Crusader Kings 3's "landless adventurers" are set to offer a whole new way of playing the medieval trouble sim

Okay, listen. The Roads To Power expansion coming to Crusader Kings III is focusing on the Byzantine Empire. But forget that. Because today developers Paradox revealed the ins and outs of another feature from the DLC that is way more exciting than some fusty old Greeks. It's called "landless adventurers" and it'll let you play as disgraced dirtbag travelling the world in a sort of medieval gig economy. You'll be making camp, gathering followers, taking random jobs from local rulers, and catching infectious diseases as you try to travel safely through war-torn regions. It sounds amazing.

Simply put, you’ll be able to create a custom "Landless Adventurer" character at the start of a campaign, just like designing a normal ruler (you might also find yourself landless mid-game following some classic political turmoil). At this point, you'll be expected to play the game a little differently than normal.

"Crusader Kings is a game about marriage, inheritance, and complex realm politics; none of which really apply to wandering characters with nary a vassal to call their own," say Paradox in a lengthy developer diary. "Well, simply put, we think of [adventurers] as the ultimate underdogs: outsiders with no land or prospects, but also no responsibilities or restrictions...

"We wanted to reflect this philosophy with a play style focused on travel and roaming, encouraging you to experience the map in a different way by moving across and spectating it — occasionally stopping to influence this realm or that when you have to proverbially sing for your supper."

That travel takes the form of making camp. You pick a region and set up camp there, at which point you'll be offered "contracts" - various odd jobs that range in difficulty and payout. Some contracts will see you help out in a war (provided you have the soldiers trailing along with you). Others might have you assisting the local ruler's councillors in some scheme or plot, or collecting taxes from reluctant locals, or educating a noble's child.

"Some require no travel, some require you to travel the length of the map, while others might involve a small tour of a character’s realm," say the developers. "Naturally, a core part of this is servicing the fantasy of forming a strong, mobile mercenary army, but we also didn’t want players to be restricted to just this. For every Roger de Flor, there’s an Ibn Battuta or a Marco Polo, after all."

Having read Ibn Battuta's travels, I love this idea. I, too, want to upset a despotic Sultan in India. I, too, wish to be mugged on the road an inconceivable number of times. (The developers say that the "travel safety mechanics" will be the same as those introduced in previous expansion Tours & Tournaments.) To generate new contracts, you'll have to stay on the move, hopping from one de jure region to another in search of the next gig.

"If you complete a contract to your employer’s satisfaction, you’ll receive resources like gold, prestige, sometimes piety, and the new Adventurer-specific provisions... Prestige is needed to advance your fame, which both governs the tier of rulers who’ll offer you contracts (kings and emperors won’t hand them out to just anybody)."

If any of this sounds familiar, it feels a lot like the mercenary wandering of the Mount & Blade games, throwing your lot in with a distant duke before upping sticks to go charm the neighbouring Khan's daughter. Just like those games, you'll also need to keep a healthy stack of food and supplies (those "provisions" mentioned above). If you start running low, followers will start to lose their opinion of you, and starvation will eventually kick in. But it may not come to that. You may become a prestigious wanderer, prompting the chance to earn yourself a landed title.

"Landing yourself should be possible (especially if you’re willing to take the indignity of an impoverished, remote county somewhere), but not something you can do with a click of your fingers and no prep work," say the devs.

"We do expect some players to want to be adventurers for as little time as possible, and others to want to be them for centuries at a time. Off-ramps are provided at various stages for players who decide they want to leave the life of an Adventurer. It’s up to you if you’d be happy taking a back-water county somewhere in exchange for a huge sum of cash, building an army to try retaking your throne, or simply drift around the world making your mark in a half a dozen small ways."

The post shares an example of exactly that, detailing a playthrough featuring a landless Kashmiri schemer called Shirin who "longs to explore far from home". It's worth a read if you still want finer details of how certain contract types will play out (a video version is also available). At one point, she takes a transport contract, meaning to escort a Baron westwards, only to discover that Persia is in the midst of the Iranian Intermezzo, a huge and prolonged struggle that probably will not clear up by tomorrow.

"Along the way," the dev explains, "danger events bedevil us, [my follower] Lalit manages to lose some provisions and get beaten up in a tavern fight, and I caught typhus."

Yes. YES. This is exactly the kind of stuff I long for in a CKIII game. Travel! Excitement! Accidentally dropping all your food into a puddle of excrement at the side of the road!

There are a bunch of other contract types, including ones based on intrigue and stewardship. But there are also jobs allowing for criminal actions like arson, murder or robbery, essentially making you a travelling bandit. At some point you'll be able to "wipe the slate" clean with a donation of gold and prestige, should you want to clean up and go straight again.

There are a lot more differences in playstyle when compared to a landed noble. Skill trees will be different, for example, and the grandiose feasts and weddings of the gentry are replaced with campfire revelries. You'll also have to invest in camp upgrades, in order to unlock other traditionally available features. Like creating a portable shrine to allow for converting religions. And, perhaps most importantly, succession becomes far more "informal" and simple: your oldest child or closest relative will take the lead. Failing that, whatever follower in the camp has the highest "prowess".

"Adventurers don’t really experience succession politics in the same way that even the smallest realm does," the developer explains. "There are no laws binding them save their own will, and comparatively little to be divided or fought over anyway..."

The post goes deeper into the mechanics and says more details will be covered in a later dev diary. Considering the length of this post alone, I'm excitedly afraid of what constitutes the "individual nuts and bolts" yet to be discussed. But that's Crusader Kings' simulation for you. Why be merely complex, when you can be a ferociously intricate labyrinth of tiny cogs?

All in all, it's getting me excited for CKIII in a way I haven't been for a while. And it's not even the flagship feature of the Roads To Power DLC (that's all the Byzantine stuff). Adventurers previously existed in CKII, but mostly as pesky randos who would show up in your country with an army and a shit-eating grin. Here, players will actually be let loose into the chaos of CKIII's fully simulated nonsense, without any of the trappings of the nobility. I hope it'll be as disastrously good as it looks.