Game of Thrones: The Wall & The Night Watch

I believe there is an old saying that goes "Late to the Party" or something along those lines. When it comes to watching the series based on the George R. R. Martin books, Game of Thrones, I'm well behind. I just finished watching season two of Game of Thrones and while normally I'd babble on about this or that, I just wanted to touch on a moment on 'The Wall.'

History and role playing games in particular touch on the symbolic if not actual importance of fantastic monuments designed to keep enemies out, to act as fortifications, and as a symbol of power. One of history's most famous is probably the Great Wall of China but there are others like Hadrian's Wall for example. Heck, even the comedy South Park got to make fun of the whole Wall bit with their own wall keeping out the Mongol hordes.

In terms of Game of Thrones though, George R. R. Martain may have taken inspiration form the later, but his own creation, The Wall has its own bits.

Green Ronin, and others before them, have already done role playing games based on the series, which includes a free quick start rule set found here. Strangely enough, Amazon seems to show that everything is sold out and only available from second hand sellers.

I just wanted to point out how handy something like the Wall would be in a role playing game with a low powered set of rules like 1st or 2nd Advanced Dungeons and Dragons, especially if emulating low magic settings.

1. Character Origin Points: The characters can come from a wide variety of backgrounds. The Wall includes murderers, sons that are bastards, and a wide variety of other types that essentially go into exile. In a game system where characters are killed frequently, its great to have a quick way and reason why characters can come and go into the game.

2. The Wall is Not Independent. While the Wall has a singular purity of purpose, it has to interact with the whole of the setting. It is not nearly as self sufficient as it needs to be. They need supplies, they need men, they need information. All of these things require them interact with the world.

3. The Wall is Not The End: There are whole swathes of land to the North of the Wall and to those who live there, all those South of the wall are Southerners. This isolation allows a lot of variety to be thrown into what should normally be a barren and isolated wasteland.  Depending on how far characters search in those areas, there are all manner of ruins to explore and clear out and all manner of 'Wildlings' to encounter, some which may be friendly and some foes.

4. Uniformity: Depending on which run of say, X-Men you've read, there was a point where the X-Men decided to ditch the costumes and go with almost uniforms. In the Night Watch, they all have similar clothes, supplies and teachings. Everything however, is not so ingrained that there is no room for individual styles or options. For example, Rob uses a sword. Others uses axes. Most can use a bow, but not necessarily all are skilled with them.

In terms of art, there's a nice job over here: http://riceandeggs.blogspot.com/2012/02/nights-watch.html

I'm looking forward to watching season three and seeing the dreaded 'Red Wedding'. Yeah, I read up to book four I think and then, like I did with the Wheel of Time, stopped. I'm waiting till George R. R. Martin finishes the series so I suspect by season five or so of the HBO series, which I hear they hope to get eight seasons out of, that I'll start to be surprised.

I myself haven't played in Westros but seeing the shows and the great character work, especially on the imp, does inspire me. Anyone else picked up the RPGs based on watching the show or are you just using Fate or whatever other RPG you've got lying around to do it?

Freeport Versus Kickstarter

Green Ronin has been around for over a decade at this point. Their initial module setting, Freeport, was one of the first adventurers for the SRD back in the day. Now they're working on a massive update to the book on Kickstarter.

One might think that with their longevity in the game and their plethora of products, that funding would have been easily hit and made right? Apparently not. I'm not saying that it won't fund. There is still time. But let's look at some reasons why they might be having difficulty.

1. No Pathfinder brand loyalty. This may sound like heresy as Green Ronin, as I mentioned, was one of the first companies to get on the SRD bandwagon in a HUGE way. They made settings, class books, race books, and a ton of other goods including cross promotions with Paradigm Press and others. But when 3.5 died, they didn't jump on the Pathfinder band wagon. They had something like d20 age or d20 forever branding so that they wouldn't have to update their catalog. Sounds a lot like Necromancer Games before they came around ala Frog God Games. Having said that, you have no build in Pathfinder base.

Oh sure, we can get into the whole, "It's all the same!" arguments that happened with 3.0 and 3.5 and with 3.5 to Pathfinder, but if you didn't go and do the branding, getting the Pathfinder crowd to automatically leap into the frey isn't something that's going to happen easily or overnight. Am I saying that Green Ronin has zero Pathfinder products? Don't know to be honest. When I think of Green Ronin, d20 gaming isn't what I think of. Instead, we have Game of Thrones, Dragon Age, Mutants and Masterminds, and the DC comic game.

2. Goal is Too High. For a company that hasn't been backing Pathfinder since the start, and isn't using one of its licensed settings, the minimal goal here seems high. I'm not saying it's not needed for what they want to do. But when you're setting a higher bar than one of the most popular OSR projects, Dwimmermount, managed to achieve at the start of the Kickstarter craze, you might be overstepping realistic expectations.

3. Eastern Front Miniatures. This one is just a casual observation. Eastern Front as a few successful Kickstarters under their belt. But those projects are late and some of the backers are vocal about it. This may not have been the best partner for Green Ronin.

4. Pirates are played out. Well, can pirates ever really be played out? Probably not. However, there hasn't been a really popular pirate movie like the old pirates of a certain Caribbean for a while AND more importantly, people just shelled out a lot of cash for a Frog God Games pirate, in part, based project. That one had trouble funding too. Also for a similar sized product. Also for premium product. And that was by a company that has been doing Pathfinder fans right for a while now.

5. Kickstarter Sucks. Well, not really. But a lot of people are getting weary of the continued lateness of Kickstarter projects and are taking their money to actual stores and buying things. Or just downloading illegal PDFs. You know those damn kids today and their internets. When I do my next Kickstarter update, I'll actually have a few that have fallen off the list but most will not. As Kickstarter continues to evolve, people will continue to decide where their money goes in a manner that reflects not only companies, but product types as well.

I hope Green Ronin is able to pull this one off not necessarily for Freeport, but I would love to see them do compilations of their various Races, Classes, and other material that never got compiled thanks to the d20 meltdown, into hardcovers for Pathfinder.