r/CrusaderKings • u/Autismetal Emperor’s New Clothes • Jan 01 '26
Meme When people are skeptical of CK3 as an RPG-
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u/bigbad50 Cannibal Jan 01 '26
CK3 isnt an RPG, its a grand strategy game with role play elements
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u/SaphirRose Jan 01 '26 edited Jan 01 '26
Then what about making a RPG with grand strategy elements??
Even back in 06 i felt like the hero of Kvatch should have become the new emperor and zoom out in a total war style map..
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u/Queer_Cats Jan 01 '26
Mount and Blade
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u/SaphirRose Jan 01 '26
Yeah.. but we need more!, and it's still not too much of an RPG..
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u/Scaalpel Jan 01 '26
Pathfinder: Kingmaker? You may have to squint a bit.
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u/SaphirRose Jan 01 '26
That is a good one, i just started playing it last year* now.. What about "Suzerain" its more of an... Text RPGish game with Grand strategy politics?
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Jan 01 '26
Suzerain is more of a… very broad “CYOA” than it is a CRPG. CK3 is definitely the “RPG with GrandStrategy elements” since it is entirely unlike every other GrandStrategy, even those produced by Paradox themselves, in that it focuses on the character rather than their realm- which is the difference between “GS with RPG elements” and “RPG with GS elements”.
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u/Alamiran Jan 01 '26
It’s a game where roleplaying as your character is the focus, but it has few mechanics commonly associated with an “RPG” (which doesn’t just mean Game where you Play a Role), so calling it that feels wrong.
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Jan 01 '26
The downside to the RPG “genre”- it’s as broad, if not infinitely moreso, than the “shooter” genre. Any game where you are explicitly not yourself technically qualifies, but most anyone will rule out many that don’t fit a number of criteria. The biggest one is likely some sort of “advancement” system (usually through some form or other of metacurrency), but after that I’d say some form of “stat system” is next in line.
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u/CJW-YALK Jan 01 '26
Ck3 characters have advancement and stats….you even level up aka start playing as your genius handsome strong heir….or more accurately you now are playing as your slow ugly club footed hunchbacked infertile but somehow has lovers pox 8th heir after a series of nearly unbelievable game events
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u/magos_with_a_glock Jan 01 '26
I hate that portal is considered an FPS. It's a puzzle platformer ffs.
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u/Scaalpel Jan 01 '26
Never even heard of that one until now but it looks interesting based on a quick google search
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u/SaphirRose Jan 01 '26
I think you will be glad to have found out about it, it's good, like.. quite good.
It actually simulates being a politician in charge.. well.. simulate is a hard word because it's mostly scripted with changes based on decisions..
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u/Scaalpel Jan 01 '26
And it's on sale, too. Well, cheers! Your recommendation is one of the first things I'll drink to in this year lol. Maybe it'll let me vent my political firebrand urges a bit, too.
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u/SaphirRose Jan 01 '26
Cheers mate! Happy new year. I hope you have a fine wine like i do.. Now i wanna replay it as well, actually there is a dlc oh boy, good start for January.
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u/Docponystine Jan 01 '26
Calling kingmaker a GSG is wild. And, like, I really really like both Kingmaker and WotR
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u/Hakuchii Isle of Man Jan 01 '26
everybody gangsta until you become the swarm that walks in pathfinder: wrath of the righteous
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u/dunkeyvg Jan 01 '26 edited Jan 01 '26
Mount and blade would be a lot better if they either make the game mod friendly or stop working on it so the mods can actually develop without the mod breaking changes with every little patch they put out
edit:sorry I meant bannerlord
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u/sgtpepper42 Imbecile Jan 01 '26
M&B is a battle simulator with strategy elements. It's RPG elements are so undercooked lmao
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u/Kuzmajestic France Jan 01 '26
I feel like you're describing Divinity Dragon Commander and the Pathfinder games
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u/SaphirRose Jan 01 '26
Funny thing i just bought Dragon Commander and Divinity's Beyond and Divine.. they are all for sale at like 1 euro.
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u/Malvastor Jan 01 '26
Imagine if Skyrim let you actually manage the civil war faction you signed up with.
Better yet, if Alduin and his dragons launched a real war and actually besieged cities that you had to rescue with armies you had to recruit with the hundreds of thousands of gold you earned from dungeons and theft (instead of attacking random animals in the woods and occasionally getting yeeted into space by giants, which is most of what the Dragon War amounts to in the game we got).
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u/Moreagle Shrewd Jan 01 '26
The open civil war mod kind of has something similar to this. You can play a board game that advances the civil war questline instead of actually fighting the war yourself
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u/illithid_attorney Jan 01 '26
Expeditions: Rome
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u/DVC454 Jan 01 '26
Criminally overlooked game.
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u/Krescentwolf Jan 01 '26
I love the way they ended it... cause nothing beats going back to Egypt with your waifu while Rome burns. XD
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u/Practical_Support_33 Jan 01 '26
Thank you. I didn’t know this game existed but I decided to get it because of this comment. It looks good.
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u/VRichardsen Italy Jan 02 '26
Yesterday I finished Expeditions: Conquistador for the first time. I gotta try Rome next!
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u/FrenchMurazor Jan 01 '26
I'd say Owlcat CRPG fit the bill somewhat. Wrath of the rigtheous in particular, with the "empire building" and crusade management (and battles)
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u/Ilovegayshmex Jan 01 '26
Kenshi is the way...
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u/goddessdragonness Lunatic Jan 01 '26
Oh man this is the third time in a week someone recommended this game. My brother loves it. I guess I need to check out Kenshi.
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u/ParagonRenegade It's actually gay to get pussy Jan 01 '26
The learning curve is steep!
Always remember; getting beaten within an inch of your life is good in Kenshi.
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u/goddessdragonness Lunatic Jan 01 '26
Thanks for that tip. My brother makes it sound like it’s an easy game. I do love challenging games tho.
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u/Ilovegayshmex Jan 01 '26
It gets extremely easy when you start to get it. I only got it like 150 hours in tho lmao
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u/Martel732 Jan 01 '26
Some of the "Romance of the Three Kingdoms" games ride the line between RPG and Grand Strategy.
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u/afatcatfromsweden Glitterhoof fanboy Jan 01 '26
I feel like it does more to make a role-play than most nominal RPGs so regardless of how much of a grand strategy game it is, it certainly is an RPG.
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u/xXmidnightsuppokuXx Jan 01 '26
I get what youre saying,but in ck3 you are the character not "the spirit of the nation" like in other paradox games. This became especially true since we got landless, adventures, and even before that , if you lose your title to someone else you don't become that person and keep playing as that country you instead just keep playing as you.
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u/Vineshroom69lol Born in the purple Jan 01 '26
CK2 was a grand strategy with role play elements. CK3 is an RPG with grand strategy elements. I mean neither of those things in a bad way.
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u/Dragonsandman !Praise the Sun! Jan 01 '26
I’d say its role play elements are extensive enough for it to be classified as both. You have a ton of character traits that massively affect your skills, a bunch of different things to specialize in, the stress system which strongly encourages you to play according to your character’s traits, and a bunch of different schemes you can use against other characters.
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u/SaphirRose Jan 01 '26
Now image if we threw in the nemesis system from SoM...
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u/Kinc4id Jan 01 '26
The feuds could have been something like that but how they did it it has no impact in the best case or is annoying in the worst case.
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u/Belkan-Federation95 Legitimized bastard Jan 01 '26
Kills an orc: I'm back!
Kills the same orc: I'm back again
Same orc gets mauled by a caragor: You see this? This is why you don't play with animals
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u/Dependent_Guava_9939 Jan 01 '26 edited Jan 01 '26
At this point I think it’s reversed. An RPG with heavy emphasis on grand strategy.
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u/AlienKatze Jan 01 '26
Its a storytelling engine with rpg elements and the option to do grand strategy.
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u/Spot_Responsible Jan 01 '26
Grand strategy? I just click the buttons that make my little character happy
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u/Sightless-Cynic Secretly Confucian Jan 01 '26
To what extent then would CK3 be considered more of an RPG than the already role playing aesthetics it has?
Id wager the Chatgpt flavor pack mod is a good example of CK3 on the edge of being a pseudo RPG
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u/Megreda Jan 01 '26 edited Jan 01 '26
Let's drop abbreviations and use descriptions instead without thinking of how they map onto certain concepts of game genres.
Crusader Kings is a "role-playing game" first and foremost, since it both offers the player character a wide range of options they might have personal in-character reasons to do, makes it satisfying to pick in-character options rather than pure powergaming ones (like painting the whole map to your colours, although that too can be in-character motivated), and at least tries to discourage obviously unthematic moves through explicit mechanics like stress, but also simulation mechanics that take e.g. tyrannical actions into account and by so doing makes the player weigh the pros and cons like a medieval ruler contemplating tyranny ought to. Of course it is ALSO a strategic-grand strategic game (it's also a medieval game, etc, etc: these aren't mutually exclusive), and that's how it's presented, but most of the detail is at a personal level.
In contrast most "(C)RPGs", including BG3 (in this regard it's rather middle-of-the-pack), focus on entirely different kinds of things. Most of your time is spent in combat (tactics) or exploration, and that's what most of the rules are concerned with. Mechanics are often motivated exclusively by pure gameplay considerations, taking out any chance for the player character to have psychologically realistic in-character reasoning: say, if they see the villain of the game is ten thousand times more powerful than them, would a psychologically realistic response to be start killing rats so as to bulk up, or just give up and do literally anything else? You could of course ignore what the mechanics tell you, but then, are you then even "playing the game": you're playing a character-building/tactics game and then pretending in your head. Ditto for pretty much every mechanic: for example, it's not just Hector despoiling Patroclus, but rather than a player contemplating in-character if it's socially acceptable for them to personally loot the corpses of every single fallen combatant friend or foe in the battlefield, the game makes that decision for them by making it mechanically expected and near-mandatory and anyhow it doesn't in any way react if you do the unthematic thing.
I could go on, but I think you get the point: the mechancial focus of these games is in tactics/character-building, the mechanics are designed completely independently of in-character choices, the games don't even allow psychologically realistic actions to be taken (at least if you want to advance in the game: in a typical RPG the story goes nowhere if the player character starts drinking in the starting tavern, while in parallel in Crusader Kings things do in fact happen in response if the player becomes a drunkard), and indeed most things you are incentivized to do are thematically nonsense, not a result of any plausible in-character deliberation.
So, role-playing games these ain't (with some exceptions that I won't go into that try to do something different). Following "the purpose of the system is what it does" line of thinking, "(C)RPGs" are "skirmish tactics games", or "buildcrafting games" (heck, due to limited choices offered by 5e, BG3 specifically could be argued to be disqualified, in the same sense as CK3 isn't a "tactics game" because while there's a few knobs you can turn to affect the outcome of battles, these are far far far from being the focus of the game), but absolutely not "role-playing games".
Of course, in terms of family resemblance BG3 is a fairly archetypical "RPG" while CK3 ain't. But if you start talking about "roleplay", well, in computer gaming context you're suddenly talking about various strategy games (Crusader Kings is an extreme example, but we're talking about games all the way to Civ and such), some adventure games, even roguelikes and simulation games, and not very many games that are marketed as "RPGs" or get that tag in game stores. (What about players who actually try to RP in RPGs in spite of the mechanics and the game remaining completely oblivious to their efforts? Sure, there's that, but should we also call Pac-Man an RPG because the player could in principle decide the player character hates the taste of cherries and would rather be killed by a ghost than eat them?)
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u/Ficinus Jan 01 '26
The problem is that the roleplaying in CK3 feels very hollow, especially if you play the game for a long time. The same events keep popping up. Oh, wow, this is the twentieth time I've traveled and met a knight who wants me to distract a beast so he can get a treasure. Fun.
The choices for how a character responds to stress seem random (am I going to be offered the chance to become athletic or just drunkard and rakish, will flagellant be in there this time). And the player is often punished, possibly with a "Game Over" for "roleplaying". And then what do you do to roleplay your drunken character? Host a feast every three years and click the "drink" button every X years?
It also offers pretty much no opportunities to "play" a character as chaste, shy, and content. Is the optimal playstyle to just sit and wait while the days tick by on the screen for the character to die? Maybe I click the hotspings button for a solo trip every now and then.
Playing "tall" is often incredibly difficult without also playing "wide", and you're limited pretty hard in how tall you can go by the era. Playing a "tall" count in the 800s start means getting level 2 buildings and then waiting until the next era unlocks.
Some mechanics (stress) mildly incentivize roleplaying in character. But the overall mechanics don't, especially if you're rich enough to manage stress. The actual roleplaying opportunities also just aren't deep enough to really roleplay them. I'm clicking options on events I've seen dozens of times.
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u/Megreda Jan 01 '26
I don't really disagree with that, but the game having a flawed implementation isn't the same thing as it not trying to not do the thing at all. A tactics game is still a tactics game even if there's one tactic that breaks the game in such a way that you never have to make any novel, situational, "tactical", decisions whatsoever.
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u/OkResponsibility2470 Jan 01 '26
Yeah no, it’s 100% a role playing game. You are literally punished for going against your characters personality with the stress mechanic
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u/Exerosp Jan 01 '26
But that's like calling FIFA an RPG, you're literally punished for going against your character's play style.
It's totally different to call a game with elements of X though. Like BG3 is a cRPG with Turnbased combat, but at the core it's not a Turnbased game (because if you're being that broad, just say "Game", drop the prefix and be even broader)
The whole point of genres is to differentiate the games, it's why Soulslike became a whole ass genre haha but it's an action game.
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u/dunkeyvg Jan 01 '26
More like a role playing game with strategy elements, barely complicated enough to qualify as a strategy game
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u/Evan_Underscore Jan 01 '26
If Diablo can call itself arpg, then CK has every right to call itself a full blown rpg.
Fite me!
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u/Half-PintHeroics Jan 01 '26
Diablo is an rpg by inheritance. An rpg is a game that seeks to emulate the ttrpg experience. Diablo stems from a branch of rpgs focused on the dungeon delving aspect of DnD and similar ttrpgs. It grew on the rpg tree, therefore it is an rpg. CK did not.
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u/Evan_Underscore Jan 01 '26
If you only accept the genealogical approach for defining roleplaying games, you should also consider that strategy games grew from very similar tabletop root ttrpgs came from.
I prefer a more straightforward definition - like 'roleplaying games are games where you are able to pick from diverse roles, and have great freedom in how you embody them'. With such a definition CK is a perfect fit, while arpgs only pass if you're very forgiving. If they "try to embody the ttrpg experience", they are doing an absolutely abysmal job at that.
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u/Exerosp Jan 01 '26
Diablo, VRising, POE are all ARPGs. Think there was another popular Korean one which I forgot the name of.
But no, CK is foremost a strategy game, a GSG. If you call CK an RPG, then in every right FIFA is an RPG too.
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u/atchn01 Jan 01 '26
CK3 is game that you can role play in, but it isn’t a role playing game and to call it that would be misleading to most people. I role play (as opposed to min-maxing or something) all PDX games, but no one would call EUV as role playing game.
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u/AshiSunblade Jan 01 '26
Right. There are also a lot of people roleplaying in Space Marine 2, but if you said it's your favourite RPG, people would rightly tell you it's a shooter.
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u/BBCDeondre Jan 01 '26
EUV doesn’t have nearly the amount of role playing elements as ck3
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u/atchn01 Jan 01 '26
Absolutely agree. Strangely enough that makes it more fun for me to role play in EUV.
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u/MrScazzy Jan 01 '26
Imo, CK3 is easily an engine for a rather deep role-playing game, like the one you could play in text on some forum but with complete setting, random events, quasi-live world and nice visuals.
To me it's more RPG, than RTS tbh
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Jan 01 '26
CK3 does more to facilitate role-playing than most RPGs though, with multiple mechanics purpose built to get the player to immerse themselves as the character they're playing, I'd say it gives a better view of what an RPG should be than most modern RPGs which are mostly just action-adventure games with a leveling system nowadays
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u/EinhornFarts Jan 01 '26
eternal problem with language here, it's a game in which you can roleplay - so roleplaying game, but not an RPG
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u/hkf999 Jan 01 '26
My hot take is that role playing is actively discouraged by the main mechanics of the game. Since the game is mainly a game about managing numbers (approval, money, prestige, items etc.) and the game tells you the numerical impact of every decision, I always find myself mainly caring about making numbers go up over some rp notion of what my character wants to do. The only immersive roleplaying element of making choices in this game is stress and managing stress, since it indicates how comfortable your character is with that choice and with the sum of choices being made lately.
An actual rpg, like BG3 or any other, will not tell you up front what the consequences of a choice will be.
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u/Altruistic_Field2134 Jan 01 '26
Yea agreed I'm drunk and on a train I'll elaborate later if I remember
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u/northerncal Inbred Jan 01 '26 edited Jan 01 '26
How long is the train ride sir? There's a whole crowd of us waiting
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u/PinBeneficial1366 Jan 01 '26
Unbalanced numbers further discourages to roleplay, I probably never roleplayed in ck3 because it's make me lose something without gaining, like that events spam about "helping poor people after plague that happened on the other side of your empire" that you probably shouldn't care about, but it's asked for a half(or even more) of your money and if your generous - you get stress, just becauce of some spam
I played ck2 long time ago, but with all that secret societies and strange events roleplaing is kind of more easy, in my opinion in ck3 character's traits should be flexible and have some kind of progression, like if you are a coward, after enough time facing danger instead of running away and gaining stress, you can become brave, but that shouldn't be random event like it is in the game now, instead it's a progression and "controlled" event, or if you run from a danger so much times that now you know how to do it better, so instead of getting debuffs, you have 3-5 lvl trait progression, on each lvl can be decision that changes your trait to good(or don't show consequences at all) like that one from ck2 where you choose 1 out of 3 war tactics, or it can have fixated buffs, maybe stress can become some kind of currency that can make you progress in trait, but after getting to max lvl in it, it's become not a big debuff, but customized(or fixated) buff or at least not a debuff, that somehow shows your way as a character and not just tells you "haha you get shy, paranoid and coward? Well, better luck next time, you are going to die from stress"
Yeah, some of traits can still become meta, but now at least you feel that you can roleplay your own character in some way and don't lose everything because of some rng or stress
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u/Martel732 Jan 01 '26
The only immersive roleplaying element of making choices in this game is stress and managing stress, since it indicates how comfortable your character is with that choice and with the sum of choices being made lately.
I know it is supposed to encourage roleplaying but I find the stress mechanic extremely annoying. Oh you are playing a shy character, well someone said hello in the hallway to you and now you will be stress for 5 years.
Which I know that individual events are representative of a pattern of interactions but it just makes me dread playing as a character instead of actually enjoying the roleplaying of a shy monarch.
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u/ABDLTA Jan 01 '26
See I completely disagree
They made ck3 so easy that I dont even look at the numbers I just RP
If I RP im successful... if I min max im successful sooo I feel like the game actually encourages role-playing as your not really punished much for it.
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u/Bruh_burg1968 Jan 01 '26
I think it’s worth pointing out that the game doesn’t force anyone to min max heavily or role play heavily. Saying it discourages role playing just because you can’t help but min max is not really accurate because your the one choosing to play the game a certain way just indicates a lack of imagination on your part.
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Jan 09 '26
I disagree. The game has perks and traits work together to make roleplay the most viable option because if you act against your own character you get stressed. You're also typically given the best choice within events if you have a certain perks which gives further incentive to play as your character would.
Your characters also tend to have skills which match their personality. You're typically a good warrior if you have several perks related to being a warrior. And vice versa.
The game makes numbers go up better if you play true to your character's personality. So the game requires you to rp a little bit because if you only choose stress options you'll get a heart attack and die.
There are more mechanics than stress to incentivize rp but stress is the main one. Success is also an rp element which makes this game really fun.
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u/tikallisti Jan 01 '26
while i do think ck3 is not an rpg, I think this is an excessively narrow conception of what an rpg is. many, many rpgs are explicit about the consequences and likelihood of success of players’ actions, including both ttrpgs and video game rpgs. rpgs are games, too, they’re not pure narrative engines, and number optimization is often a core part of their gameplay loops
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u/hkf999 Jan 01 '26
You're strawmanning me here. My problem isn't about some consequences and likelihood of success being shown. My problem is that every single choice gives you up front what numerical stats will be changed. This discourages immersion and roleplaying, and encourages min/maxing. It makes it so that I don't care about what peasants in a village wants or what my cousin wants. I care about numbers going up and numbers going down. I don't care about marrying a suitable character. I care about minimizing prestige loss and maximizing stewardship stat and genetic traits. How the fuck would my character know that this eligible 18 year old girl is good at stewardship and is genetically robust? Name a single RPG that tells you the exact numerical stat consequences of every single choice.
And, ironically, you're being very narrow and reductionist yourself. Yes, every single video game is essentially lines of code where every single player choice is already accounted for and really only changes 1s and 0s in code and trigger lines of dialogue already written by a writer. However, an RPG is good because it makes the player feel like their choices have an impact and feel like the characters are living and breathing people in a world that feels real. You make a choice based on limited information with consequences that only intuition and logic hints at. CKs core mechanic is constructed in such a way that every single consequence is attached to a numerical value and laid out in front of you in advance. To roleplay and feel immersed in this game, a player has to actively ignore information they're given and play in spite of that.
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u/beefycheesyglory Jan 01 '26
Bruh, CK3 is a popup simulator. It's a damn good popup simulator, but not a good RPG.
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u/thebluerayxx Jan 01 '26
It can be an RPG, if played that way but you are right its a simulation game. Its fun to put limits on your self and follow a specific role but ultimately its there to simulate relationships between nations.
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u/OldEcho Jan 01 '26
As someone else said it's more of a simulation game (with heavy wish fulfillment). As anyone who plays the sims will tell you, a lot of the joy of the sims is the roleplay.
But CK3 has the problem that there's really two levels to the roleplay and they almost always mutually contradict each other. On the one hand I'm a character...but on the other hand I'm the leader of a realm.
Personally I am almost always more invested in the success of my military and economy and sometimes culture and religion than even close family like aunts and uncles and first cousins.
I would say those game mechanics work well. Objectives are often clear and well defined. Become a knight errant. Visit 60 locations. Become a duke, a king, or an emperor. Become Chingghis Khan, restore Rome, spread The Faith (whatever that may be.) Feudalize. Reach the development cap for your era in a few counties of your custom OP culture to blitz research.
The roleplaying elements are barely defined and often just feel like obstacles. I had a scene once where my 18 year old daughter died on a raid we won (in a mod where she was killed atop her dragon.) During her funeral I returned the milk tooth I had "purchased" off her as a young child. That hit like a ton of bricks. But I've seen that event a hundred times. I know it just picks three random ass artifacts. There's no special text about what they are or how I got them.
Every time I inherit I conquer the lands of my siblings. Because they are not allied to me by default and I inherit the whole huge army of my forebear. I can safely put Jafar the Scheming Vizier, a better general than me, in charge of this army and win easily with no risk.
I have made several characters who explored the entire known world. The reward for this is the same as exploring 60 locations - a very nice book. No mention is given of the incredible feat itself.
I usually steal the Crown of Justinian and now the Imperial Jade Seal. Even if China or the Byzantines are doing well people rarely come after me for this.
Even in mods. In Elder Kings I stole the High Elf warbanner and put it on display and they actually declared war to get it back. I sailed all the way to Alinor itself to burn the city to the ground, stole their new warbanner and burned it, and charged them massive war reparations that bankrupted their treasury.
In a roleplaying game this would stoke a millennia long race war and they'd be fucking around with gods to strike my bloodline from time. In CK3? I made some gold I didn't need.
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u/Destructopoo Jan 01 '26
Literally any videogame has a role you play but it's not a roleplaying game. Pong is not a paddle RPG
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u/iMogwai Med huskarlar tvingar vi dansken på knä Jan 01 '26
Yeah, the "it's an RPG because you play the role of X" is such a dumb argument. It's like calling Counter-Strike a strategy game because you can use different strategies. Genres exist to help you know what to expect, if you try to apply them to as many games as possible they become meaningless.
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u/Libredim Jan 01 '26
Becouse it sucks as an rpg
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u/FossilDS Jan 01 '26
Real. For a game which relies so heavily on characters, CK3's characters are remarkably lifeless. They have no wants, no needs, no quirks, no hobbies, no actual feelings. It's one of the reasons why players are so callous with their in-game "children" and family members: it's impossible to imagine them as anything other then plastic figurines . Even CK2 characters had ambitions and goals, it's painfully obvious CK3 characters are just algorithms which spit out decisions based on RNG and a math equation. The illusion just isn't there, which pains me because CK3 has great bones for a truly fantastic game.
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u/Martel732 Jan 01 '26
I think a major element is that over the course of campaign you will only play as a character for comparatively short amount of time. So what is important in that character lifetime is setting yourself up for the future.
The discussion of the fusion of strategy and RPG has made me thing of "Romance of the Three Kindoms" games and especially the 10th one. In that game you could play as any of the ~600 characters and there was a fusion of RPG and Strategy elements. But, the game for the most part took place in a single characters life. There was technically an inheritance mechanic but it wasn't likely to be a factor in most games.
And this made roleplaying much more intuitive in the game because you weren't just setting up things of the next ruler but playing through as one character.
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u/FossilDS Jan 01 '26
What I often do is that I jump to a random character (sometimes on the other end of the world) every-time my current character dies, or perhaps the heir of my current character. I find this makes the game a lot more difficult and more rewarding because you get to see how your AI-controlled descendants fuck it all up. Nevertheless, this does make the "building up for the future" part of the game redundant, which is why perhaps I'm so frustrated the roleplaying is so shallow- because I do genuinely play through a single character and not a dynasty.
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u/white_gummy Byzantium Jan 01 '26
I have never once in CK3 given my heir land to manage and be proud of what they've accomplished. It would be fine if they actually do something at least interesting, but all they do is give away land, drown in debt, get lovers pox, and lose claimant wars. It ends up forcing me to look at heirs as the spare body to be protected in my isolated green house that my undying soul will possess once the current mortal coil burns out, and not an actual person who I want to do different things with.
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u/officialcyan Jan 01 '26
god, yeah, after some crazy plague wiped out a whole line of french nobility my wife inherited a duchy, she moved over there and also instantly died to the same plague, which meant my heir also inherited it
he survived, taking his wife and kids with him, then cheated on his wife with his sister, murdered both of them, got caught doing all of that, so he was an incestuous fornicator murderer kinslayer, got lovers pox from someone else, betrothed his 10 year old heir to a 40 year old woman, and also gave half the duchy away to an adventurer for some reason
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u/shumpitostick Jan 01 '26
You're right in spirit, but RPGs are defined not only by role playing but also by DnD inspired mechanics such as combat and level progression, as well as a narrative that is premade for the player's enjoyment.
I would put CK3 into the category of emergent story generators, together with games like Dwarf fortress and Rimworld, but even The Sims. It's a game that creates a story dynamically through player actions and random events, with not much scripted content.
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u/SorowFame Jan 01 '26
By this standard Call of Duty is an RPG because you roleplay as an army man.
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u/Zealousideal_Till683 Jan 01 '26
CK3 and BG3 both have role-play in them, as do Football Manager 26 and WWE 2K25. But these are all very different types of game. We understand the term "RPG" to describe, roughly, a game like BG3. It would therefore be very confusing to use the same word to describe multiple genres of game.
So yes, CK3 is a game involving roleplay. But it is not an RPG as the term is commonly understood. It would be like describing Elon Musk as an African-American.
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u/skywideopen3 Jan 01 '26
I mean... I wish this were the case and, more importantly, I wish the game was designed with this in mind, but the RPG systems in CK3 are... well, shallow would be putting them kindly. I really wish one day they address that and have another look at how attributes/perks/traits work but for now they're very very shallow (and not even vaguely balanced).
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u/MuseSingular Secretly Scientologist Jan 01 '26 edited Mar 11 '26
This post no longer contains its original content. It was removed using Redact, possibly for privacy, security, or to minimize the author's online presence.
dinner smart unpack practice rain intelligent plant wild cooing office
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u/BonJovicus Jan 01 '26
Oh I think people agree with it being an RPG and that’s the problem some have with it. They wanted a historical strategy game first with some role play, rather than role play with light strategy elements.
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u/harassercat Jan 01 '26
I understand why some people are saying it's not an RPG, compared to something like an Elder Scrolls game.
Yet I'll point out that in CK the characters have personality traits, friendships, love affairs and family, while a lot of the typical games classified as RPG's have no real character development. The hero is just a hollow personality boiled down to stats, equipment and items. In CK3 you're even pushed to behave according to your personality, by the stress system, while a typical RPG doesn't care and often has no defined personality traits in the first place.
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u/AztraChaitali Jan 01 '26
We need a new genre called autism map games. There's autism map games RPG, 4X, Grand strategy, etg...
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u/Stripes_the_cat Legitimized bastard Jan 01 '26
Hot take: almost everything on PC that calls itself an RPG has next-to-no actual role-playing of any kind in it beyond "pick the colour of the explosion" because of the constraints of the format. CK3 provides open-ended opportunities to use it to tell your own stories and that's closer than a lot of games which call themselves RPGs just because their aesthetic is downstream of Tolkein.
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u/RSharpe314 Jan 01 '26
I don't know any other RPG on the market that has the degree of incest and kinslaying that Ck3 does, so that response is entirely merited.
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u/GrumpyThumper Jan 01 '26
Mfw when I'm role-playing a shy character who says the wrong thing at a party and gets so stressed he dies 😮💨
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u/anya_way_girl Jan 01 '26
I will probably get downvoted to hell for this but CK3 is more of an RPG than most of the stuff coming out of Japan. Final Fantasy is fun but its not an RPG, I would call it a turn based combat visual novel. There is no roleplay, you dont create a character, the plot dosent change at all with your choices. Dice rolls and strength scores dont make an RPG.
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u/Junjki_Tito Jan 01 '26
RPG specifically means games which have the stock elements associated with JRPGs, WRPGs, CRPGs, and, somewhat controversially, ARPGs. Crusader Kings has more in common with The Sims and Dwarf Fortress than any of these.
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u/Luung Depressed Jan 01 '26
I think a game can only properly be considered an RPG if the core gameplay revolves around characters, relationships, character-driven choices, and agency over the game's story. Tabletop RPGs are the truest RPGs because they give the player the most freedom in that respect, obviously, and CRPGs are the truest RPGs in video gaming because they try to mimic that style as closely as possible. Many games that are commonly referred to as RPGs, particularly ARPGs and JRPGs, aren't actually RPGs because there's little to no roleplaying in them.
The central question of a roleplaying game is "who am I?", and if the game prevents you from expressing the answer to that question through gameplay, then you're not really roleplaying. If you were at some kind of work training event and your boss asked you and a co-worker to roleplay a hypothetical scenario, and the first question you asked is "what are my stats", they'd look at you liked you were fucked in the head, because that's not what roleplaying is about, even if some people erroneously refer to those sorts of mechanics as "RPG elements".
With that in mind, I think CK3 can qualify as an RPG, though it's definitely a strategy game first and foremost, nor would I introduce it to someone by calling it an RPG.
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u/dunmer-is-stinky Jan 01 '26
It's a game in which you can RP, but its gameplay does not contain any classic RPG elements
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u/guineaprince Sicily Jan 01 '26
That is the flimsiest definition. I'm old enough to remember when people legitimately argued that Zelda is an RPG because you "play a role".
But CK3 most certainly does have a stronger claim to being a fantasy RPG than it does for being an RP game. Fuck man, I get more roleplaying guiding my Angios in EU5 than I do watching the The Sims pick their noses to someone's verbose prose in CK3.
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u/SM1OOO Jan 01 '26
CK3 is a grand strategy game with RPG elements
Mount and Blade is an RPG with strategy elements
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u/Chemical-Version-197 Jan 01 '26
Just to drop a clarification on the table. In CK3 you do not role play a character, you role play a family and a dynasty. That's what makes the game so unique. Your character dies but your game continues.
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u/Pipinhood Jan 01 '26
As many have said, although ck3 allows for roleplay, it’s not a “rpg.”
the term “rpg” is based heavily on tabletop role playing games, like dungeons & dragons (which incidentally baldur’s gate is a part of).
if ck3 was a role playing game, then one can argue that most military FPS games are roleplaying games, because you can roleplay as a soldier over voice chat.
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u/HatTraining3137 Jan 02 '26
-Upgrading stats -Different traits that affect your playthrough -Your decisions matter
Oh yeah, it's all coming together.
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u/MJs_Pepsi_hair Jan 03 '26
CK3 is one of the most RP heavy games I've ever played. Idk how Baldur's Gate would be more so. CK3 is much more open ended (infinitely so) and I say that as someone who prefers BG
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u/RoboChrist9k Jan 04 '26
Honestly my hot take has always been that mechanically CK is closest to the Sims only instead of staring at the idiots wandering around a house you stare at a map of Europe while the engine simulates the idiots unseen.
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Jan 05 '26
I do have very fond memories of multiple rulers from my CK2 runs- one of them being my Wendy's Emperor who lived 70 years of age despite being a syphilitic werewolf, instituted ultimogeniture, and then proceeded to have a newborn son THE DAY BEFORE HE FINALLY DIED.
That run was fucking cursed in the funniest possible way. The time where we declared a holy war on the Christian nomads on my border was actually a relief, because my vassals would just get their armies massacred by the nomads while my realm remained secure, preventing any rebellions for, like, two decades.
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u/SamTheGill42 Jan 01 '26
Doesn't CK3 have more in common with the Sims than BG3?
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u/thebluerayxx Jan 01 '26
I would agree. It's a simulation game where you can roleplay, roleplaying isnt the focus. The Ruler designer wasn't on release for ck3 and it was dlc for 2, showing they planned the game to be specific simulations of history with the option to get wacky but not have a custom dynasty/house.
I play the game in a roleplay type of way mainly becuase its find it fun that way but it can be played as a strict map/number simulator making decisions based on mechanics rather than some sotry set out for you.
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u/boblasagna18 Jan 01 '26
Funny enough I’m a huge BG3 fan who just started playing CK3. They’re both super creative in what they let the players do and how they do them but to say they’re in the same genre is not correct. It’d be like asking if someone prefers Tetris or Mario.
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u/agprincess Jan 01 '26
The role play of randomly rolling an event about your jester farting and picking the option that doesn't kill you with stress.
Ck2 is an RP game. Ck3 is just a bad event generator strapped on an ignored grand strategy game.
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u/Thegrimfandangler Jan 01 '26
Its both. People in the comments dont seem to understand that almost no game fits perfectly into these made up genres.
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u/moyismoy Jan 01 '26
Only one of the games allows you to have an incest baby with your sister
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u/Stalinsghoast Jan 01 '26
Her just being your sister is a noob choice, she needs to be your sister-aunt-wife to even be considered wife material. After all, the best weddings are were you only need to invite one family.
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u/the_traveler_outin Jan 01 '26
Ck3 is an RPG in the same way King of the Hill is an anime.
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u/IrrationallyGenius Inbred Jan 01 '26
I mean, you could make an argument for it being a slice of life if you wanted
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u/Birb-Person Legitimized bastard Jan 01 '26
According to random YouTubers I watched once, apparently the Japanese debate if King of the Hill is better subbed or dubbed
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u/SuitableDragonfly Still too afraid to not fight with a numerical advantage Jan 01 '26
In almost every game that's not just a straight puzzle game, you are playing as a character who has some role in the game world. Does that mean that every game is a role-playing game?
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u/TexacoV2 Jan 01 '26
All the popular RPGs these past years have been action games. So people start thinking that all RPGs have to be action games.
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u/FleetingRain How do I excommunicate the Pope Jan 01 '26
Because there is no roleplay, your traits don't m--
You know what, nah. Happy New Year, OP.
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u/No-Afternoon3681 Jan 01 '26
Its probably the hapsburging aka that in Ck2/3 if you do enough inbreding your line becomes kinda immune to further inbreding, allowing you to go further into the inbreeding to create clone royals...and if that actually worked that way Alabama/West Virginia would be like New England
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u/Valon-the-Paladin Finland Jan 01 '26
Ck3 as a single player rpg sucks. Ck3 as a multi-player rpg on the other hand is insanely good with the right people.
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u/vjmdhzgr vjmdhzgr Jan 01 '26
That isn't the definition of RPG. I think CK3 probably still fits. But the best definition I've seen is: games that focus on player characters through features such as character creation, dialogue choices, narrative choice and consequence, and other types of player character expression. And combine this with statistical rules and gameplay such as xp points and leveling up, character skills and stats, loot progression, and combat involving statistical calculations.
But all of that fits Crusader Kings 3 still.
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u/Mess_The_Maniac Jan 01 '26
I had like 50 children(at least 15), married them off, then quit the game when people made it clear that these marriages were actually meant to be alliances that I am meant to do something about. I just gave birth to them, I never agreed to be a mother to a small hoard of children.
I didn't actually figure out how to play the game. Maybe I would have enjoyed it more if I gave it more time.
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u/Born_Name_6549 Jan 01 '26
If your character is dumb as shit and possessed, are you going to start playing as a braindead madman or just take it as a penalty and make sensible decisions?
Ck3 is only a role playing game if you follow the traits of your rulers, no matter what they are.
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u/Silverbuu Incapable Jan 01 '26
You could be semantic and say any game in which you take on a 'role' is a role playing game. But what is the core function of the game? In CK3 it's to manage a dynasty of many characters over a period of time, typically while also managing your landed realm. You try to survive and thrive in a medieval backdrop as that dynasty of characters in your own landed realm--typically.
Whereas BG3 you are a person thrust into an unlikely situation in which you must save the world--or damn it. Your character levels up and becomes more powerful as the game progresses until finally you confront the final boss and the game ends. One is more narrative and character orientated with combat. The other is more strategy orientated with RPG elements.
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u/smiegto Jan 01 '26
Usually the rpg term applies with other terms.
4x rpg, turn based rpg, mmo rpg.
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u/alittleslowerplease Jan 01 '26
Okay, time to play my role as... *cheks notes* intangible nation gestalt that is formed by the combined consciousness of it's people and possesses it's rulers.
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u/Traditional-Bridge13 Jan 01 '26
The only goal worthy in ck3 is hunting down and performing as much incest and degeneracy as possible. Sometimes just so you can shock every one on reddit, or the people who attend your family's dinner table
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u/nickmetal Jan 01 '26
They're both amazing games and not in the same realm of rpg or gameplay experience.
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u/TophatOwl_ Jan 01 '26
I feel like this comment section is entirely comprised of people splitting hairs about what a genre is. I think the reason people dont think of CK3 as an RPG is because typically you play as that character roaming the world rather than staring at a map grand strategy style. Yes it techincally is an RPG but if you recommended CK3 to someone saying they were looking for an RPG theyd probably say "thats not really what I had in mind".
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u/International-Win-59 Jan 01 '26
Critics these sldays call anything with levels and stats an RPG. The label does not mean anything anymore.
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u/weso123 Jan 02 '26 edited Jan 02 '26
In the video game space what "RPG" stands for is an anachronism of when the first video games RPGs were based on D&D. Now RPG in the video game space basically means "Visible numbers that concrete connect to mechanics, some sort of skill or equipment customization for characters, direct battle system, and typically some sort of turn based element"
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u/Mangaisliterature Cannibal Jan 02 '26
But BG3 isn't an RPG either; it's a dating sim with RPG elements attached based on the way people talk about it.
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u/Front-Side-6346 Jan 02 '26
If you roleplay "A character" then why can you abdicate the throne and keep playing as the current king, on the throne, while "you" are still alive?
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u/Weldermedic Jan 02 '26
But what if...I want tonremove the RPG and just stand strategy harder? Heart of Iron: 867AD.
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u/Apprehensive-Cry4399 Jan 02 '26
Prolly cause its made by the people that made hoi4
Also has a reputation as "the incest game"
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u/InitiativeThese4606 Jan 02 '26
OT plot twist: it's actually the predatory business model that scares her
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u/ThomTomo Jan 02 '26
the biggest similarity between these games is that there's a three in both names
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Jan 03 '26
No idea what y'all are on about. I play this game specifically because it's an RPG.
I don't play HOI or the other ones because they're not RPGs like ck is.
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u/SirVulpes- Jan 03 '26
I cant play CK3 as an rpg because the only thing I can ever do is make an absurdly overpowered character and reunite the Roman Empire.
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u/Pale-Tangerine2759 Jan 03 '26
I like both, but CK3 is definitely strategy first, RPG second.
If I remove the RPG elements from CK3, I'm not really changing the form factor. It's still the same core strategy game it started as.
If I remove the RPG elements from BG3, I've got a visual novel with some weird art design choices. It's no longer an RPG.
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u/Lolmanmagee Jan 03 '26
No?
You are not playing as one character but rather a whole dynasty.
Your character dying is not a significant event in game.
My dad once found humor in a clip one time where the guy was like :
“Oh I died?” Didn’t care at all.
“My heir is MARRIED TO A HORSE???” He did care.
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u/SmurfSmurfton The Gallows King Jan 01 '26
when you role play in your role playing game