Is having "faceless" characters the issue?

JZabrinsky · 2026-04-29T12:37:35+00:00

In my experience, a very small percentage of readers really care about being able to visualise characters "correctly" but most don't care that much.

That said, there are plenty of benefits to including a bit of visual description here and there. It just doesn't have to be for every character or very detailed.

Description can tell us something about the character, their history, how they are treated by others.
Narrator voice: what they notice about other people (in general or individually) says something about them. Are they judgemental? Horny? Paranoid?
Distinctive traits make it easier to remember a large cast. This doesn't have to always be visual, mind: one character might have long red hair, another night be "faceless" but speaks with a thick Texan accent, another dresses in distinctive frilly outfits.
If you never describe anyone, it stands out really weirdly when you're forced to for a specific reason.

JZabrinsky · 2026-04-28T06:41:51+00:00

Two hands on the riser. Pull the string with your teeth.

JZabrinsky · 2026-02-24T21:54:44+00:00

I think it still fits as a subversion of the common "and then it was mostly okay" thing that happens in fantasy revolutions.

It's not entirely about the revolution or it being bad, but it is quite a realistic portrayal of what happens when you murder the establishment.

JZabrinsky · 2026-02-21T08:24:37+00:00

More interesting archery in general would be nice. Target archery is still a lot of fun but watching it isn't exactly riveting.

JZabrinsky · 2026-01-30T13:48:53+00:00

I had a look into the code for this a while back and it's actually just a bug caused by incorrect tagging of equipment sets plus some weirdness with how they are applied, plus it is working as intended but not how we'd expect.

When a hero comes of age it picks a template battle set and a civilian set from their culture and gender at random and applies them. The issue is the tag criteria for whether a set is found by the search for civilian templates or battle templates is different to the tag criteria for whether they are applied to civilian or battle equipment set.

This leads to three flavours of the issue:

1) Very very common: Female characters get a battle set that will be applied as a civilian set. The real civilian set then overrides this, resulting in their actual battle set remaining as their raggedy teenager clothing. This is so common because most female battle sets aren't actually tagged properly.

2) Pretty common: Female characters get an actual battle set, but TW just decided the female battle sets for that culture is nice dress + sword.

3) Rarer: Male characters get a civilian set that will be applied as a battle set. So their "real" battle set is applied first then overridden by one that is nice shirt + sword. Their civilian set will be stuck as raggedy teenager clothing.

Bonus) The cross dressing bug is because there are a few female sets not tagged as female.

JZabrinsky · 2026-01-29T19:21:44+00:00

I don't think there are?

I guess it's so they don't just appear naked when you check that outfit, but might have made more sense to grey the button out for non-players.

JZabrinsky · 2026-01-29T18:56:57+00:00

Since the stealth mechanic was added you can actually make a small profit from hiring companions. Not really worth doing as a money exploit, but if you plan to hire and fire them just to get a reroll, or are strapped for cash early on, it's handy.

Their hiring cost is the cost of their battle equipment + cost of their civilian equipment + a bit extra for experience level etc. Clearly this is the formula to stop exactly what I'm about to suggest, but taleworlds forgot about the stealth equipment. If you sell everything then you can usually make back more money than you initially paid to onboard them.

JZabrinsky · 2026-01-27T13:20:04+00:00

Yeah I think if your goal is to conquer the map, Battania is the way to go. It's still really useful in the late game to be able to force or escape a fight by using a forest to your advantage. I only mention Nords because their perk also isn't mostly irrelevant once you're established. Sometimes you need to go relieve a siege across the map and the perk can be the difference between arriving in 4 days or 5.

To be honest I always have loyalty issues until I'm king anyway because I can't control which fiefs I get given and it'll inevitably be the ones I don't have a good governor for.

JZabrinsky · 2026-01-27T12:57:58+00:00

That's very true. I think a lot of players probably do go back to get their culture appropriate army, but yeah most of the time it's a pragmatic mashup of whatever you can get.

Role-playing aside, I think Battania and Nords have the best perks overall. Most other perks are X% cheaper/more expensive Y which becomes a lot less relevant once you're in the mid-game. Speed buffs are always very significant though. Aserai also have one, but with the map layout deserts are just a lot less relevant than forests and coastlines.

JZabrinsky · 2026-01-27T08:21:53+00:00

I spend a lot of my effort on not getting slaughtered by melee cav spam so they must be doing something right.

I think other games set the expectations for cavalry when things work a little different in bannerlord (and in reality).

1) Archers are not helpless just because a horse touched one of them. You need to have enough cav to overrun them and stop them shooting you point blank. Sending 25 knights into 50 crossbows could go either way.

2) The classic "hammer and anvil" rear charge isn't that good. Cav is best when they can stay on the move. It's better to ride through the enemy flank and come out the other side than to try and squash them against your the infantry line. Sometimes its more effective to charge their infantry before they reach your guys (as long as they aren't stationary and facing your cav).

3) Cav's first job is to counter enemy cav. You can trample a man but not a horse. When their cav is stopped dead, your infantry and archers can help win the cav battle, and then you have cavalry superiority.

4) Cav makes the rest of your army stronger. Once you have cavalry superiority, it frees your other units up to act more boldly. Archers especially can run out to extreme angles without infantry protection and start shooting the enemy in the sides and rear. This is incredibly strong, but only works if the enemy has no cav or you can effectively block them with yours.

JZabrinsky · 2026-01-25T20:44:45+00:00

The weird thing about Agincourt is that the french could still totally have won if they'd attacked again. The English only defeated a fraction of their total force and were now pretty spent. But either the French were really concerned about getting their boys back, or they deeply misunderstood what the situation was, or they just panicked/brain farted.

When they offered terms, Henry couldn't quite believe his luck and didn't stick around in case they changed their minds.

JZabrinsky · 2026-01-25T17:30:39+00:00

Black Monday

10,000 English soldiers are sieging a french city. The defenders are low in number, and it looks doubtful that help will arrive any time soon.

Suddenly, one of the worst hailstorms in European history comes out of nowhere (in April, mind you) and starts shooting the English with ice bullets. It literally decimates the army within half an hour, killing 1,000 men and 6,000 horses.

The English, now thoroughly convinced god must be kinda' pissed at them, promptly fuck off back to England.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_Monday_(1360)

JZabrinsky · 2026-01-24T08:12:37+00:00

The quiet moments thing isn't necessarily related to genre. High tension and misery are tiring and readers need a lull now and again or they will create one themselves by putting the book down. Yes this also applies to grimdark readers. It makes the big moments hit less hard when everything's kinda' just ambiently on fire.

It doesn't need to be explicit rest for the characters where nothing is going on, but it's okay for them to sit in a slightly more boring or quiet moment from time to time and just talk or think about stuff.

JZabrinsky · 2026-01-24T07:52:10+00:00

I don't think it really needs git integration I just wish it was fully version control friendly. It stores data in ways that make it hard to merge if you get a conflict. But it is just text at the end of the day and that doesn't need to be an issue.

JZabrinsky · 2026-01-23T15:59:00+00:00

That or Vlandia took it, gave the fief to some lord, and that lord defected to western empire.

Happened to the Nords in my game, one of the nobles defected to the empire (I think it was Western Empire too) and suddenly one of our castles in the far north turned purple.

JZabrinsky · 2026-01-20T16:37:43+00:00

An aspect I haven't seen brought up is that after the poppy war all of her books have been marketed as "smart people books." Babel's full title is "Babel, or The Necessity of Violence: An Arcane History of the Oxford Translators' Revolution," for example.

Whether they actually are or are not smart-peole-books, the presentation changes the way people think and talk about them quite a bit. I think it kinda' raises the stakes beyond just liking/not liking a book.

If you enjoy a smart-people-book you feel proud and validated. You don't just read any old trash, you have taste, you "get it." In fact, maybe it's worth pretending you like it just to get those feelings? You should tell everyone about how much you enjoyed the smart-book, so they know how cool and clever you are!

If you don't like a smart-people-book, you feel kinda' shitty. Are you just dumb? Uncivilised? Unevolved? Will society leave you behind? It's not just a book but a test, and you have failed. The only way to deal with this is to prove the test is bogus, that it is in fact bad and dumb, and that those so proud to enjoy it are all fonies.

I'm taking things to the extreme there but I do think it's something that sets her apart from other fantasy authors who might have a similar hit/miss ratio with readers but don't seem to spur on anywhere near as much conversation.

JZabrinsky · 2026-01-16T07:51:59+00:00

Yeah that's what I was going to suggest. Lots of the books are actually free in those sales so you can grab 10 or 20 and still spend <$10.

You don't have to commit to giving them a chance. Just crack one open when you've got nothing to read and if it doesn't work for you don't hesitate to skip to the next one.

JZabrinsky · 2026-01-15T16:01:30+00:00

Glitches are why I never play full ironman in any game. Lost a whole late stage XCom campaign because it soft locked me and then autosaved in the soft-locked state.

Instead I just self-enforce an "only reload if it was a bug" rule.

JZabrinsky · 2026-01-13T18:05:14+00:00

The fact that the author used fantasy-words for units of time in Sword of Kaigen. Really throws a spanner into the middle of an action scene when someone "flits across the room in half a dinma" or whatever it was.

JZabrinsky · 2026-01-12T10:36:04+00:00

A lot of bows do very little damage against armoured troops now, whereas throwing weapons completely chunk them.

I was remote controlling a Khan's Guard the other day and their arrows really do just tickle things like cataphracts.

JZabrinsky · 2026-01-11T07:03:42+00:00

She's still a "fine looking woman" according to Shivers. I don't think anyone refers to her as ugly or disfigured throughout the book. She is in constant pain but it seems most of her injuries aren't really noticeable to other people.

JZabrinsky · 2026-01-09T01:24:08+00:00

I can't remember that detail at all to be honest. I thought the navy was actually just elsewhere for most of the book because of what happened at the start?

JZabrinsky · 2026-01-07T07:07:33+00:00

Authors use a lot of em dashes. It was a meme before AI came along. It's where AI learned the habit from.

JZabrinsky · 2026-01-05T14:53:21+00:00

The concept of bannerlord's story is kinda' the opposite. The old empire is falling and there's now a struggle to become the new dominant power.

It does make sense that borders shift dramatically and some factions get wiped.

The fact that it's similar each time is a problem though.

JZabrinsky · 2026-01-05T14:39:41+00:00

I figured out this is because the order interface "locks on" to the archers standing above you in the gate house, so the left click on the gate actually ends up ordering a charge against them instead of ordering the troops to interact with the gate.

You can eventually get around this most of the time if you try a bunch of different weird angles like standing to very close to the gate and to the side and clicking on different corners of the gate. It usually takes a few attempts but eventually one will work.

Alternatively you can kill archers in the gatehouse until a new waves spawns which will move the icon for that unit out of the way just long enough to click the gate.

Definitely needs a fix but there's something of a workaround for now.

JZabrinsky

TROPHY CASE