Events are one component of the problem as they fail to be interesting most of the time. While there are some that I don't care for, most of them are fine, but even of the ones that are fine, so many of them fail to do something that is perceivably interesting. I've been going through events lately, trying to better understand the types of events in the game, and in an incredibly basic sense I can identity three main types of events in CK3: outcome events, question events, and conflict events.
Outcome events are events with only one choice. You're not making a decision, you're just acknowledging that something has happened or is about to happen. These are generally not very interesting because they don't require anything of you, but they're pretty necessary for relaying important information to the player. I would consider the birth of a child to be this type of event, though technically you do get to choose the child's name. Most of the time, though, these events spawn as reactions to other actions you've taken, like scheme setbacks/progress or the outcomes of earlier events. They can be interesting when unexpected, but in my opinion, they're mostly a necessary evil that reiterates information you need to be aware of, or else represents the end to a countdown you initiated.
Question events are events where you're making a choice, but it's the kind of choice that's equivalent to how you want the deck chairs on the Titanic arranged. These are probably the most common events in the game, and what's most frustrating to me is that they are really just the illusion of choice. These events exist almost exclusively to push numbers around, and if they do involve other characters, then you are almost never in direct conflict with them, but instead those other characters are used to spout exposition, such as introducing you to the question itself, or else they're used as a prop to give legitimacy to the question. Most Lifestyle events are these. In my opinion, no matter how well written they are, these events are not interesting in regards to telling an emergent story, and they're the ones you get most often.
Conflict events are the most interesting for story, imo, and they're also vastly underrepresented. These events also ask a question, but they're directly centered around your relationship with another character (or characters), and they require you to make decisions that might run contrary to the other person's wants, or change your relationship with them, or at the very least change your perception of something. When your spouse cheats on you and you're asked what to do about it, that's what I would consider a Conflict event. I think these events are most interesting when they ask questions that don't have a clear answer, and which ask the player to make an emotional decision rather than a gameplay one. Question events can have conflict, but it is almost always an incredibly vague sense of it, often turned inward, and often mostly unrelated to other characters or your relationship with them. Conflict events are almost always about interpersonal relationships, but sometimes the line between a Question event and a Conflict event blurs a bit.
For example, there's the Royal Aid Duty event, which does involve another character:
Despite tangentially involving your relationship with another character, I would argue that this is actually an example of a Question event. Your relationship with this character doesn't actually matter, and the decision you're making does not have a conflict with anyone else, but is only an internal conflict for your own character. In this case, your response doesn't affect your relationship, and it's frankly just not a very interesting question to begin with.
It is my belief that good events should always change a player's perception of the world by doing at least one of these three things: incite conflict, build character, and advance plot. Advancing plot is easy—Outcome events do this just by existing, telling you that something has happened, or is about to happen. Building character is easy—almost all events do this to some degree—but Question events excel at it because adding modifiers and pushing and pulling numbers is a fine way to add characterization in an RPG. What this game's events are really not good at it, though, is inciting conflict. Very few events actually seem to change the game state or (more importantly) the player's perception of it. I've seen the complaints that the game is kind of empty, and I think a lack of these events that inspire players to act is certainly a part of it.
Here's an event I would consider a Conflict event that is about my daughter who had an affair with my knight:
This has potential to make something happen. You're asked to make a judgment about another character, either forgiving their mistake or punishing them, but even when the game lands on an interpersonal struggle, it doesn't do a good job of following up on it. Yes, you can send someone to prison, but that's also ostensibly where the conflict ends. If I lock her up, I'll take an opinion hit with my own family, but is anyone actually going to do anything about it?
That's not the event's fault, though. If you start scripting follow-up events for everything, then you're moving ever closer to railroading the player into playing your story, not telling their own. But still this lack of follow-up is the other component of the game that could be improved to create much better drama and story for players. There are some really cool systems in the game, but a lot of the time I don't feel compelled to use them in reaction to the world.
To look at this event more causally, for example, what could happen next to my daughter? Does her lover care about her now that the relationship is over? Will your family do anything about you imprisoning her? Does her husband want to get her out, or is he over the whole marriage? The problem is that because events with conflict are so rare, probably none of these characters are going to do anything at all, to you, or her, to further expand on this potential story. What could be an interesting start to a player story really just becomes another Question event that pushes around numbers for your character, asking "Do you want people to like you less, or do you want to lose a level of devotion?"
And to be clear, I'm not advocating that characters have to be scripted to react intentionally and directly in response to every change in the world. The way events are designed to have weighted randomness is an absolutely fine solution. The game just needs more events with conflict so that when things happen, players can ascribe meaning to the randomness of the world's events because of current and previous conflicts.
To look at real life history, for a moment, there was the Tour de Nesle Affair in France in the early 14th century, where three of King Philip IV's daughters-in-law were accused of adultery. Their lovers were tortured and executed, and two of the daughters-in-law were imprisoned, but the way the three women were treated was quite different. One of them died under mysterious circumstances while imprisoned, another spent nearly a decade imprisoned before being consigned to a nunnery in poor health, where she would die shortly thereafter, and the third, who was supported by her husband throughout the entire ordeal, was acquitted of all charges. King Philip IV would also die the same year as the scandal, with some suggesting the shock of it contributed to his declining health.
When King Philip IV's heir, King Louis X, took over for his father, the daughter he had with one of the convicted adulteresses was later denied the throne when Louis X himself died, which inadvertently allowed for the succession crisis that led to the Hundred Years War.
If these were the events of a game, it would be an interesting story, but it also would not matter if these events were actually related or not. It doesn't matter if King Philip IV's death is a result of the shock of the scandal; it doesn't matter if Margaret, the daughter-in-law who died suspiciously, was actually murdered; and it doesn't matter if the Tour de Nesle Affair led directly to the Hundred Year War. All that matters is that things kept happening that changed the status quo.
That's where CK3 fails to be interesting. The player's perception of the world doesn't change often enough. The events in the game can be completely random and unconnected, but as long as things keep happening and there's a sense of conflict between characters, players will be able to invent meaning to the game's happenings.
But that means the player's perception of the world has to be constantly changing. It's not just enough to be asked a question that's centered around what kind of boon do you want. The relationships of characters has to be in flux in the player's mind. You have to have reasons to hate some characters, and like others. This can be achieved in the most obvious way of using game mechanics like relations (e.g., lover, friend, rival) to qualify what people think of you, but a lot of this conflict can be written entirely into flavour text—because it's the player's perception of the world and its unrelated events that matters most.
Consider again the Royal Aid Duty event from earlier. It's not an event that necessarily needs to be changed, but as it is it's not a conflict at all. It's just a straight-up question about the game's mechanics: do you want Gold, or do you want Prestige? Functionally, that's fine, but it doesn't add anything to a player's story. By changing only the flavour text, you can give the appearance of an actual conflict with other characters:
This event is about as low-stakes as it can get in the game, and here it's still just about gaining a minor amount of gold or prestige. But framed as an encounter, I think it carries more narrative weight. Your father-in-law asking for gold probably isn't going to motivate you to war, and your Steward lightly chastising you probably isn't going to incite you to murder him, but over time these things build up. The next time you have an interaction with one of these characters you might remember the time your Steward chastised you, and soon, with the impression of repeated conflict, you'll find yourself in an emerging story as subsequent encounters with Steward Gaton or King Charles stack up, even if they are entirely random.
If the game wants to be better at stories, that's where it needs to be better. Events should change the player's perception of the world and the world itself as often as possible. They don't have to be immense changes, but they have to change how the player views the world and/or the characters in it. If you murder your way to Empress, lose power in a war, then win back your throne, I would argue it's not remembering only because your Satanic magic was cool, but because of the illusion of causality created by interpersonal conflict. But I do respect the attempt to get magic into the game.
