The Seven Kingdoms Online

[RobSandbach]

Hello all,

First off thank you all for providing a fantastic respositry of knowledge and information pertaining to the books we all love. Its been a pleasure browsing these forums and the website as I read (and reread ) the books; I've never been part of a community surrounding a series of books before, but being a part of this one has been a fantastic experience.

I am the founder of a small independent game studio, developing titles to be published by online portals such as MSN games, Real Arcade and so forth. The studio is also developing a next generation title to be released later this year on PC and Mac. Being such a big fan of the books however, I would love to put some of the studios resources to creating a game for the fans to play together. First let me get this clear; if we were to be permitted by the author to continue, the game would be developed for fans of the books, not common fans of online games. I have seen enough licenses passed to games studios who must develop for commercial profit to see that the resulting games do not honor the origional book/movie in any way, and are just a generic rehash of substandard quality <-- whatever will sell the most units.

For this reason I hope to be able to produce some form of online experience which honors the books well, and is developed with both great gameplay mechanics but also a rigid respect and adherence to the books and setting laid forth. I would rather this game were played by 50 Ice fans than 50,000 World of War Craft fans. I am not even sure if the author would be willing to allow a non commercial venture of this type, I have emailed before, but no doubt he is a busy man and doesn't have time to respond to queries such as mine.

What I am asking of the community is this : Setting aside the attainment of permission to use the recquired intellectual property as a barrier to creating game, what would YOU like to see in an online, multiplayer game based around the series?

Personally, as a game designer, I would like to explore the "MMO" sphere but on a mini scale, and not based soley on combat and boring grinding. A small persistant world, perhaps based in one of the cities or even one of the kingdoms if the game grew, whereby all players could pursue a path as varying different roles Maesters, Knights, Sellswords etc. It would be extremely difficult to find a system which was interesting, challenging and not at all based on combat but i'm in no rush to design the game. I envisage something not dissimilar to a roleplaying MUD or MUSH, but adopted for a 3d world - perhaps even roleplaying enforvced. A small core of players policing and running the game, us the developers relying on players to drive and care for the game in a way no MMO could ever do. The servers with capacity for 50 - 100 players. A studio of our size is certainly capable of producing a game like that, and its players would be loyal fans, not those looking to grind and cause grief to real players.

Perhaps you envisage something totally different, I would love to hear your thoughts on my own brief ideas and also your ideas for a game that would do the series justice!

Thank you for your time,

Rob Sandbach

http://www.urban-games.net/

PS

I know that acquirements of rights to produce the title is HIGHLY unlikely; I would be interested all the same to see what your thoughts were!

[Skyman]

Sounds like a great idea! Good luck, I hope you get a chance to do this. Like Manticore, my main hope would be for some meaning to character roles/actions. No quest givers standing around telling people what to do (though I know that's not what you're thinking of). If the players took on the roles of important characters, that'd be great.

I'd also be happy with permadeath - I know people don't like losing characters they've spent an hour on usually, but when I'm playing a real pen and paper roleplaying game I actually find it quite fun to have an interesting death - I imagine this would be much the same. However, a system where one usually takes a major injury instead of dying could be cool as well - bring on the scars!

Really, all that I think would be necessary would be good character creation mechanics, the ability to have character interrelationships (relatives, etc.), some reasonable combat mechanics, a moderately accurate worldspace (of whatever scale), and you could just plop people down to rp and I'd have fun with it.

[Slynt]

What is required is, rather obviously, the possibility to be completely immersed in the World of Westeros.

That means, few if any typos, no changes to the story as is, and as you mentioned, no grindfest.

I see (at the moment) three good types of gameplay that would fit ASOIAF, that would be different from standard MMORPGs, and that would be enjoyable for fans of the series if not for WoW-kids.

1) A strategy multiplayer title, where players control factions and Houses (Lannister, the clansmen of the Mountains of the Moon, Braavosi, what have you), and take actions online but in turns (a bit like those online space strategy titles), where the main goal of the game would be to have the most power (aka sit on the Iron Throne)

2) A MMORPG where each player has a knight character participating in jousts across the continent of Westeros, gaining prestige and additional titles and gold to improve armor/barding.

3) A game based on the intrigues of King's Landing with players plotting against each other in secret alliances etc.

[rathe]

I am an avid fan of mmorpgs and the coolest thing coming out right now that i think would adapt well to westeros would be the same type of realm v. realm combat like they are doing with warhammer online. people could pick a faction when they create their character then have huge rvr battles. that imo would make asoiaf online great.

[Knight of the Teabags]

Like Skyman I believe there are two major features of ASoI&F which ideally should be captured by any MMORPG attempting to portray GRRM's books.

1) Long-term and even permenant consequences of actions including character perma-death.

2) A strong inter-character and faction relationship system which captures the important sociological themes of the books.

With these in mind here are a few suggestions. Lessening the bitterness of perma-death - all characters in the game age and will eventually die, the question is of how and when. Given the 'Game of Thrones' dying a peaceful natural death in old age would be quite an achievement in itself! However this is not the end of the player's game because their account is not connected to the character they currently playing but the House which that character is born into. When a character dies the player has a choice of younger relatives to take over as their next character.

The achievements a player may achieve playing a character can very possibly have an impact on all players with accounts in that character's house long beyond the character's game life. Let say a daughter of the house marries into another house and has children, her descendents in the other house for a number of generations (say two or three) are potential future characters for all players with accounts in her 'maiden' house as well as of course the children of her original house. Also each family has a number of differing traits connected to it which have a direct relation to the stats of all characters born into the family, by making clever marriages with other houses the players can over the generations tailor these traits to the house's best advantage as a whole. As you can see there are a lot of incentives in the longterm game for taking your turn at playing the dutiful daugther...

Of course reputations are a big theme in ASoI&F and should have an effect. All actions characters make in game will reflect back on them and maybe their family as a whole. Certain limited in-game achievements like say getting a son of the House in the Kingsguard are a big honour for the family as a whole, whereas pulling a 'red-wedding' stunt can make them pariahs for a generation or more.

Any thoughts so far? I am interested to see how this thread develops!

[Maester Yobjascz]

Rob -

I've been interested in game mechanics for a *long* time... fiddling around with heuristics and models for MMORPG's. While I applaud the interest in a persistent MMO world, a standard RPG model is *not* going to work well for the ASOIAF world.

You *could* generate a standard RPG, where characters gain XP, ability, and progress from quest to quest over the course of the game. However, ASOIAF is too gritty and realistic to support such linear developments. Characters who begin as peasants or even sellswords rarely become minor lords. The major lords are near-permanent fixtures in the realm. And much of the storyline that we love revolves around courtly intrigue and political maneuvering... something that would be next-to-impossible to involve any significant number of PC's in.

The only way to make the standard model work, is to have a static universe a la WoW... in which the actions of the player progress that player's storyline, but has no impact on the rest of the world as known... in which case it's simply a WoW clone dressed up as ASOIAF.

A more plausible possibility presents itself, however... instead of an RPG where the player represents a single character, perhaps consider an RPG where the player represents a family of minor nobility. Meld together some of the concepts found in Civ, with the more recent Total War games, and develop a real-time model to run it. Here, you'd function as the head of a minor house, trying to position your family to take advantage of any opportunity for gain. Send younger brothers to become knights or maesters. Recruit sellswords and defend your territories against incursions from rival noble families. Curry favor with your liege. So long as the AI is well designed, games of politics and intrigue could be modeled reasonably well. Certainly to the extent that such games could be played against other PC's, and with abstractions that modify how AI nobility react. I think there's more viability here than in yet another static RPG in a fantasy setting.

[Inactive User]

Basically, the above posts boil down to this-

A Classic MMORPG would be no good, certianly no WoW clone.

Most people seem to think a progressing House thing. Father to son. I personally back Yobjascz's post.

I think that there should be "worldwide events" that brings effects such as

-Kingswood Rebels (send a son to fight there?)

-Robert's Rebellion

-War of the Five Kings (big one)

Only problem is that the game will eventually wither and die, if there are these things. So I think that a static model would work better, but that when a world is finished, you should be able to port your family to another world. Also, I think that having players as rivals would work out quite well. A classic MMORPG would be waay too bad. Maybe we, as fans,a re demanding too much

[RobSandbach]

Wow, Thank you all for your thorough and well considered posts!!

It is understood that a WoW clone isn't what is needed here, and players need to be immersed in a dynamic and living world, where their actions have direct and large implications for the games setting, and other players. Most people therefore want the world to be persistant. Seems also that those who want to emulate the book most closely would prefer a sort of real time online strategy game - which is perhaps the best way to emulate household rivalries both on and off the battlefield. It would seem to me that this sort of approach is perhaps well on the way with the excellent total war modification I've read about?

I've had some excellent ideas from this thread, and I'd love to hear more. One of the main themes of contention is this "Player as individual" vs "Player as leader of small faction" debate. And its roots stem from trying to emulate the books plot characteristics (intrigue, scheming and waring). The only way to achieve these is to play on a large scale. However perhaps if played on an individual scale, whilst living and and being part of the same world, the players can explore other emotions and gaming styles? Those who want intrigue and ASOIaF lordling issues can choose to play as a small lord, and their game is centred around their strong hold, building army, marrying daughters etc. They mot even ever have an individual avatar they move around - more of the civ setting.

Meanwhile other players can choose to become a sell-sword which is far more (dynamicly or player generated) quest based. So anyone with money can put a price on any player (or NPCs) head, or hire them to the do the opposite, keep them alive. Some players may choose to be a knight, or maester. The game interactions can be completely different for each, but they all exist within the same world, and they all have impacts. Just because we're considering MMO on individual scales, don't think it has to be quests, levels and grinding. When we're developing from sourcecode and not just a mod, we can do anything. I personally detest the idea of developer defined quests EVERYONE does, I think having players set their own is far better, a farmer can set a quest to kill 10 wolves from his wood, first person there gets it. A maester can set a "collect 5 XXXXXX herbs" first person to do it gets it. Every now and then the admin can start a largescale story line which has some playerwide quests, but they're not essential.

If anyone is serious about helping a great game design come along, please add me to MSN [email protected]!

[Maester Yobjascz]

Rob -

Dynamic modeling is, I think, the future of good MMO's. It can be difficult to work out the details though.

On a separate note, the problem that you'll run into when you stack genres as you suggest in your 2nd para. (a 'lord' game and a 'combat' game combined) is one of timescale. The timescale needed for a man-at-arms wandering the lands and participating in fights is real-time. By abstracting combat to a tactical game, you can compress time a little so that it passes quickly... but the more you abstract it, the less it stands on its own as a game. Conversely, the timescale for a 'lord' game is *much* more compressed. Intrigue takes time, generating marriage alliances, building up towns and economies... these all take months and even years of game time. If the game ran in real-time, a player would make a move once every few days or weeks.

So, it become difficult, if not impossible, to stack the two as independent games. The only resolution I can see at first blush is to combine both games into every character... and then focus the entire game on one or the other. Either the game is a combat game where politics and intrigue provide *occasional* flavor, or the game is a political/intrigue game punctuated by *occasional* combat. Given the time horizons, I don't see a solution where both games function independently at a pace pleasurable for everyone...

[doc awesome]

How about at first all the lords and stuff are NPCs and the PCs start out at whatever region they want to start in. No classes its would be all skill based so you can be an archer a bard a swords men whatever then you go on and maybe become a landed knight with some power. Of course dieing of old age will happen but if you can play as your child after that then marry them off to some minor lord of something until there is enough players with noble blood that new characters can start off as branch members.

Might not work but its the best thing in my mind right now.

Oh and I MUST and I mean MUST be able to put helpless cities to to the sword.

[Myrddin]

I'm late to the party, but have an idea to share.

Has anyone played WWII Online? Basically, the game was a persistant world that would progress to the end of the war and then restart. Sometimes the Allies won, and other times the Axis. Think a MMORPG version of Axis and Allies.

Application for ASOIAF:

• Start the timeline with the deaths of Robert and Ned and progress to end of the war of the kings. Players declare for one of the Five Kings (well, declare for one of the supporting houses anyway).
  
• The Five Kings war for the Iron throne. Alliances can be as fluid or static as needed. (For example, Renly and Rob could form an alliance to wipe out the others before resuming their fight.) Think of Axis and Allies, except none of the five countries are allied at the beginning.
  
• It's a game of MMORPG armies and skirmishes. If one army doesn't block the other, lands get raided and towns sacked.
  
• Players gain rank and status through the game, progressing from Hedge Knight to Landed Knight, etc. The persistant part can carry rank across "restarts" of the war. The person with the highest rank in each of the main houses play named characters. (A lottery system cah be used to assign initial heads of houses and named characters). People would be limited on ho many times they play named characters. The same person can't play Rob all the time.
  
• Build in economic realities as well as warfare. Do you raise taxes to pay the other players? Raid your enemy's NPC peasant population for money? Get money from winning battles? Will the other side offer more money to your hedge knights to get them to change alliegences?
  
• Owning lands brings in a certain amount of income, which then goes to pay retainers.
  
• Not having enough income = losing resources. A knight may lose his armor, horse, etc if face with financial hardship. It's possible to take and ransom other lords if the battle is lost, as a source of income (no imprisonment of characters). Depending on the complexity of the programmed economy, this could be an automatic payment to the ransomer or be deducted from the player coffers of the house/king.
  
• Include an "alliance history" for each player for each reboot. How many times did they change sides? ie How well can they be trusted to take your bribe and fight?
  
• Add perma death for named characters and heads of houses. (Players retain rank and status for next reboot, but must start a new hedge knight character from scratch to continue). Death carries other penalties.
  
• Lords can hold tourneys for fun (and for income).
  

Anyway. This will never get built, but this is how I would (start to) design it.

[Jakob Lightbringer]

I love the way the ideas for this game is progressing. I would make the following suggestions:

If it is desired to have both a long-term strategic game, as well as a real-time tactical or roleplaying game integrated together, one method (favoring the real-time tactical roleplaying element) might be to break a series of real-time intervals up into political "turns" or "phases". So for instance, while I am am engaging in small-scale combat with my character Ser Hacksalot Frey, I may take a break and enter the "Political phase" menu, where, under the role as Lord of the Twins, I can issue some political commands, command my vassals, and advise my liege lord. Then closing that menu, I return to my role as Ser Hacksalot Frey. When the next "phase" (perhaps once per hour?) expires, the server calculates the results of the political activities and posts the results. At that point, I am free to issue new political commands for the next upcoming phase.

Another option might be to allow me to change characters between phases, so that if I tire of a combat oriented game, I might change to a crafting or roleplaying persona for the next phase. In this manner I might engage in several different types of gameplay in a single game session just depending on the length of a "phase" and how long I wish to continue playing the game at a single stretch.

Another option might be to separate Phases by a lengthy period of time. So that each phase is considered a "moment" within a season or a year. So for instance, the current phase might be identified as a particular season of a particular year. The next phase would be the next season... or perhaps the next year (reflecting the game designers desired time pace). An on-screen clock could give players a heads-up as to how much time remains in the current phase, so that they can wrap up their activities before the phase change hits.

Another interesting option, I think, would be to have a certain portion of the game be cooperative (King Robert rules the land). Then when a crucial event or phase begins, suddenly the players find that the rules have changed and it may be in their best interest to compete for resources instead of cooperating(King Robert dies and the throne is up for grabs). At another point, the cooperative play may resume (Wildling/Others attack). These shifts in gameplay could be based on pre-set events such as listed above or it may be based on dynamic activities that can only be set into motion by player's political decisions and/or random events.

[The Prince]

I know you aren't going to want to hear this... But the best possible advice I can give you is NOT to make an MMORPG. I think online games are lacking because they ALWAYS end up playing out in an overly simplistic way, and also because they end up having much less depth than they might've had if they had been created solely as a single player experience. Take the recent LOTR online as an example of this.

Check out the trailer for this game...

http://www.gametrailers.com/gamepage.php?id=3241

Now the game itself is probably a year/s from release but the combat looks fantastic. In fact, it looks better than any other medieval combat I've ever seen in any other game...period. Something like this, which is likely at least somewhat based on skill and reflexes, could not be done for an online game, because online games don't have difficulty settings that you can adjust...every player that plays one has to be able to manage it which is why they oftentimes have rather lackluster combat. (although taking kotor's fantastic combat system into consideration, that really is no excuse).

As for what the game needs... It needs to feel like ASOIAF. If you have a single city with a bunch of people w/ different professions running around, there won't be much to distinguish this game from the rest. If you want to hear of some of my ideas, then look for my post in the following thread.

http://asoiaf.westeros.org/index.php?showtopic=19315

Basically...this series is nothing without the history that goes into it, without the events of the books, and most of all, without the characters! All of which would be extremely hard to tie into (at least that is what it seems like to me) an online game. Anyway, that's my 2 cents.

I think the strategy game variants that have been mentioned would be great, but I think that you should only get to control a single character throughout the game... Simply for the reason that if you want to keep what makes ASOIAF special...it's characters...and I'm sure everyone playing a ASOIAF game would want to be able to interact with them in meaningful ways via conversations, through diplomacy, etc. What makes House Lannister special is certainly not their motto. Rather, it is Jaime Lannister, the conflicted and dissillusioned young knight whose greatest deed is interpreted as a horrible evil and who is forevermore regarded as a betrayer and an oathbreaker. It is Cersei, the crazy, power hungry, malicious, young queen who will not hesitate killing anyone who gets in her way. There is Tyrion, and Tywin, and Kevan, ETC. If you don't incorporate these characters in a way in which the player can interact with them and actually have some kind of a relationship, so to speak, with them then your game will lose all it's personality.

My best advice, besides not going for an online game, is to always keep in mind why you love the series while making it and try to incorporate all those things into the game while making sure it is enjoyable and rewarding to play.

[fisheggz]

I have always thought an ASOIAF would be a fantastic RPG, if you could start of as a small Lordling or something, maby an heir to some Lords rights and you have to talk to folk to win there allegance (maby like the system in mass effect for 360) you also have to command a small protion of an army as you start off fighting in the first person view and you basically play the game making alligances and breaking them in an attempt to claim the throne.

I know this is not what you were talking about making buddie but if I was to see a game of the franchise then thats the kinda thing I would like to see

[Lord Qyburn]

This may have been mentioned in the various essay length posts, but: I don't want any artificial rules. I am not a PVPer, as I can't be assed to look up character builds and such like that that are necessary to participate effectively, I just like knowing I have the option. And nothing breaks immersion more than finding out you can't attack x because x's name is in blue text instead of yellow or something.

Have it like an online version of Morrowind. You can do whatever you want, but that doesn't mean other players or NPC guards will let you get away with it.

[Forderz]

LQ's got it right. While is despise Morrowind and its similar games, a multiplayer one with user-defined quests (Bounties and contracts, like mentioned before), rewards(Lords put their smiths to work creating weapons and armour), and reputation(Maybe a list of people you've killed, only works with permadeath, and of course name recognition), would be amazing with 300-400 players.

But I honestly doubt anyone will play a farmer.

[Slynt]

I've been giving the idea of The Seven Kingdoms Online more thought, so allow me to express them:

* A Song of Ice and Fire is complex - so why should a game like this not be complex? We all want different things - so an ideal game would include most of it, but somehow compressed into one fluid game, online. In this regard, I think a structure like this may work out:

- All players start out as low-level non-class characters, with a profession; City Guard, Baker,

Cobbler, Bastard, Carpenter etc. Each profession has certain tasks that must be performed

(Baker makes bread that can be sold to other players, City Guard must patrol the streets..); this

opens up the crafting side of the game.

then, later, when earned enough (let's call them) Insight Points, you have enough to create a

second character of a higher stature - a minor lordling, a knight, stuff like that. Now you can play

two characters generating Insight Points, which eventually may land you a pre-generated character

from a House and which allows you into the strategy/political side of the game.

As a Knight, the PvP side of the game opens up - Tournaments are PvP events with jousting,

melee and all that, with the rules as close to real medievial tournaments as possible.

In all cases, characters when dead stay DEAD and you lose any gained Insight Points from them.

This would make it more desirable to keep your characters alive.

In the end, you would have let's say four different characters - a crafter/low-level peasant type

character, a freeman, a noble, and a landed noble. Each character would perform in certain

parts of the game, but you can always log on any of them to play, and they all let you gain Insight

Points through the use of skills, performing missions etc.

In addition, there could be overarching storylines that one or more of your characters participate in

at various stages. I don't know, this is just some of the stuff I've been imagining as an ideal

game somehow.

* Border Wars: At the borders between certain regions there could be realm vs realm events, for

instance the Siege of Riverrun, or the Battle of the Blackwater etc.

* A deeper combat system that allows players to receive scars, wounds, lose limbs etc.

[Lord Eriyan Arcasia]

Has anyone here every played the Romance of the Three Kingdoms series? Strategy/War game. Could base a ASoIaF game off of that series, specially the most recent ones 7-9 i believe where you can pick any of the over 700 characters to play as. As through ASoIaF could play as factions, small houses or larger ones. To make it a more online game you'd have to modify certain things, but it would be a great start. Just a thought from an intense ASoIaF reader and RTK gamer noting the similarities between the two. Look up the RTK series, or download the old SNES version of RTK 2 through emulation.

[RobSandbach]

hey guys,

Just an update. Unfortunatly we've (not suprisingly) been unable to contact GRRM concerning the development of this game.

Thank you all for your wonderful ideas. We are actually developing a world strongly based around the politics and intrigue of the series but with our own Intellectual Property, which is probably for the best! The game is being designed, from the ground up, to be roleplaying intense, possibly enforced, and player development will evolve around character interaction, plotting and scheming. I'm actually thinking of using the Game of Thrones RPG rules as a base, with similar classes, social structures, feats etc.

Thank you all for your input I'll keep you posted if you're interested?

[Underfoot]

For the whole Realtime/Tactical time or whatever, you could make it so that you play as tactical/political time until there's a big battle or major attack and then switch to realtime combat mode or whatever.