Ruling is hard. This was maybe my answer to Tolkien, whom, as much as I admire him, I do quibble with...

>Not the point that LOTR is a bad story for its philosophy
But that is what he's saying though. Read his quote again and actually try to understand what Gurm is saying without projecting your own opinions on it. He's saying that he admires Tolkien as an author while still "quibbling" with him. He's pretty much saying that he enjoys LotR but thinks that it would have been better if it was more morally grey (note: more, there's already shades of grey in LotR no matter what Tolkien's critics may claim) and brought up points about how Aragorn's tax policy really wasn't all that different from Sauron's or how Mordor really was more progressive in certain areas than the Free People. Completely ignoring that the tone and style Tolkien went for was that of a medieval epic like Beowulf, not common ass trash fantasy found in a pulp magazine.

It's intended to be a claim of superiority to Tolkien, but ironically you don't see much in the way of tax policy, or even ruling in GoT either, but instead see interpersonal drama.

Actually what are the tax policies of Westeros? I'm just a dirty show watcher peasant and I don't remember them mentioning anything about tax policy.

>What he tries to show is that unrestrained power structures generally provide the powerful with a license to exploit and oppress
That's exactly what Tolkien did. GRRM seems more interested in showing that such oppression is sometimes necessary or even for the greater good.

How DOES the Economy of half the places in GoT work? They don't seem to produce anything other than assholes.

I actually haven't been on Veeky Forums in a while. Is this thread really that regular

>It's intended to be a claim of superiority to Tolkien
GRRM is a huge fan of Tolkien though.

It's pretty regular. I haven't seen the entire quote posted in a while though.

>But Tolkien doesn’t ask the question: What was Aragorn’s tax policy?

Hey Martin, what happens if an economy all of a sudden loses both its workers and sees the value of its main type of investment drop to zero?

Does LOTR holds up as reading material?
Or is some just shitty clasic you "have" to read like frankenstein, you know those kind of book that are famous for getting their genre to be mainstream but are boring as fuck to read now
Never saw any of the movies and i dont plan on doing it

But nearly all the rulers we read about experience great tragedy, loss and pain with many failures or pyrrhic victories during their reigns.

You don't like Frankenstein? What kind of pleb are you?

His writing is shit
His opinions are shit
His physique & looks are shit
George RR Martin is gross and he's a fucking bleeding heart liberal faggot

The Slimarillion is a lot more fun. It's a chain of fuckups they try to fix by becoming more hardcore.

While the gods repeatedly tell them that that's not going to work, that is.

I'll send you another angry email about eyelashes you fat fuck, see if I wont.

Since this is basically an asoiaf thread, can we discuss the visions Daenerys had in the House of Undying? I'm specifically interested in those.

>From a smoking tower, a great stone beast takes wing, breathing shadow fire.
>A corpse stands at the prow of a ship, eyes bright in his dead face, grey lips smiling sadly.

>Three fires must you light, one for life and one for death and one to love.
>Three mounts must you ride, one to bed and one to dread and one to love.
>Three treasons will you know, once for blood and once for gold and once for love.

Does you party travel? Do they use roads? Tax policy matters for road maintenance. Do they go by ship? Then docking facilities need maintenance. In both cases highwaymen and pirates have to be fought, and that takes money too. Is any of this fun and entertaining? No, so why the fuck worry about it. It's called "fantasy" for a reason. You should leave the shit pieces of reality out of it.

>Does LOTR holds up as reading material?
I'd say yes. Just be aware that Tolkien wasn't trying to mimic the style of contemporary authors at the time, but rather took great effort (and was very successful) in recreating the style and tone of an ancient text which has been added to by countless authors over centuries and eventually compiled by him into an understandable narrative in modern times.

>Never saw any of the movies
Don't. The movies are pretty trash. Or rather, The Fellowship is alright, but everything after it is outright trash.

Going by your post, I'd say you wouldn't like it. Maybe Harry Potter is your type of thing.

Not that guy and it's been a while since I've read Frankenstein but I didn't like it

Frankenstein is a dick for no reason and In general it's too flowery and emotional

Fair point about the personal drama. There is some engagement with economy, tax and the likes, but it doesn't really add up, which is fair enough. To write about something realistically you have to know your stuff, and at the end of the day he's not an economist or historian specialising in the affairs of the realm. Neither are most of his audience as well, so it's alright.

As far as I'm aware it seems to be quite a maritime economy, considering the rivers and trade with the Free Cities.

The Reach is rich in wheat and other foodstuffs, ships up the Mander. Has the highest population of the regions. The Arbor produces luxury wine. Oldtown is the biggest city in Westeros and has a near monopoly on the trade of scholarship.

Dorne's population is centralised on the Greenblood river and the west coast. It seems to ship off luxuries, oranges, lemons and Dornish gold wine.

I know little about the Stormlands. It's a fairly mountainous and desolate region with lots of storms. No major cities.

The Riverlands has lots of small towns such as Harroway's and Saltpans. A lot of trade presumably happens over the rivers, and it's a fairly fertile region.

The Westerlands are hilly with lots of gold mines. Lannisport is their principal city.Among the hills it seems fairly fertile.

The Vale is very mountainous with the fertile Vale of Arryn in its centre. The edges are all windblown. Gulltown is its largest city.

The North is the largest region, and sparsely populated. I guess it has a strong lumber trade from the large woods. White Harbour, its main city, is on the mouth of a river, situated to receive goods from further inland.

Fuck all is exported from the Iron Islands.

Tyrion puts a tax on brothels during ACOK which makes him unpopular. There's other examples, but I can't remember exactly.

>too flowery
Then you might enjoy Tolkien. There's not much prose going on at all in his books, in fact. Everything's pretty straight forward and simple.

>Neither are most of his audience
Nor am I, but you don't have to be to be able to tell that things don't add up in GRRM's world.

The smoking tower vision is commonly associated with three lies Daenerys must slay.
> A blue-eyed king with a red sword in his hand who cast no shadow
The first lie is that Stannis Baratheon is the Prince That Was Promised, bearing the legendary Lightbringer. He is not.
>A cloth dragon amidst a cheering crowd
The second lie is that Aegon Targaryen is the heir to the throne and a true dragon. He is not.
>From a smoking tower, a great stone beast takes wing, breathing shadow fire.
Since Stannis and Aegon are both pretenders to the Iron Throne, the third lie is probably also connected to a pretender. A tower probably represents Oldtown (unless it's the Tower of the Hand, that was burned down). Euron Greyjoy, another pretender, is on his way to sack it, and he also intends to steal a dragon from Daenerys with a valyrian magic horn. The great stone beast taking wing probably is connected to that.
So the third lie is that Euron Greyjoy is a god. He is not.

He's the kind of writer who sniffs his own farts too much.

I guess when the world is at stake from eternal darkness, how a ruler does his tax policy in the epilog just doesn't matter.

And his own writing is really beginning to suffer. Winter is coming, so all this rabble rousing we saw before was completely fucking irrelevant.

Not only that, but because he really has no way out unless its another Load Bearing Dark Lord like the ones he found silly.

So, how does your tax policy exactly works during the 20 years long winters that should logically kill your entire setting, or when each logistical part of your setting, starting from the size of the setting itself, makes absolutely zero sense?
Maybe, if he had understood this concept before starting his series, wich then developed in a multitude of admittedly useless subplots that won't advance the story, he would have finished his books in less than twenty years.

Kinda agree. Stopped reading after really reading after book 2 I think. Skipped pretty much everything that wasn't Daenerys or Tyrion for 3 and 4. Read the wiki article for the rest.

The first couple books are honestly not bad. They're refreshingly different from what you normally get in fantasy. But after a while, inverting/subverting/twisting all the tropes gets boring.

>No really guys, the sister fucking child murderer is really a good guy!

>I do quibble with. Lord of the Rings had a very medieval philosophy
How could someone come to this conclusion after reading Lord of the Rings? It is quintessentially an early 20th century work, and has a very modern "philosophy" guiding it. You have notions that people become good or bad, and aren't just intrinsically such. And if you want to apply that test to ruling classes, just take a look at Denethor. He might not be a king, but he's an empowered ruler of the single biggest country for the good guys. He's certainly good, trying his damndest to destroy, or at least shield his people from the power of Mordor. He's expended himself such that he's lost his supernatural longevity. And he cracks, goes nuts through the visions that Sauron sends him via the Palantir. The idea of a good king being overwhelmed and turning to evil is not something you generally associate with medieval philosophy.

Nor do you get other themes present in LoTR, like the addictive power of evil, most clearly exemplified in the ring. Or the cost of victory being one that's not trivial to bear, what with guys like Theoden dying and his line ending, the Elves passing over to the west, or Frodo's totally not PTSD leading to him to a premature leaving of this world. And let's not forget that the chief heroes, the ones who actually make the victory of the west possible, are the ones who are supposed to be stand ins for middle-class british people dumped in an archaic world.

Seriously, the more I look at GRRM's comment, the more stupid it is.

But Jaime is a good guy.

I usually don't mind, but wildlings shooting arrows to the top of the wall is absurd.

I wondered that too a few times.
I didn't read ASoIF but in GoT, there are a few comment that really make you think about the whole scale of the realm.

John Snow asks how many people live in King's Landing, to which it is answered "about a million, give or take" and to which Snow comments "more than in the whole North".
How could the North even have thought it stood a chance against Joffrey, the Lannisters and the Tyrells ?

A single city had more potential recruits than the whole North.
And, given the low yields and manpower needs of medieval agriculture, one couldn't be wrong to assume there was at least 10 times as many people in the Reach and Westerlands, if only so there's enough food being produced to feed King's Landing.

If those scales are correct, then Tywin was correct to be smug about the war :
He had unlimited supplies of men compared to the North and only needed to have enough gold to pay said recruits.
He could win the war simply by losing enough battles...

I'll be honest Veeky Forums. I don't like Tolkien. I never liked Tolkien. I had to read the Hobbit in E-lit back when I was in 6th grade and had a lukewarm reception to it, but gave Tolkien the fair due that maybe Lord of the Rings would be more to my liking, but it wasn't. And when I looked into the other books covering the greater cosmology like Silmarillion all I could say was "This doesn't make any sense. Noone in these stories behaves or speaks like people anymore. At least in the Hobbit there was Bilbo and the Dwarves and there was no sign that Gandalf was some kind of angel rather than a mortal dude."
But all that did was just make me shrug in the end. I mean what we understand as fantasy today has nothing in common with all the bells and whistles Tolkien had in mind for his works, and we retained all the good parts, and there's always other authors like Howard or Pratchett if you want more humanised character stories.

AND THEN THERE IS THIS FAT FUCK!
Words can't fucking describe how much I loathe this GRR Martin fuck. This man fucking BUTCHERED the genre and look at his fucking statement, him gloating about his supposed fucking depth concerning his "work"! He's intoxicated just about every outlet of high fantasy with his absolutely barroque approach to storytelling, characters, and narrative. He thinks that taking a shit on a plate and propping it up in front of us is some kind of mirror to view the "true" conflict between good and evil. This cynical bastard has done an exactly negative contribution to modern literature and I will never accept the fact that he wasn't the one to take the Alzheimers up his brain instead of Pratchett, an actually skilled satirist with something relevant to say about the human condition.

Fuck Martin, fuck him unconditionally, and fuck Game of Thrones.

I don't even care about how much mundane ammunition the party has, why would I care about mundane tax policies?

That's show only but still bear in mind a war isn't just about numbers. In fact in a wartorn region like the Riverlands having too large an army would probably just cause starvation.

>GRRM
>Cynical
Pick one

Yes. You may not put in a single body of a published text, but you should have notes/thoughts on it if you are going to include descriptions of certain crops in any published text.

Stop half-assing it just because it requires you to read and learn new things.

Where are all the grain silos? Why isn't surviving the next winter a bigger concern for government? Feeding a whole nation through 5+ years of winter on a medieval economy should be a constant concern, the overwhelmingly biggest function of government.

Instead they all burnt the riverlands the fuck down in the middle of autumn. I could understand Robb sending his men a-reaving, hes mad with grief and basically a child, but it's motherfucking Tywin, a middle aged hardened professional who first turns it into that sort of war.

What the fuck?

>This man fucking BUTCHERED the genre

Could you explain?

No, one rant a thread is enough, I think.

He doesn't burn his lands. He doesn't care about the Riverlands, and the hungrier are, the weaker they will be come winter when the lords have to beg to him for help. It's the same deal with Littlefinger stockpiling food in the Vale.

>all this rabble rousing we saw before was completely fucking irrelevant.
This is the biggest strike against ASoIaF as a series, and the biggest reason I lost interest after the third book or so when I saw where it was heading (pretty much exactly where the tv-series has gone) and realized that none of the political intriguing was actually relevant to the greater plot, and that was like the one thing that interested me about the first book. The fact that the political intriguing became really sloppy really fast certainly also helped. I think I might have been able to stand it even though it was in the end irrelevant if it had only been written good.

The Reach is supplying Lannisters with food, Riverlands are supplying Starks. This is why it's perfectly logical to burn and pillage the whole region - it will starve the enemy out, and won't affect you at all.

Necessary point that the show fucked up the scale, the North while being scarcely populated is as big as the other Six Kingdom.Combined.
Feudalism, especially Martin's version, doesn't work like that.
In reality, Tywin was absolutely doomes as soon as he chose to stop at Harrenhal.
You can't recruit an entire city, or the entire population of your country, else your army starves. You can't stop an army with no supply lines while performing chevauchée, else your army starves. You can't keep your army for too long, else the rest of the country starves.
Robb could win by simply patrolling the Riverlands, since he had the only standing army with established supply lines.

Don't think baby orc is a thing in Tolkien world

Everything involving any form of scale in GRRM's books is absurd. Which might have something to do with him never having stood on one.

>The fact that the political intriguing became really sloppy really fast certainly also helped
You should probably re-read Theon chapters in ADwD. Grand northern conspiracy is more interesting than any of Littlefinger's schemes.

Tolkien fanboys are the worst.

Enjoy wasting x hours learning about physics just so you can make a boulder crushing someone "realistic"
If it isn't part of the story, or at least relevant to it, it isn't even remotely necessary.

The only reason I even do as much as I do is because designing deities is fun.

"What is [location]'s tax policy" has kinda turned into a buzzword at this point.

Because Tywin is an incompetent with zero political understanding loathed for his war crimes from all Westeros.
We are talking about someone who was kicked out by a madman for incompetency and that couldn't figure out why breaking the only recognized form of war rights was a bad idea.

I'm going to take a guess at what user meant by this:

GRRM, despite his books being not very good, was wildly successful. This meant that other authors looked at him and said "oh look, a money printer." In addition, readers started to want more stuff like GoT to be out there. These two things fed into one another until the prevailing attitude of fantasy was trying to ape GoT, which our original user thinks is a bad thing. For the record, I also think it's a damn shame.

Not to mention, Aragorn did hunt down the disorganised orcs, southerners and eastlings. In case of the latter ones, at least those who refused to go back home. But most of them probably didn't really feel all too happy about fighting for an evil overlord anyway.
The other parts in GRRMs quote are quite easily explained/handwaved. The Numenorians back in the day weren't idiots who built their cities in places that could easily flood and destroy them, and the Pelennor made for good land, letting them harvest enough crop.

Maybe. There was never a definitive answer as to what exactly where Orcs, but apparently he says in one of his letters that there were female Orcs.

While in literature I'd say both Tolkien and GRRMs approaches to worldbuilding are valid, I'd reckon that in RPGs having a GRRM-esque "this is basically real life but with magic and dragons" is easier to GM for than the Tolkien-esque pseudo-mythical, epic style.
This is mainly due to the interactive nature of RPGs.
If a player asks the GM what Not!Aragorn's tax policy is and it's feasible that his character would know this information, the GM should probably provide an answer, even if it's just "he's fair and just, taking only as much as each is able to give" or some shit like that.
In literature, if something isn't mentioned, alluded to, or implied, it may as well not exist or not be important. Who tops: Achilles or Patroclus? In the Iliad it doesn't matter, but if you're playing a game set in the Greek camp and the players try to sneak into Achilles' tent and see what's going on, you'll need to answer that question.
btw, it's probably Patroclus. No man can handle the spear of Achilles after all

Also I guess the "real life with dragons" style requires less buy-in from players, as they can think like real-life people. If you're trying to emulate something like Tolkien or Homer, you also have to take into account genre conventions if you want to be true to the thing.

I don't know, I don't care, and it doesn't matter anyway.

>So Veeky Forums are tax policies important?

If they were, GRRM would have included some in ASOIAF.

Or maybe he's just a fat hypocrite criticizing a better man and writer, I dunno.

Martin thinks that we've never moved beyond feudal oppression, just that we've changed the appearance.

Which is another problem with his setting, for something about feudalism, you sure don't see much of it.

Considering that it's pretty much the same place fantasy already was in I see no reason to be particularly upset about it.

>about feudalism
Are you sure?

He didnt understand SHIT about Tolkien or his work.

It's miles above that mundane materialistic shit this fat fuck raves about.

Read history for realism

It holds up in my opinion, but if you can't stomach classic literature (Frankenstein is an excellent book) then you'll have no patience for it.

>implying a half-god would play bottom
Greek gods and half-gods are way to far up their own asses for this. Achilles tops.

That's the problem, I'm not sure.

From the looks of it, it's just about angry cunts yelling at one another.

Additionally, where are all the peasants? And farms? Why does Geography seem to be a non-issue with the exception of rivers and walls? Why does no-one seem to know fuck all about what's going on? Is nothing ever written down in ASoIaF? Why is there a prolonged conflict with no decent consolidation of power? Why does this feel like a story about the Balkan War of the 90's more than a story about the War of the Roses? Why is Martin's grasp of Religion so completely shit?

In the end I just figure he's an American post-modernist writer trying to write edgy "realistic" stuff. And it sucks.

Also if everyone is dying all the time, and there's nothing actually worth fighting for, why does anyone give a shit? That's literally the setup for Soap Operas.

Pic Related.

Why is Westeros a weird cryptoeuropean mashup between feudalism and the enlightenment without any of the unique features about Europe that made those social arrangements come to be?

Where the fuck is the Catholic church?

Middle Earth is not medieval. It's dark ages or something.

the seven are the catlick church.

Why would non-profits not be impacted by tax policy.

Not taxing something is a tax policy.

GRRM Isn't a historian or a particularly educated man, he taught high-school level English at community college, why the fuck would he know anything about the nuances of political/social history?

This. Tax policy is irrelevant to Tolkien in the same way gasoline is irrelevant to an electric car - tangentially related to the broader subject at hand, I suppose, but intentionally not the focus of this specific work.

Tolkien set out to make myth, not historical documentation. There is an extensive mythic history giving context to his works but none of it is intended to be realistic - quite the opposite. And as a work of myth it succeeds.

GRRM on the other hand tries to be realistic but fails because tax policy notwithstanding no food or clothing could ever realistically be as lavish as his multi-page descriptions.

Also there were no orc women, let alone orc babies in orc cradles.

>the seven are the catlick church.

Those cucks aren't fit to illuminate an inquisitor's garden party, never mind weilding the kind of social power the irl church wielded.

>Where the fuck is the Catholic church?
Faith of the Seven. It's a pretty big deal in the books, especially in the A Feast For Crows, where the High Sparrow, the local pope, is a very big player.

>Is nothing ever written down in ASoIaF?
Clearly it is since they have history dating back, what, 10000 years into the past or something, which really only adds to the confusion.

Makes me mad that D&D are such hack writers.
>Oh shit, what do we do with the High Sparrow, there are only two seasons left and we need zombies vs dragons happening!
>Just blow everything up lol
>What do we do with Littlefinger, a guy we established was the smartest player of the game, with years to prepare himself, should he ever stand trial?
>lol, the kid that was missing had a vision and Sansa said he lies, just kill him off already
I want this dragon ride to end.

Aye, but Patroclus is the elder and is also the better warrior, with a higher kill count
Also, Achilles' ma wasn't exactly high up the divine pecking order
Also also, while any Greek Hero, especially a demi-god, would have to keep face in front of society at large, what happens behind closed tent flaps wouldn't make him lose face

He claims to.

>why the fuck would he know anything about the nuances of political/social history?
Because he's writing a book series which purportedly exemplifies those very things.

Maybe because an user picking up hearsay on fucking Veeky Forums and applying a bit of critical thought could and would come up with a more coherent world than this bastard within the scope of two days.
It may be tough to know the exact specifics of how things work, but it's EASY to notice when something doesn't work at all and anyone trying to be taken seriously for "the details" should check if their fucking setting isn't working.

Here's a hint that'll tell you how fucking terrible the economic side is thought out:
The reason the Lannisters are so rich that they routinely lend out all their money and have so many lords indebted to them?
They own a gold mine.
That's it
No interesting Westerosi banking system, just a literal fucking gold mine, the single most boring way to write a source of wealth, trumping even "a genie did it" since that at least implies the existence of wish-granting genies

Only if it's relevant to an interesting part of the story/campaign, which in the case of tax policies, it probably isn't.

>Just blow everything up lol
THAT makes you mad? Not the fact that the Sparrows were adapted as moustache-twirling religious fanatics, taking over the city like a terrorist group and killing the gays? Not the fact that when Cersei blew up a church with all those people in it, she faced no reprecussions whatsoever, when she should have been fucking lynched by the rioting mob?

>Tolkien has easily defined, established, moral absolutes of both good and evil
>GRRM blurs the lines and tries to demonstrate how everything and everyone is a certain shade

It's a pretty simple distinction. Two different stories, two different styles. Neither one is inferior or superior

I'd never trust Zeus not to stop by and stick his dick in just because he can. Always be prepared.
Always.

Think about the agriculture that's necessary with the whole "year-long winters" thing

A Song of Ice and Fire makes no sense if you scrutinize it even a little

Since this thread is devolving into a "talk about Game of Thrones" thread I'm going to ask what you guys think of Jon and Daenerys' relationship.
>How will they react to the "Aegon" reveal?
>Will Jon want the Iron Throne or not?
>Will Daenerys share the Iron Throne or not?
/tv/ wasn't having any actual discussions so why not here? Veeky Forums will likely have read the books at least anyway.

The worst part is that D&D is used as an excuse for everything now, every new fantasy author claims to have based their fiction on a campaign they were running and then get ultra defensive when you ask for evidence how their ultra complicated magic system worked in a TTRPG because it seems impossible to gamify.

>They own a gold mine.
Whis has also been drained for a good long time, which makes you wonder why the word hasn't spread. Why didn't we hear of any rumors about Lannister being a brokeass house before the fact suddenly became relevant to the plot?

>it's a Wesley and Data episode

When it comes to the show, I'm always guided by the principle - what would be the most cliche, predictable and lame way things would go down? I then come up with something really fucking bad, and lo and behold, it happens in the next episode.

>nearly all rulers we read about
There's the bit. That's not an accurate sample of rulers broadly. You commonly read about the ones who had interesting lives because they're interesting, not because they were common. Everyone It's a matter of course that nobody expects you to read about the successful and just rule of the kings after or before king fuck-up the fifth. Fuck-up the fifth's life is a more engaging subject and so gets more attention.

Everyone knows Caligula but nobody now remembers Trajan.

At which point, when they pull in time travel, it's more like a cap stone to a setting not really making sense then an ass pull.