[mod] Carnal Realms Total Conversion Beta 0.9 Released 9/11/2026

[bodiefrank]

If you could make this compatible with dark world reborn that would be great but I think I read that for some reason that is not possible.

[SamIAmHam]

2 hours ago, bodiefrank said:

If you could make this compatible with dark world reborn that would be great but I think I read that for some reason that is not possible.

 

DWR touches the same files that I do. It also is someone else's code and I've had my share of headaches with a merged code base before. Let's just say it didn't turn out well and this was in 2013-2014. I've been here long enough to know the history of Dark World, LF, and Tentacle Dreams. It lead to a major falling out over the code base and the direction of the inherent setting. 

CR is a completely different setting. The design is modular for people to add what they want without touching the core systems. If the core needs hooks I can provide the hooks.

 

Telling me that you want DWR actually tells me nothing on what you want from DWR. Did you want fantasy races and magic? That's going to be a planned submod already.

 

Did you want slavery?

 

Already on the planning section for a submod.

 

Did you want the heroes and villains? Did you want the fairy tales? Did you want How to Train Your Dragons?

 

If it's the heroes and villains, the fairy tales, and HTTYD then no, I'm not working on that. Someone can, but I won't. 

I am but one person doing this and my time and resources are limited. In the next pass I will be taking the DLC events and rewriting the content to match the story decks. I will be redoing all of the societies to match what was done with the Order of the Sacred Magdalene. I plan on redoing some of the events in the Order to have a full story deck for them.

Edited Sunday at 08:08 AM by SamIAmHam

[bodiefrank]

Thanks for clarifying and it sounds like you already plan on adding most of what I want from DWR.

[SamIAmHam]

How Big Can a Story Deck Actually Get?

I recently finished rewriting the vanilla personality trait events using the Story Deck system, and it gives a good example of why I am using this instead of the normal CK2 event-chain structure.

 

The personality system starts normally enough. Vanilla's existing personality events are hijacked and used to start the new system. Once the Story Deck begins, however, the character goes through four events before reaching the ending. Each of those four stages draws one event randomly from a pool of 20 events. The player then makes a choice in that event, and that choice determines which pool of 20 events becomes available at the next stage. In other words, the player chooses the direction of the story while the game randomly determines the particular scene encountered along that direction.

 

The basic math is already fairly ridiculous. Four pools containing 20 possible events each gives: 20 × 20 × 20 × 20 = 160,000

 

That means there are 160,000 possible combinations of the four events themselves. This does not require writing 160,000 event chains. It requires writing the event pools and letting CK2 assemble the story while the player is playing it. This is the basic advantage of treating events more like encounter tables in a tabletop RPG instead of writing a fixed railroad.

 

The personality system goes further because every event gives the player two choices. Those choices are not cosmetic. Each choice sends the story into a different correlated pool at the next stage. A constructive first choice can lead into a pool built around the trust that choice created, while a destructive choice can lead into a pool where people react to the advantage the character previously took. Later pools continue remembering that history. A character who begins well and then reverses course enters a different story pool from one who made two constructive choices or two destructive choices. The story therefore develops from the decisions that came before it rather than drawing four unrelated random events.

 

Once those choices are included, there are 16 possible choice histories across the four events: 2 × 2 × 2 × 2 = 16

 

Combine those with the 160,000 possible event combinations and the complete system has: 160,000 × 16 = 2,560,000 possible event-and-choice paths.

 

Obviously, no player is going to see 2.56 million personality stories. That is the point. I do not want a player seeing the opening event and immediately knowing the next three events because they have already played the chain before. The system has a controlled beginning and ending, but there is an enormous amount of variation in what happens between them. This is much closer to how I approach running a tabletop RPG. I know what situation I am presenting, but the players and the dice determine how we actually get to the other end.

 

The choices also build the character mechanically. Each personality axis begins with a 15 percent chance for each opposing trait. Every choice adds another 15 percentage points toward the trait represented by that choice. Four consistent choices therefore produce a 75 percent chance of gaining that trait, a 15 percent chance of gaining its opposite, and a 10 percent chance of gaining neither. The trait is not handed out because the player clicked one answer once. It represents a pattern of behavior developed over the entire story. The ending even recognizes the route taken, distinguishing a consistent path from one involving reversals, recovery, or an evenly divided series of decisions.

 

This is what I mean when I refer to Story Decks as a Choose Your Own Adventure system rather than simply random event pools. RNG determines which particular situation you encounter. You determine where the story goes. The next deck then deals from the consequences of that decision.

That is how 300 relatively lightweight scripted event cards can produce millions of potential journeys without writing millions of railroaded event chains.

Edited Monday at 04:23 AM by SamIAmHam

[SamIAmHam]

Update on things.

I had to make a compatibility patch for Better Looking Garbs. blg.3 was creating too many society clothing change calls and it was causing instability in my system.

 

Almost all of the general events from the vanilla game have been reworked completely to fit Carnal Realms setting. Personality Trait events is now a story deck with 300 events in separate pools. That leads to about 2.5 million different stories that can be built.

 

Pets are now an actual decision to buy, be gifted, or go out to capture them in the world. Your rank determines what animal you can actually get. For the safari it will cost a base amount plus a percentage of your treasury. The animals themselves are artifacts that can die from age. This uses a story deck.

 

All of the vanilla event images have been replaced with custom images in the established style.

 

Order of the Sacred Magdalene is now a core system. I figured it would be easier to maintain that way as I'm already working on the replacements for the vanilla societies.

 

[bodiefrank]

I started a new game as the male king of scotland.  For the first 4 month of my reign I got marriage proposals two or three times a month from men wanting to marry me.  I'm all for gay marriage and I sometimes play as a homosexual but not receiving a single proposal from a woman is kind of ridiculous.

[SamIAmHam]

21 minutes ago, bodiefrank said:

I started a new game as the male king of scotland.  For the first 4 month of my reign I got marriage proposals two or three times a month from men wanting to marry me.  I'm all for gay marriage and I sometimes play as a homosexual but not receiving a single proposal from a woman is kind of ridiculous.

Thanks I will investigate and fix it. Is this with the custom marriage system or vanilla?

Edited Tuesday at 01:59 AM by SamIAmHam

[bodiefrank]

I was playing with both your mods and I think I was using custom marriages but I am unsure.

[SamIAmHam]

Okay that helps a lot. I'll have the scopes change to respect traits.

[bodiefrank]

I was using custom mariages.

 

[SamIAmHam]

Thanks I'll have the scope changed to block same sex marriages for player characters that don't have the homosexual trait.

[anonanon421]

Hmm, would it be practical to split the combat and weather systems and such off into a separate submod or are you planning future mods that will incorporate both in a way that can't be handled by conditional triggers to enable stuff only if the combat mod is present?

 

Personally I'm mostly satisfied with the combat system despite some issues and am frankly concerned a new complex system developed by one person will have worse cases of edge issues that incentivize doing things I don't like and don't fit the setting like how current tactics selection tends to incentivize having only two troop types at most. I was involved in playtesting the Warhammer mod for a while and at that time it had a more complex magic system that we never quite got to work and the battle magic portion was eventually cut in favor of just spawning temporary special troops. And it had a bunch of special racial mechanics that were cool concepts but we could never get the numbers right on to be satisfying to play and I'm still sad the Grand Generaless Jade Vampire in Lustria going on the warpath to recontact Cathay just doesn't work because getting anything useful out of nearly all conquered territory just isn't really doable. So I'd like to be able to use the Order and future similar submods without needing to use the combat system, and if some but not all of the mods do hook into the combat system you can just make them require both.

 

Also my experience with seasonal weather in CK is that it ends up basically just being an annoyance because the rate at which seasons change vs how long it takes to do things basically means I can't actually strategically adapt to it and just depending on when a war started or whatever I have army penalties or don't, so I'm glad there's a rule to turn them off.

[SamIAmHam]

I'm doing a total conversion to make CK2 what I would like. Weather can be turned off for those that don't want to use it.

 

The new combat tactics are balanced around troop types, technology, commander traits, and commander Martial. It is no longer rock-paper-scissors that vanilla has. It also means how you move your troops to engage matters a lot. Terrain matters as well since it defines what tactics can actually be used.

 

I also shortened the phases from the original 18 days to 4-8 days. It never made sense for me why battles took months to do. 

What issues are you having with the combat tactics?

Balance is a false concept unless you boil it all down to 1 of each thing. There will always be asymmetry. I have 41 years of designing gaming systems. However the bonuses and penalties I use are small because I have expanded things out farther than vanilla. For example, I do have a fully functional clothing system that uses the Luxury Market building. There are four tiers of clothing to choose from. I have mounts and their gear as artifacts that you can buy if you have stables built in your barony.

Societies are core because they modify 00_societies.txt file. The goal of the TC is to have the core then submods running off of it. Submods will be like the fantasy one. New event story decks and the like. If something needs the core to change then the core changes and a submod is built for those changes.

 

What Carnal Realms actually does with the societies is completely different from vanilla. I'm using my TTRPG player/GM/designer experience for this part of the conversion. I do not do the vanilla event chains. I do a story deck where you have a start of say 20 events with two choices. The next step is event 1 which has 20 events. Event 2 is 40 events. Event 3 is 80 events. Finally the end event has 160 events. The entire system is set up as a storyline that you play through. Every choice you make the storyline remembers and only presents you with what fits the remembered events. This is why the events double every stage.

 

The advantage is that you most likely will never get the same sequence on every character in a single playthrough. You may never get the same sequence in 100 playthroughs. For some event chains there are flags that tells the game that this particular character will never experience again. I got tired of the repeated events in CK2 and usually just ignore the actual text. Not now though because the story is different each time you go through it. I actually mapped out all the story paths for the Personality Traits, Order of the Sacred Magdalene, and Benedictines to put in a pdf. It came out to be close to 400 pages.

The weather doesn't impact combat at all. It impacts disease resistance, taxes in your counties, army movement, and that's about it. I didn't want combat effects for the reasons you spelled out.