A song of ice&fire: recruitment and house building

[Igordragonian]

'The realm. Do you know what the realm is? It's the thousand blades of Aegon's enemies, a story we agree to tell each other over and over, until we forget that it's a lie."


*Insert Well crafted teaser with very long descriptions of food*
But seriously, the way this game strucrured it's to write a statifying teaser:
I domt know the exact point in the timeline our story would play.
I am not sure in what one of the seven realms the game would be set in.

But it's part of the fun.
Welcome. This game will use the system of A Song Of Ice And Fire. No need to have the book. We can have pregens, and together we will figure it out. (And there is a quickstart)
Complex character building but the game itself simple enough.
It also new to me.
Knowledge of the books/show is good, but even a curiouse "casual" who want to roleplay in gritty medival-ish setting with political intrigue- is welcomed.

Alright.
We will build this from top down, and before work together on the house,
Two questions-
Which point on the timeline-
1-A bit before the cannon books.

2-A bit before Robert's rebellion.

3-Alternate timeline- where Rahegar have defated Robert and became the king. A very diffrent Westrose. And not neccarilly in a good way.



Second- in which realm of Westrose our house will be set?
We can instead of voting to roll for it.


King's Landing/Crown lands
Dragonstone
The North
The Iron islands
The riverlanda
The mountain of the moon
The westerlands
The Reach
The Stormlands
Dorne

Any intrested?
Any questions?

SPOILER: Click to show

{The House Of Spoiler}

The House was establiashed recently. (100-150 years ago)
It was founs during an event of scandal




Defence 28- Defensible, with at least one fortified town or castle. Roads and trails are present, and rivers or ports are likely

Influence 22- Maximum Lord's Status 4. A small minor house. Examples

include House Mormont and House Westerling.

Lands 17- A small stretch of land, about the size of a single small

island or small portion of a larger island, or a large city and

its immediate environs, such as House Mormont.

Law 30  -The typical level of Law throughout much of Westeros.

Crime is common but not out of control.

Population 31- Modest population. At least one town and several small

hamlets.

Power 29- A modest force of soldiers, including some trained troops.

Wealth 27- Common. Your family has enough to get by.

[Daos]

I'd be interested.  I've never read the books, but I did watch the entire show...all the way to the disappointing ending.

In terms of when and where, I'm completely flexible on that.  But if I have to choose, I would say right before the books start, and the Stormlands.

[Igordragonian]

Greetings Ml'ord! It's a great honor to have you here!

As for a realm there is also a random table for this, if there isn't a strong preffer 
Anyway I hope more people would come

[Zero Prime]

I'd be interested in seeing the ruleset in action, I've read the books & watched the series, so I have passing familiarity with the setting itself.  If I had to vote I would say for something before Robert's rebellion, and a House situated in the Westerlands, it's smaller size, geographically, would make it easier, I think, for people newer to the setting itself.  Either way, it's just my opinion, and I would want to hear from other interested players before we decided as a group.

[HorizonsDream]

After the last season, I'm a little disgruntled (still) with the whole franchise.

With that said, I'm willing to give this a try. I would be interested in the North or Dorne. As to when the game starts, I agree with Daos and Zero, before the books and show starts would be preferred.

To be honest, I'm not too picky where we start the game. I just picked my two favorite places.

[Igordragonian]

Well! Three intrested! And quite of noble breed!
I can do with more, but we can most defeintly work with that.


I did research of the book, listened to gameplays and discussed it with people who GMed and played it-
Because there are challenges in roleplaying asoaif, and I believe the people in this forum are mature enough, and of high quality in general.

Disclaimer- you all have roleplayed with me. You might have noticed my english is far from perfect... but I try to improve.
And I am not G.R.R. Martin, so my prose won't be at his level- but I will try.
Also, I'll probably won't be as explicit, and I couldn't describe food for three pages.


First thing- it's a gritty system and setting. Death is a real possibility.
People I talked with, had to switch three characters during campigan, but every death was meaningful.


Second- The relationship as a group-
We work around the house as the ramificadion, and the norm is that the house's intrests are more important then of the induvdial- but you always can rebel. Go after personal desires, kinslaying, or simply have your own understanding of the house's intrests.
Those conflicts are the bread and butter of asoaif.
It's ok to split the party. I think forum media work with it better then irl.
Therefore before the characters themselves, the house is created with it's own sheet. The house have stats, and they inform us of the strengh, weakness and the status of the house. Improving them is a big motivation.


Third- in relation to cannon- Asoiaf is lore heavy and with billion characters and moving parts. And as with any series based roleplay some creative freedom and even head cannon must be allowed, so some details will be diffrent.
And of course, the players might change the course of the story
----

Now to move the recruitment along-

We have 2 votes to start a bit before the series. (I think 2 years before Lord Arryn's death would do-- to give the house it's own storyline)

And 1 vote for around Robert's rebellion.
----

As for realm, we have offers for the

Stormlands,
Westerlands
The North
Dorne
We can roll between those, or a new player will voice their own opinion.
----

We can start roll for stats anyway.
7d6 are rolled for each stat.
And I want for every post now, to roll once for the stats in the order I present them.


Defence- represnt the fortifications and even the natural advantages.
The range is from a small tower to a castle great enough to be famohse.

Influence- represnt how famouse, connected and respected your house is.
Low stat would probably make you to be considered as some random knight.
On the high range you would be considered a big player, second only to great houses like Stark, Lannister and etc.
Mechanicly during the second phase of the Housr building it determine how many "relevant" heirs the house may have. During the game, you can pay influence to get aid from other houses for example.



Lands- Determine the quality and size of the lands the house own.


Law- represnt how well controled the lands the house own. The crime rate and banditry.

Population- How many people under your control.


Power- the milirary force. With power high enough the house may have it's own banner house to be served by.


Wealth- represnt the resources, and general wealth of the house.

[Zero Prime]

Fair enough, to make things easy, I'll shift my timeline vote to match Daos & Horizon, setting ourselves a small number of years before the death of Jon Arryn and the start of the series.

A quick wiki search determines that Arryn died 298 AC, so if we're set two years earlier, it would be 296 AC.  Robert's Rebellion ended in 280 AC, so even the youngest of our characters would have lived most of their lives under Baratheon's rule.

Now, as for location, reading about the Stormlands, I am liking that more and more, the two penninsula's and the heavy Germany vibe I am getting from the terrain and forests, so I could go with Stormlands as well, plus it gives us a coast to deal with, so if anyone was interested in naval stuff, there would be the opportuity for that as well.  That being said I am still open to discussion on these things, but as we start to form our House we should have a region in mind so we can come up with relationships and rivalries in the regions power and political structure.

Now, let's see how strong our House's defences are!


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[Rax]

I'll throw my hat in the ring as well. I've played in multiple SIFRP PbP games and know the system well, though it's a few years since the last game now.

I don't necessarily agree that it's a particularly deadly game - apart from a few specific weapons and special abilities, a PC is never killed in combat unless the player wants that to happen. Having all health removed only leads to defeat, with consequences TBD.

The system as a whole holds up fairly well, but it's not a Middle Ages simulator, so there are design decisions in terms of the noble houses, weapons, armour, and such that tend to annoy realism purists. It does a fair job of simulating the books though, so knights in full plate fighting each other with swords is perfectly doable, and a charge by cavalry will devastate most infantry.

The system is also strongly focused on relatively small noble houses. It's very difficult to build the higher ranked noble houses of the books just by crunching the numbers. For creating and running a strong local player in one of the realms it works very well though.

In terms of character generation, there's nothing to stop a player from min-maxing that makes them basically invincible in combat or intrigue from the beginning, but on the other hand they'll be useless at everything else unless they later spend XP to build up competence in other areas. My general advice to mitigate this is to ask players not to do it.

For instance, ranks in abilities run from 1-7, with 2 being Average, 7 being Paragon and 8 being Mythic (and only possible by taking a specific Benefit). Rank 5 is Accomplished, described as:

Intensive training coupled with natural talent places you far above the common man. In fact, people with rank 5 are often the best at what they do in many areas, having surpassed their peers in their craft.

In terms of mechanics, this is consistent with the results produced in the game. As a benchmark, it's also notable that Fighting 5 is what an NPC Knight of Quality or even Kingsguard gets.

An important ability in the game is Status, which determines your position in Westeros society. There are three tables with different interpretations of what Status means:

• Page 45 is for quickly generating characters and shouldn't be used if we're generating a noble house.
• Page 67 is the one that most clearly tells you what Status actually means in Westeros as a whole. Of note is that it runs to rank 10, an addition to the system which I disagree with, but since no PC is likely to get anywhere near the higher ranks it's of little importance on the whole.
• Page 100 correlates the maximum lord's status based on the house's Influence stat with the table on p. 67. In general, everyone but the lord should have lower Status than this. For instance, when designating an official heir using the Influence stat, the first born son's maximum Status is one less than the maximum Status of the house lord. In a house with low Influence, expect a great many PCs to have Status 2 (since Status 1 = smallfolk).

---

I have no particular preference on when the game will be set. I've been in three that took place long before the books, two during the War of the Five Kings, and one that was supposed to be slightly before the events of the books but never took off.

The advantage of steering clear of the period covered by the books is that the Narrator is free to make up NPCs as he likes. The advantage of sticking close to the books is that there's an extensive gallery of players at all levels of society that he can use. It doesn't sound as if there are lore-heavy purists in the game, so hopefully there won't be any confusion if named characters don't necessarily conform to their representation in the books or the TV series.

In terms of where to set the house, I've played in the Riverlands quite extensively. Geographically, it's sort of the crossroads of the Seven Kingdoms, so any major war tends to involve it and people from all other realms can be found passing through it. That said, it could be interesting to play elsewhere.

I would suggest against the Westerlands if the game is set just prior to the books, since Tywin Lannister is very firmly in control during that time. I doubt any sort of open conflict can occur between minor houses without him stepping in (he's a control freak of monumental proportions).

The same could be said of the Crownlands (King's Landing), Dragonstone, and the Stormlands. On the other hand, there can be external threats to deal with, particularly for Dragonstone houses and some of the Stormlands.

The Mountains of the Moon, the North, and Dorne are all large enough and or geographically divided enough that minor conflicts between lesser houses could go on for quite some time without the lieges of those realms being able or willing to intervene. They're also all subjects to external raids (wildlings and mountain clans) and banditry.

The Iron Islands are also quite united in this period, but since the culture there is more "Viking-style" than medieval Europe, open conflict between houses is less jarring. If we want to focus away from Westeros, the Iron Islands are also a good starting point for piracy, raiding and trading on foreign shores.

The Reach is huge and not very well documented. There's little evidence of ongoing internal strife in the books, but raids and counter raids in the Dornish Marches are a possibility. Very low level conflicts in some corner of the realm are probably also not too weird.

---

Influence is up after Defence, so I'll roll for that: MAzWLlIy7d6

7d6

[Igordragonian]

I am a newbie to this game, so that a thing.
I actually studied the lore of the ironborns and fell in love with them.
And in general fan of the books.
I also have read fire&blood and would happily GM in any time period. Or parallel time period. (I wrote to myself lore of what if Rahegar has defeated Robert)
But it seems most are familiar witha

And thank you.

For one, I am not sure how much Tywin will care about squabbles among minor houses. In some cases he might encourage it.

Also, politics can be around. "Please love me Tywin-sama". Intresting things could occur anywhere, I believe.

In the stormlands, Pro-Renly, Pro-Stannis.
Anti dorne.
Also some closet Targeryen loyalists.
Tournaments, marriage pacts.. there lot of stuff to do there. If there ain't we can timeskip

[Daos]

I'll roll for lands then.

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7d6

[Igordragonian]

Alright. I added a poll and a spoiler for the house stats.
By the way, the realm like a race in d&d give + and - to diffrent stats.
Also we later roll for the history of the house, and in the end every player can add a 1d6 to one stat.

But first we need to pick a realm and roll base stats.

[Zero Prime]

I'd be fine rolling randomly as well, heh.  That's just me, I am looking forward to the next bits, where we determine the history of the House, that can give us alot of character and hooks to build around for our characters.  There are a couple of online Heraldric programs as well, so we can come up with a symbol and motto for our Household as well.

[Igordragonian]

can you please then to roll the next stat?
we don"t have 7 players, so some of you will roll more then once.

after this we roll for history, which is quite fun, then we can design a symbol, and then get into the nitty gritty of the house.
or auto this said part if you preffer.

[Zero Prime]

Sorry, for Law then:


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[Rax]

Apr 18, 2021 8:05:53 GMT -8 Igordragonian said:

For one, I am not sure how much Tywin will care about squabbles among minor houses. In some cases he might encourage it.

Also, politics can be around. "Please love me Tywin-sama". Intresting things could occur anywhere, I believe.

To me it's mostly down to characterization. Tywin literally built his reputation and restored the pre-eminence of House Lannister by utterly crushing anyone who challenged or opposed him. We're talking about a man whose reputation is so fearsome that sending a bard to play the Rains of Castamere is considered a sufficient threat to get any sane noble to back down. He just doesn't strike me as the sort of liege who would condone armed conflict between his underlings - it could lead people to think he's not in total control of the Westerlands any more. But I'm sure all sorts of other scheming to advance one's position happens all the time.