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Fun and Interesting Houses to play as when the goal is to become a King in Westeros?

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Moarice said:
"Remove everything that has no relevance to the story. If you say in the first chapter that there is a rifle hanging on the wall, in the second or third chapter it absolutely must go off. If it's not going to be fired, it shouldn't be hanging there."

— Anton Chekhov
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I for one very much disagree with Chekhov (I honestly believe that more details is always good, no matter how useless) but its just my opinion

Furion Matsuya said:
Do you have any ideas how difficult world building is let alone writting a story as good as ASOIAF's? going into needless and excessive detail beyond what the story reqires is a secondary luxery most writters don't have the time for especially when they write as slowly as GRRM due to all the plots and things been covered.

Also it's a fantasy you arn' supposed to overthink every damned thing
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Nothing is worst than language building in my opinion; Literally developed baldness because of it when I was making a Tabletop RPG setting
 
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SchmittLenin said:
Nothing is worst than language building in my opinion; Literally developed baldness because of it when I was making a Tabletop RPG setting
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Ouch! that's why I've never tried to develop a language, I might bastardize a existant or extinct one but no more then that.
 
BadassMcGee said:
Guys, this thread has gone way off topic by this point, it's nice to see support for GRRM's work but you are just wasting people's time when you post all these entries about it when the thread is about fun houses to play in the mod :p. I'm gonna attempt to un-derail it here by explaining that, as previously mentioned in passing, House Blackwood are a lot of fun because A: they have a rivalry with another house at the beginning B: they are decently strong, C: they have a pretty cool coat of arms, and D: they are the only old gods lord outside of the north, so you can try and convert westeros back to the old gods if you like, which is fun. (albeit a pain due to the increased revolt risk from the mod for religious conversion)
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Thanks for the idea! Didn't know there were old gods worshipping house down of the neck, converting westeros from there is whole world different story then from some northen lord, because for northen lord to do so would make sence to first get northren kingdom.
 
NakedBeast said:
Thanks for the idea! Didn't know there were old gods worshipping house down of the neck, converting westeros from there is whole world different story then from some northen lord, because for northen lord to do so would make sence to first get northren kingdom.
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Also if you play any time around the Blackfyre rebellions you can plot to put Bloodraven on the throne
 
karmaepsilon said:
Also if you play any time around the Blackfyre rebellions you can plot to put Bloodraven on the throne
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Same with Bittersteel, though this should be after Daemon's passing RP-wise. Though I wish Bloodraven had his own House if you landed him.

In the meantime, I thought I should share a new, fun scenario I just tried out.

Start during the Dance of Dragons Bookmark as Rhaenyra, win the war, attain a few Green Lords and take their lands, and then give said lands to one or more of the Dragonseeds (Nettles, Hugh Hammer, Ulf White, Addam of Hull, Alyn, etc) and work your way up there. If you want the Iron Throne but don't want to usurp it from the Queen or one of her children, you could always wait to see if a faction to place a Green Claimant succeeds or a Adventurer Claimant succeeds to make an attempt at getting it.
 
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Just pointing it out, what if there isn't any heresies to the religions and no schsicms. Just because we have them doesn't mean GRRM has them in his world.

Onto the topic on hand, I'd say play as Mance and conquer Westeros from the North with the true men.
 
blackninja9939 said:
Man thats an essay and a half. GRRM writes to make a story so why would he add in things that are not relevant to the world? Things that really do not make that much of a difference.

Its called a fantasy setting for a reason, hence you can have the same technological levels in the continent so things are a level playing field for your wars without one side clearly winning cause they have better <insert weapon here>
Would the world really be that much better by adding in arbitrary distinctions in languages or changes in a group of cultures who are all descended from the same ones?
As for the same customs and laws, they are all ruled by the same monarch so of course the laws and custom are the same (bar the Dornish obviously but there is lore reasons for that exception).

You come off like a bit of a dick. Does the inner writings of Christianity effect much? No it really doesn't, the big differences maybe at a push but the majority of the world follows the same basic ideas with minor pointless variations arbitrarily defined by average people who thought their view on religion was somehow better so they make their own sect. Would that make the world of ASOIAF better? Not really, not unless it was going to be used in the story at any point otherwise it has just been needlessly tacked on and achieves nothing.

As Moarice said with the example of Chekhov's gun and the point of GRRMs books, adding unnecessary detail does not achieve anything.

Also next time you write a post about you try and act like less of an self-righteous arse
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... For the love of God, stop trying to cover up for GRRM's lackluster worldbuilding. I love A Song of Ice and Fire, but I still see its many many many flaws. Especially in worldbuilding.

For the granddaddy of real worldbuilding? Look to Tolkien. He wasn't lazy or shallow about it. Fuck, there were different cultures within the same fucking SECTION of a single continent. Loads of them. GRRM has had decades to write shit. You don't get to claim his worldbuilding isn't shit when it really is ill-thought out.

Look at his fucking stupid idiocy with the Faith of the Seven as a parody of the Roman Catholic Church. He stripped away all of the good things from it and gave them to other organizations. I believe this stems from his being a former Catholic, and shows his hateboner.

He doesn't flesh out his Old Gods. They're just some New Age hippie mumbo jumbo shit. Not seeming a religion that anyone would actually KEEP. We hear about occasional songs and such for the Seven, where are the prayer services? Where are the orphanages, universities, and charities that were historically handled by the Church that this is a parody of?

Why the fuck is Braavos so powerful and having the largest fleet and remained a secret city for centuries when it was in some bumfuck swampland and would have had to go into Valyrian territories to get lots of wood for their ships? It makes no fucking sense. It's just there so GRRM can masturbate to 'MUH REPUBLIC CITY STATE' and show us his O-face like with the Salty Dornish and how they consistently got away with pulling shit that makes the Red Wedding look like a playground accident.

Or during the First Dornish War with how apparently the Martells kept the Yronwoods from rebelling against them even while every vassal's holdings burned. And somehow the Dornish could hide out in caves for years without farming for more food. Martells were obviously using their mind control powers to force their vassals to not just jump ship and sign on with Aegon.

Fuck, the Dance was just the fucking Anarchy with more silver hair and dragons. He squandered the potential for a rich and deep history.

Edit: I apologize for my foul language. This is just something of an issue of mine.
 
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blackninja9939 said:
As Moarice said with the example of Chekhov's gun and the point of GRRMs books, adding unnecessary detail does not achieve anything.
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That might be a point... if A World of Ice and Fire didn't exist. The worldbuilding in the books is lackluster, and would intrude on the plot? Sure, no problem. Not every writer is Tolkien, writing a good story and an interesting setting at the same time isn't easy.

But when you make a book specifically about the worldbuilding that you can't include in the books? Then I expect something better. Something that isn't an uninspired rush job like A World of Ice and Fire was.
 
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Nikephoros II said:
That might be a point... if A World of Ice and Fire didn't exist. The worldbuilding in the books is lackluster, and would intrude on the plot? Sure, no problem. Not every writer is Tolkien, writing a good story and an interesting setting at the same time isn't easy.

But when you make a book specifically about the worldbuilding that you can't include in the books? Then I expect something better. Something that isn't an uninspired rush job like A World of Ice and Fire was.
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For better or worse in the judgement about his worldbuilding in that book GRRM wasn't even the primary writer of AWOIF.
 
Caspoi said:
For better or worse in the judgement about his worldbuilding in that book GRRM wasn't even the primary writer of AWOIF.
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Well, that's what happens when you put incompetents like Lindo and Elia (Or was it Elio and Linda?) in charge of something. I think the Targaryen parts were mostly GRRM? At least he is somewhat better, when he actually tries to put effort into his setting.

Aside from the Dorne wank? I still can't believe AWoIaF made the Andal invasion 'the Andals chivalrously attacking one region at a time'. Or made the Stormlands the big First Man stronghold in Westeros. "Remember ASoS mentioning Tristifer IV and the Mudds going full First Man King Arthur in the Riverlands? I hope you did, because we didn't!"
 
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As much as I love both GRRM and Tolkien, I will say this. It is incredibly unfair to compare anyone in world building to J RR Tolkien. The man was a fellow at Oxford and a tutor at Pembroke college. He was fluent in Anglo Saxon and had a very good knowledge of French, Italian, Latin (obvs), old Norse and various Celtic languages. GRRM is a writer, Tolkien was a scholar (the man went to my old school, so knowledge of him was practically compulsory). People calling GRRM the 'American Tolkien' is unfair both on George and on Tolkien, they are different as night and day.

Tolkien based so much of his world building on knowledge of the Ango-Saxons (his first love) as well as his time in the trenches, GRRM bases a lot of his writings on his refusal to fight in Vietnam. Tolkien spent a lot of his time inventing languages as the linguist that he was, GRRM allowed others to invent his languages for him. Both created detailed lineages for their important characters and both showed the horrors of war, Yet to compare the two is both disingenuous as well as intellectually dishonest. AWOIAF can no more be called GRRM's Silmarillion than Twilight be called a modern Dracula.

This is not to say that I did not enjoy AWOIAF, but it was still wank in places. Grover, Elmo and Kermit are my main examples, but other stuff (by Elio and Linda mainly) was atrocious.
 
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