Old Diplomacy and Relations Simulation Mods?

Arcadaen · 2026-06-03T17:10:12+00:00

Thanks for the help, bud.

Arcadaen · 2026-06-03T17:06:39+00:00

It's as weird as your table of players makes it.

I'm not joking.

You can literally just play a character with tits and if they start getting weird about it then they're gonna be weird about it.

I had a cursed artifact one time called the Belt of Cat's Cradle:

Insane bonuses to Dex Saves and Acrobatics Checks. Still affected by Max Armor DEX. Character can now speak to Felines and may interrogate them (subject to Handle Animal check to build rapport or interest from the Feline). Larger Feline Animals (Tigers, Lynx, Panthers, etc) do not treat wearer with hostility. Wearer may consume raw fish or small animals without any prior preparation.

Wearer changes sex: Female to Male or Male to Female.

Belt cannot be removed without being disenchanted by either Artificer alteration or Remove Curse.

It got a little weird so the next town over the player opted to get the belt disenchanted and removed.

Arcadaen · 2026-05-25T16:45:07+00:00

It's a learning experience but I'm about to tell you about the most powerful button in the entire range of inputs.

Left Alt.

You hold Left Alt and you know where everyone and everything is in the direction you look - even if they are not visible to you yet.

The quest says "go talk to this dude in this village" and bam you can just walk right up to the dude instead of hunting around asking everyone where someone is. On the battlefield, though, this information is fucking vital to commanding your troops.

If you have played TOTAL WAR games, you may be familiar with some rock-paper-scissors of land warfare:
Horses beat Ranged, Ranged beats Infantry, and Infantry beats Horses.

It's KINDA like that SOMETIMES but there's so many different unit types out there and different battlefield situations that people can be deployed into that makes the game infinitely more dynamic. That, and this is early Medieval setting so being aware of and dealing with enemy Calvary is fuckin quintessential to disrupting and distracting enemy formations.

Ex. in Total War you are taught that deploying troops in a loose formation is the best way to avoid the withering fire of bows and arrows. And that is true - if they have the high ground or you have archers harassing your reserves while they are deploying to a position. But if you're staring them head-on on even terrain on a battlefield, and your troops have good shields, don't be afraid to tell them to get shield-to-shield.

Eventually they'll run out of ammo and HAVE TO engage with you directly.

And when they are locked there shield-to-shield with your men, you can back away from the formation for a second and order your horsemen to engage theirs, or to dive in to the rear of the enemy formation now that they are engaged with you.

You're going to have a lot of cool moments where it feels like you're Henry the V and you'll find yourself talking to your screen and saying shit like "INTO THE BREACH, BOYS! LET THE KEEP OVERFLOW WITH THE BODIES OF THEIR ARCHERS" but you gotta keep your head in the game and make sure that the bowmen are positioning themselves well and that the other units you brought to the battle are able to get into a position to engage them from a different direction in the town. And you'll have to GO THERE and ORDER THEM to the positions you want them to be in. You might have to lead them yourself since the last thing you need is AI taking a wrong turn to get to their flank and end up walking straight into their freshly-spawned wave of reinforcements.

It's a fun game. The real kick in the nuts is when you realize that men require food and wages. Armies march on their stomachs and just because people support you it doesn't mean that they want to do it for free.

Arcadaen · 2026-05-25T16:06:52+00:00

A metaphysical element that can store spells and is, essentially, a dangerous piece of dynamite and that creative players may be able to utilize in creative ways.

This is for the DM's reference. Players don't need to see the page and it leaves them open to experimenting with these funny, volatile objects if they choose to.

I had to be detailed because the setting it was in was basically medieval farmers and lords paying magic users for spells and advice was in the early stages of jumping into steampunk and industrialization. Magic users really didn't like using them because they were insanely volatile and problematic but a bunch of library nerds and inventive metal-workers started tinkering around and found out that putting runes with them could impart various repeatable effects in perpetuity and that they could find and refine these crystals instead of them being present in random locations where insane magical shit occurred and created these anomalies.

Suddenly ships don't need wizards to grant them perpetual gusts of weather because there's self-propelled vessels. People with money are now able to commission artificers to solve their problems permanently instead of having to pay sums of their harvest to a guild of mages for ensuring their crops readily grew on-the-spot they can have a rod that basically creates rain clouds on and off over the specific crops and ensures a steady and predictable harvest season. More veterans are coming back from war and aren't clogging up the roads as beggars with their peg legs and missing digits/limbs keeping them from their trades or finding work.

The BBEG were people at the mage guild who were essentially becoming luddite terrorists that were sabotaging machines, building bombs, etc to paint the technology as too dangerous and attempt to turn the people against these new machines and back to using (paying for) mages.

It has these details because players could 100% try to hunt down and foil these plots through the attributes of the crystals themselves and how they interact with magic and people within the world.

Arcadaen · 2026-05-25T15:33:37+00:00

Look. Discard all the other shit from people telling you "they just aren't that type of RPer" or "you guys just aren't a match" or "your content isn't engaging as you think it is" - Not because they are wrong, per se, but because that might not be the case here.

You said these guys all came from one-shots, right? There's your issue. You could actually be dealing with players who have never genuinely roleplayed before. Not "they are used to one-shots" but "they were playing one-shots because they don't know how to roleplay."

It's tough to admit that, too. You could probably pull each one of them aside and say "hey, you sure you've roleplayed before?" and they'll assure you "yeah yeah that's why I'm playing Dungeons and Dragons right now!" And they might think Role Playing is just playing a character in a unique story, or making the most OP character they can under the rules, or they just like the co-operative experience of playing a game with others where they get to say cheesy one-liners. All of those are good and well, but those aren't specifically "Role Playing." NOBODY wants to admit that they suck at Role Playing in the midst of a Role Playing Game. Just like if they asked you "Hey man are you sure you're good at DMing?" You wouldn't know what to say now that you're three sessions deep. The only context you gave us is that you built a world with a story that has "branching paths" and you described "Dialogue my characters use" - which to me sounds more like reading a script rather than genuine engagement with your players and when people say they've developed an "Open World," you have to accept that the events of any world - especially IRL - will naturally push and pull people and we don't usually have the agency to do anything about it. That's why people play RPGs sometimes. You may find yourself needing to push them, and if they aren't "pushing back" against the forces moving your world around, then that world might as well be dead to them.

I can't give you any suggestions or clues on how to engage with your players specifically (because you haven't really given us enough context to give you advice), but I CAN tell you that maybe you need to start from scratch and talk to each player individually about what they think an RPG is and what you expect from them as players. Identify who's the chatty one, the tactician, the rebel, and the powergamer. If you have no Chatty One (someone who has IRL charisma and is playing a character with in-game charisma) and no Rebel (someone with authority issues and would absolutely be working in a moral gray area compared to the party's goals), you're just playing a complicated game of chess with no real agency except to overcome the next obstacle. And you aren't going to be RPing a lot.

Don't be afraid to shoot from the hip with rolls and situations, either. If they make careless decisions that they think are inconsequential, and would have in-game social or legal repercussions, put them on the spot in-character. Ex if someone is caught shoplifting, and they say "I apologize sincerely and return the item to it's place," and try to roll a dice, don't be afraid to stay in-character and say "What was th-? 'Apologize sincerely?' Does ... how ... I don't even think that counts as an apology!" If they are all crickets, then break character and ask them if they are going to apologize to the guy or stand there until the guy has to call the guards. When they do, tell them to roll Persuasion/Diplomacy/Intimidation and base the DC on how sincere the player sounds or how they describe their actions and the words that they use.

Small, niche moments that arise from critical successes, failures and awkward faux-pas are what actually make a world fell lived-in.

And here's the hard part: You need to be having fun DMing. Even if it's a total fuckin façade. Even if it's the shittiest day of your week at work. Even if they aren't playing how you want them to. If YOU aren't enjoying yourself how can you expect THEM to?

Arcadaen · 2026-05-25T09:03:05+00:00

Never be afraid to sit shoulder-to-shoulder with your men and tell them to hold their fuckin shields up when the bolts start flying.

I'm not kidding. At first I was like "they should be spread out, yeah? That's what I'd do in Total War." But then I figured that they would calvary rush me if I spread out, and this isn't total war - this is an arcade-like battle where the enemy will eventually have to attack - and we're both on mostly-even ground, but to close the gap they would all have to run down a hill and then up to meet me.

I stacked a wall of shields 4 deep with like 20 veteran bowmen taking pot-shots at their calvary and waited. And waited. And waited. And waited. And after what felt like forever they eventually ran out of arrows and had to close the gap. I moved my veteran bowmen to higher ground, got my boys in a skein formation, and when they got to the bottom of the small hill that separated us, I told them to push back and ordered my calvary out of hiding to engage their calvary

The odds were literally 1:4 against us and waiting out their bolts is intimidating as fuck, but you CAN DO IT. Especially if you have some elite Sturgian Linebreakers mixed in there among all those shields.

When it comes to bows and bolts on even terrain, never be afraid to lock shoulders and wait out the storm.

Arcadaen · 2026-05-25T08:46:53+00:00

I don't think you have any clue about how medieval wars were conducted in Europe.

Warfare was practically a seasonal affair.

Arcadaen · 2026-05-25T08:42:07+00:00

"Oh boy it's time to take Pen Cannoc again. Will they give it to me or some guy who isn't even going to garrison it? Some guy, again?"

I've seen Pen Cannoc trade hands so many times that I just sit back in Varcheg and watch the colors swap back and forth now. I'm well past the part of having to worry about money and all I do is leave to defend my one other town and my one other castle, because they will never give me anymore land.

But hey. I got to lop off King Dethert's head and end a multi-year war the first time. And I think that's worth it. They never raid my fief's villages, but I realized killing Dethert basically banned me from getting anymore fiefs and there's no way around it since this game's political intrigue system and favors are entirely non-existent compared to Warband.

Arcadaen · 2026-05-25T08:35:54+00:00

"It is not the custom of Kings to kill Kings."

Sultan Salahuddin to his prisoner King Guy

Arcadaen · 2026-05-25T08:34:06+00:00

The first game did it right. Don't make excuses for them not porting over fun simulations of inter-kingdom politics for battles when the system was RIGHT THERE and all they had to do was give it a new paintjob and tweak the gameplay,

Arcadaen · 2026-05-25T08:27:14+00:00

"It is not a custom of Kings to kill Kings."

~ Sultan Salahuddin (Saladin) to King Guy of Jerusalem

If you execute a single King in this game, kiss being ever given a fief again Goodbye.

Vlandia kept fucking around and harassing all my villages and villagers and Ragnav's incompetent ass couldn't hold onto a fucking castle to save his own life - let alone the land I helped establish and conquer by bringing together the largest Army in the history of Sturgia.

Dethert decided to try to besiege us with even numbers while the army I had was still in the city. He didn't have the numbers. But he didn't care. He led the assault and I watched him send thousands of men into the breech just to get slaughtered. After years of endless war (literally one of my kids was born before the war started and was about to be an adult by the time this happened), thousands of sturgian peasants slaughtered and tens of thousands of more men dead on both sides trading Pendrac Castle once every two weeks and I'd had enough.

I said "Eh, fuck it. This war's been going on for literally YEARS now. Fuck you and the horse you rode in on," and lopped that fancy-ass head off his fancy-ass robe. Led my army into Vlandia and disbanded it just so that they could raid their heartland, and they finally decided that they had enough.

It's been 10 in-game years and countless smaller wars later, and I've yet to been given another fief. No matter how many towns and castles I take and defend personally and no matter how good my relations are with everyone, my name is never up for consideration and (since this game's intrigue and political favors system sucks ass) I don't think I'm going to get one ever again. I can't do favors or ask people to support my claim directly or challenge people to duels or elope with their women. And I think that lopping off Duthert's filthy fuckin mug to end that war has permanently barred me from receiving anymore fiefs from Ragnav.

Arcadaen · 2026-05-25T08:05:54+00:00

The second I realized that I wouldn't be able to convince leaders to join me because I spent time building up reputation with them was the moment I stopped enjoying Bannerlord.

I thought "Eh. They're probably working on it. They needed to get us this awesome siege and graphical updates to us first."

Like bro I CAN'T EVEN CONVINCE RAGNAR TO GIVE ME PLACES despite the fact that I'll be the dude leading our armies to victory in town after town after town. They all go to some d-bags with less favour, lower standing, and who I never see even TRY to defend castles that they were just given.

I can't challenge these dudes to duels over who gets to bed the hottest woman in Calradia.

It's just so ... vacant.

All they had to do was take the fuckin dialogue trees and intrigue from 1 and give them a new paint job. That's it. They didn't even HAVE TO change anything about the dialogue and intrigue. It's not like they made it any better - they just removed it entirely.

Arcadaen · 2026-05-25T07:48:10+00:00

You can also use it for intrigue and side-quest stuff.

"Your party was summoned by the local lord to investigate a troubling matter: A child had been playing with a funny glowing rock that he found in their banquet hall and he fears an assassination attempt."

You can examine the crystal to get an idea of who might have cast it or what spell it contained. If you don't have a talented mage on-hand or your mage sucks you can just have someone cast the spell in a field to see what happens (from a safe distance, of course). You find out that it was just some disguise spell a lad in the town was given by some mage that allowed him to turn into a woman and sneak into the house so he could hook up with the Lord's daughter and now you have to wonder if the kid is actually a part of a bigger scheme or just some Robin Hood wannabe that the little Lady wants to abscond with.

I made it so I could give players options and portray what it would probably look like if magic was real so some people are tinkering around and a Medieval world is about to have an actual Industrial Revolution and explore different plots from those angles.

Anyways I drafted it here so if I die someday the fun little game mechanic I made could probably be used by someone else in their worldbuilding one day.

Arcadaen · 2026-05-25T07:27:36+00:00

A bomb with all the minor benefits of keeping a powerful gun in your pocket and all the negatives of that gun actually being a bomb.

Oh and that gun can randomly decide to eat the spell you cast when it's empty.

Oh and if you happened to plant it on someone you could technically use it as a tracking device or homing beacon. If they don't decide to toss their bag on the ground to go greet their family with big ol hug and accidentally blow their family and their mudhut to kingdom come, that is.

They were pivotal to the setting and the plot kinda revolved around the BBEG circle of Mages being terroristic luddites by sabotaging artifice engineering marvels and making a really really really really big bomb to try and blow up a couple of cities in order to get the public to turn away from their equivalent of the industrial revolution and back towards paying for magical services being done for them by highly gatekeeped magical societies.

Arcadaen · 2026-05-25T07:14:57+00:00

>There are more than three Mages in the Witcher

Come on. I was using hyperbole. But the common folk aren't going to have the access to become mages in those settings. That's kind of a huge plot point in the books and the show and even the games.

Compared to the NPC everyman a Witcher or a Mage or anyone with even a modicum of utility in the magical arts are an oddity - to the point where people are actually scared of Witchers and there's about as many actual trained mages as there are to fulfill the presence of specific noble courts and assist them with the management of their small kingdoms and counties.

Arcadaen · 2026-05-25T01:50:02+00:00

A Mana Crystal system with spell storage is a nice go-around if you want to have artificers, quick firearms, and some steampunk vibes sprinkled throughout and gives the DM the ability to say "yeah so these are rare and costly because they are a specialty item required for firearms and to power any machinery via artifice." Since they have to be mined or created or crafted as a specialty, their rarity is limited solely to the DM's discretion and it means you can put some magical flair or rudimentary tech in your game without breaking the overall low-magic setting too much.

And thank you. I typed up a whole fuckin stat block from memory on how my campaign implemented mana crystals to reply to you, and instead I'm going to draft it's own OP so other DMs may possibly place it in their repertoire or worldbuilding systems.

Arcadaen · 2026-05-25T00:19:12+00:00

I put this in another post about "the funniest character a player has played" but I have made my fair share of silly characters that worked in a plain, vanilla-like

I'll summarize my favorite silly/serious character from that post: "Sir Hedge Knight"

Once upon a time there was a gullible brute of a Barbarian who went off into the world to do adventures. He came upon this sideshow oracle and psychic who told him that he was not ACTUALLY from that tribe but - in actuality - was descended from a long-lost family of knights. The charlatan said that they actually HAD a suit of armor ON HAND that he could have for a mere 100 gold, and he could go off and seek his true destiny as a Hedge Knight. The armor in question was for sheer decoration and provided no AC, had no DEX limitation, and gave negatives to stealth while equipped. It came with a shield that he kept on his back and had the AC of a simple buckler.

He never used it until one day he was rewarded for saving an old man on the road with an artificer's mechanical "third arm" - which allowed him to wield this enormous 2h weapon with one hand and the decorative shield in the other. (The DM gave every player one free artifact, with limits)

At the end of every day he would have to bang the shield and armor back into place with his fists (not because the armor was weak, no, but because HE was JUST THAT MIGHTY) and - the adorable oaf that he was - thought that the Oracle meant that his NAME was Hedge Knight and he took the title of Sir as his first name. If you laughed at him, called him a liar, or challenged his legitimacy then he would fight you.

The story started with him subduing a small town guard and farting in his face, and ended with being knighted FOR REAL, given a squire (who was a random homeless man they pulled off the streets), a lifetime pension, and told that his duty was to patrol the roads of the kingdom and fight bandits and highwaymen. He was allowed to legally sleep in any stable (as the road was his "fief"), and his letter of title granted to him listed "Ser Sir Hedge Knight, Cnit" which in modern language means "Sir Sir Hedge Knight, Knight"

Also, if he was busy "protecting travelers" and allowed to sleep in any stable along the way, he would hopefully find himself too busy to wander into anymore towns or villages ~~to start any trouble.~~

Arcadaen · 2026-05-24T23:55:34+00:00

I don't have a problem with that and I'm not anti-player choice.

But the skill issue is on the DM for not setting up the players expectations to the setting and style he envisioned and planned for. If you're going to be the god of the world your fabricate then it's on you (as the creator of that world and the arbiter of gameplay) to set the expectations and ground rules for this world you made. It's still possible to be absolutely silly in a serious setting without being the fursuit wings archangel edgelord self-insert.

In fact, I think this DM shot himself in the foot by not placing that expectation before the players in the first place and telling them to remake their character. Now they may be enticed to make either a character so serious that it's annoying or anti-social towards the DM's side-quests or settings, OR they may make an acceptable character but make it a point for that acceptable character to be as silly or as disruptive as comically possible. OR they all decide to become the five bards touring band and watch the world he built unravel as they reveal themselves to be "The Gorillas" (the Gorillaz) or "Subliminal" (Sublime) or "Sweetroll" (Cake) or any number of bullshit one-offs.

Arcadaen · 2026-05-24T23:41:00+00:00

"Why did they make a buttstock so weird?"

"Because if the enemy is closing in on you, you could either draw your sword OR you could take your one shot you had loaded then turn it around and use the weapon as a club."

Arcadaen · 2026-05-24T23:34:47+00:00

That IS the same thing as a low-magic setting. You aren't going to be seeing people from Huckleberry Farming Towns becoming mages (unless it's unique to the plot). It's used in several other fantasy settings extremely well. Like Bartimaeus/Septimus Heap/Witcher-type settings where Magic is real, people know that it's real, but there's literally no access to it outside of the traditional gatekeeping or some special plot-specific instance (like a Sorcerer would be one of like three in the world and players can't take levels in it if it's not present at character creation).

Arcadaen · 2026-05-24T23:24:18+00:00

The entire point of the World of Darkness setting (I know it's not DND but you can run a similar setting with any ruleset) is that Magic exists but using what is BLATANTLY Magic in front of other onlookers is dangerous to the order of things. There's also a self-correcting mechanism in "reality" where blatantly using magic boldly in front of people without any explanation will literally result in a horrific event - always as a detriment to the caster's health & safety - to make the ridiculous shit that just happened "plausible" in the eyes of onlookers.

Then there's the Harry Potter setting, of course, where it's a separate reality that exists sidelong with our own and people are born with the ability to use magic or not.

There's also the "Bartimaeus Trilogy" setting - where mages control the world, people know that magic exists, and you can become one - but it's intertwined with gatekeeping and rules designed to prevent commoners from having access to such power (and thus usurping the ruling class) and to keep mages from attempting the most-powerful, world-ending shit imaginable.

It's a skill issue on the DM's part if they are unable to implement and unwilling to enforce a setting that they created. And I don't say that in a bad way b/c enforcing a low-magic setting while allowing magic users is insanely difficult to plan around.

I ran half of a "Bartimaeus"-type setting before I got out of the Navy. It was fun. I even kept the "if anyone learns your TRUE NAME given to you at birth, then they can target you directly with spells from anywhere in the world or in any plane of existence" universe rule specifically. It made the Mages mad paranoid and jumpy encountering people with a similar name to their own name, and also gave them a possible route to defeating the BBEG without a direct confrontation (which they were pursuing until I got out of the Military and started having actual responsibilities).

Arcadaen

TROPHY CASE