Team Nessassity Mods - IT LIIIIIIIIIIIIVES! (And Is Thiiiiiiirsty!)

It's... still March, and this is the actual March Monthly Mod Report!

Although... admittedly, it's not entirely what I'd originally planned. It was at first supposed to be half-Stellaris and half-CK3 dedicated, but with how much Friere- I mean, CK3 has been on my mind lately, I ended up getting completely derailed off the Stellaris track >.<

So! Here's the plan: let's dedicate today's MMR to CK3 stuff (which in itself is quite a lot to cover), and April will be catching up on our Stellaris mods. If everything goes well, it should also be when I can start showing the progress on the Lhùren rework, so things should line up nicely!

Oh! Wait, we're still in the intro... and we've been here for quite a while! Hmm... and that means we might run afoul of the ado soon... Oh no, nononono that won't do! We need to get out of here, now!

SO WITHOUT FURTHER ADO!

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Velum Noctis: Sanguis Maledictus

So, I did announce some time ago that the mod formerly known as "Veiled Realms" would be going through a bit of a rebranding... and quite a lot of restructuring!

There are many reasons, but two in particular stand behind the name change.

• Firstly... admittedly, I never liked how "Veiled Realms" rolled off the tongue. Or more to the point, how it didn't. Funnily enough, the Latin sounds better than any of the English names I've tried.

• Secondly... and this is more of a philosophical issue than a practical one, but I felt like I made a mistake by putting the focus on the "realm".
  In CK3, the land or even the realm were never the true meat of the experience, and they will be even less so in the near future. Paradox recently announced that the next season of CK3 DLC will include the ability to play as landless characters for the first(ish) time in the series' history! And... well...

Suffice it to say... that prospect alone was enough to bring me back to CK3 and decide that I was finishing the forever-WIP vampire mod THIS YEAR, come heck or high water.

So, you might not recall because it's been like 42 years since the passing of Hero Hi- I mean, since the last time I mentioned it, but the mod's concept from the beginning was meant to focus more on characters and their supernaturally parasitic interactions than the map-painting aspect of the game.

And that was very much something I always tried to reflect in gameplay, in all of its iterations. Originally, characters had to be physically present in the same province as their target in order to enact vampiric interactions... although at the time, there was no other way to do so than raising an army and marching over. Which I found a little too micromanagey, so I streamlined and abstracted it so that simply being within the confines of the same realm, or the same Activity, would be good enough. BUT THEN, proper travel mechanics were introduced with Tours & Tournaments, which made me rethink the implementation again and revert it to the original one...

However, ultimately tied as the characters were to their land and titles no matter how far they travelled, at the end of the day (or night, as the case may be) I still had to account for the fact that the player would be compelled to spend most of their character's lifetime (even if it was infinite) sitting at home, developing their realm and fighting over land.

And... I'll admit, I struggled so much to tie vampire mechanics into all of that, so I kept pivoting back and forth on various ideas. Should my vampires be strong in personal combat? Should their influence strengthen the armies they were leading? Should enemies suffer increased attrition within their realm so as to evoke the idea of a cursed land overseen by a bloodthirsty monster? Should the courtiers slowly turn into enchanted thralls? How should vassals and overlords of a vampire interact with them?

Naturally, I wanted the whole vampirism thing to be something transformative to the player's experience, so it had to be present and relevant to the minute-by-minute gameplay. You should never forget that you're playing a supernatural creature, because your experience should be different from a human character. You should have different priorities, face different risks and concerns, but also... you should still be able to play Crusader Kings 3, because I can't possibly give you enough content to substitute the entire vanilla game. (And believe me, I tried... I know my limits now >.<)

Wait... what was I talking about? OH! Right!

Well, with proper landless gameplay finally getting vanilla support, I started rethinking things.

Specifically, it made me ask myself: what really is the essence of the vampire experience I'm trying to capture? And is it okay for it to perhaps be something that exists in the background, rather than taking over the player's gameplay?

To answer those questions, I went back to my inspirations (Carmilla, Shiki, Vampire the Masquerade and a few other things. I also added a couple more!) and tried to understand what it really was that first captured my imagination and made me fall in love with those shady sexy scary bloodsuckers.

Okay, okay, okay, I won't keep you in suspense any longer!

I think, for the new rework, I want to focus less on how it affects the court and day-to-day gameplay, and instead zoom in on the interpersonal interactions and the stories that can stem from them. It's something that every character, be they a landless adventurer or the Emperor of the Whole World, can relate to and engage in without requiring too many rank-based considerations.

The individuals you choose to hunt, the individuals you choose to enthrall, and above all, the individuals who may know your dirty little secret.
In Velum Noctis, I want the vampire experience to be about dealing with individuals, choosing your prey and your thralls, and deciding how to deal with threats. As intimate narratives develop and overlap, a new layer of engaging gameplay will naturally emerge.
To go along with this scope shift, I will be reworking all the aspects of the mod that previously were either too large in scope or too impersonal to match the new direction.

• Feeding. With the fantasy becoming less abstract and gameplay being scaled down to a more intimate focus, I have changed my mind on the optionality of feeding.
  In the previous iteration, feeding was something you could do if you wanted to, to make your target vulnerable to supernatural charms, but beyond that, it was assumed that the character would take care of their needs off-screen just like mortals do.
  Of course... I still don't want to force the player to constantly maintain a "need" in a simulationist way incongruous with the rest of the game, but... I think I have come up with a compromise that might just work.
  The vampire will have a Bloodlust meter that will increase over time. And three distinct ways will be available to manage it:

  • Willpower. Simply expending some Sanity to suppress the Bloodlust. It can be effective if the vampire's lifestyle is comfortable enough to afford the price, but might serve as nothing more than a temporary bandaid otherwise.

  • Hunting. Naturally, the most direct way to satisfy the craving is simply approach another character and take a bite. Some prey is more challenging than others, but in an emergency, blood is blood, even if one has to wash the peasant out of their mouth afterwards.

  • Herding. Any previously fed on character who has a good enough relationship with the vampire may become part of their Herd. Simply spending time in the same Province as the cattle will satiate Bloodlust over time (up to a certain cap).
    This is the long-term solution that allows settled, or at least charming enough, vampires to take care of their hunger without excessive micromanagement.

• Menace. I like the idea of Menace as a general "masquerade meter" that affects how inhuman, unnerving and suspicious the character seems to others, but with the reduction of scope, I'd like to change its effects to be rather more... subtle than before.
  Rather than high Menace causing peasants and courtiers to become discontent unless enthralled, I think it should colour your vampire's interactions with her prey on a case-by-case basis instead.
  And... instead of being a strictly positive/negative indicator, I'd like it to become more nuanced, offering different drawbacks and benefits based on your approach.

  • The higher the Menace, the more guarded mortals will be and the fewer doors will be left open for deception and subtlety, pushing the vampire towards more violent and potentially dangerous hunting approaches.
    But perhaps letting some scruples erode away might just be... beneficial to one's sense of internal stability? After all, aren't all living (and living-adjacent) beings driven to survive at the expense of lesser prey? If a human can milk a cow without burdening their conscience, it is only natural that a vampire should sup on their cattle as well.

  • But on the other hand, maintaining low Menace should be a challenge that demands a price to be paid continuously - the price of one's own sanity, eroded slowly to keep the ever-present bloodlust at bay.
    Those who choose to do so, however, would find it easier to interact with humans, and get them to open up. And come just a little closer...

• Lifestyles. The three Lifestyle Foci of Obfuscation, Mastery and Predation will remain, but their specific applications need to be reconsidered. As of their latest iteration, they mostly presented different ways of dealing with Menace, but since Menace is also changing and becoming less central, I'm thinking of giving them a new purpose.

  • Obfuscation. No longer just a means of keeping Menace down and erasing inconvenient memories, Obfuscation's expanded focus will now also make it easier to suppress Bloodlust via Willpower, and slow down the rate of its accumulation under certain conditions.

  • Predation. This Focus, on the other hand, is aimed at making it easier to Hunt, as well as negating some of the drawbacks of high Menace.
    The Perks are useful to all vampires to some extent, but frequent wanderers will find them indispensable thanks to the ability to bypass much of the hassle of hunting when targeting low-quality prey such as unlanded commoners, and gain more opportunities to feed during travel.

  • Mastery. It will keep its focus on Enthralling and Charming mortals, but will now also include means of making Herds more effective, increasing their "supply range" and impact on Bloodlust.
    Aside from its universal utilities, Mastery would be the ideal Focus for settled vampires who value stability and wish to cultivate a safe haven... at least for themselves.

SO! Anyways, this is what I've cooked up so far. The oven is very much still on and scorching hot, but at this point I think I've spent enough time thinking and planning, and it's time to... start doing!

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...or so I would like to say, but I should finish the Lhùren rework in Elves of Stellaris first n_n

But I'm hoping to get started very soon, and when I do, I'm also planning to... take another shot at maybe resuscitating the ill-fated "Weekly Updates" initiative that I never even got to start the first time around. Although I imagine that it will need to go through some restructuring too.

But until then, I hope you're enjoying playing games and using our mods. And thank you, thank you, thank youuuu for being here and supporting our work >o<
All of this would be so much harder and less fun without your feedback and constant encouragement ♡♡♡

And if you're here but aren't part of our adorable cat-loving, game-playing... things-doing-somethings community on Discord, please feel free to join us over there to keep always up-to-date on all the Team Nessassity news @o@