How do you feel about house mottos?

[Ezumiyr]

At best it's a nice addition to flavour, at worst it's useless and I'll never look at it like CK2's chronicles.

What I hope is that CK3's mottos won't be CK2's heraldry. In CK2 we had ugly colours and coats of arms in general, and they were never changed. In CK3 they look way better, but we have the risk that generated mottos will get nonsensical or repetitive, and therefore a bit immersion breaking. We'll see.

 

[Arko]

If the Inserted_noun somehow affected the gameplay, then yes. For example Insert_Kindness. People of this house are expected to have the kind trait. Those who do not, and especially those who are cruel, go against the very foundation of the dynasty's slogan. And then there might be some repercussions for this, like negative [-] monthly renown. And this would work similar to a decadence system where the Head-dynast guy can force them to adhere to the house's key motto. If they refuse, there might be punishments like being kicked out from the house.

I agree, it could even lead to form a new cadet branch with its own motto.

 

[Arko]

At best it's a nice addition to flavour, at worst it's useless and I'll never look at it like CK2's chronicles.

What I hope is that CK3's mottos won't be CK2's heraldry. In CK2 we had ugly colours and coats of arms in general, and they were never changed. In CK3 they look way better, but we have the risk that generated mottos will get nonsensical or repetitive, and therefore a bit immersion breaking. We'll see.

I really hope for better quality heraldry, with historical colours and symbols.

 

[Woifee]

Seems like every house is going to get the generic motto such as "INSERT_NOUN_1, INSERT_NOUN_2, and INSERT_NOUN_3" and "INSERT_ADJECTIVE with INSERT_ITEM in hand".

While some houses did have a motto (such as Habsburg's A.E.I.O.U), reckon most didn't. It feels very ASoIaF inspired and that's great for eventual AGoT mod.

AEIOU is way out of timeframe, and so a propably most house mottos.
In GoT these were a major part of family Identity, not sure how big of a role they played in RL medieval times. But it has a nice touch and don't do any harm. So I realy don't care that they are in.

 

[General Karthos]

If the Inserted_noun somehow affected the gameplay, then yes. For example Insert_Kindness. People of this house are expected to have the kind trait. Those who do not, and especially those who are cruel, go against the very foundation of the dynasty's slogan. And then there might be some repercussions for this, like negative [-] monthly renown. And this would work similar to a decadence system where the Head-dynast guy can force them to adhere to the house's key motto. If they refuse, there might be punishments like being kicked out from the house.

This is exactly the opposite of what I want to see. I want the motto to just be a flavor thing, and have no mechanical impact on gameplay. I'd rather have no mottos than have mottos have any impact on gameplay. I get the impression that it won't have any impact though.

 

[Arko]

I'd like to see the motto of a dynasty or house reflecting some traits or feats of its founder.

 

[Lysistrata]

I don't like this habit Paradox have of extrapolating things that only make sense for Western feudal Catholics into universal features. House mottos just seem like more of that. It probably wasn't even that big a thing in Western Europe until the very end of the game.

 

[Will Steel]

Royal families in India didn't have official mottos or watchwords in CK3 timeline. There were some anecdotal references like below -

Spoiler

रघुकुल रीति सदा चली आई।
प्राण जाइ पर वचन न जाई।।

Which can be translated to "It has been the eternal creed of Raghu dynasty that we can forfeit our lives, but we shall never ever back down on our word."

...But there weren't any official words in any major Indian dynasty, feudal or not.

Nor could I find any in any dynasty in Persia or the rest of Asia. At best it is just a bunch of popular anecdotes in the line of "A Lannister always pays his debts", not official watchwords. Same with Africa and even Eastern Europe as well.

I am unsure what to think of this mechanism. Of course it will be amazing in mods (especially the inevitable Game of Thrones mod where this feature would be at home)...but in real world scenario of CK3, how?

 

[Zhetone]

the GOT influenced stuff in the base game annoys me, like "House _____" which is not a formal construction of dynasty names, it comes from GOT. It's kind of jarring