What does Veeky Forums think to the official song of ice and fire RPG? Aside from the source material that is.
Despite the having all the problems of a license product i'm actually a big fan of the mechanics myself.
It has interesting ways of doing character house creation, ability stats, as well as social combat and mass combat.
I always liked the idea of a D6 dice pool system which doesn't need a buckets worth of them.
It's alright, our group played a campaign of it recently and had a good deal of fun.
Great system, great mechanics, don't use mass combat rules because they stink.
I've tried a couple of times to get a game running in my area, but they've always fizzled out due to lack of interest. Should be fine for an existing group, though.
The trouble with everything in this game is that it all seems sound of paper but clearly hasn't been play tested enough when you use them.
It's a shame because if they just got around to tweaking it a little bit would be perfect.
The base/fort/family mechanic are great, the combat between people appears quick, strong and brutal. Not good for prolonged fighting but good for quick spurts of fighting.
What do you think of the way abilities are done?
It's technically an ability based systerm, but you have *18* based ability stats which cover pretty much most skills would do.
'Specialties' exist, it only give bonuses in specific situations.
This is part of the roll and keep system.
A fighter with long sword specialisation, gets adds his extra bonus dice to his roll but only can keep the number dice his has in his fighting stat.
This cover will never cease to be hilarious. Never.
His entire body language communicates "Oh shit, I'm fucked."
> What does Veeky Forums think to the official song of ice and fire RPG?
Old people are overpowered.
You're either very good or very bad at something, very little middle ground.
Lost the equivalent of 100 XP of the in-game Edge-Like mechanic to make sure one specific NPC died. Earned 4 XP for the session.
Still better than Pathfinder.
I grabbed it when someone else linked it in a thread a few days ago.
I've never actually gotten passed the scene where Bran was pushed out of the tower in book or show, but the mechanics seem interesting. Roll and Keep seems like it would be a lot less swingy with d6 instead of d10.
How well would the game work for someone who's never read the books or seen the show? Could I just run a generic game where the players are all trying to build up their house? I still haven't really gotten that far in the book, since I'm also reading Eclipse Phase and shitposting on Veeky Forums and watching Evangelion and generally just procrastinating at life.
The system has very little swing to the point of a character who put the points into being good at something will succeed roughly 70% of the time even a high difficulty task. Even before bonuses. Not that I consider that a problem.
Combats is not great but if you played the eclipse phase anything is going to seem simpler. It's fast and brutal.
> better than pathfinder
Man talk about damned with faint praise.
I haven't played Eclipse Phase. I didn't even know Eclipse Phase was hard. I'm still reading it and not getting far, because of said procrastination. Is it a game where I could play or run without having read the books?
The only thing the books will give you is the sorts of shit that goes down in Westeros and hopefully a string grasp of the themes at play.
I say "hopefully" because despite how ridiculously obvious all of them are they still slip by people.
The rules for the game are in the game book, so no; you don't need to read the novels.
What I mean is "is the system so tailored to playing the events of the books or show that you can't enjoy it if you haven't experienced those things". I may end up not even using Westeros at all.
> eclipse phase
It's not as bad as Veeky Forums claims but it is complicated. The system is simple enough in principle but it's just has dozens of subsystems rules to remember.
Character creation takes fucking forever but.
As ASOIAF, I guess you don't have to read it but odds your players have and to be quite vocal about their opinions on your interpretation of the matter.
Oh, not at all.
There's even several setting-agnostic supplements for the system they turned out.
A nice system hampered by a terrible setting
So how do houses work? I mean, I know you can basically pimp your house, but from what I know, the Game of Thrones is a game where you either win or you die. That doesn't seem very conducive to party cooperation.
Is something where the players are all part of the same House and working together to build the house up and make it great a viable way to play the game? Or is it more for backstabbing and PVP?
Players are all supposed to be from the same House, or at least working for it.
Well you're supposed to be from the same house and work together to forward it. At least that was my understanding.
At our game store though, there are multiple groups playing concurrently, each representing a different house, and we're all kind of playing against one another. As in, actual groups VS. one another.
Oh, good. Like I said, still reading it. I'm only on the "how the mechanics work" section.
That sounds pretty awesome actually.
Would take a fairly skilled GM or group of GM's to pull off.
Well it's going pretty good so far, we've made it as far as the war of the five kings, and only one house exploded. Though that group just went and made another house.
Just be absolutely clear, a house is a noble family line.
Not an actual house. I know you probably knew that but it's an easy misunderstanding as someone who read X-men House of M.
Basically it's the way of creating a adventure party with an actual sense of shared heritage beyond 'we'll all meet in the same pub'
That sounds amazing. Tell us more.
>as someone who read X-men House of M.
What?
Also, presumably there's an actual building of some kind involved, for you to pimp out. I had been worried when reading that there was house creation that it would just be everyone creating their own factions and backstabbing each other, as with the show. That kind of thing is kind of hard to pull off in general, since the party is inherently split and PVP is shitty and frustrating.
>Tell us more
What you wanting to know? The game started right around the naming of the hand tourney and we've been going since then. Now we're in the war and actually sort-of combatting each other to an extent.
The house that exploded was a Riverlands house, the got wombo combo'd by both our house and the Cleganes.
No I meant more just having two playgroups play off each other.
I had one GM tried it a few years back with both play groups being on the other side of the same war but nothing really came of it.
Never really considered trying to work in the TV show as the game goes but not necessarily a bad idea. Only real TV show you could do it with actually.
The house of M was X-Men comic about magnetos children Quicksilver and Scarlet witch.
The common misconception was that magneto's actual place of residence was somehow relevant.
Anyway there is a bit about base building but the purpose of house creation is more about your characters lineage, history and their status within other noble families.
Intrigue and backstabbing important just as much is the show but players loyalty should ultimately be to their shared house and by extension the other players.
This shouldn't be a big deal but I personally find it makes a huge improvement to great play to have your players have a united origin and goal rather than being a cast of non compatible snowflakes
Roll dice, add all results is about as random as a d20 can make it, plus a hard limit. It really is subpar.
Change the Dice rolls and DCs to Dream Pod 9 Silhouette (roll all dices, take highest, additional 6s add to results) and a Song of Ice and Fire becomes playable.
That's factually wrong.
A D20 has roll has no bell curve whatsoever compare to the quite predictable curves of a roll and keep d6 system.
I'm a fan of the sillcore system though so kudos.
>Change the Dice rolls and DCs to Dream Pod 9 Silhouette (roll all dices, take highest, additional 6s add to results) and a Song of Ice and Fire becomes playable.
What?
Been rather enjoying the campaign i'm in so far. Only major complaint is that we're doing a bit of time skipping till the War of Five Kings so most of the sessions have been fairly crunch heavy as we pass by 6-8 months a go. The PC's were assembled to serve the fifth son of a minor lord out in the Riverlands. Mostly Sell Swords and Hedge knights brought in with the promise of proper knighthoods and perhaps some small patch of land somewhere.
of the 9 PC's we have 4 Dornishmen, 4 Northmen and 1 unlucky bastard out of the Stormlands. Currently it's been about...2-3 years in game over about six sessions. Currently the Northerners have proven to be just about worthless. The guy out of the Stormlands is alright...not that good but not as bad as the Northern punks. Could share some tales if ya'll be interested.
Not that user but think it's a good system. You roll your number d6s, take the highest and one for any additional D6s.
It scales nicely. It's easy to beat a two or three but getting a 10 is a yetzee.
I am quite interested so if you get chance tell me more.
So our first outing was heading up to the lands our House had been gifted in the Riverlands, some shitty backwoods place with really nothing there. had been ravaged by a plague during Robert's Rebellion and so most people wanted nothing to do with it. So our Lord, the 5th born son of the Head of House took us and some men on up. 2 Units of Infantry, paid to get them Veteran status.
So we arrive to the decrepit barely populated little Hamlet next to our Hall, not even a proper Castle. And we go about divvying up the various tasks among ourselves. This when the Northerners mark their first failings.
The Dornes.
Ser Bole, Tourney Knight and competent at Intrigues. Champion for our Lord and Second in command of the Forces.
Ser Culinarys (my guy) Former Sellsword commander, good at Warfare, Intrigue and Combat. Commander of our Lord's forces
Ser Tristan, Exceptional Swordsman. Forward Thinking and Body Guard to our Lord.
Ser Gotti, A strange knight whose gifted in the arts of Healing as well as Combat. Also decent at Intrigue.
The Northerners and Stormborn.
Garret Snow. Woodsman, Tracker and way too obsessed with breeding Hounds.
Arlen (can't recall last name) Is supposed to be some sort of healer or poisoner? he's done literally nothing but sit there every session. No clue what he does.
Ashten, Exceptional Horse rider and trainer. Alright at fighting. Decent archer.
Dorn #3 can't remember name, but he's supposed to be our Scout. He has no stealth, only bought up his Survival by 1. No keen senses, Ok Awareness bu no specialties. But his fighting and endurance are both 5s...not that he ever actually wades out into combat if he can avoid it.
Ser Malcolm (only Northerner who didn't complain about being given a free Knighthood from the GM). Also no clue what this guy does...has just kind of sat on the couch complaining about headaches.
Ser Barlow Storm. Far as I can tell this guy is only good at archery.
Will cont later, must get to work
it sounds really promising, but i have no idea how to make a campaign work, should book/show events be changed? on what scale does the campaign operate? etc
The ASOIAF rpg produced some of the fondest memories I've ever had playing games.
"And then the house mummer ran down Walder Frey on a horse" will forever be the greatest possible conclusion to a two-year long campaign I could imagine