A Song of Ice and Fire

Okay, so, some talk about a SoIF hack was bandied about on Story Games, and I've been doing some thinking about this (yeah, I've had AW and hacks on the brain a lot recently). I want to work on the Dark Heresy stuff some, but my Dark Heresy books are currently being shipped back to America, whereas I have my Martin books here with me for reference, so I think I can go into more depth with this right now.

Taking Orly's advice, I'm trying to think of the characters and what their moves are as the starting point, since that's what drives the game most, and I think in a feudal world, "classes" or playbooks make sense. I might want to rip off Gregor's gender differentiated moves from Sagas of the Icelanders, or at least the basic concept there, since Lords and Ladies do very different things in Westeros.

Oh yeah, I think I'm gonna focus on Westeros for now, maybe pushing out to the east after I nail those down.

So, without any cool guy moves yet, here's some ideas I had for what playbooks ought to get made:

* Lord
* Lady
* Lord's Son
* Knight (should hedge knights get their own?)
* Sellsword
* Maester
* Smallfolk
* Man at Arms
* Septon/Septa

Am I missing anything obvious or cool? Collapsing anything into too few books?

In addition to the characters, I'm thinking that there should be some way to represent 'house', maybe with custom house moves that anyone associated with a house gets in addition to their playbook moves, to represent the differences between Dornish knights and Northmen knights and what not.

Well, that's all I got right now, hopefully have something more concrete soon!

Look at the basic moves really hard. Not so much there structure but their purpose, and what it means that everyone gets them.

Also, I would take Vx advice about the 'basis' for all the moves dead seriously. Looking that some of hacks, I feel like the designers understood the method and form of the moves (trinary outcomes, lists) but miss the point that they exist never to model the fiction or complicate the tactical options but to serve the fiction, to move it forward and complicate it in relation to other characters. Without this, the core mechanics of Apocalypse World lose their teeth and turn into a cute and complex reworking of Otherkind and GHOST/ECHO.

Apocalypse World isn't about the apocalypse, the world or sex and violence (sure, it contains those things) but, to me anyways, Apocalypse World is about people and their relationships to each other. From what I remember of aSoIaF is that it was about people too.

I was concerned with the things I wanted in Bulwark but lately I've just been trying to figure out the people who live there and what they're like. Who do they love? What are their families like? Who would they kill for and why? What are their desires like? The answers are multiple and undermined (to be determined in play).

Yes! I totally agree! The characters and their sometimes complex interactions to get what they want is exactly what I want to focus on for aSoIF. As in the main game, I want the playbooks to be ways to help along these conflicts of interest from the get go. I want the character type moves to demand interaction and conflict and accommodation and so forth, but thank you for laying it out nice and clear.

The official Song of Ice and Fire RPG has a free quick start available online. I'm about to check it out, see if it has some good ideas to mine. Also, the PDF of the full rules is only 18 bucks, so I might grab that too (plus it's been reviewed as pretty good on RPGnet).

I have the first official RPG by different designers and publishers boxed up somewhere, but I think it was D20 system and the book was mostly pretty pictures and lots of source material, so I don't think it's gonna be doing a lot to influence where I'm going with this.

Okay, I made good on getting the PDFs, read the quick start, and now I'm reading the full rules.

The House Creation process gives me some ideas, though I don't want to be as fiddly/crunchy as the rules as presented.

The overall game seems influenced by or at least coming to similar design principles as FATE, but with maybe a little more traditional flavoring. It doesn't look like a bad game, but I'd still rather play with an AW hack :)

Now, a question: what sounds more interesting - all of the players playing as part of one noble house, and working to advance that house's fortunes against the others, or each player having his own power block and competing against each other in the game of thrones?

I think deciding which of these is the 'default' assumption will drive some pretty different hack decisions. I think 'all players in one house' would make it easier to maintain the same 'level' or 'scale' of relationships and interactions between PCs and NPCs, with an extra 'tier' for inter-house jockeying. Doing inter-player house level intrigue would probably have a more complicated relationship between tiers of play, but would encourage more widely impactful inter-player interactions. At least, that's how it seems to me. Any thoughts?

Your mention of tiers makes me think... what about a stat strata, something like:

1 - Personal, immediate level
2 - Within a small-section of a house
3 - A single house
4 - Between houses
5 - The whole world

And your influence and such can move up and down this somehow? Just shooting out an idea here.

Hmmm, and you're thinking strata similar to what's being discussed over in the Knife & Candle thread?

That's what originally inspired the thought, sure, but maybe that, maybe something similiar yet different, whatever's gonna work for the game. I'm not really sure; I'll think about it some and post if I get a better idea or more refined idea.

Okay, so, as I was laying in bed trying to fall asleep last night, thoughts of hacks racing through my head, I had the following thoughts for Ice and Fire:

* You know how cool is low to encourage difficulties with acting under fire? I think in Ice and Fire the 'weird' equivalent might be that way to show that starting out, magic is subtle and unpredictable

* Probably gonna be stealing plenty from Shreyas, Orly, and Gregor for Influence, Mantle, and gender moves/seasons respectively

* As brought up in the "Sex Moves" thread, I'm wondering if Sex is the appropriate 'special' for Ice and Fire. There's lots of sex in the novels, and I want the game to be sexy too, but I'm trying to imagine if there's something that is more genre/tone central than the sex to put in its place. I just can't think of a "when you do X get Y/Z/Purple" type set up for any of the other important stuff (like intrigue and duty and family and what not)

It's been a while since I've read any of the books, but what about plotting or something like that?

Like... "When you plot or parley with another character, you and they alone, do X.".

Vincent was kind enough to set up a dedicated forum right over here.

Come on over, that's where the party is now!