MrDidact

Game of Thrones : The Pact of Ice and Fire (Always Open)

@Gowi Well Shireen and Edric seemed pretty good friends so that would seem in character for her. Having Gendry as leader of their armed forces would be neat too.

Your sheet is shaping up pretty well so far.

@Masterkeun Ah I see, yeah the Frey house is quite complicated so it's not reasonable to have you describe the whole surviving family but the significant story ones should suffice. There is definitely enough ambiguity to have other players come in as Freys if they wish. I like the details about Malkor trying to ally with the Mountain Clans. Should prove interesting.

I think all you need to do really is flesh out your mains, especially Malkor out a bit more and clean up the formatting and you should be good to go. I really like your idea, and it's no trouble to give you our input on it. Thank you very much for your diligence and understanding.

@Dredigan The only discrepancy I can see, is one of their holdings being listed as Darry. I had Darry be stripped from the House Lannister and given to a bastard cousin of the House Darry, since it seemed likely to me that House Lannister had to face some kind of fine for Cersei and Tywin's crimes and I think the River Lords would not have liked having Lannisters have land in their region. It also amps up the potential rivalry between the River Lords and the West a bit.

Other than that it looks fine and you can go ahead and put it in the CS tab and keep working on it. Really look forward to seeing what you end up with. Plus you're the Co-GM, you have certain privileges haha.

*fanboy mode* did Brienne and Jaime settle down and have kids?

Game of Thrones : The Pact of Ice and Fire

@Dredigan I second that.

Everyone, to the OOC!

Game of Thrones : The Pact of Ice and Fire (Always Open)

@Gowi Well once you work out a sheet, I think a post once every couple of weeks from you would be fine; as long as we keep getting word from you that you're still interested and still in the game. If you want you could also open up House Baratheon a bit to let other players have minor POVs in the House, in case anyone wants to play one of the bastards for example.

Don't feel obligated to join the game just because, but if you want to go ahead and play I'll tweak some of the backstory once you have your sheet together.

Game of Thrones : The Pact of Ice and Fire (Always Open)

@Gowi How often do you think you'd be able to post? At least once a week or are you thinking less?

@DrunkasaurusRex Great sheet, go ahead and put it in the CS tab, you're accepted.

Game of Thrones : The Pact of Ice and Fire

@Gowi You are right, we have played a game together before. It was a superhero one. It was a bit ago though, and I was unsure if I was remembering correctly. Yeah GRRM will probably build up to it a lot better, but the actual specifics of her death are never elaborated upon in our backstory, it was just stated to happen. The same way I think the Boltons and Walder Frey will probably die differently in the books, but it's still likely going to happen.

Dredigan put our whole view of the matter in way better words than I did but you did bring up some good points about player involvement in the shaping of the world. For me it was kind of a balancing act to keep the canon (both of them) as relevant as possible while still having room for collaboration.

Now the reasons for me wanting to keep Shireen's death in the story are because of it's thematic appropriateness to the canon story as a whole, and because of the potential ripple effects. Since we have played a game before, I am not worried about your ability to play a Shireen character really well. But I do want to be fair to future player, and I don't think there's a fair way to allow certain character's deaths to be washed from the backstory and bar others. As of right now, I think I would prefer to keep Shireen's death in the RP's backstory. As Dredigan said, nobody wants you to play a character you don't want to play so if this is a hard no-go for you than I understand if you want to leave completely and there will be no hard feelings from us.

However, a good case can be made that a resurrected Shireen would be a very compelling PC for the game for the reasons already stated by Dredigan. It would depend on the specific circumstances of her resurrection, if she came back soon or in adulthood, but either way it could potentially enrich her POV and the story greatly. Of course, the role of the Baratheon bastards would be adjusted depending on whether or not you wanted to have them as additional PCs as well.

I hope you do decide to stick around. But whatever you decide to do, I'm glad we had this discussion and that it's been a sensible and reasoned discussion.

Game of Thrones : The Pact of Ice and Fire (Always Open)

@Masterkeun I think you're definitely on the right track, but there's still a bit to go until your sheet is completely ready. I like the additional details, but I'm not sure why members of other families are in the family sheet. That should only really happen if someone is an in-law. For example Jon is not named Targaryen, but he is the family patriarch and is a vital part of the family, just as how Catelyn Tully is a vital part of House Stark as the matriarch. But you wouldn't consider the Stark kids to be Tullys even though they have a Tully mother. So these more collateral relatives can be part of the story but it should be more closely involved Freys who are focused on in the House Sheets, especially if they have the family name. You can also leave it more open-ended so that there aren't quite so few Freys left, in case anyone wants to jump in and possibly play a Frey. And you can use the lesser Freys as NPCs for the important ones, Walder basically sired an army of people and that army grew exponentially (and was probably cut down a lot too) so no reason you can't have the House Leader's squire be a Frey for example. You also need more details for the Frey PCs you include in the House Sheet. Malkor and Jem Rivers seem important, but lack a lot of detail for example.

But all in all, you're definitely on the right track and it's good to see your sheet shaping up so well.
@Dredigan Do you have any additional comments or input?

@EnterTheHero So the Alchemist Pyromancers wouldn't be able to shoot flames out of their hands, but with the resurgence of magic, wildfire is easier to make and even more powerful and dangerous than it was before. The Pyromancer's probably won't make as much since Dragons are back, but the Alchemist's Guild could still do all kinds of semi-mystical chemistry awesomeness. Basically like Alchemy in any fantasy story, except probably without the turning iron into gold stuff. A Pyromancer could come up with all kind of flame-based chemical weapons, like possibly an oil they can slide on a sword to make it burst into flames or maybe some kind of reduced-potency wildfire grenade. You can get very creative with this.

Red Priests, they will have all the same abilities they have in the books, which are a lot but also seem to depend on the specific Priest's talents. Shoot fire balls, heal, see visions of the future, increased life-span, illusion, communicate through fire, there's a lot of stuff a Red Priest can potentially do. I don't think the return of magic would change much except perhaps make their abilities easier to do and maybe rev up the potency a bit.

Common Sorcerers who are Pyromancers, I kind of imagine them being like Firebenders crossed with Green Lanterns since they seem to be able to make fire "constructs" and can probably manipulate fire like any fantasy pyromancer can to burn and scorch. They seem to be mostly limited to the East however.

Again though magic-using characters will be scrutinized so that there won't be too many of them, and they are at least a little bit balanced. Additionally, IIRC using spells in the story took a lot of energy to do, and that would still be the case. I think for the RP right now, either Alchemists or Red Priests would make the most sense in terms of story and plot relevance and Alchemists would be more common than Red Priests.

@Enzayne Thanks, for your interest. There are a lot of less prominent Houses, so it might be easier to use canon than come up with something out of scratch but it's totally up to you. Me and Dredigan are at your disposal if you have any questions or want any input from us.

Did you have a particular region in mind for your low-profile House?

Game of Thrones : The Pact of Ice and Fire (Always Open)

@Greenie Real life and drawn are fine. For this particular setting I think anime style might be ill-fitting somewhat.

Game of Thrones : The Pact of Ice and Fire (Always Open)

@EnterTheHero Hmm that depends. Do you mean the Pyromancers in the Alchemist's Guild, the Red Priests, or just general pyromancers like that one Qartheen sorcerer?

Game of Thrones : The Pact of Ice and Fire (Always Open)

@Greenie Hop right in! I look forward to seeing what you got.

@supertinyking Yeah sure, any idea what direction you want to take the House in?

Game of Thrones : The Pact of Ice and Fire

I was under a different impression with regards to Shireen but whatever. I'm fine with letting people develop their POVs, the entire next generation of Westeros' leadership is going to be largely player determined for example, but a concrete backstory was needed in my opinion. There needed to be a fate for the Boltons, for Stannis, for Shireen, for Cersei, and while they aren't dead in the books (and Cersei isn't in the show) I was trying to reconcile the two canons and that necessitated a few unplayable characters.

All that aside thank you for your interest and your input, and I hope your other games go well and who knows we might be in a game together in the future.