What do you think about westeros? Good worldbuilding? Bad worldbuilding?

from someone who glanced at the show a few times, they're indistinguishable from one another, dragons notwithstanding, and the religion being bolted on as an afterthought and excuse for fuckery is standard HBO pandering just like the uninteresting nudity and meaningless violence. Kids are welcome to it, because when they're watching this show, they're not driving or writing into the parts of the internet that adults use.

Then no doubt /tv/ would love it; I've never seen a better example of nerd outrage at 'normies' invading their realm than the response to Game of Throne's popularity. If the show did not exist, this board would be all over it.

Naming conventions are lazy as fuck besides the essos free cities, the reach, and the vale
Dothraki are dumb
Lack of pagan religion in westeros is dumb
Everything else is interesting or cool

>Lack of pagan religion in westeros is dumb
>what is the north
it existed, but then the church of the seven went and removed them

The map is pure shit.

That's actually a pretty nice cover, the pulpyness is just the icing on the cake.

They lost baiscally all their power after maegor raped them
Wouldn't be too hard for neo pagans to crop up before sparrows are a thing

Iron Isles, is pagan, theres the island of the green men which you can see on the map who are also pagan. But otherwise yeah they don't have a huge presence.

the font needs to be changed but otherwise it's fabulous

>Lack of pagan religion in westeros is dumb
Paganism and the faith of the Seven existing alongside would be pretty cool. I mean, from what I understand, people in Europe didn't just clearly move from paganism to Christianity. Pagans and Christians exited alongside in the samea reas, and more importantly, same people took part in both Christian and pagan religious rites. People believing in the Seven, but also showing respect to older gods just to be safe or because it's the done thing in times, would be pretty neat.

>Series so old Robert Jordan was still alive when it started
George pls

An interesting example of this can be seen in eastern Europe around the 11th century, where some Slavic peoples who practiced ancestor worship would demand their ancestors be baptized before they converted to Christianity.

That's the kind of thing fantasy writers could stand to learn from real history. In a lot of fantasy, even good fantasy, things tend to be sort of cleaner and more clear-cut in reality. Cultures, religions, and such tend to be more distinct from each other and purer in a way than in real life. Examples of different religious practices coexisting and mixing would go a long way towarda making fantasy settings more lifelike and believable.

well, they still exist in the north and in the iron islands

the south appears to be very much "team seven" tho- and i guess somehwhat LoL now that stannis brought that over

Fuck Westeros, we need to go to Sothoryos and see what's going on there.

It's got the best historical worldbuilding that I've ever seen. The War of the Five Kings, the (latest) Greyjoy rebellion, Robert's Rebellion, The War of the Ninepenny Kings; all of it follows smoothy from one event and generation to the next, all the way back to before Aegon's Conquest. The history of the setting actually feels like real history in a way most other fantasy novels don't even get close to.

That said, the map of Westeros and Essos looks like two rectangles awkwardly trying to fuck, so it's far from perfect.

>“A start?” said Ellaria Sand, incredulous. “Gods forbid. I would it were a finish. Tywin Lannister is dead. So are Robert Baratheon, Amory Lorch, and now Gregor Clegane, all those who had a hand in murdering Elia and her children. Even Joffrey, who was not yet born when Elia died. I saw the boy perish with mine own eyes, clawing at his throat as he tried to draw a breath. Who else is there to kill? Do Myrcella and Tommen need to die so the shades of Rhaenys and Aegon can be at rest? Where does it end?”

>"Oberyn wanted vengeance for Elia. Now the three of you want vengeance for him. I have four daughters, I remind you. Your sisters. My Elia is fourteen, almost a woman. Obella is twelve, on the brink of maidenhood. They worship you, as Dorea and Loreza worship them. If you should die, must El and Obella seek vengeance for you, then Dorea and Loree for them? Is that how it goes, round and round forever? I ask again, where does it end? I saw your father die. Here is his killer. Can I take a skull to bed with me, to give me comfort in the night? Will it make me laugh, write me songs, care for me when I am old and sick?"

Reminder that Doran is not a genius mastermind, but a dupe who's dooming Dorne with his revenge quest.

Nothing. It's africa. Get over it.

It should be noted that GRRM by his own admission literally does not engage in "worldbuilding" the same way some folks do on here; he did not write up Westeros and Essos and then write stories there, he wrote his story and as he began writing he spiraled off into adding details and background to flesh these backstories and histories of other people out and filled it out after the fact, pretty much like most professional authors.
Robert Baratheon wasn't created at the time as Robert's Rebellion; he needed a poor but publicly well-loved king to drive home the point that there is no such thing as "happy endings" where everything works out automatically and you get to quit living and that you have to deal with what comes afterword when you meet your grand goal, so he created the Rebellion.
Because he's a solid writer who understands that history shapes the personalities and events of modern people and that to some degree we are always the sum of past experiences of those who came before us he frequently does add lots of history to characters to flesh them out, but he doesn't worldbuild for the sake of worldbuilding.

He's admittedly openly in fact that his editor often has to remind him of minor character names and houses and details as he writes because they were created as background info to the story, not as a project in and of themselves.

What about all that stuff on the Targs and their history?

The Targaryen Dynasty seems to be the single most fleshed out part of the setting, with lots and lots and lots of detail, but that's because kings and their legacies is kind of a recurring theme in the series.
None of the other Great Houses have anything more then anecdotes about them despite most being around as long or longer then the Targs have ruled Westeros and being of equal importance to the plot at least.

He's a Targaryan loyalist whose dislikes the current regime cause they fucked up his House's bid to become top dogs by marrying his sister to the Crown Prince. Watching the Lannisters tear each other apart is a bonus.

Had to make an excuse to justify an entire royal dynasty being one big tribute to his incest and then he had to explain where all the bad ass dragons this family controlled went.

Not telling shit about your world is apparently world building.
This guy gets it

It's probably because the world consists of various maps that were all drawn to fit onto a page in a novel before being combined into a big world.

I find Essos' geography rather boring and unnaturally big compared to Westeros. It's like an afterthought.

>People believing in the Seven, but also showing respect to older gods just to be safe or because it's the done thing in times, would be pretty neat.
And most Noble Houses, kept their Godswood after converting to the Faith.

>worldbuilding
does anyone else find this term nauseating? Write a fucking story

I do not find it nauseating precisely but as someone who writes a lot and not only for my regularly scheduled D&D game or whatever it is, I am aware that there is a strong difference.
It's like writing for a newspaper versus writing for a fiction novel; they're completely different things that share a skill the same way walking down a paved sidewalk in a clean neighborhood and hiking up Mount Everest both involve your legs at some point; vastly different executions.

It's just you

>after maegor crushed the faith the new high septon was much more passive
>he rewrote the entire religion
>the new church is more about keeping the peace and keeping the peasents safe than the good old fire and brimstone
>instead of chocking new religions in their cribs the new church preaches helping these new religions develop past their barabaric stages into more productive and civilized beliefs
>for the most part the new church is just an extention of the kings power and a tool in for him to use to try to stop holy wars between the seven kingdoms years before they begin
>however the septons have grown fat and lazy leading to several relgious wars over the centurys

It's ok.

The map and world as a whole aren't too great, but there are plenty of cool individual locations and history

>afyer the new church is established many of the more zealous septons ran away from kingslanding and settled in the vale
>traditionalist believe that the andals are the chosen people of the seven and all others should kneel before them
>take much stranger stances on sins than the new church and doesn't care about peasents
>most religious wars in the seven kingdoms is started by traditionalist catching a whif of a new religion and trying to kick the shit out of it
>this has led to several crown v vale wars which is usually some of the most bloody wars in westeros history because its the fuckivaleous
>traditionalist are also very anti valyrian and want pure blooded andal kings

Considering that it's a term that makes sense and isn't in any way incompatible with "writing a fucking story", finding the term nauseating requires some kind of brain problems.

>other sects of the faith include the church of baelor who just want to build cool shit in the name of the seven, the sparrows who mix traditionlost ideals and new church ideals,and a weird northern church who believe the old gods fathered the new gods and that the new gods are their rightful heirs

>It's got the best historical worldbuilding that I've ever seen.
The dynasties are way too stable.

It depends on the angle. As far as the familial relationships, grudges, alliances and assorted politics go, it's excellent. As a logically consistent fantasy world, it's shit. Also, for something that purports to show the "true face of the middle ages", it sure focuses a hell of a lot on everything constantly being the level of shit that actual Europe barely ever got to.

>series sold on "realism"
>800 foot walls and a poor emulation of medieval politics and society
GoT will pollute the fantasy genre

Reminder that Ellaria Sand gleefully kills Myrcella in the show.

Considering that ASoIaF is still better than most of the fantasy genre, that isn't actually a terrible thing. Writers getting interested in doing what this series tries to do or claims to have done can only be a positive thing, I'd say. Sure, there will be a lot of derivative crap - which is business as usual, not a new development - but there are bound to also be writers who'll pull off the medieval politic and sort of fantastic realism and all that.

I do too. People get overly consumed with it and they just make shit up to make shit up rather than using it for any interesting artistic purpose.

Cersei's revenge on her for that is amazing.

It's kinda funny; Dorne was widely criticized for adding new characters and new storylines in book 4 and having it all amount to very little in the book itself, and the show's solution was to apparently take all of those characters and boil them down to ONE character and to make an existing character also exactly like that one character, to drag the plotline out even longer and make it somehow matter even less then it already did, and finally just kill off the entirety of the Dornish cast in the new season rather then deal with it any longer.

They somehow made the least liked and least relevant part of the novels even less liked and less relevant.
I can't decide if that's impressive or what.

Oh, the fantasy genre was horseshit already and don't pretend it wasn't.
Pretty much ALL entertainment genres are filled almost entirely with complete fucking garbage which is why you only really remember a few of them.
Taking a piss in a toilet that someone already forgot to flush doesn't make it any worse.

One thing I appreciate is the same names being everywhere like Robert and such

It's better than 99% of fantasy worlds because it is internally consistent, has a single worldbuilder instead of a bunch of freelancers, and has strong aesthetics that can be easily adapted to players.

It's been literally 1000 years since the Andal Crusades conquered Westeros. I'd say the amount of "paganism" is more than you'd expect given that fact.

That's because Dorne and the Vale are like Euron; they're intended to come in later in the war/history as other stronger powers weaken and die off.

...

Does this "History" not take place within one year or something in the books?
That was my biggest gripe with it.

Bandwagoners have come and gone. Mainly it's people who treated the knowledge they could say fuck and talk about tits and rape as the saviour of the genre and simply try and pile on cynical shit ("all the heroes are actually bad guys!!!2") instead of actually including any depth or nuance. At least derivative high fantasy is less pretentious.

No? The War of the 5 Kings is at least 4 years long by Book 4. The first book is all 1 year.

youtube.com/watch?v=QmKhGqWcJGY

I had no idea, wow.

Repeating digits are always right.

It works for england and the upper part of westeros to.

This 100%.
I actually read the books before the show because of Veeky Forums. Pretty pathetic when a fanbase ruins your enjoyment of a thing.

Honestly, most real life countries and landmasses look like that, user.

>Implying that literally every real place name isn't literally a bastardisation of a generic word in a some random language.

The fucking earth fits into a rectangle if you want to be that reductive about it.

The entire thing has taken place over about 4 and a half years or so.
Each book is about a year, while 4 and 5 mostly take place about the same time and the closing chapters of book 5 takes place over a few months or so.
The show is much worse about passage of time then the books because a lot of the show watchers don't care about the internal consistency and silly shit like Littlefinger teleporting across Westeros to appear in multiple scenes as a way to visually indicate intrigue is happening.
I mean Dany in the final episode of the last season somehow crossed a distance of hundreds and hundreds of miles from Dragonstone to somewhere far north of the Wall just to make a dramatic rescue of Jon so she could properly fuck her cousin.

Exactly my point.

what ass are you pulling this out of?

The way the kingdom is ruled is unrealistic. It seems that the small council rules everything alone, and the maesters and the lords rule the great provinces(North, Vale, etc) by their own.
The weather should have killed most humans a long time ago to the point even small villages would not exist.
Cities are positioned on weird places. Lannisport and Oldtown are on the wrong place . I

It has been far more than 1000 years

I believe the wheel of time fanbase and asoiaf used to argue all the time before the show.

>I mean Dany in the final episode of the last season somehow crossed a distance of hundreds and hundreds of miles from Dragonstone to somewhere far north of the Wall just to make a dramatic rescue of Jon so she could properly fuck her cousin.
that was second last episode and wasn't a fast magic teleport. The were stuck on that island for at least a day, long enough for thoros to die and freeze and the lake to refreeze and freeze more solidly. they just time skipped the boring stareing constest.

A bit of both.
George is bad with maps and scale, to name one thing, but I find the people inhabiting the world to be rather compelling.
All in all I've had fun with the books. Would play in the setting.

This is neat.

This is fucking hilarious. I laughed for a good two minutes.

>Not telling shit about your world is apparently world building.
Oh fuck off, I'd rather an open sandbox that provides the tools for gaming rather than some autistically restrictive "canon" where I have nerds whining all the time

Aren't we talking about a book, though?

I love this mappamundi style
All the easter eggs are a treat too
Here's a huge 10mb version of that Westeros map:
mega.nz/#!6l8HiKpA!KCoTRT119Wk3oOVKsPjkS-xPCY009Kpz_saBXynl9a4

forgot this link too, it's all the maps of this style I could find
imgur.com/a/mY4e6

>The Shadow

What's that about? Looks neat.

Like a lot of things it's all left a little vague, but it's implied to be like the inverse of the North: with a wall of fire instead of ice, keeping back shadow monsters instead of snow ones

Huh neato.

Land of spookiness beyond Asshai in the far East. We know next to nothing about it.

Supposedly Dragons originated there and were tamed by people so ancient they had no name. Dragons and deamons supposedly still live there.

At it's center is a ruined city so ancient and horrible that even the Shadowbinders refuse to enter.

Ghost grass is a luminescent and invasive plant that grows taller than a man and chokes out all other grasses. Supposedly it originates in the Shadow.

There are reavers and pirates that live in the Shadow, they're known for their full body tattoos and red lacquer masks.

Here's a weirdly cropped map that shows it's geographical relation to the rest of Planetos. Asshai should be on the bottom tip but it's cut off.

Also, for what it's worth, here's a now incorrect fan map that I use as a partial basis for the modified map I use in my ASoIaF games, because I don't like Eastern Essos in the canon map very much.

I fucking love those.

youtu.be/fIqOf0qI2H4?t=588

DEEPEST LORE

That's some kirkbride levels of stupid.

It takes 2 weeks by horseback along the king's road to reach winterfell from dragonstone. Gendry ran a marathon, then delivered a message, which caused a raven to be sent about twice that distance, and then a dragon flew at supersonic speeds without tearing dany's skin off or killing her from exposure in less than a day

According to your timeline.

Your timeline sucks.

Is this just a bizarre way of trying to show the land of alwaya winter and the grey waste are connected and the weateros and essos aren't actually seperate continents.

Or a map generated in Sid Meier's Civilization.

...

Nah it's just a silly /got/ meme
Although there is long-standing debate among nerds about how everything joins up, for example there's the famous case of a ship from Asshai washing up on the Frozen Shore

A ship washes up on a shore....... That's supposed to b surprising?

In this case it's equivalent to a ship from India washing up on a beach in Iceland in the 1400s, but even more exceptional under the circumstances