mercs, titles, general all-round adder of things!)
-Armandeus (flags and COA's)
-Iron Gore (Brecht characters)
-Talias (custom trait icons)
-Tamman (Rjurik region, and part elves)
-Hamanu (Khinasi Region)
-Gamarasa (Resident dwarf expert, dwarf events)
-JonStryker (Brecht Region, and map assistance)
-Achab (Bloodline system mechanics & scripting)
-Themios (Custom Music and Sound + trait icons)

Here is a viewof the map so far - special thanks goes to JonStryker's map-filler tool without whom making a 900+ province map with baronies, landed titles, cultures, religions, de jure set up, etc would have been an absolutely nightmare and 500-hour effort, and also thanks for his assistance in helping me get the map functional and create the basic height/terrain/etc maps. Note to future mod makers: Use the map filler tool! Also special thanks to Redit of the MEP for pretti-fying our map

The terrain view:

Independent realms view:

De Jure Empires view (largely follows the 5 major human culture groups. Anuireans/English, Rjurik/Norse, Khinasi/Arab, Brechtur/German, Vos/Russian)

And the cultures/race view:

CREDITS TO OTHER MODS:
Middle-Earth mod and Lonhaldar for portraits
Jasperclay for Better Congenital Traits
Knuckey/Galle and the Game of Thrones Team for the duel-engine
Rabid Bogling & the_hdk for their COAs
Syren: Syren's Nicknames (http://forum.paradoxplaza.com/forum/showthread.php?590197-MOD-Syren-s-Nicknames-Mod)
Waylit1: mini - Dungeons and Sieges: An Imprisonment Game & Meneth + the PB Team ( http://forum.paradoxplaza.com/forum...isonment-Game!&highlight=Dungeon's+and+Sieges )
rein005: BTPortraits (http://forum.paradoxplaza.com/forum/showthread.php?765324-Mod-BTPortraits)
Some AGoT Decisions, Traits, Hairs&Beards, Flavor thanks to Knuckey and The AGOT team.
Jordarkelf: Plead the Belly/Legitimize Cuckold Bastard events http://forum.paradoxplaza.com/forum/showthread.php?655891-Various-micro-mods
ZachPruckowski and JGCrusader Additional Objectives http://forum.paradoxplaza.com/forum...-Objectives-2.0-Brand-New-Ambitions-and-Plots
"Velho e Bom Joe, Nendur and AstroCat: Better Models" http://forum.paradoxplaza.com/forum...-Mod-Campaign-Map-Culturally-different-cities.
Thund91: More Loading Screens - http://forum.paradoxplaza.com/forum/showthread.php?822480-MOD-More-loading-screens-mod
Korbah and Arahkor: Adoption Decision

 

[Blood Royal]

{ Reserved }

A mod is never "completed", it is just "published", but I think now two years after the first release it is in a pretty polished state and unlikely to go through any more major iterations So play, and enjoy, and let us know what you think!

14/9/2016 (2nd) Released version 0.84, with Grim Reaper compatibility and now with less CTDs! :

v0.84
https://www.mediafire.com/?loa784y6hr1v588

NOTE: Add replace_path = "events" to the .mod file. You can open it via notepad or notepad++. Turns out there's a crash on loading if that is not there, and it was removed at the last minute before I tested it.

Delete all traces of the previous version before installing this one, and I recommend not playing with Reaper's Due when testing for the CTD/stability.

Known issues:
-The CTD issue has been reduced greatly, for me at least I got two CTDs (non-recurring) in a 100 year test-game which I consider acceptable
-I don't have Grim Reaper DLC, so play with that at your own risk, weirdnesses may happen as the events are not adapted to this mod
-The mod has been thoroughly tested with all the other DLCs, however

 

[jebezt2]

Looks nice.I love total conversions.
Try getting a team going because it looks quite ambitious.

 

[Jaidal]

Sweet! Also, well done on the map!

 

[Blood Royal]

The main hurdle will be in getting the map to work, and I'm not sure how much of an endeavor this actually is going to be - hence the call for assistance with that once I have the provinces.bmp done.

Once I have that, and with Jonstryker's map filler tool and my provincesDEF excel file filled out, in theory I should have:

1) A working map (though it might not look pretty on the terrain view)
2) all history/titles files auto-generated via map filler tool, though I'll need to fill out holders. I plan on just making the dukes at first ruling their provinces, the rest will be autogenerated and making the dukes will probably only take a few days as there's maybe 100 of them
3) all history/provinces files complete with culture and religion auto-generated via map filler tool
4) an auto-generated landed_titles.txt document

Elf/dwarf/hobbit/orc/wraith portraits hopefully, plus basic gameplay events and traits for the custom races from the Middle-Earth Project if I get to the point where I can actually use them in a working mod.

For flags, I can just use the Vanilla ones or whatever other ones I get permission to use from other mods.

Same for traits.

Religion and culture files are quick to do - there's may 10-20 religions with all the info on them in the Birthright source material, and cultures is also easy, as the 5 types of men are basically - 1) Anglo-French 2) Norse 3) German 4) Russian and 5) Arab.

Once I have this basic infrastructure done, I plan on "crowdsourcing" the work, ie, keep a version of the mod available on a development thread here on the modding forums. I'll make a list of things needed to be done (characters, gameplay, specific events, retinues, etc) and just let people contribute as much or as little as they want without formally joining a closed team.

But yeah, still hoping a map-maker will answer the call for assistance

Here is more information on the birthright setting btw:

~removed external link, contains a discussion forum~

The beauty of a birthright mod is that it is actually 90% similar in gameplay to crusader kings. Even the pen & paper version of the game had a province map where you could build holdings, conquer neighboring lands, and full of realm intrigue and expansionist rulers. Basically just like CK II!

 

[LDRevolution]

I would love to work for this team for this particular total conversion mod, too bad I have no idea how to mod.

 

[Blood Royal]

I would love to work for this team for this particular total conversion mod, too bad I have no idea how to mod.

The time-consuming stuff takes 5 minutes to learn. Take a look at how to make a character for example:

You open the relevant text document, and use the relevant ID (I will supply this, with ID's assigned for each realm, perhaps 50 each)

1 = {
name="Random"
dynasty=1
religion="orthodox"
culture="alan"
father=2
992.1.1={
birth="992.1.1"
}
1068.1.1={
death="1068.1.1"
}
}

So you have a character with ID = 1, dynasty = 1 (the dynasty ID's are listen in a separate file) and the rest is common sense. You can also add traits and stats, but you don't have to - if they're not there, they're just randomly generated. The father is character ID = 2 in this case. You can also make a wife for him by targeting the wife's ID. Most of the other time-consuming modding stuff is just as easy, it's just text file editing, so there's no excuses Once we have this character, we can open the history/titles folder and open the document for the provinces. For example we can open the C_Imperial_City (C_ is for county, obviously) one and just write:

1500.1.1={
holder=1
}

Meaning that in the year 1500, around the start date of hte mod, this character with ID = 1 that we just made became ruler of the Imperial City. That's it! Nothing to it, really, except that it takes a long time to do this for all characters and provinces :ninja:


And we'll need thousands of characters made before the mod is 100% complete probably, as there is going to be around 1000 provinces. We don't NEED thousands, of course, we can make do with the dukes and their families, and just let the counties have randomly generated families/holders. That is probably a more manage-able 4-500 characters in that case.

 

[JonStryker]

I'd replace "death="1068.1.1"" with "death=yes". To paraphrase Sean Parker: It's cleaner.

And I would use the character creator to create a ruling dynasty for each county (with a number of generations). That way you are prepared for multiple bookmarks and there are women to marry at gamestart. Then let the match maker tool marry people and voilá you have a consistent web of nobles.
Get the tools and use them

 

[Blood Royal]

I'd replace "death="1068.1.1"" with "death=yes". To paraphrase Sean Parker: It's cleaner.

And I would use the character creator to create a ruling dynasty for each county (with a number of generations). That way you are prepared for multiple bookmarks and there are women to marry at gamestart. Then let the match maker tool marry people and voilá you have a consistent web of nobles.
Get the tools and use them

Ahh, yes, death = yes it is then! And I hadn't even heard of the character creator... will look it up :b

And most definitely will use all the tools available, otherwise I'd never have thought of starting this mod For example in the MEP, we spent countless hours filling out provinces, cultures, religions, baronies etc - with your map filler tool, I should have all those available automatically with the click of a button (well, probably a few issues will come up).

Btw while you're here - quick question: Once I'm done with the provinces.bmp and provinceDEF file - how many hours of work would you estimate are involved before I have a functional map? Even just one with pure grassland and no heightmap or rivers. And how much of an undertaking is it making the heightmaps, terrainmaps, and rivermaps? On a scale of the provinces.bmp/provinceDEF work for 1000 provinces, or is it more or less?

 

[LDRevolution]

The time-consuming stuff takes 5 minutes to learn. Take a look at how to make a character for example:

You open the relevant text document, and use the relevant ID (I will supply this, with ID's assigned for each realm, perhaps 50 each)

1 = {
name="Random"
dynasty=1
religion="orthodox"
culture="alan"
father=2
992.1.1={
birth="992.1.1"
}
1068.1.1={
death="1068.1.1"
}
}

So you have a character with ID = 1, dynasty = 1 (the dynasty ID's are listen in a separate file) and the rest is common sense. You can also add traits and stats, but you don't have to - if they're not there, they're just randomly generated. The father is character ID = 2 in this case. You can also make a wife for him by targeting the wife's ID. Most of the other time-consuming modding stuff is just as easy, it's just text file editing, so there's no excuses Once we have this character, we can open the history/titles folder and open the document for the provinces. For example we can open the C_Imperial_City (C_ is for county, obviously) one and just write:

1500.1.1={
holder=1
}

Meaning that in the year 1500, around the start date of hte mod, this character with ID = 1 that we just made became ruler of the Imperial City. That's it! Nothing to it, really, except that it takes a long time to do this for all characters and provinces :ninja:


And we'll need thousands of characters made before the mod is 100% complete probably, as there is going to be around 1000 provinces. We don't NEED thousands, of course, we can make do with the dukes and their families, and just let the counties have randomly generated families/holders. That is probably a more manage-able 4-500 characters in that case.

If it is that easy, please let me know If I could be of any help I know the very basic which is edit save-files, and I once created a whole family of 5 living members but that was it.

 

[Blood Royal]

If it is that easy, please let me know If I could be of any help I know the very basic which is edit save-files, and I once created a whole family of 5 living members but that was it.

It really is that easy, and much of the rest of modding is on a similar scale of difficulty, ie, simple editing of text files. Event and map modding, that's the really hard part to learn, however.

And welcome to the Birthright mod then! As soon as a I have a functional map, I'll begin a separate development thread and start handing out assignments to those willing, along with explanations of how to do the work like I just did above. You could in theory start already now, but it's probably best to wait to see if I can get the map working - no map, no mod Hopefully I should know in a week or two if it looks like it is going to happen - but so far so good!

In the mean time, if you don't know the campaign setting, try and look at this map http://gm.mapgears.com/birthright-map/ (you can zoom in with the mouse wheel) and visit - there's a huge amount of information there on the setting and the individual realms, plus the name and dynasties of the rulers, their main lieutenants, and so forth - so all the information we need is there (and in the official campaign setting supplements which I have in hard copy and which you can actually buy on pdf from Wizards of the Coast now).

 

[JonStryker]

Ahh, yes, death = yes it is then! And I hadn't even heard of the character creator... will look it up :b

And most definitely will use all the tools available, otherwise I'd never have thought of starting this mod For example in the MEP, we spent countless hours filling out provinces, cultures, religions, baronies etc - with your map filler tool, I should have all those available automatically with the click of a button (well, probably a few issues will come up).

Btw while you're here - quick question: Once I'm done with the provinces.bmp and provinceDEF file - how many hours of work would you estimate are involved before I have a functional map? Even just one with pure grassland and no heightmap or rivers. And how much of an undertaking is it making the heightmaps, terrainmaps, and rivermaps? On a scale of the provinces.bmp/provinceDEF work for 1000 provinces, or is it more or less?

You might've missed some of the history of the MEP mod ^^
The modbase was once kinda broken and so I spent a rather long time searching for the cause. I then ended up recreating the files with the tool and voilá it worked. Of course then the people apparantly forgot about that and resumed doing all by hand. At least that's what it looks like as the "auto generated content" comment still sits in the landed_titles.txt

For creating characters I usually use a modified version of AgentPaper's character creator that creates a dynasty at a time, without unnecessary traits and useless side branches of the familes as well as the possibility to create county history information. But AgentPaper improved his original tool since I "branched off" so it is very much worth checking it out.

Once you have "filled" the map you need:
- a terrain.bmp -> green / blue. Takes a minute
- a topology.bmp -> Two shades of grey. Takes a minute
- trees -> leave it black
- positions.txt -> leave it empty
- adjacencies.csv -> tricky, use provinces outside of the map if you don't want to add an actual portage to the map.
- a starting character with a title -> takes a minute
- texture dds files -> basic ones are easily made from the existing ones (vanilla, agot, ...).

If you add replace_path for decisions and events it should technically already be working.


If you want to get something that is pleasing to the eye you need many hours of work and an artistic talent.
For CK2 the best ones are made by cabezaestufa, Korba, Luca, Tirenendon but certainly not me.
I actually spent a rather long time with staring at cabezaestufa's work in awe

 

[Blood Royal]

Hehe, yeah, I wasn't in on the MEP from the start I think it was probably Redit who you helped with getting the map fixed, but that was before my time (late summer/early fall of 2013). When I joined Redit was more or less missing in action, and it was Lonhaldar, Chris, Nukuhmentar and myself that were actively working on the mod. So that probably explains why we "forgot" to use your tools, those of us left had no idea what they could do, hehe, and we just made the mod based on how the vanilla files looked and adapted them to Middle-Earth.

And as for the time-frame estimates once I'm done with the provinces.bmp and provinceDEF, excellent! I really just want a functional map... if someone likes the mod but hates the look of the map, then they can prettify it themselves... I also will probably give some OCD people fits of rage with how uneven my borders are... I'm drawing fast and loose, not really a detail-oriented person and according to my last boss, have zero sense of that "Danish design" aesthetic when it comes to presenting my work But I do get it done fast and efficiently!

 

[newtlord]

My lack of practical modding experience prevents me from offering anything but good will and best wishes, but you have those in abundance. I look forward hopefully to this.

 

[LDRevolution]

After I started making the characters for the mod, I noticed the story behind this is pretty amazing I am starting to like it considering I have never played DD before.

 

[Blood Royal]

My lack of practical modding experience prevents me from offering anything but good will and best wishes, but you have those in abundance. I look forward hopefully to this.

If you don't have time to help modding, that's perfectly fine of course and well wishes are always welcome and appreciated

But when I started on the Middle Earth Project, I had zero modding experience either, but I learned bit-by-bit, and now I'm pretty proficient in everything except map modding and graphical editing. Like I stated previously, and this goes for you and everyone else, I can teach useful modding skills on a case-by-case basis in a matter of minutes as long as people have basic computing skills. The majority of the work involved in making a new mod is relatively basic stuff, just editing .txt files and typing in information. You know, basic minimum wage data-entry type work

As for this mod, well I'm hopeful it will take off!

I'll need lots of help from map makers to get it functional, probably, but we have a great and very helpful community of modders here on these forums. I encourage everyone to read the Birthright Wiki links I posted above, and hopefully they'll become as eager to see Birthright in CK II as I am. It's a world of nobles with special blood-powers gained when the gods destroyed themselves in a great battle, of dwarves fighting orogs (big orcs) relentlessly in their deep tunnels, and of elves driven from their pre-eminence into the deep forests by human settlers, but who still want to see the tribes of men defeated and the glories of the ancient elf-realms restored. There are goblin realms, and orog realms, and realms ruled by "awnsheighleen", those with the absorbed blood powers of the evil god who have been twisted into new forms and taken names such as "The Gorgon", "The Magian", "The Lahmia", "The White Witch", "The Raven", etc. Magic is rare in the Birthright setting, maybe only 20-100 "true" mages exist, but those that do wield epic powers as per high level Dungeons and Dragons magic spells - and also capable of wielding "realm magic" on a continental scale.

It is also a fragmented continent. The Anuirean Empire was destroyed when the Gorgon killed the last Emperor, and now it is - in CK II terms - a splintered continent of "duchies". Claiming a King title will be hard, but becoming Emperor of a region - or even the whole continent, that will be an epic undertaking

 

[Blood Royal]

After I started making the characters for the mod, I noticed the story behind this is pretty amazing I am starting to like it considering I have never played DD before.

It's epic!

I have all the campaign material in hard copy from back in the day, but you can still buy them in .pdf form at -removed non-PI commercial link- for a couple of dollars

 

[Blood Royal]

Progress report:

Provinces.bmp drawn, and provinceDEF file filled out with county names, baronies, cultures, religions, de jure set-up, and unique RGB colors:

That was hopefully the time-consuming part of map-making Now I'll have to see if I can get it running in the next few days...

And if any map-makers interested in seeing a Birthright mod want to help me get this functional, they would be most welcome! I'll try myself of course, and will probably get it working eventually, but it may take a while :b

 

[JonStryker]

Add me on Steam if you got any problems with generating the output

 

[Korbah]

I've had to remove a couple of links. Linking to external discussion forums and non-PI commercial links aren't permitted.