New month, new dev diary! This time, let's talk about events. Does anyone remember the first Crusader Kings? Raise your hands, kiddies. Now, think back to the events in that game. There were loads and loads (and loads) of them, though they were not exactly verbose. CK was, in fact, very much an event driven game, and this remains true in Crusader Kings II; characters still gain and lose traits through events, random stuff happens to them, and so on. These are the basic, bread and butter type events, and they are still very succinct and to the point in CKII. They are written in first person and represent various occurrences in the life of the character. They are, however, not particularly immersive, and so, we have added two other classes of events; letter events and narrative events.
Letter events are a form of custom interaction between characters, and are, as the name suggests, presented in letter form. Functionally, there is no real difference between these and normal events, but they have a different look and feel to them. They are fairly common, though rarer than regular events, normally used whenever a character's choice in an event should trigger an event for another character in a different location.
Narrative events are very rare, occurring on average only once or twice per game, and are used to tell a kind of interactive story where the player choices can have unforeseen effects down the road. They have fairly lengthy texts, and, like letter events, a distinctive appearance. When one of these event chains kicks off, the player should be surprised, and should rarely get the same narrative again (and never in the same game.) Narrative events typically vary with character culture, and can have a bit of a mythical element to them (subjectively speaking, of course.)
All three event types will have many unique pictures and borders. We feel that the new events are more immersive without being more intrusive, and will bring characters to life in a way that was not possible in Crusader Kings. Until next time!
Henrik Fåhraeus, Associate Producer and CKII Project Lead
Letter events are a form of custom interaction between characters, and are, as the name suggests, presented in letter form. Functionally, there is no real difference between these and normal events, but they have a different look and feel to them. They are fairly common, though rarer than regular events, normally used whenever a character's choice in an event should trigger an event for another character in a different location.
Narrative events are very rare, occurring on average only once or twice per game, and are used to tell a kind of interactive story where the player choices can have unforeseen effects down the road. They have fairly lengthy texts, and, like letter events, a distinctive appearance. When one of these event chains kicks off, the player should be surprised, and should rarely get the same narrative again (and never in the same game.) Narrative events typically vary with character culture, and can have a bit of a mythical element to them (subjectively speaking, of course.)
All three event types will have many unique pictures and borders. We feel that the new events are more immersive without being more intrusive, and will bring characters to life in a way that was not possible in Crusader Kings. Until next time!
Henrik Fåhraeus, Associate Producer and CKII Project Lead
