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

[sidonunspa]

I largely agree with you Sidoninspa. I think a big reason 3e went in so strong for the battle map was to stop games where the DM frequently made the player's sword 4'11" long and the monster 5 feet away.

That is the kind of GM.... you should NOT be playing with.

"oh but we don't have any other GMs"

yes you do..... YOU.. lead by example or suffer the suck

 

[Grazzt]

What I would do if I were playing in GoT/SoIaF is

1) come with 2 dozen characters premade... 2-3 in the north 2-3 in the south at least 1 per kingdom and the rest at kings landing...

2) trust no one... I mean my own dear sainted mom is a threat...make spy movies look naive

3) never go to weddings... just send my regards and a gift.

4) all characters are evil aligned... bad things happen to good people...

Agree with all but #4. Would need a "grey" alignment to simulate ASOIAF. No one is truly good or evil; the world is shades of grey (much like the real world)...though I guess Gregor Clegane would be pretty evil.

 

[sidonunspa]

why the heck do you need alignment again?

if you need a rule to force your players to be good guys, you clearly are running the wrong game.

run a game where the players can be what they want to be....

make sure there are consequences...

see how they act when a paladin comes knocking, when divination magic is used against them, when they do things that come back and bite them in the ass.

they want to kill that guy in cold blood? after a few weeks someone attempts to kill them...

why?

speak with dead, divination, + someone who loved that person or someone that person owned a vary large favor...

actions have consequences...

want to play a campaign like SoI&F? remember those three words

actions have consequences...

every promise, every time they keep or brake their word, every time they kill and every time they show mercy.

no good deed goes unpunished and no evil deed goes unnoticed

 

[GMMichael]

1) come with 2 dozen characters premade... 2-3 in the north 2-3 in the south at least 1 per kingdom and the rest at kings landing...

2) trust no one... I mean my own dear sainted mom is a threat...make spy movies look naive

3) never go to weddings... just send my regards and a gift.

4) all characters are evil aligned... bad things happen to good people...

I totally agree with #3. And the more I think about it, players really should be creating new characters as they go along. Must your favorite one get killed? Not necessarily. Should you have 3 other characters that you would like to play, who are tied to your favorite character and make everyone involved more interesting? Totally.

why the heck do you need alignment again?

You don't.

no good deed goes unpunished and no evil deed goes unnoticed

This could be a D&D rule.

Neutral actions: meh. Who cares?
Good actions: earn credit with good people or annoy bad people.
Evil actions: earn credit with evil people or annoy good people.

And a quick lesson from Skyrim:
If you leave no witnesses behind, you're less likely to be held accountable.

 

[Hussar]

I once played with a DM who used the following for chargen: you have a pool of two of every number from 8 to 18. You could choose any numbers for your stats, but until you exhaust the pool, you had to use only the remaining numbers for your next character.

Cool idea I thought.

 

[Savage Wombat]

I once played with a DM who used the following for chargen: you have a pool of two of every number from 8 to 18. You could choose any numbers for your stats, but until you exhaust the pool, you had to use only the remaining numbers for your next character.

Cool idea I thought.

Seems like it requires a little too much PC killing to be really effective. Mind you, I've played in a campaign that lethal, back in the day.

 

[The Black Ranger]

I think D&D needs to step away from a default setting and just allow each table to set their own default and give the DM the tools to make his game as heroic or less heroic as he wants.​

 

[The Black Ranger]

This website is not great on mobile devices BTW.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

And a quick lesson from Skyrim:
If you leave no witnesses behind, you're less likely to be held accountable.

I was thinking about this on the weekend - what if you had a D&D setting where the gods, or fates, or what-have-you, really were watching all the time, and where your deeds actually did matter, even if there were no witnesses? I mean, sometimes it seems like D&D, this is how it is - but it only really matters when you die, in deciding where you end up temporarily (if even that), because D&D has a sort of quasi-Catholic afterlife, one where heaven or hell are more like Limbo, and eventually you pass on beyond even those (certainly in most 2E or later cosmologies).

What about a setting where the gods really were watching over people, really were helping them where they could? Really were pushing agendas? I don't think any setting really has much of that, and it might be cool to see one not where the gods were dead/banished, but where they were more present.

In such a setting I'd have all Divine power be Divine power, though (and thus radiant), even when used by evildoers for evil - Infernal power, from demons/devils/etc. would be necrotic etc.

Just thinking aloud, as it were.

I once played with a DM who used the following for chargen: you have a pool of two of every number from 8 to 18. You could choose any numbers for your stats, but until you exhaust the pool, you had to use only the remaining numbers for your next character.

Cool idea I thought.

Seems like Mr 8/8/9/9/10/10 and perhaps his older brother 11/11/12/12/13/13 would both "accidentally" meet their fates very very quickly with most groups! One could dumpstat int/wis to excuse such shennanigans, too!

 

[Lanefan]

Seems like Mr 8/8/9/9/10/10 and perhaps his older brother 11/11/12/12/13/13 would both "accidentally" meet their fates very very quickly with most groups! One could dumpstat int/wis to excuse such shennanigans, too!

Probably. Were I to ever use a system like this (and I probably won't) I'd put in some sort of stipulation that there had to be a range of at least 7 between the highest and lowest stats of any character, to prevent just this and also to prevent 16-16-17-17-18-18.

Lan-"consistently using Wisdom as a dump stat makes for a very entertaining and amusing game"-efan