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Summer is coming: A review of the surprisingly good new Song of Ice and Fire RPG I’m taking the decision to tread into uncharted territory here. The previous reviews that I’ve written have all been for games that I’ve played to a level where the rules are come as second nature to me, and I know the setting pretty well, too. In this case however, I’ve been inspired to tap away at my keyboard about a product on just reading it.

Firstly, let me nail my colours to the mast: I am a massive fan of George R. R. Martin’s Song of Ice and Fire series. I love the politics and intrigue, and the grim darkness of it all. I love the medieval fantasy setting with its low-level magic and iconic noble houses.

However, I’m not a massive fan of Green Ronin. Don’t get me wrong I love Mutants and Masterminds (but only the 2nd edition). I don’t know of any other Superhero RPG that is both flexible enough to allow you to create just about every type of superhero concept you can think of, whilst still remaining essentially fairly well balanced. It’s perhaps not as much fun to play as Champions, but it lacks its many flaws. However, practically every other Green Ronin product I’ve bought has left me largely unsatisfied. Whilst their products are invariably beautifully turned out, with excellent artwork and graphic design, the games themselves are often quite bland.

And it was with the same underwhelmed-ness that I was hit with when I read through the previews of the Song of Ice and Fire Roleplaying Game (which from hence on in I will call SIFRP). I can’t remember enough about the quickstart they released as a preview to say anything constructive, and it isn’t really the point of this review so I’ll move on quickly. Just keep the idea in your head that I really wasn’t keen. I thought “Oh no, here’s Green Ronin sucking all of the life and flavour out of what should have been a really good game.”

And it was because of this feeling of disinterest that I chose not to buy it. Even when Dave (owner of my FLGS) and Rich (member of my gaming group) told me it was good I didn’t believe them. On flicking through it I was further underwhelmed. Which brings me to my first criticism of the book: the graphic design. The British versions of the novels have truly classic covers. They are simple yet moody and really capture the darkness of the books. I’ve heard a number of people criticise the cover of SIFRP, but for me it goes well beyond just the cover. The cover is a good picture, actually. The trouble is it could be for almost any fantasy game. It doesn’t really capture the flavour of the novels. The interior design, however, doesn’t even go this far. The choice to use bold colours to box things off and colour-code the sections strikes me as a massive dumbing down of what isn’t a game for simpletons or teenage newbies. This is a game that would have been perfectly adequate in B&W, but the extra expense spent on making it colour has been wasted on a Duplo colour scheme and inferior quality artwork. They would have been much better spending the money on getting top quality B&W artwork than some of the shoddy colour ones that make it into the book. Don’t get me wrong many of the pictures are good, but there’s enough that aren’t to make you cringe. There’s one picture, for example, where I don’t know whether one of the characters in the picture is supposed to be Tyrion or Jaime Lannister (for those of you who have read the books you will know how ridiculus that sounds), or just some random person. Anyway, I’ve got all my moans out of the way so that I can concentrate on why I am definitely going to be playing it. Rich lent me his copy to try and persuade me to run it. It was kind of an unwritten pact that I conceded to at least giving it the once over because I wanted him to play Fading Suns, for which he really didn’t like the system. So I started to read SIFRP, and slowly the game itself started to win me over.

So, where to begin? Well, let me start by talking about something that turned me off the original game and tell you why I now think it’s a good system: Abilities. At first I thought “it’s a game with only skills, no stats,” but on further reading and analysis of how they actually go about it I can see that the Abilities are in fact something of a halfway house between stats and skills. There are just 18 abilities, but then each one has specialisations within it that allow further definition of characterisation. And its not a case of no skill=no chance as one might assume with a skills-only system. Like stats, you get a starting score of 2 in every ability. Whilst 18 seems quite a large number of stats, if we think of them as such, I’ve come to the opinion that this is actually very appropriate for the flavour of the novels. Often a character can be big and strong, or nimble and quick, but without training they are useless in a fight. Similarly the most cunning people aren’t always the best educated, or the most deceitful aren’t always the most charming. In a game with stats and skills, it is likely that such abilities would be linked by a stat and so it would be difficult to be good at one without having some natural capability in the other. Whilst I think for most games this approach is desirable, I can for SIFRP the Abilities approach taken is spot on.

Now let me go into some of the things that stood out for me as making SIFRP such an outstanding game:

Firstly there is the house creation system. Perhaps nothing truly unusual here for anyone who has played any strategy games, but what is really good about it is how it ties in to the both character creation and gameplay. The Players must all start out as members of the same house, which they create as a team before they start to generate their characters. The stats for the house determine the PCs position in the world and will affect how the GM (or narrator as SIFRP refers to them) runs the game. However, it also determines some of the options available to the players. Do they want to play the heir to the house? If so they will need to spend some points on enabling that to happen. The status of the house also sets maximums for character status, so you can’t just dump your points into status and set yourself up as the Warden of the West.

Secondly, there’s the intrigue system. This system works a little like combat but for social situations. You take actions that “attack” your enemy and damage their composure. When they run out of composure you can apply the effects you set out to achieve, which could involve convincing them of a truth, becoming friends with them, or something much more sinister. Before even encountering SIFRP I had the idea to do something similar for the new Etherscope system Nigel and I are writing, so it’s good to see other people having similar ideas. I’d have to see this in play to see how it works properly, but it certainly reads like a great system, and covers an absolutely crucial part of the novels.

The combat system is also pretty good. On first read it appears to be a fairly straight forward “Green Ronin Combat System”, derived and simplified from 3rd Ed D&D, as used in M&M, True 20 and WHFRP. However, there are tweaks on this that provide all the options and variety that will (potentially) make the many different fighting styles mentioned in the books equally useful. I really like how the weapon damage system works, using an ability to determine the damage – it might be agility, athletics or even animal handling (for lances) that determines the base damage (whilst the Fighting ability determines the chance of hitting). Armour is also pretty nice, with heavy armours making you easier to hit, and really slowing you down in terms of movement, but stopping a awful lot of damage. There are some things I’m, not keen on, such as the “processional” initiative system taken from the D20 system, but at least I know this will work pretty well and the rest of the system seems really quite good.

Finally, there’s an excellent mass combat system. Not just a scaling up of the normal combat rules, nor a separate system similar to miniatures wargames rules, but a system designed to be integrated with PC actions. It takes the best concepts from wargaming and integrates them into a game that allows the PCs to play their own individual roles within the battle, allows the general to have tangible yet not complete control over their troops, and scales beautifully from individual to unit combat within the battle. I’ve seen numerous attempts over the years of making a roleplay-friendly wargaming system, but SIFRP goes well beyond that to create a truly integrated warfare-roleplay system.

In closing I have a few short concerns: The dice pool mechanic used means that high ability characters will almost automatically at difficult tasks. My instinct says that this is appropriate to the style of the game, but it might just take away any element of risk, and hence fun, there could definitely do with there being a few extra narrator-characters in the adversaries section – there’s a good few creatures, but SIFRP strikes me as a game where you will spend most of your time dealing with human threats – and a bit more background info on Westeros would be ideal.

Overall it is far from a perfect product, but the system is perhaps only a dull-as-dishwater initiative system short of it.