Game of Thrones begins....

[Viking]

http://maps.google.com/

I found Västerås without any problem. I don't understand what Siegy's problem is...

[Habbaku]

 

[Martinus]

Larch, I generally don't like systems that have "levels". I prefer more organic growth, where players can just put xp into new abilities and the like.

[jimmy olsen]

 

http://store.hbo.com/game-of-thrones-i-made-the-eight-t-shirt/detail.php?p=300711&v=hbo_shows_game-of-thrones

[Siege]

Holy crap! Semi-canonical world map!

http://www.artofthetitle.com/2011/05/12/game-of-thrones/

Wow the east is damn close to them. How come no one figured to go sailing over there? Surely the iron men would have?
And the big southern Shivering Sea is surprising.

Well, the equator seems to be below Dorne, so the world of in Westeros is, must be a big world.
Me thinks the continent West of Westeros is not the same continent in the East.
If the seassons last 10 times as long as in Earth, maybe the world of Westeros is 10 times bigger than Earth?

And what about the continent North of the Eastern continent?

[Siege]

This map is ridicuolus.
It looks like Eurasia and Africa.

[Siege]

Yup. Riverrun was historically part of the same Kingdom as the Iron Islands, and Dragonstone is simply the place where the Valyrians landed.

How can Riverrun be part of the Iron Islands?
No doubt the Riverlands are far richer and more populated than the islands.
I would think it impossible to hold the Riverlands from Pyke.

[Admiral Yi]

Nice ending, I liked.

Ned's a bit thick-headed isn't he?  Surely a normal person would have asked himself what angle the pimpmeister as playing?

And being one of Ned's personal retainers gives you about the same life expectancy as a red shirted security officer on Star Trek.

[Habbaku]

Ned's not exactly thick, I'd say, so much as completely lacking in guile.  He's a very straightforward person who just doesn't seem to understand that other people aren't going to be as forthright as himself in all their actions.  In Ned's world, someone that says they'll support you will support you...

[Habbaku]

I thought the scene with Littlefinger, his whore and Theon's whore dragged a bit.  The exposition was decent and probably necessary, considering it reveals his motive's, but it seemed a little over the top.

The rest of the episode was solid, though, and the final scene was excellently handled.

[Martinus]

Ned's not exactly thick, I'd say, so much as completely lacking in guile.  He's a very straightforward person who just doesn't seem to understand that other people aren't going to be as forthright as himself in all their actions.  In Ned's world, someone that says they'll support you will support you...

I don't think that's even that with Ned. I think he is quite capable of understanding, on a conceptual level, that some people may act dishonorably. For him, however, honor is such an important thing, that he can't act differently - it is no longer a choice whether to act with honor or not - in that he is quite a tragic character.

The way he handled Cersei's betrayal, the Lannister/Clegane incident and supported Stannis over Renly - it's not because he does not understand other people can be dishonorable, but these were the only ways he could act.

[jimmy olsen]

Nice ending, I liked.

Ned's a bit thick-headed isn't he?  Surely a normal person would have asked himself what angle the pimpmeister as playing?

And being one of Ned's personal retainers gives you about the same life expectancy as a red shirted security officer on Star Trek.

He looked pretty jumpy, he expects to be betrayed/attacked. He just would rather be right and dead then wrong and alive.

[Martinus]

I don't know if this has been used before, but I love the word reviewers use to describe the now-common feature of HBO's "Game of Thrones": "sexposition".

Tyrion with whores, Viseris with Doreah, Theon with a whore, Renly with Loras, Littlefinger with whores - it seems the show writers share GRRM's love for gratuitous sex scenes. But what about the other pillar of the books: lemoncakes? 

[The Larch]

Larch, I generally don't like systems that have "levels". I prefer more organic growth, where players can just put xp into new abilities and the like.

Ok, I get what you mean. For better or worse, leveling is a staple of RPGs, something that most players get almost intuitively, so it's not surprising that it was used. How does the "roll and keep" system work? You can send me a link if you want. 

FWIW, I personally like a lot the d20 system as applied to the ASOIAF RPG by the previous makers (who went belly up and only published the basic manual). It managed to make it feel fantasy-y, but also gritty and dangerous. Every single combat was a death trap about to happen, you really had to measure your forces before comitting.

[Martinus]

Larch, I generally don't like systems that have "levels". I prefer more organic growth, where players can just put xp into new abilities and the like.

Ok, I get what you mean. For better or worse, leveling is a staple of RPGs, something that most players get almost intuitively, so it's not surprising that it was used. How does the "roll and keep" system work? You can send me a link if you want. 

FWIW, I personally like a lot the d20 system as applied to the ASOIAF RPG by the previous makers (who went belly up and only published the basic manual). It managed to make it feel fantasy-y, but also gritty and dangerous. Every single combat was a death trap about to happen, you really had to measure your forces before comitting.

I can see what you mean about leveling being the staple, but at least as far as I am concerned, my entire roleplaying history did not feature any game with a strong leveling component.

I started out with Warhammer FRPG, then moved to Chaosium Games (Call of Cthulhu, Pendragon), Ars Magica, White Wolf, GURPS, Amber Diceless and few others along the way. I never really played D&D until very late, when I joined an internet based campaign ran by Demetrios from EUOT. So for me, leveling outside of a computer game is not really that prevalent.

"Roll and keep" works by letting the player roll a number of dice, but give him an edge not by adding more dice that are all added up to the result, but allowing him to keep the top dice.

For example, in SOIAF, you have Abilities (e.g. Warfare, Athletics) and Specialties (e.g. Axes, Swords, Climbing). In your usual game you would normally add an ability to a skill/specialty and roll that number of dice and keep the result. In SOIAF, you roll a number of dice that is equal to the total of the Ability and the Specialty (if any) but keep only the number of dice equal to the Ability.

This way, a player with a higher specialty gets an edge, but not an enormous advantage and can be beaten by an unspecialized player with enough luck.

Btw, SOIAF does not feature separate Abilities and Skills (so Endurance is on equal footing with say, Fighting or Warfare - you do not add Abilities and Skills together, unlike say White Wolf).