Arbitology: Dei Gratia Rex News

Once again, the time for a monthly update has arrived. Technically said time arrived yesterday, but spotty internet convinced me to just postpone it. My apologies. Without any further ado, let's get to the update.




I wrote about this some in the last post. The counterproposals ended up being a bit thornier than anticipated. The good news however is that they, and all the other bits touching wedding negotiations, are finished.








Royal weddings were important events. Rather than a minor footnote which might perhaps occasion collecting a feudal aid, these were times for feasting, processions, and much else.



And, yes, also raising a tax if you desire it.



The 12th century predates the Church's formal understanding of marriage as a sacrament. More on the historical aspect to follow. Despite this, it would have been shocking to not have any religious involvement in the marriage of a king. Bishops are, and were, a bigger deal than they are portrayed in many medieval games. There were only about a dozen in all of England and certainly far fewer than that in the fractured state of our timeline. Given their stature, it is fitting that a member of the episcopate performs the service.

Amusingly I managed to track down an edge case in which crashed the wedding (in several senses of the term) if no bishops were to be found in the kingdom. This required, as I mentioned on Twitter, some workarounds:



Regardless of what else happens, the wedding ends in the familiar feast hall. This is, for the more “standard” choices, perhaps the first opportunity to really get to know your wife.






Many things about medieval wedding ceremonies are preserved in modern ceremonies. However there are many notable differences as well. As mentioned, there was not yet a requirement that the Church be involved for a wedding to be valid. Indeed, all that was required in those days was present consent of both parties and a witness. A priest makes a great witness, and naturally most people desired blessings for their new union, so a liturgy developed from a fairly early point to solemnize weddings, even if it was not strictly required to form them. Luckily for us, this was put down in the Use of Sarum, which would have been largely finished and coming into widespread use during the early parts of the game.

According to this, the service was performed in front of the church rather than inside it. Some of the wording is a bit different than a modern ceremony — “I will” rather than “I do” for example — but most things are at least analogous. A nuptial mass followed, where further prayers and benedictions followed for the couple.

Interestingly, Western Rite Orthodoxy still to this day follows the Use of Sarum. There are a few differences between this and a medieval wedding, for instance two rings are used in this service rather than just one for the bride as in medieval weddings, but this is as close as one can get to a medieval English wedding in the present era:

[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]

If any part of a wedding in DGR feels unusual, consulting this video might help!




A few more matters, mostly behind the scenes to bring some of the terms of the wedding into effect. There is also some text left to write, as there are a great many traits that might prompt comment in the feast section.

More next time!

It's yet again time for a monthly update. There are some interesting — if a bit historically crunchy — details this time. Let's jump right in.




One of the goals of Dei Gratia Rex's design is "hard historical fiction," in a similar sense as hard sci-fi. The game presents a fictitious scenario and will privilege gameplay over simulation. However where possible, things are kept as closely in line with the actual history as I can. With that in mind, the time had come to revisit marriage.

Medieval marriage was a complicated process. It wasn't as easy as, say, searching a database of every woman in the world, filtering it, scrolling until you found the one you wanted, and being married under a week later. Indeed, even knowing who you could marry wasn't straightforward. Sometimes you might meet a prospective spouse naturally, but that's not necessarily the best plan for a royal marriage. Luckily we have a chancellor.



Moreover, the marriage always required terms.



In particular, dowry — known also as marriage portion or in the primary sources maritagium — was extremely widespread in 12th century Anglo-Norman England. A century later, the practice was indeed nearly universal from the highest ranks of society to the humblest. To be very brief, this was property (more often lands or rents rather than chattels) given by the bride's family to her on her wedding, in the care of her husband. More on that last bit later.

For a royal wedding, matters of oaths, alliances, and monetary payments must also be sorted. Beyond that, there's also the matter of providing for the lady should she become a widow. Her dowry would be part of this most assuredly, but provision of a dower was also part of the marriage contract. These are lands held by the groom that are promised to the bride at the time of the groom's death. Dower lands were only held for a life term before reverting to the normal chain of inheritance.

Isn't medieval land tenure wonderful?






Here we see the maritagium in action. The title is clearly the lady's. However the befit of these lands belongs to her husband, who has not yet gained lands of his own. Her father, whose gift these lands were, owes the military service attached to those lands until such a time as his daughter's husband can provide it. This is a new feature that I wrote specifically to handle these lands given as dowries. However that's not the only place I'm using it.



A particularly thorny issue in the 12th century was the Investiture Controversy. Kings, as they had done for some time, thought they should choose who aught to be enthroned bishop within their kingdoms. The Pope on the other hand thought that he (or his delegates anyway) aught to be the one to choose. This matter was inflamed further by the practice of leaving sees vacant so that their wealthy estates could pay into the Exchequer. Using the new system, a king can enjoy these episcopal lands without holding the title.

Another historical case of this was wardships. If one of your direct vassals is a child, the same sort of thing applies. They will continue to hold their titles, but you, their lord, will enjoy the revenues until they reach the age of majority. On the other hand, they will not owe you knight service during that time. This is not fully implemented, so no screenshot just yet!




I've consulted a number of sources for this. However I would particularly like to highlight The Contract of Marriage: the Maritagium from the Eleventh to the Thirteenth Century by Claire de Trafford. If you find this sort of thing interesting, you'll find some fascinating material there.




Finishing the marriage negotiations. Some work remains on that front. When that's finished, plugging in the wardships so that they use the new system. When that is done, some provisions for, shall we say, less than regular marriages.

More next time!

The time for another update post is upon us. Actually that time was yesterday; I'll hope you forgive me for being a day late. Christmas was cancelled for us (COVID; I'm fine now but others somewhat less so), and I'm just now getting on top of things.



Many exciting things happened this year. Perhaps most recognizable was the creation of some new art. The line-fillers and bas-de-page illustrations now give life to what were otherwise blank voids on the pages. Between the text, illuminations, marginalia, and glosses, medieval manuscripts rarely had much empty space, and I wanted to capture that. Here's a before and after for the same event:




The soundtrack was also completed this year. I've linked it before, but in case you've missed it:

[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]


I finished quite a lot of content as well. Events for tournaments, feasts, hunts, various other ways of interacting with your subjects, and more were written. All that totaled hundreds of events: I noticed some time ago that there were more events in some of DGR's subsystems than exist in other narrative games. This isn't a small game.

What I didn't do was launch. I tried to meet an external deadline in May. Missing that hurt financially, but too much was getting cut. I'm happy about not forcing it out the door then, but I am cognizant of the fact that this is taking far too long. My goal in the first part of the year is to "close the loop" so that whole-game testing can begin. All of the events are thoroughly debugged, but sometimes defects won't show up without the sort of interactions full gameplay provides.




To that end, the biggest thing missing that is required to play a full game is marriage and family. Since we start with a quite young king, courtship is necessary as well. Love marriages among the nobility were incredibly rare, especially among high nobility. Love was of course an outcome that was pleasant and desirable, but it was not at all a precondition for matrimony. Thus when I say courtship, I largely mean the identification of good prospects, negotiations regarding the terms of the marriage, and so forth. Alliances, dowry, and other factors all must be taken into consideration. It also might also be prudent to ascertain the personality of the woman in question. She will play a large role in your life going forward, after all. Queens don't cease to exist when you get married — quite the opposite in fact — but more on that at a later date.

This has required a rather lot of work under the hood. Unfortunately this sort of work doesn't show off well in screenshots. A non-exhaustive list of things I've done to support this: added Ireland and more of Scotland to the simulation, ensured that land can be held outside of the realm without breaking things, vastly expanded the character templates used for women, and created family trees of particular special
historical family should you wish to pursue a certain high-risk, high-reward marriage. Hopefully more details on this, with pictures, next time.




While I'm here, I want to thank everyone for following along. I really do appreciate the support shown thus far.

I genuinely expected this to launch in late 2020 or early 2021, but here we are. I know how frustrating it can be to follow something for this long. I'm very focused on finishing the game at present. It still needs a few things before then, but I'm very motivated to get this launched.

A bit of a smaller update this time. As expected, things are unfortunately going a bit slowly right now. What I'm presently building also doesn't translate well into update posts just yet; hopefully more on that next time.




In a few previous posts I wrote about vassal interactions. There is an entire system for meeting with others in your kingdom. One major goal I have is to ensure that the other characters in the realm aren't just amorphous, interchangeable entities. To that end I actually expanded the taking counsel part of the feast I wrote about last time. Those at the high table can give you advice: some of it is generic based on their traits, some of it is specific based on things that are going on in the realm.



I reworked some of the random events at feasts to show vassal personalities as well.



And, as always, there are some continuation events. This one is rather rare and based on some literature written in the same time period as the game. Kudos to those that recognize it!






I recently read some online discussion about the topic of "too much information" in strategy games. Specifically the idea was put forth that having exact numbers and percentages turns a lot of things into spreadsheet management. I'm not sure I'd quite go that far, but deciding to obscure information to some degree was a decision I took very early in the development of the game.

I've written previously about era-appropriate fog of war. Additionally, I don't say exactly what happens when you make a choice before you make it, but, as seen in most of these update posts, risky choices tend to get marked with redder letters. As yet another example, under the hood all traits and skills are integers. All relationship values are numbers too, though not necessarily integers. However you can only gain a general sense of these when looking at someone's "character sheet."



Moreover outside of your kingdom and its immediate English neighbors, only very high level information is available about other realms. If you've noticed, there aren't even hard internal border lines drawn within Wales, as the exact political conditions there weren't especially clear to the Anglo-Normans.



I certainly understand why some games do provide very clear information about everything. However I'm trying to take a somewhat different tack here. For a game like DGR I think it will work well, even if it might not in other strategy games.




I'm not ready to set a date, but I am very motivated to see this finished. One of the major blockers is courtship and family events. I put these off for some time so that I could have more entry points to their sections, especially for courtship. In the same vein as the above section, I don't want marriages to happen by pressing a button and searching a database of women. At this point I think I have enough of those entry points in place.

If health holds, I expect to have some things to write about on that topic next month.

This post has some updates and some bad news. The updates are up first and the bad news is at the end. Times being what they are, please feel free to skip that last section if you're not up for it. Anyway, on we go!




Like the tournament, the feast looms large in the popular imagination of the medieval period. Indeed, it is a favorite of modern reenactments, and for good reason. However Arbitology: Dei Gratia Rex takes great pains to get the history right as possible.

Feasts are real things that happened, clearly. However they were not typically raucous parties. When they were, it was usually a sign that something was out of order. More commonly, they were tightly choreographed affairs. There had to be a reason for the event, for starters, and of course nothing of this sort might happen during Lent, those 40 days of holy fasting.



Rank and precedence were of the utmost importance in those days. This applied even (or perhaps especially!) to seating arrangements at feasts. When you appointed a chamberlain to head-up the royal household, you did find someone with talent, right?



As public affairs, feasts were also an ideal time and place for giving gifts, that all may see your largess. Not only monetary gifts, but also land grants were commonly made on these occasions: perhaps that vacant episcopal see that you've been taking revenues from, much to the chagrin of the Church?



There are other things that happen as well. Naturally food is the focal point. Spending more lavishly does allow more options. Gifting leftovers from the high table to others, even to the poor, is historically attested after all. Feasts provide opportunity to take counsel with those present as well. Moreover the feast provides a nice backdrop to more unpredictable events. I don't want to spoil it all in screenshots though.




I added a bit more love to the tournaments hosted in your own kingdom, as opposed to fighting in a foreign contest. As in the tournaments in France, the domestic ones now also conclude with a small feast. This can result in rivalries or friendships continuing from the tourney ground into later affairs.



Or perhaps an annoying noble from a neighboring realm might provoke an international incident. This could be both a good and a bad thing, depending on how much you want a war.



Much else can also happen as your tournaments conclude!




Bus factor is a measure, common in the software world, of the number of people who, if hit by a bus, would imperil a project. A wonderful thing about indie dev is games that no large or even medium company would touch are possible. A terrible thing about indie dev is low bus factor. I've worked with some wonderful contractors for art and music, but those were short term arrangements. The daily work on prose, code, and everything else is done by me alone. Thus, the bus factor for DGR is one.

Well, gentle reader, I've been hit by a metaphorical bus.

In late August I developed a heart condition. In late September I sought treatment for said heart condition. Long story short, the clinic insisted on a hospital visit and my life has been a waking nightmare ever since. And it is not yet over. I briefly had a negative net worth until I phoned some people and negotiated the numbers on these bills. Bills plural, you see, because apparently everything is charged separately by a different party. The money I was planning on investing into the company for advertising purposes has been devoured by the insatiable rapacity of the medical-industrial complex. No prizes for guessing the country in which the above transpired.

I'm not writing all this because I'm fishing for sympathy or because I am going to hit you with a GoFundMe link. It's just… things will be slow for a bit. I'm probably going to have to do more activities that generate short term money and less work on the game. I've also got some more bureaucratic hoops to jump though. And then there's, you know, the cardiac problem that has been stealing time from me over the last few months.

DGR will release. I've sacrificed too much for it not to. I'm just not in a position to make any definitive statements about when, as I genuinely don't know what the next few months hold in store.


More updates, and less bad news, on the the first Saturday of next month!