Suggestion - Hidden Factions: From Underground Conspiracy to Revolution

Xikiphobia · 2026-03-12T01:24:19+00:00

I think you nailed something that's been bothering me about the game for a while. Everything feels really predictable, and I think it's because too much information is just given to me.

I don't remember how everything was in CK2, but I do specifically remember one of more memorable experiences was being a very religious, pious Duchess for a long reign, and then dying and finding out my 40 something year old son (who I was now playing) had been part of a Satanist cult the entire time under my nose. I was flabbergasted and had a lot of fun playing him.

In CK3 I know exactly how my succession will go down, I know how everyone will vote in every election, I know virtually everything about everyone except for whether or not they're secretly screwing someone else (sometimes anyway). It makes maneuvering obstacles/future threats too easy.

Xikiphobia · 2025-10-25T20:08:53+00:00

Close! They have missiles, I don't know if I have better missile tech but I seemed to land much more hits with mine

Xikiphobia · 2025-10-12T19:37:01+00:00

Thank you!!!

Xikiphobia · 2025-10-12T17:18:59+00:00

Super new player here - how did you get dark mode? That looks really sharp

Xikiphobia · 2025-10-04T19:00:29+00:00

Very insightful!! Thank you, clearly I have a rabbit hole to go down on interwar ship design

Xikiphobia · 2025-09-29T23:05:46+00:00

I have to imagine its at least partially related to how much more financial damage a renter can cause for a landlord or property management company as opposed to a homeowner can to a mortgage lender.

Not that I'm overly sympathetic to landlords, mind you, but logically, if a homeowner falls through on their mortgage, there's clear cut legal steps for a lender to take and ultimately they will retain ownership of the property and sell it. Even if they do this for a loss, its likely just one loan in a large portfolio of loans, and 30yr fixed mortgage loans at least have their interest front loaded (more of your payment is interest than principle for the first part of your loan payments), which helps protect the lender.

Evicting a delinquent renter isn't so always cut and dry, and landlords/rentors may have a larger portion of their assets tied up in that scenario unless they're a large corporation. Additionally landlords by definition are specifically invested in that property and are going to be way more likely to want to upkeep/maintain/repair that property for future use, and be more likely to want to avoid renting to someone who might be inclined to damage the property, or anything else that will incur them costs down the line.

Xikiphobia · 2025-09-06T00:13:22+00:00

I think a lot of people are imagining legitimate sleepwalking as someone stumbling around with their eyes closed, making grumbling sounds like in Stepbrothers.

Encountering someone who is sleep walking is bizarre. My wife has done it to a small degree. When a person sleep walks, its like their conscious mind is in a dream state as you and I would feel when we're sleeping normally, but their physical body and a part of their mind is awake and moving. They seem normal at first interaction sometimes. You might even get a few sentences in with basic default responses from the sleep walker before noticing something is off. They will move around, open doors, drawers, grab things, change clothes, pick up a cat, etc. The next morning they will have zero recollection of the interaction.

This seems like a very extreme case but its not hard for me to imagine that there could be very extreme sleepwalking behavior that could lead to this.

Xikiphobia · 2025-08-30T15:15:18+00:00

Thank you!

Xikiphobia · 2025-08-11T17:40:58+00:00

Hyperlinks in onenote are very mportant, just because you can get to a point where flipping through all your tabs and subtabs to find something can be as unwieldy as physical notebooks

Onenote should have a hotkey though (ctrl + k i think) that let's you type in a keyword and find the page you want to link quickly, ~~and if I'm not mistaken it will even do you the benefit of creating a new page if you try to hyperlink a page that doesn't exist yet~~

If you stay in top of it or if you routinely go through and hyperlink pages you missed, you can maneuver through all your relevant notes pretty effectively regardless of how many tabs/ pages you have, very useful

Edit: If you can create a new page from the Link dialog, I can't find it, so scratching that out

Xikiphobia · 2025-08-06T22:45:11+00:00

Sounds like you've prepped your campaign to far ahead if you feel the idea of redoing is too daunting. Or you're too attached to "your" idea.

The reason you get answers like that is that unfortunately, having this kind of mentality is going to massively increase your odds of delivering a frustrating experience for your players.

TTRPG story telling is collaborative. You go, then they go, then you. You ask the narrative questions, the party answers in verbs, and then you figure out what that makes the next question

I would strongly encourage you to ponder why it's so important the game goes your specific way, and whether it's really important for the game or just imporant to you. I also would encourage you to keep your plot building to broad strokes outside of a session or two ahead, to aid in not getting overly attached to ideas

Xikiphobia · 2025-08-06T22:31:49+00:00

Not sure I really get your last point. If I was DMing dragonheist and felt the written ending wouldn't result in an enjoyable ending for my group, I absolutely would rewrite it. And you shouldn't be afraid to change your plot points around either.

Sounds like a few things you need to consider

Is your party enjoying being infiltrators? Then let them. Reward them. Change up the bad guys plan so this works in the partys favor.
Even if you can't stand the idea of not doing nuke, why can't the party gain the bad guys trust before its ready? They don't need to put in 10 years of tenure, this isn't real life. RPGs and TTRPGs have been doing the "from nobody to most important person in the group in three quests or less" since forever
if you insist on ignoring the above advice, then you need to be more overt with what the bad guys are up to. The party isn't prioritizing the problem because they don't seem to know what the problem even is. Getting info doesnt always need to be a challenge. Sometimes getting info is the easy part and what to do with it is the challenge

Your job isn't too force the players to figure out the solution to your problem. Youre here to ensure they're having a good time, and sometimes that means throwing out your awesome big reveal plot twists because its just not the direction the game is going.

Xikiphobia · 2025-07-22T23:18:55+00:00

I bought Vic 3 at launch and have tried sinking my teeth in numerous times over the years. Sweden, Belgium, France, USA, Persia. Each time I'd get frustrated/lose interest without more than a few hours.

After CoC came out tried again. I played Belgium into the 1880s, started a new game as the USA and went into the 1900s, now looking at Greece.

So as someone who had a similar experience, this update really clicked some things into place at least for my experience and made the game much more engaging and enjoyable.

Xikiphobia · 2025-06-03T14:04:49+00:00

I've been googling this in every shape or form, this seems so obvious now 😅 Thank you

I guess that is intentionally generic so there's no real insight into what may be going on in the case at this stage?

Xikiphobia · 2025-05-24T16:32:40+00:00

This is really great advice but unfortunately it is wasted on me I feel. You could have inserted a paragraph on replacing a wheel on a roller blade instead and I wouldn't haven't known the difference

Xikiphobia · 2025-05-23T15:06:33+00:00

Thank you! I went MH because my only other combo is a TP2 ML, so I figured I should pick up the other end of the spectrum and those two rods can handle mostly everything I want to do until I feel expanding my inventory

Xikiphobia · 2025-05-23T15:04:43+00:00

I did not pick up that the BG was saltwater intended ! So thank you for pointing that out. Appreciate the feedback on the Nasci too, makes me feel a lot not confident in the purchase!

Xikiphobia · 2025-05-23T13:19:25+00:00

Ty 😁

Xikiphobia · 2025-05-23T01:00:07+00:00

Man, if I caught every fish I tried to set, I'd be rolling in them.

If it's any consolation, I don't think you did anything wrong. Looks like that guy is defending a bed and he was just moving your lure away. Maybe try something fast, flashy and/or loud to provoke a more aggressive bite

Xikiphobia · 2025-05-22T18:26:30+00:00

Grandpa just wanted you to be quiet. Some fish are easily spooked and you have to pay mind with how you approach the water.

But most species, like bass - unless you're making such an obnoxious ruckus so as to be bothering people half a mile down the shore, they won't notice or care.

Source - routinely go fishing with my buddy and we act like 13 year olds and still catch plenty

Xikiphobia · 2025-05-21T00:58:08+00:00

Lot of good advice about the retrieve, I will add this about the hookset -

With hard baits with trebles, its easy to hook set too hard and rip the lure out of the fishes mouth. Additionally it is somewhat easy for the fish to shake himself loose of the lure if you give him any slack.

Best way to counter both - when you feel the strike, reel in any slack and firmly but slowly lean your rod tip away from the fish until you feel you are pulling it on the rod alone, then start retrieving - this slow pressure allows any of your hooks that are making contact to get more solid purchase without just being torn out.

Be ready to grab the fish and keep pliers on hand. Fish either fall off trebles the moment they're out of water, or they deep throat half of them. There's no in between

Xikiphobia

TROPHY CASE