Okay, listen up. The Roads To Power expansion is coming to Crusader Kings III is centered around the Byzantine Empire, but forget about that. Today, the developers at Paradox revealed the details of another DLC feature that’s way more exciting than some old-fashioned Greek schtick. It’s called “Landless Adventurers,” and it will let you play as a disgraced scumbag traveling the world in a sort of medieval gig economy. You’ll set up camp, gather followers, take random jobs from local rulers, and catch infectious diseases as you try to safely travel through war-torn regions. Sounds awesome.
In a nutshell, you'll be able to create a custom “Landless Adventurer” character at the start of a campaign, just as if you were designing a normal ruler (you might also find yourself landless mid-game after some classic political conflict). At this point, you'll be expected to play the game in a slightly different way than usual.
“Crusader Kings is a game about marriage, inheritance, and complex kingdom politics – none of which really apply to wandering characters without a vassal to call their own,” says Paradox in A long developer diary“Well, in a nutshell, we think of[adventurers]as the ultimate losers: foreigners with no land or prospects, but also no responsibilities or restraints…
“We wanted to reflect this philosophy with a style of gameplay that is centered around travel and wandering, encouraging you to experience the map in a different way, moving through it and observing it, occasionally stopping to influence this or that kingdom when you have to proverbially sing for your supper.”
That journey involves setting up camp. You choose a region and settle there, at which point you'll be offered “contracts” – various odd jobs that vary in difficulty and pay. Some contracts will require you to help in a war (provided you have soldiers at your side). Others might require you to aid the local ruler's advisors in some scheme or plot, collect taxes from reluctant locals, or educate a noble's son.
“Some don't require travel, some require traversing the entire map, while others may involve a short tour of a character's kingdom,” the developers say. “Naturally, a key part of this is serving the fantasy of building a strong, mobile mercenary army, but we didn't want players to be limited to just this either. After all, for every Roger de Flor there's an Ibn Battuta or a Marco Polo.”
After reading about Ibn Battuta's travels, I love this idea. I, too, want to piss off a despotic sultan in India. I, too, want to get mugged on the road an inconceivable number of times. (The developers say the “travel safety mechanics” will be the same as those introduced in the previous Tours & Tournaments expansion.) To generate new contracts, you'll need to be on the move, hopping from one de jure region to another in search of the next job.
“If you complete a contract to your employer's satisfaction, you'll receive resources such as gold, prestige, sometimes piety, and the new Adventurer-specific provisions… Prestige is necessary to advance your fame, which governs the level of rulers who will offer you contracts (kings and emperors won't just hand them out to anyone).”
If any of this sounds familiar, it sounds a lot like the mercenary wandering of the Mount and blade Games, where you join up with a faraway duke before going to woo the daughter of the neighbouring Khan. As in those games, you'll also need to keep a good stock of food and supplies (those “provisions” mentioned above). If you start running low on them, followers will start to lose their opinion of you, and eventually you'll starve. But it may not come to that. You might become a prestigious wanderer, giving you the chance to earn a title to a property.
“Landing should be possible (especially if you're willing to put up with the indignity of a remote, impoverished county somewhere), but it's not something you can do with a click of your fingers and no prep work,” the developers say.
“We expect some players to want to be adventurers for as little time as possible, and others to want to be adventurers for centuries. At various stages, there are ways out for players who decide they want to leave the adventuring life behind. It's up to you whether you'd like to take over a remote county somewhere for a large sum of money, raise an army to try to reclaim your throne, or just wander the world leaving your mark in half a dozen small ways.”
The post shares an example of exactly that, detailing a game featuring a landless Kashmiri plotter named Shirin who “yearns to explore far from home.” It’s worth a read if you still want more precise details on how certain types of contracts will play out (a Video version is also available). At one point, he accepts a transport contract to escort a baron west, only to discover that Persia is in the middle of the Iranian Intermezzo, a massive, protracted struggle unlikely to be resolved tomorrow.
“Along the way,” the developer explains, “dangerous events beset us, (my follower) Lalit manages to lose some provisions and gets beaten in a tavern brawl, and I get infected with typhus.”
Yes. YES. This is exactly what I crave in a CKIII game. Travel! Excitement! Accidentally dropping all your food in a puddle of poop on the side of the road!
There are many other types of contracts, including those based on intrigue and administration. But there are also jobs that allow criminal actions such as arson, murder or theft, which basically turns you into a traveling bandit. At some point you will be able to “wipe the slate clean” with a donation of gold and prestige, if you want to make amends for your past and get your life back on track.
There are many more differences in playstyle compared to a landed noble. Skill trees will be different, for example, and the grand feasts and weddings of the nobility will be replaced by revelries around the campfire. You'll also need to invest in camp upgrades to unlock other traditionally available features, such as creating a portable shrine that allows for conversion of religions. And, perhaps most importantly, succession becomes much more “casual” and simple: your eldest son or closest relative will take the lead. Failing that, the camp follower with the highest “dexterity” will.
“Adventurers don't experience the politics of succession in the same way as the smaller kingdom,” the developer explains. “There are no laws binding them except their own will, and by comparison there is little to divide or fight over…”
The post goes into more depth about the mechanics, and says that more details will be covered in a later dev diary. Considering the length of this post, it makes me very excited to think about what constitutes the “individual details” that haven’t been discussed yet. But that’s Crusader Kings simulation. Why be merely complex when you can be a ferociously intricate maze of tiny cogs?
Overall, it's getting me excited about CKIII in a way I haven't been for a while. And it's not even the main feature of the Roads To Power DLC (that's all there is to it). Byzantine things). Adventurers already existed in CKII, but they were mostly just annoying interlopers who showed up in your country with an army and a smirk. Here, players will be swept up in the chaos of CKIII's fully simulated nonsense, without any of the trappings of nobility. Here's hoping it's as disastrously good as it looks.
