The Shattered Crown

The Shattered Crown turns RimWorld into a medieval party RPG. You do not build a colony. You ride out with a handful of companions, take work from the Wayfarers' Guild, meet new NPCs, complete quests, and get loot.



A party, not a colony. You start alone on the road. Companions are found and recruited.

Conversations that matter. Over 50,000 words of dialogue.



Dice-based proficiency checks. A d10 system across eleven skills - Lore, Arcana, Thievery, Athletics, Persuasion, Survival, Perception, Insight, Investigation, Nature, Performance. Rolls happen in conversation, at locked chests, at shrines, at rotted bridges, and at anything else the world puts in your way.

Eleven classes, over forty spells and abilities. Barbarian, Bard, Cleric, Druid, Monk, Paladin, Ranger, Rogue, Sorcerer, Warden, Wizard. Multiclassing is supported; every level-up offers a class level and a proficiency. Spells run on Energy, which recovers with sleep, and scale with your level in the class that granted them.

Turn-based tactical combat (optional). Flip on Turn-Based Mode and fights become initiative-order, action-point tactics: move, attack, cast, end turn, with a live hit-chance readout, an AP preview on every order, and a combat log.
Toggle it off and the game plays like ordinary RimWorld.



Dungeons with floors. Multi-level underground complexes you descend by finding the stairs: catacombs, flooded undercrofts, ossuaries, bandit-held works, hives.



Towns now provide new services. Friendly settlements have six new buildings:
The guild hall posts contracts and hires out help,
The tavern sells provisions,
The smith trades in arms and armor,
The temple heals for a silver offering,
The training hall drills vanilla skills for a price,
and the mage guild enchants armor and teleports the whole party between towns.



The Shattered Crown - the authored campaign. A full quest chain with a written story.

Wayfarers' Guild: Adventure Mode - the sandbox. No over-arching story. Take procedural contracts from guild halls in any friendly town, discover wilderness locations as you travel (caves, shrines, dens, bandit holes, ruined castles), hire on help, and rescue captives.

Both modes share the same systems, and both are started as scenarios from the normal new-game screen.



Requires: Harmony and the Odyssey expansion (openable containers, tile mutators, underground structures).

Suggested mods: (NWN) Real Fog of War (Continued) or CAI-5000, and Medieval Overhaul

Combat Extended - supported.

Safe to add to an existing save, though the campaign is designed to be started from its own scenario. Not safe to remove mid-save.

Works alongside most content mods. Anything that heavily rewrites melee resolution, caravan forming, or map generation may conflict.

Not translated yet. English only.



How do I level up in a specific class?
You need to find and read class books that will teach you that class.
From then on, anyone in your party can choose that class at level-up.

In The Shattered Crown scenario, some companions will teach you their class.

Doesn’t this mod produce characters that are overpowered?
Yes, in vanilla contexts. RimWorld cannot balance against spells and feats it knows nothing about, so seasoned adventurers will handle many vanilla threats easily. This mod’s own quests scale their threats to your party, and those are meant to stay a challenge.

Since this is medieval themed, what about shields and two-handed weapons?
There are many other mods that add support for this - see Medieval Overhaul or Combat Extended. Rather than add my own, I decided to spend the effort on compatibility with these mods. If there is a compatibility or balance problem with one of them, please let me know.

I keep encountering non-medieval content! Is this a bug?
Enemies on this mod’s quests should carry medieval weapons; if they don’t, that is a bug. Elsewhere, the world is a ruin where most factions have fallen to lower tech, not a world where advanced tech never existed. If stray tech bothers you, lock the world to medieval with the Progression: Core mod.

Isn’t turn-based combat going to be too slow?
It might be with lots of pawns. However, there are some features that are meant to speed it up:

1. Non-combatants (un-drafted pawns and animals) move together during the world turn, so they don’t take up individual turn slots.
2. Enemies that will only perform move actions on their turn will move together if they are next to each other in initiative order.
3. There is a configurable setting (mod options) that scales all damage taken in turn-based mode. Increase this for shorter (and more lethal) fights.

That said, the sweet spot for turn-based combat is the intended way to play this mod: a party of 4-6 adventurers, not a colony with dozens of pawns.

Is this compatible with RimWorld of Magic or Vanilla Psycasts Extended?
Compatible? Yes, probably. Recommended? Definitely not. This mod’s spells use their own resource (Energy), which is independent of Mana or Psyfocus. If you use them together, you’ll end up with multiple ability systems that can coexist but don’t exactly mesh well.

Why not use Psyfocus instead of adding a new resource?
Two reasons, mainly:

1. Relying on Psyfocus means that Royalty is required. Not a deal-breaker, but something I’d prefer to avoid if possible.
2. Energy regenerates during sleep. Psyfocus regenerates by meditating. For an adventuring mod, the former feels much more on-brand. Getting your spells back after resting is a familiar mechanic for RPG systems.

My adventurers get sad after spending time in dark dungeons! How can I deal with this?
Yes, they do! You have options:

1. Accept this as an interesting interaction with RimWorld’s vanilla systems, and find ways to keep your adventurers happy. Give them occasional entertainment and sunlight.
2. Visit the tavern in friendly/neutral cities, and pay silver to increase your party’s mood.
3. If you have a bard with Performance and a musical instrument, make camp and have her perform for the party.
4. Change the setting in the mod’s options to add a mood buff every time a quest is completed, or an enemy is defeated.

The mood settings are off by default, because I think that leaning into RimWorld’s systems is more interesting than bypassing them. But they are there for players who would prefer to make it easier to manage their pawns' moods.



Spell and ability icons by Lorc (lorcblog.blogspot.com) and gear icons by Delapouite (delapouite.com), both CC BY 3.0, via game-icons.net.

Source code: https://github.com/fr0/TheShatteredCrown