Hey guys, so a friend of mine is interested in getting this book because he is a big Game of Thrones fan but does not like Green Ronin's D6 system. He has played Fantasy Flight's Star Wars games and wants to use this system to craft his own Game of Thrones game. I'm trying to help him get started and here is what I've come up with so far based off what I have looked at in the core book.

There is a decent amount in the fantasy setting to get started but it still leaves a lot of work to craft on our own. I know there will eventually be a fantasy splat book but he would rather not wait for that. With that in mind what all are important things that need to be crafted?

Here is what I have so far:

Gear/weapons: The basics are in the book and look pretty well done, but there is so much more that needs to be flushed out.

Valyrian steel comes to mind. I was thinking at first to just look at the lightsabers in Star Wars, but I don't believe that is going to translate well. So I started thinking about Vsteel having high pierce and vicious stats. Not sure, on balance there.

Then there are things like poisons, different breeds of horses, and so on.

Another big one siege weapons. I didn't notice any stats siege weapon nor encounter ideas for how to lay siege to a castle/fort.

Oh and painkillers will be milk of the poppy!

Intrigue: I saw there is an intrigue section in the book that is more detail than what is found in the Star Wars books and that is greats since social combat is more important in Game of Thrones. I haven't had a chance to read it yet, but for those that have are there any suggestions there to make it feel more like A Song of Ice and Fire?

Archetypes: My initial idea here was to do an archetype for each of the different cultural groups in GOT. So you would have an Archetype for Dornish that is different from Ironborn that is different from Northmen and so on. To me this seems like it would be the most fun part to craft but it will take a while. Any suggestions you guys have or have seen here would be great!

Anywho, that is where I'm at right now with this conversion with the Genesys system. It is still early going, but we plan to put some serious time into it! Any and all help would be greatly appreciated!

Haven't got the book yet (it's shipping at last, as of today), so most ideas are derived from Star Wars.

I'm going to filch Duty from AoR for characters with house affiliation, Obligation from EotE for unaffiliated.

Am pondering making Status a seperate characteristic, like Force rating.

Don't like the idea of healing potions/painkillers/whatever in a low-tech, low-magic setting; would need to overhaul the whole Wounds business probably. First idea was, removing 5 wounds after the first combat in a given day, 4 after the second etc., i.e. free Stim after an encounter. Second idea there's an once per encounter manoeuvre, any PC may take, healing 3 wounds (like the Repair Patch). Sorry, I just cannot picture everybody running around with bottles of MoP; as it is represented in the books, it's coming with severe side effects/addiction.

Siege weapons are basically stationary vehicle weapons.

Valyrian Steel should be unaffected by Sunder like Cortosis, plus it's definitely Superior. One could make it as Vicious and Piercing as Vibros, compared to regular blades.

Are you talking the stupid show, or the quality books?

The books would make inspiration for a great NaDS campaign. The show would require a GM to ignore everything that made the books work, ignore the time taken to travel between points by adding a literal fast travel option for turnip carts and ravens. If there's no scene where someone schemes with pointless "edgy" sex going on, then the players would have to be docked XP.

7 minutes ago, Endersai said:

Are you talking the stupid show, or the quality books?

15 minutes ago, Grimmerling said:

[...] the books [...]

Of course.

The weaponry doesn't matter so much. That's not what makes a GoT game.

What matters most is the Houses. Houses should be the focus.

What matters secondmost is intrigue and social conflict being deceptively dangerous. More dangerous than physical combat. Which also must produce a rather high fatality rate.

Fourthly, magic must always, always, always come with a nigh unbearable price. To the point that I would consider that all magic attempts might get an automatic Despair.

Look at Green Ronin's SIFRP game. It has its flaws, no doubt. But they absolutely nailed what makes GoT feel like GoT.

GoT isn't heroic fantasy. It's horrific fantasy. Every player should go into every session expecting severed limbs, unwinnable choices, and death. So much death. In fact, a successful character in GoT is the one whose death wasn't meaningless, who advanced the station and fortune of his House as he died.

Well, I haven't read the Genesys rulebook yet, but I have several years of experience as both a player and GM in FFG's Star Wars System. Furthermore, I have read Green Ronin's SIFRP but I have not played it, so take everything I'll say with a grain of salt.

I think that Genesys/FFG Star Wars would be a good system for adventures in the world of Ice and Fire. In fact, I already thought about merging the Star Wars System and SIFRP a year ago, but didn't write anything down about it.

Concerning your questions:

1. Vayrian steel: I don't think that Valyrian steel should grant Vicious or Pierce. Valyrian steel is known to be make weapons of high-quality, that are very lightweight and near indestructible. So I would propose the following:

   Quote

   Weapon quality: Valyrian Steel

   A weapon or armor with the Valyrian Steel quality automatically gains the Superior quality and all the effects of this quality. A Vayrian Steel weapon can not be affected by the Sunder quality. Furthermore, the encumbrance of a weapon with the Valyrian steel quality is reduced by one to a minimum of zero. If this weapon has the Cumbersome quality, its rating is reduced by one as well. Armor with the Valyrian Steel quality makes the wearer’s soak immune to the Pierce and Breach qualities.

2. Archetypes: I see the temptation of making different archetypes for the different cultures. The templates almost write themselves, after all. But from a game play point of view, I would advise against making archetypes for different cultures. Many players would propably like to play as members of a House and would therefore have the same cultural background. That means that cultural archetypes would just needlessy constraint players. Let's take a look at an example: Let's say that a Northman would start with a Cunning of 1 and a Willpower of 3. What happens if a player wants his character to start with a low Willpower but doesn't want to be from another region? What if a player wants to play a character like Hodor, who is clearly a Northman but has an Intellect of 1? I would rather propose to let everyone start as a baseline human (All characteristics at 2, WT 10, ST 10, 110XP, 2 free non-career skills) and to introduce a new system of boons & drawbacks (see explanation further down).
3. Wounds, painkillers and combat: FFG's Star Wars RPG and Genesys are written as systems, where healing is easily obtainable, either through technology or magic. Furthermore, while it is very easy to loose a combat, both systems are not very lethal. The World of Ice and Fire on the other hand is a world, where healing can take a very long time, wounds can fester and combat can be very deadly or can easily lead to gruesome injuries. Therefore I would propose several changes to Genesys's healing anc combat system ( Warning: These changes have not been tested yet, it could be that they do not have the intended effect. All these changes would have to be thouroughly tested before they could be implemented in a inofficial setting book):
   1. There are no stimpacks or equivalents of stimpacks in this setting. I would rather adapt Grimmerling's idea and introduce a once-per-encounter manoeuvre, which allows the character to heal three wounds. Other ways to heal wounds are the following:
      1. Once per encounter, a character's wounds may be healed with a medicine check (maybe just once per day? - but that would be probably too hard).
      2. Every day, a character may automatically heal 1 wound.
      3. After one day of rest, a character may make an Resilence check to heal wounds (difficulty would be the same as a medicine check).
      4. Milk of the poppy is a single use item that can grant a bonus to Medicine and Resilence checks made to heal wounds and critical injuries (like an extra boost die or an automatic success).
   2. The second problem would be the lethality. As written, gruesome wounds and similar effects are rare in the system. Genesys's combat system is quite straightforward, any big changes would just needlessy complicate everything. So we need to make a small change which makes the system more lethal. - Well, that's easy:
      Now, every successful attack, that deals wounds to a character, will automatically inflict a Critical Injury. There will be no roll for this Critical Injury, the character will automatically suffer the lowest and easiest critical injury, that he doesn't have yet, instead. If the attacker inflicts a Critical Injury with Advantages or Triumphes, everything will happen as usual (rolling on the table + 10 per each previous critical injury) instead of the automatic Critical Injury. Now, these automatic low Critical Injuries won't matter much, when they are inflicted, but they will influence all regular critical injury rolls greatly as add +10 to the roll each, as well.
      This would make prolonged fights quite deadly, and there is almost nothing worse than loosing a character to a single unlucky die roll, so we need another new rule:
      Everytime a character suffers a regular critical injury (one with a roll), after rolling for the critical injury, the character's controlling player may spend a Story Point to change the critical injury to another one of the same severity.
   3. Healing critical injuries:
      1. The difficulty of each check to heal critical injuries (Medicine or Resilence) is upgraded once. On a failed check with a despair, the wound begins to fester.
      2. What happens when the wound festers? No idea, we should think about some consequences. Maybe an automatic critical injury similar to the effects of Bearsloth Venom?
      3. When a critical injury is obtained, a character may perform a Medicine check in the same encounter to heal it (difficulty as usual + the mentioned difficulty upgrade).
      4. Each week, a check must be made for each critical injury of an character: The character or another character may choose to perform a medicine check. If nobody tries to heal the injured character with a Medicine check, a Resilence check must be made. Difficulty of the check: see above + 2 additional difficulty upgrades if the character did heavy work during the week, +1 additional difficulty upgrade if the character did only light work (GM's call), no further difficulty upgrade if the injured character rested during the week.
      5. There should be talents for skilled healers to downgrade the difficulty of the check.
4. Poisons: Well, there are already lots of poisons in the Star Wars RPG, the effects could be easily ported over. Maybe some new posions with more dangerous effects? But it should be quite easy to make new poisons.
5. Siege Engines and Mass combat: Siege engines would probably be weapons on the planetary or tactical scale (Damage x10) with the Slow-Firing and Prepare qualities. Thanks to AoR, we already have rules for bigger combats. the squadron rules from the AoR GM Kit and the mass combat rules from Lead by Example. these should work well or could at least serve as a good starting point for a new mass combat system. For example, there propably needs to be a rule for unit losses during a mass battle, if the system needs to handle longer campaigns.
6. We probably need a new subsystem with rules to organise a noble House. AoR's base building rules (Desperate Allies), EotE's homestead rules (Far Horizons) and SIFRPs House rules could serve as starting points for the new system.
7. New subsystem: Drawbacks & Boons : When you think about it, most characters in the World of Ice and Fire have several drawbacks and/or boons: They are either children, dwarfs, untrustworthy bastards, blind old men, naive, or something similar. On the other hand, some people with the blood of the Valyrians or the First Men have clearly a magical touch, most of the Dornish people are acustomed to the heat, and so on. Green Ronin's SIFRP had mechanisms where starting character's abilites were influenced by the character's age and most characters had to take one or several flaws. I think similar Drawbacks could work easily in the Genesys System and some of these Drawbacks could be related to age. These Drawbacks would work like anti-talents. Cultural differences could be modeled as Boons and Drawbacks as well. That way, you could make your cultural background important for your character, but you don't have to. In other words: If you want to play a Dornish character, you don't have to take any Drawbacks or Boons related to the Dornish, but you can if you want. This is just a general idea for such a system, I haven't playtested any of these ideas.
   1. Each Drawback has an XP value (usually between 10 and 25XP, smaller Drawbacks probably won't be really important).
   2. Each PC has to choose a number of Drawbacks with a total XP value of at least 15XP and at most 50XP (exact numbers will depend on playtesting).
   3. After that, the PC may choose a number of Boons with the same XP value (therefore it could make sense for a character to take more and more severe Drawbacks than necessary).
   4. Drawbacks could for example include the following things:
      1. Less experienced: Less starting XP (e.g. 10 less starting XP could be a Drawback worth 10XP)
      2. Drop one characteristic of your choice by one (20XP Drawback)
      3. Bastard born: suffer some kind of malus (Setbacks, difficulty upgrades,...) on social checks when interacting with nobility
      4. Wildling: Malus to social checks to all Westerosi characters.
      5. Blind (see the effects of the Blindness critical injury)
      6. Old: some kind of malus on Strength and/or Agility checks
      7. Child: some kind of malus on checks to interact with grown-ups, when it depends on that these grown-ups take you seriously
      8. Frail: Less wounds (e.g. -3 wounds --> 15XP)
      9. ...
   5. Boons could for example include the following things:
      1. Any talent (the worth would be the regular cost of the talent); Talents as Boons are not restricted by the "talent pyramid", neither do Boon-talents count towards the "talent pyramid". If you choose a ranked talent as a Boon, the cost of the second rank rises as usual.
      2. Environmental adaptation: ignore a number of setback Dice in cold/hot weather, in naval environments,...
      3. Automatic advantages for a skill (e.g. an automatic advantage for Streetwise checks could be fitting for a citizen of King's Landing)
      4. Boost dice in certain situations (for example: Child-like: You get two Boost Dice on checks to appear non-threatening or unimportant)
      5. Higher strain treshold
      6. more starting XP
      7. a mixture of the above, for example the following Boon: Valyrian blood: You may downgrade the difficulty of all checks to withstand fire, and you get a Boost Die on all checks you make to handle, tame or otherwise deal with dragons.
   6. Some combinations of Drawbacks, Boons and Characteristics won't make much sense. It would be up to the individual GM to allow or forbid these combinations.
   7. Drawbacks and Boons may be switched during play with the GM's permission.
   8. A GM may grant a Boon or may take away a Drawback as a story reward
   9. With the GM's permission, a Drawback may be bought off for it's XP worth + 5XP. That does not make the Drawback (like Dwarf) disappear, but it won't hinder the character any more.

These are my unfinished ideas for a Genesys game in the World of Ice and Fire. What are your thoughts?

So with Game of Thrones setting is there a George R.R. drawback across the whole game that anytime you roll 2 Despairs on any check your character dies?

21 hours ago, Endersai said:

Are you talking the stupid show, or the quality books?

The books would make inspiration for a great NaDS campaign. The show would require a GM to ignore everything that made the books work, ignore the time taken to travel between points by adding a literal fast travel option for turnip carts and ravens. If there's no scene where someone schemes with pointless "edgy" sex going on, then the players would have to be docked XP.

The stupidest thing a story can do is not finish.

@Varlie Naah, most characters would die because of narrative reasons. You just have to be quite unforgiving as a GM concerning the mistakes of your players. Nobody should die because of a single die roll in this setting - but one should absolutely die because of some bad decisions... (insert evil GM laugh here)

@CitizenKeen Yes, but that makes TWOIAF an excellent setting. You can't break canon if there is no canon...

First off I want to say thank you to everyone who is contributing ideas and please continue to do so. Second I especially want to thank @FeBommel this is exactly what I was looking for!

I like a lot of your ideas, and they have made me reevaluate how I planned to approach this conversion. You are right about the Archetypes, since we were planning on keeping the players apart of one House, they would mostly be of the same archetype and thus have the same starting stats anyway. There needs to be a another method to allow them to have differences in their characters and I do like your drawback and boons idea. In Genesys there is already a drawbacks/fear/motivation part of character creations, but I haven't looked at that closely yet. It might be something that can be mined to craft your ideas.

Anywho, I'm at work so I need to finish this up, but I'm going to really take a close look at everything you said, as I really like a lot of it; thanks again!

Oh, there is already a mechanic called Drawback? Well, in that case, I'll propose renaming my subsystem idea to Flaws & Boons.
And I would keep Genesys's drawbacks/fear/motivation mechanic, as this social subsystem would fit perfectly for TWOIAF.

Have you taken a look at Green Ronin's SIFRP(Song of Ice and Fire RolePlaying)? It's a quite interesting system and even if I don't like some parts of it, it could be mined for ideas and inspirations. There is for example a similar mechanic to my Flaws and Boons mechanic called Benefits & Drawbacks in SIFRP.

Let's talk about magic: Most of the magic in the setting is pretty low-powered. It's mostly warging (--> animal companion rules from FaD), skinchanging (--> animal companion rules + taking over and dominating animals/people) and different versions of visions and skrying (dreams, glass candles, looking into the fire, connection with weirwoods...). These things could easily be done with talents and/or Genesys's magic system. I would put an XP tax before magic, as TWOIAF is a very low-magic setting (so I would make these abilities active talents). The rest of the of the magical abilities are pretty unexplained (making shadowbabys, raising ice and fire wights from the dead, hatching dragons,...) and I'm not sure if PC's should even have access to such abilities. That's more fitting for unexplained NPCs and cutscenes in my mind.

3 hours ago, FeBommel said:

Have you taken a look at Green Ronin's SIFRP(Song of Ice and Fire RolePlaying)? It's a quite interesting system and even if I don't like some parts of it, it could be mined for ideas and inspirations. There is for example a similar mechanic to my Flaws and Boons mechanic called Benefits & Drawbacks in SIFRP.

If not, the pdfs aren't very expensive.