Expanding substantially on Crusader Kings 2’s Poet trait, Crusader Kings 3’s attempt will bring reworked stats, character interactions, and, most importantly, randomised poetry generation, meaning you can bask in the digital ditties conjured by rhyme-loving computer-folk all day long. Poetry will be generated in-game by combining a particular subject with one of five overarching themes - romance, legacy, mourning, strife, and incompetence - enabling characters to influence events with a catchy rhyming couplet or two. Here’s one of several randomly assembled examples provided as part of Paradox’s latest blog post. Poetically inclined characters can send poems to most people in diplomatic range, and the result will depend on the theme. A romantic poem will make its recipient like the author more, for instance, and a poem about mourning will also improve relations but give the receiver a stress loss too - assuming the content matter isn’t overly inflammatory, of course. Perhaps most importantly, however, poet characters can summon their inner Vogon and torture their prisoners by forcing them to listen to their very worst work. “As with any use of the torture interaction,” explains Paradox, “this can cause a hideous amount of stress.” Poetry will be making its way to Crusader Kings 3 in the game’s upcoming 1.3 patch, which also introduces winter as a gameplay mechanic and brings various other additions - including the ability to wear the pope’s hat - as detailed in Paradox’s latest post. Crusader Kings 3’s 1.3 update will be accompanied by the game’s first significant DLC drop, which Paradox is set to reveal as part of this month’s Paradox Insider livestream event. It’ll be airing on Twitch at 7pm UK time/11am PT on 13th March.
