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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Psion" data-source="post: 2604970" data-attributes="member: 172">A Game of Thrones (Standard Edition) is the d20 based OGL game book for roleplaying games set in George RR Martin’s novel series of the same name, a recent hit among fantasy literature fans (a group with sizable overlap with the fantasy RPG audience.) The book is published by Guardians of Order. Writing credits include Elissa Carey, Johnathon Cassie, Simone Cooper, Chris Desmarais, Jason Durall, Debbie Gallagher, Sam Johnson, David Lyons, Wil Upchurch, Jeremy “Bolthy” Zimmerman, Jesse Scoble, and Ian Sturrock.Note that Guardians of Order also publishes a Tri-Stat edition of this game. This review concerns the d20/OGL version.Also note that this review is based on a pre-release version with only a partial map of Westros.A First LookA Game of Thrones is a substantial book, weighing in at 496 pages. The book is a hardcover with color interior, with an MSRP of $49.95 US. Though there are few RPGs of this size to compare it to, the book keeps the 10 cent per page ratio that seem to be the low end for books in its category, comparing to similarly competitively priced large RPG books such as Spycraft 2.0.The cover of the book is a wrap-around oil painting, depicting an armored warrior in a snowy backdrop. The cover art is attributed to Mike S. Miller.The interior is full color. This is one of those rare books that it serves little purpose to draw a distinction between cover and interior art. In addition to a variety of illustrations and character portaits, the book sports a number of full color two page spreads, most of which are extremely high quality and could have been just as easily used for the cover. There are a few of these paintings, however, that have a somewhat archaic style which really don’t catch my eye. Interior artists include Roman “Amok” Papsuev, Nate Barnes, Dennis Calero, Shane Coppage, Thomas Denmark, Chris Dien, Jason Engle, Mark Evans, Jon Hodgson, Veronica Jones, Travis Moore, Lee Moyer, William O’Conner, Chris Seaman, Andrew Trabbold, Beth Trott, and Udon Sudios.Editorially, the book is well done. It’s not perfectly flawless, as I sighted a few flubs (like the much hated affect/effect confusion).I appreciated the “designer note” sidebars throughout the book. In an OGL book that deviates from d20 in some significant but easy to overlook way, these are a great convenience to players familiar with the core d20 rules. Further, chapter summaries of each chapter help distill the content of the book down for those browsing the book.A Deeper LookA Game of Thrones back cover blurb calls the book “a comprehensive reference guide to the best-selling novel series by George RR Martin”. This makes it sound as if, in the case of Green Ronin’s Nocturnals and Mongoose’s Babylon 5 game, the book is intended to have some appeal to non-gaming fans of the series. Indeed, the books does seem like it has some sensibilities along these lines, including an extensive introduction with a history of fantasy fiction and many extensive summaries of characters from the setting with defer statistics until later in the book. That said, I don’t think it treads unjustifiably in this direction. I could have lived without the lengthy introduction, but the character descriptions are about on the order that would be justified in a role-playing heavy campaign involving the characters described.Being an OGL book, this book includes everything you need to play (no reason to crack out your D&D Player’s Handbook and re-defines several aspects of character generation. The aforementioned sidebars describing differences from standard d20 are a real boon to current d20 system players, help them navigate their way through the rules changes quickly.The game does not assume that all characters start at first level. The introductory section on characters defines a few standard campaign models such as the “noble house game”, and each of these describe appropriate roles for beginning characters depending on what level the GM decides to start the campaign at.Wealth has been a sticky wicket in d20 fantasy. But in a highly political game climate like AGOT, the authors could ill afford the “magic wielding mercenary” monetary model of the core game. So instead of this model, players can choose to play characters of a higher social status, and thus character wealth and influence might vary in the group. The cost for a higher social status is ECL, which is probably the most acceptable place to put this cost, but it does limit the options if you are playing a game starting at low levels. That said, the book only treats social status as a starting cost, and does not affect the character if it is raised or lowered due to in-play actions (which is a welcome break from experience teetotaling, but does raise questions of fairness when you are playing a game alongside players who paid for ranks you just earned through in-game actions.) The book does provide for dispensing with the ECL modifier in a game in which all of the characters are of an elevated social standing, and provides other options for handling it as well.The system has more than a few tweaks that affect character creations, and the designers are sensitive to issues of balance. The fact that the system models armor as DR instead of opposing attack rolls means that it no longer makes sense to have strength add to attack rolls. To help balance this, several bonuses are removed from other ability scores. Most are reasonable, but the one that remains a head-scratcher to me is that attack rolls are no longer affected by dexterity.In a similar vein to AEG’s Spycraft 2.0 and RPGObjects’ Legends books, backgrounds fill a role similar to races in games, or even the starting professions of D20 Modern, providing the character the character with a package of starting benefits. This includes bonuses to skills and/or saving throws, a “favored skill” always treated as a class skill (or providing a bonus if it already is), and access to regional feats. The backgrounds define which region and culture the character hails from and helps reflect it in game terms.As the activities of noble houses are an important part of the landscape in a Game of Thrones game, choosing one (where appropriate) is a central character choice as well. Many house descriptions are provided; the bulk of these descriptions are background details, but there are a few game statistics associated with them, such as starting influence level, social status, and access to feats.Classes are re-defined totally; Westros lacks the overt magic that d20 fantasy possesses, and nobility plays a much stronger role. This leads to a list of core classes that includes Artisan, Godsworn, Hunter, Knave (the closest thing to a rogue), Maester (a master of lore), Man-at-Arms, Noble, and Raider. There are no striaght-up spellcasters or spell-like abilities. Class abilities tend to be bonuses to skills or other rolls, or other non-magical abilities. Godsworn are not spellcasters, but can grant or receive bonuses due to blessings or faith. Most classes receive class abilities at every level; man-at-arms receives less (perhaps due to strong numbers in its advancement.)A number of prestige classes here represent a variety of advanced or specific professions wuch as commanders, knights, or night’s watch rangers or stewards. Many of the prestige classes featured here are available sooner in a character’s career than traditional prestige class, to reflect situations that occur among young characters in the books.Skills and feats have some modest tweaks from d20 fantasy, due to balance or other issues (for example, the leadership feat is replaced in function by AGOT’s influence mechanic.) A new class of feat is the Legendary Feat, the closest thing to supernatural abilities in the game. In this book, there are only a handful of these feats (Animal Companion, Dreams, and Pious), and in addition to their listed prerequisites, require explicit GM permission.Befitting the highly political nature of the setting, AGOT features mechanics for reputation and influence.Reputation progresses by class level. Whenever a character progresses in reputation, they choose a topic for their reputation such as “violent”, “hard worker”, etc. These points can be split up or accumulated. The reputation points can be invoked to add to or subtract from any roll the GM feels appropriate.Influence is also accumulated per class level, much like HP, though the number is fixed and the character’s charisma modifier is applied at every level. Once accumulated, influence points are used to “purchase” influence with various figures. Influence can be used like skill ranks to curry favors with opposed rolls.Characters who are inform or have some other form of physical or mental impairment are a common thing in Westros; befitting this, AGOT d20 provides a defect system. Unsurprisingly, this system resembles the point system in GOOs other books (Tri Stat and BESM d20). Defects typically provide 1-3 bonus points, which can be traded for skill points (3 per BP) or feats (1 for 3 BP). Though this is pretty much routine for Guardian’s of Order, and a significantly better system than the flaws system in Unearthed Acana (which is entirely too giving of feats), I have come to see this method of defect compensation as “old school”, and prefer the methods of newer systems such as 7th Sea, Spycraft, and the new World of Darkness. These systems provide experience when the disability actually hinders the character instead of the method of up-front compensation like AGOT, which tends to turn into a point farm and falls too easily to “min-maxing” mentality.The game mechanics of AGOT d20 have fundamental similarities to d20 fantasy core rules. There are quite a few basic differences. As already mentioned, armor provides DR and uses class based defense bonuses. A fixed DR (“AC”) is not used for attack rolls. Instead dexterity bonus, shields, and class based defense bonuses are used as modifiers to a defense roll. The system also dispenses with attack of opportunities.As is the case with many d20 instances addressing literary properties, the game is designed to be a bit deadlier than the d20 baseline. This is addressed through a derived statistic called shock value, equal to half of their Con score. Damage that exceeds this amount can stun the character and cause continuing hit point damage through bleeding (if lethal).The book has a GMing section common to most large game books. As AGOT is not a game of dungeon crawls, the emphasis is rather more on the sorts of GMing skills that are needed in more story and politically driven games.A few mechanical tidbits are tucked away in the GM section, including a few NPC classes in the style of those presented in the DMG. Also, given the rarity of magic in the setting, you’ll find the game’s magic rules tucked away here. Each spell is a feat of its own, but at the GM’s discretion, some can be enacted spontaneously (as happened in the series). Rituals require a difficult wisdom check, though bonuses can be derived from a variety of sources.A brief sections discusses translating standard d20 fantasy characters. Though it might be possible that you would use this to pull in characters from other sources, it seems more likely to me that you would use this section to adapt some of this book’s rules to add a more political spin to a normal d20 fantasy campaign.The last two chapters are substantial, and provide an overview of the world of Westros and major characters of the series. The characters chapter is split into two sections: a nicely illustrated front section with little mechanics and heavy on background details, and a mechanical section with full statistics. The section also contains sample characters that can be dropped into a game.The book features two appendices – a character glossary and a d20 rules glossary – and a fully detailed index.ConclusionsIf you are a gaming fan of the Game of Thrones series, this purchase should be a no brainer: go out and buy this book. The only reservation is that you may want to get the Deluxe edition instead. Overall, this book is a good value for the page count and format, and mechanically, it seems well conceived and addresses many subtle points that are hallmarks of a well playtested game. Visually, the book is extremely attractive.The book also has some potential for those who wish to harvest it. The classes aren’t as portable to standard d20 as some other literary adaptations, but I think the influence and reputation rules are well suited to any d20 system game which needs deeper political and social elements.Overall Grade: A- -Alan D. Kohler</blockquote>

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