D&D 5E What D&D should learn from a Song of Ice and Fire (Game of Thrones)

[Lanefan]

Is this something your players have consistently asked for? Have they expressed a common concern, in other games, that their characters die too infrequently? I've been DMing for quite some time now, and I have yet to have a single player come up to me after a campaign and say, "You know what would have improved things for me? If I'd died more often." In my experience, high-lethality is the sort of game trait (along with things like "low-magic", "anti-magic-mart", etc.) that is almost never requested by players and is almost always suggested by DMs.

A quote from a long-time player (33 years and counting, and only very rarely a DM) many years ago set the tone: "Dungeons without mortality are dungeons without life.", this in supportive response to a move at the time to make death harder to return from. And oddly enough, it was a straight DM decision much later yet to abandon this change.

And as DM, believe it or not there's been times when I've been damn annoyed that a character has died; along the lines of "well, bang goes that story idea".

Lanefan

 

[DaveMage]

Since there have been 2 RPGs based on a Song of Ice and Fire, one could always play those if one is looking for that type of game.

However, I don't think it would be very hard to make D&D into that type of game without changing rules - a good GM would be able to create the setting/mood.

 

[Lanefan]

Since there have been 2 RPGs based on a Song of Ice and Fire, one could always play those if one is looking for that type of game.

However, I don't think it would be very hard to make D&D into that type of game without changing rules - a good GM would be able to create the setting/mood.

In 0e maybe, in very low-level 1e-2e-3e probably (capped at about 4th level?), can't see it in 4e. Uncertain yet as to 5e.

Lanefan

 

[I'm A Banana]

So my question: what sorts of things happen in a Song of Ice and Fire (the novels, not the RPG) that you would like to see included, in one way or another, in D&D 5?

GoT is an interesting setting, and an interesting subgenre, so I think I'd capitalize on certain narrative themes.

I think one of GoT's most defining themes is protagonist death. It's also a bit daring for D&D to try something like that -- D&D has normally been a game where one character does heroic deeds until they either succeed or die. Things like levels relate to one particular character: if that person dies, their kills, their heroism, dies with them.

To do something a little more GoT-esque, I might flirt with the idea of lineage-as-level. That is, your "character" isn't one character, it's a family, a lineage. That is what you play as, what you control. As your family gains power and control in the world, your family gains levels. If someone wants to stop that gain of influence, they have to kill not just one hero, but your ENTIRE FAMILY. You focus in on an individual family member at any one session at the time in which they come into conflict with the other families.

If that family member loses that conflict, then your character -- your family -- suffers under some penalty. A "death spiral" comes into effect, where one failure is more likely to produce more failures, though each generation is a chance to reverse that trend.

My first choice is easily mortality rates. Characters in SoIaF don't hack their way through hordes of orcs. They hesitate even to begin a fight, because fights mean death. I'd like to see D&D 5 make characters more fragile, and put greater emphasis on social and intellectual conflict than on physical conflict.

I think where you lose me is the idea that 5e more broadly should to be more GoT-esque -- I'm not sure I agree with that. D&D is not the same kind of experience that the novels or the TV shows are. They can be different things, just as D&D and LotR, or D&D and Harry Potter are different things.

I'm a fan of modules, though. And I think a "more lethal" HP module where you can die in one hit is a likely candidate for 5e. I'm not sure I think that 5e needs to make characters more fragile or put more emphasis on social and intellectual conflict, period, but I'd like the ability to take it in that direction if I'm in that mood for a night or a campaign or whatever.

All D&D needs to do as a default is give a good dungeon crawl, I think, and there's not much you can learn from GoT's style in regards to crawling a dungeon. But D&D can be more than that, too, and so there's good ideas to take if you want more than that.

 

[am181d]

I think it's pretty obvious when a game's characters are more superhero than hero. I've played plenty of games like that. D&D, of any edition, doesn't come close.

Now might be a good time to point out the title 8th level fighters got in 1e.

 

[DDNFan]

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Now might be a good time to point out the title 8th level fighters got in 1e.

Good catch (I had to look that one up).

But...

An 8th level fighter in 1st edition bears little resemblance to what someone watching The Avengers would expect.

So, not a fair comparison at all.

 

[Ahnehnois]

high-lethality is the sort of game trait (along with things like "low-magic", "anti-magic-mart", etc.) that is almost never requested by players and is almost always suggested by DMs

Perhaps the pertinent lesson to this thread is that players should not necessarily get what they want, no more than GRRM readers get what they want.

 

[Kinak]

There's something to be said for a more grounded dark fantasy... I'm not really sure that's ever been D&D, though. I certainly have games I'd rather use for that, although you could move an E6 variant there easily enough.

I think beyond that, the mortality of Game of Thrones is heavily dependent on its ensemble cast. Which could be an interesting concept to play with, particularly if you have an irregular group.

Interestingly, you end up with a very, very old school play style there. Players and character constantly dropping in and out, with the most powerful characters becoming involved in the politics of the landed gentry.

Really, Game of Thrones D&D could just be the way Gygax ran it back in the day.

Cheers!
Kinak

 

[Hussar]

Good catch (I had to look that one up).

But...

An 8th level fighter in 1st edition bears little resemblance to what someone watching The Avengers would expect.

So, not a fair comparison at all.

I dunno. 8th level party is squaring off with giants, dragons and demons in AD&D. Regularly. They're only one or two levels off of squaring off with a god. ((Q1 was 10th-14th wasn't it?)) A name level party in AD&D was pretty epic in scale. Looking at the G-D-Q series of modules, I'd say that's pretty Avengers.

 

[Dannager]

Perhaps the pertinent lesson to this thread is that players should not necessarily get what they want, no more than GRRM readers get what they want.

I hope you're not confusing this with a player entitlement issue (and really, let's not go down that road; it doesn't end in a nice place for DMs). This isn't about player entitlement, or spoiled players, or anything like that. This is about a play philosophy that, at its core, threatens the connection that players have to the game. That is something that you want to threaten sparingly, because a player who is invested in the game is much preferred to a player who is not.

It's okay to kill characters in ASoIaF, because readers follow a whole bunch of them and are no more inherently connected to the story via one than any of the others. It stings, but that's how the story plays out. It doesn't reflect on the reader, personally, and it doesn't reduce the value of reading the previous chapters of the book.

It's less okay to kill characters in D&D, because players are intimately connected to one character. When that character dies (barring resurrection), they must begin with a new character and re-establish ties to the game's narrative. On occasion, this can be a welcome change of pace. More often, though, it comes as a punch to the gut. It's a question of personal investment and risk - if I expect my time running each PC will be short, I have little incentive to explore that character. If I expect, on the other hand, to have the same PC for an entire campaign, I will probably be much more willing to invest energy in fleshing that character out.

There's a time and a place for high-lethality games, but I think that time and place is usually one-shot, hyper-casual adventures, not lengthy campaigns.