GM Authority (Edited For Clarity, Post #148)

[BookTenTiger]

Perhaps not, but they might dig their heels in trusting to their friendships to bend their way rather than break. You see this kind of thing a lot. It may be a bit dysfunctional, but it's common.

That's a problem D&D is not equipped to solve.

 

[doctorbadwolf]

If I want to run a setting that excludes elves, the entire group should agree that they want to play such a campaign first. Once that is agreed upon, character creation should be no issue. So I side with neither.

This, at the end of the day, is it.

I'm going to agree with this. the OP setup the description to read just shy of "when did you stop beating your wife" type questions so the elf pc looks bad making a lot of things dubious about it. It's not like GoT is without things the PC could call elf-like when it's got people still getting born with (high)vvalarian bloodlines, chldren of the forest, dothraki, children of the forest, unsullied, & even poor bastards experimented on by wizards/sorcerers like varys they or the gm could have argued made reasonable standins for elf with a (big) twist. We don't know if the player tried to make those points but we can safely guess that the gm sure as heck didn't because there was no bragging about the attempt before showing how terrible the elf player was being.

The bolded is worth repeating.

As for elfs, yeah seriously an elf could easily be something like a High Valerian (who absolutely are analogous to Tolkein's Numenorians and Dunadain, who are only mostly/technically human), children of the forest, something like a warforged (though hopefully concealed somewhat by being in a suit of armor), or even just...one of the foreign peoples who have trouble integrating with their neighbors or remain very independent and distinct in spite of generations of close interactions.

Elves are one of the easiest fantasy races to include in such a world, even before we address that it's more likely a world inspired by GoT than the world itself.

Well, them and Goliaths. They even have cold resistence, making them perfect for hardy ice dwelling descendants of giants.

And Firbolgs, tbh. Why shouldn't there be giant-scions whose blood is effected by children of the forest? or just big strong children.

And Vryloka and Shadar-kai. There's a lot of death-related people. High Valerians, if you don't use elves for that. The people to the far east who live under dark magic and/or the Lord of Light. Individuals who have been brought back or infused with the terrible power of various gods or other, old or new.

And forest gnomes. the children of the forest could go a lot of ways. mental magic resistant folk who can command illusions and speak to birds.

And others, I'm sure.

If a DM came to me with a GOT pitch in a system that has elves, magic, and monsters in the core book and doesn't immediately hand or mention to me a list of houserules, homebrews, and/or additional book to alter the game...

...I am going to assume he or she has NO IDEA what they are doing despite wanting to play. And some people mention ask to be an elf to test or troll him/her/them.

Yikes. Why would you assume something wild like that?
Unless you mean, literally the GoT world, as such, with a serious intention of sticking to canon, I don't see what difficulty you're imagining that would require a bunch of houserules or homebrew, nor do I understand why you'd expect to have direct mention of any houserules or homebrew before you tell the GM if you're interested in the basic premise or not.

Are you really sure about that?

Expand it to 'game system' instead of 'elf' and examples are abundant.

Game system is an entirely different beast. One of my best friends is very, very, reluctant to learn new systems just to play a given campaign.

Spoiler: tangent

He views it as a waste of time and effort, when he knows damn well we can do pretty much anything we want in either DnD with some mild variation (seriously, I'm considering starting a new thread about my Space Fantasy galaxy setting, it's fully playable, with maybe 5% more work needed than it normally takes to set up a campaign with some custom PC needs, and it's DnD meets Star Wars meets Treasure Planet meets Cowboy Bebop or Firefly meets Galaxy Rangers)

or

with a "system" that is basically "describe your character using this list of half dozen or so questions about them. If your description or something determined in play tells us that a task is harder or easier for you, or you are clueless or expert in it, etc, you have advantage or disadvantage. All resolution is done by the player rolling 2d6 against a success ladder, advantage rolls 3d6 and drops the lowest, disadvantage drops the highest die instead. That's the whole system."

Those are the two systems we use to play our games. Has been for a couple years, since we talked about getting back into one of our many SWSE games, and couldn't stop getting distracted talking about how we would like to fix that system to our tastes, and decided to create Space Fantasy instead.

Game system impacts every aspect of play, to some degree. It's a bigger deal to compromise on.

However, the D&D fans always claim the D&D can be used to play any kind of campaign, at least till you say you want to use it to play anything other than kitchen sink fantasy murderhobo adventure. So, which one is actually true? Can D&D be used to run anything, or is it limited to a very narrow genre particular to D&D itself?

Playing GOT in DnD would only be hard if we want to literally play in that world, as such, keeping to canon. Much more common, IME, is to play a game inspired by something, set in a world built by the GM with a healthy dose of plagiarism, but also influenced heavily by what the GM and the group involved actually enjoy about playing TTRPGs. In that context, DnD inspired by GOT is easy.

 

[Imaculata]

Yeah, I could see either thing working just fine in D&D:

-A D&D campaign inspired by GOT, which uses some of its themes, twists and turns, and grittyness, but not its setting. A campaign in the spirit of GOT only.
-A D&D campaign in the style of GOT, focusing on a part of GOT, such as mostly political intrigue and less on combat and magic.
-A D&D campaign that literally takes place in Westeros, featuring characters from the show/books, and excluding any D&D races, and limiting (or downright removing) the use of magic. This last one could be a new plot entirely, or follow the plot from the books/show closely.

The only thing that would be hard to do in D&D, is to closely follow the plot of the show/books, but that would be with any system. After all, it is probably expected of a GOT role playing game that you can affect the plot. Otherwise, what would be the point? Which would mean the DM would need to be willing to come up with a new plot, or allow the existing plot to be altered by the actions of the players.

Depending on how you lean, some systems may be more suitable than others. But any of these takes on GOT could be done with just the D&D rules if you wanted to.

But because all three of these takes are very different, it highlights just how important it is to communicate what sort of GOT campaign you intent to run during a session 0. Example 1 and 2 could include elves, while example 3 would not.

 

[Minigiant]

Yikes. Why would you assume something wild like that?
Unless you mean, literally the GoT world, as such, with a serious intention of sticking to canon, I don't see what difficulty you're imagining that would require a bunch of houserules or homebrew, nor do I understand why you'd expect to have direct mention of any houserules or homebrew before you tell the GM if you're interested in the basic premise or not.

Because it's GOT/ASOIF.

The books and show has so many different genres and elements to it that. That'sprobably one of many reasons why GRRM split up the Starks. Everyone in most of the main character families have wide arrays of skills that others in their family does and walk in different adventures. It's a setting with about 10 different game genres in it and people don't neccesarily get pushed into other types of adventures and are often only at one "game". You have melee combats, mass combats, domain management, domestic politics, foreign politics, trade wars, spy games, survival adventures, multiple times of lores and knowledges. And each one of them are important enough to get you killed if you engage in them. And often people are killed because they are skilled in only one or two challanges and enters third on purpose or accident.

So if a GM can to me with a GOT/ASOIAF campaign with a system not designed for it and wants to put more magic and monsters in it, I'm gonna need to seek houserules because I get serious.

 

[doctorbadwolf]

Because it's GOT/ASOIF.

The books and show has so many different genres and elements to it that. That'sprobably one of many reasons why GRRM split up the Starks. Everyone in most of the main character families have wide arrays of skills that others in their family does and walk in different adventures. It's a setting with about 10 different game genres in it and people don't neccesarily get pushed into other types of adventures and are often only at one "game". You have melee combats, mass combats, domain management, domestic politics, foreign politics, trade wars, spy games, survival adventures, multiple times of lores and knowledges. And each one of them are important enough to get you killed if you engage in them. And often people are killed because they are skilled in only one or two challanges and enters third on purpose or accident.

So if a GM can to me with a GOT/ASOIAF campaign with a system not designed for it and wants to put more magic and monsters in it, I'm gonna need to seek houserules because I get serious.

Okay. I don't get it at all, but you seem to have a very strong preference here.

 

[Lanefan]

2) What I'm describing is why there is need to commit any sort of player resources (stat points, skill allocations, etc.) in a game where the desired type of play is freeform roleplaying, specifically freeform in the social and mental spheres. Basically, why is Charisma even a thing in OSR style play, when the goal of play is skilled play adjudicated by the DM's judgments of reasonableness?

I'd say it's because without these type of stats to inform one's character and-or personality a bit, the risk is that many (most?) players will just default to - for both better and worse - playing themselves.

Also, some game systems (D&D is one) tie these non-physical stats to hard-mechanical game aspects e.g. spellcasting prowess, psionic or psionic-like abilities, and so forth.

 

[Thomas Shey]

There is no mention that the system chosen is multipurpose. The majority of games are tailored to specific styles, tones, genre, and challenge foci.

You did catch that my question and response was because you seemed to overgeneralize, right? Which the above doesn't?

 

[Lanefan]

No Sneak?!?!? In GoT?!?!? What was Arya then? Cause from my viewing she was in no way a Knight or Noble.

Absolutely - Assassin all the way.

Which raises a point, I suppose: what typical D&D classes could work in a GoT campaign?

Fighter - well, duh, the setting is crawling with these! There's lots of room to break the class up into Warrior, Archer, Swashbuckler, etc.
- a variant Fighter class could be Mariner, to replicate the seafaring warriors from the islands.
Cavalier/Knight - another rather obvious Fighter variant
Ranger - there's a bunch of people guarding a wall up north who might have something to say here; the class translates well elsewhere too.
Paladin - I can kinda see it...maybe...but I think I'd go for something more resembling a War Cleric on this one
Cleric - Melisandre, Boric Dondarrion, the Drowned God priests, the High Sparrow - yeah, Cleric can work in the setting
Druid - not a big stretch, the Children of the Forest fit well here, as do some of the Wilders and maybe some eastern-desert types
Thief - these fit right in
Assassin - a rare class (probably severely gated behind alignment and-or stat requirements) but they could certainly exist
Monk - not a big stretch to have these come from the Dorne culture
Bard - as a concept, yes; as casters, no; so the class would likely need to be rebuilt from the ground up in order to work

And then we hit the messy one. There's probably only room in the entire setting for one arcane-style caster class, and even that would be rare. Open choice between havingit use something like what we know as Wizard mechanics or something like what we know as Sorcerer mechanics; but there'd only be one class, and no sub-classes. Like Assassin, this one would also want to be severely gated somehow in order to enforce rarity.

As for Sansa Stark, she would be of no character class at all as she - despite everything - never really does become an adventurer as such. She's more like the poor hireling who gets dragged from one adventure to the next despite her best attempts to avoid them.

 

[Thomas Shey]

To me it sounds like a session 0 problem. That is what a session 0 is for: to get everyone on the same page.

I absolutely agree. On the other hand, a lot of people either don't do, or do very sketchy Session 0s, and some players are bad about reading things into a pitch that aren't there and don't bother to follow up.

When I asked my players if they would like to play a pirate campaign, I gave them the following guidelines that I had in mind:

• D&D rules, but with firearms
• No characters that can innately fly or breath underwater, with the exception of magic or shape shifting.
• No evil characters.
• The pcs are all part of the same pirate crew.

I also explained to my players why I felt these rules were important for the sort of campaign I wanted to run.

All good ideas--but if you don't think there aren't players who will decide you don't really mean what you're saying about parts of this, you've been fortunate. I've only hit one in my career in that situation, but I've encountered other GMs who've done so more frequently (especially ones who change player group constitution more frequently).

Once I got all my players on board with this idea, they started making characters. I find it unlikely that after agreeing to those rules, any player would insist on making a character that goes against those very rules that they just agreed to.

Again, you've been fortunate. In particular, I'd be willing to bet there are players out there who would consider the last two bullet points "negotiable".

I think clear communication is key here. I wouldn't just propose a GoT campaign, but I would also explain what that means in my opinion. Because you would want your players to know exactly what they are getting into.

Absolutely no disagreement from me here; I'd just note that as with all things, what can seem like clear communication to the sender isn't always to the receiver.

 

[Thomas Shey]

That's a problem D&D is not equipped to solve.

That doesn't mean its not a problem GMs don't have to deal with.