{"id":568,"date":"2007-02-19T14:15:19","date_gmt":"2007-02-19T18:15:19","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/flashofsteel.com\/index.php\/2007\/02\/19\/gamers-bookshelf-the-song-of-ice-and-fire\/"},"modified":"2011-05-12T12:05:28","modified_gmt":"2011-05-12T17:05:28","slug":"gamers-bookshelf-the-song-of-ice-and-fire","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/flashofsteel.com\/index.php\/2007\/02\/19\/gamers-bookshelf-the-song-of-ice-and-fire\/","title":{"rendered":"Gamer’s Bookshelf: The Song of Ice and Fire"},"content":{"rendered":"

I don’t read a lot of fiction. And I read even less fantasy literature, Tolkien excepted. But I thought that some good fantasy reading would make a nice Christmas gift for my geeky wife and everyone I asked – everyone<\/strong> – recommended the same series: George R. R. Martin’s still-in-progress Song of Ice and Fire<\/em>. I took the first book in the series with me on a recent business trip and then quickly raced through the next three.<\/p>\n

People were right about these books. I will now try to write about them without spoilers. There will, necessarily, be some larger plot references made, so if you are a purist about this sort of thing, you’ve been warned. No shocking reversals will be laid out in any specificity.<\/p>\n

The series, so far, is about a civil war. The ruling house of the Seven Kingdoms is a usurper, having deposed the last mad king of the dynasty that unified the continent. The death of the king and doubts about his successor tears the kingdom apart and the noble houses must take sides. Meanwhile, an unearthly supernatural force is stirring in the North. Will the Seven Kingdoms be strong enough to face it? The plot is your typical War of the Roses showdown, with some wonderful passing looks at the devastation caused to the peasantry. Bandits, cults and robber barons rise to fill the hole that sovereignty left. The series is Hobbes’ state of nature in action.<\/p>\n

Well, this is what the series is supposedly about. It really isn’t. The book is about the people and their relationships with each other and themselves. Every chapter is a “point of view” chapter, slowly revealing a little bit more about the characters. As the point of view changes from chapter to chapter, we see how confused loyalties (good and evil, friendship and nation, family and duty) shape the continent. And the characters change, both through plot development and through reminding us that when we read something about a non-narrating character, we are seeing them through somebody else’s eyes.<\/p>\n

For example, in the first book (A Game of Thrones<\/em>), a particularly unsympathetic character is introduced – he seems arrogant, manipulative and even monstrous in a particular action. By the third book (A Storm of Swords<\/em>) he is a chapter character and we learn more about what makes him tick. Likewise, a dead remnant of the deposed dynasty is seen as an abductor and rapist in some early sections, but later we learn that some of this could be propaganda.<\/p>\n

One of the great things about this way of writing is that it effectively plays up inaccuracies in opinion, memory and perception. There are multiple viewpoints on a single event. This works well in a civil war narrative, and is reinforced by the unreliable nature of news in wartime. What exactly happened in a battle? Where are the armies?<\/p>\n

Martin, like Shakespeare before him, keeps all of this real war stuff off stage. Excepting a single major battle in Book Two, there are no battlefield narratives, descriptions of flowing banners and heroic deeds. The reader is told about the ebb and flow of the war as the characters are. This “What news from the front, my liege?” gimmick could get old, except for the high personal stakes involved.<\/p>\n

The shocking thing about these books is that they aren’t that well written. It’s an alternate world that Martin keeps reminding us is not our own, but only in the clumsiest of ways. There are knights, squires, lords and ladies, but he insists on calling peasants “smallfolk”. Knights are titled “Ser” instead of “Sir”. Characters never have a morning meal or eat breakfast; they “break their fast.” Sometimes this works: sworn followers are called “bannermen”, mercenaries are “sellswords” and priests of the Seven Gods are called “Septons”. In an uninspired lack of creativity, he resorts to calling the main language “Common”. He repeats cliches at a maddening pace and will work in the titles of his books at every opportunity.<\/p>\n

“This battle will make a feast for crows.”
\n“When you play the game of thrones, you must play to win.”
\n“Is that a storm of swords I see on the horizon?”<\/p>\n

OK, I made that last one up. But you get the gist. <\/p>\n

Martin resorts to the same plot mechanics over and over again, and the reliance on shocking turns of events has become so routine that nothing really shocks anymore. He also has an almost unseemly interest in the budding breasts of young teenage girls and when they lose their maidenhead. I am convinced that he should treat sex scenes as he does battle scenes – draw the curtain and show us the morning after. They aren’t written well-enough to be interesting, and if they were, should I want to be interested in a thirteen year old girl’s wedding night? And, ironically, Martin must have half a dozen groups that are sworn to celibacy – none of whom take it seriously.<\/p>\n

But even if they aren’t especially well-written, the larger plot is compelling and the characters are some of the richest I’ve encountered in some time. The intelligent outcast, Tyrion Lannister, and his scheming sister, Cersei. The Starks, who would rather be right than safe. The exiled princess Dany and growing confidence in her rights to the throne her family lost. It’s the characters that keep the books interesting – not the words. Martin’s normal prose is workmanlike, but his dialogue quite good. He knows who these people are. <\/p>\n

The books are so popular that HBO has picked up the television license. There are still three books to go, though, so it could be a while. In the meantime, the series has spawned board games<\/a> and collectible card games<\/a>. As of yet, there is no computer game based on the trials of Westeros, but one of the earliest new fan created maps for Europa Universalis III<\/em> is based on the books<\/a>. The same modder made a Crusader Kings<\/a><\/em> game, too.<\/p>\n

Converting a book to a game isn’t easy, especially when the appeal of the books isn’t necessarily things you can game. The Game of Thrones<\/em> board game is your standard conquer-the-world title with some card based mechanics and random events. You muster your troops, consolidate power and, Diplomacy<\/em> like, hope that alliances will get you over the hump. It’s still a very army focused game with a lot of randomness built into the system.<\/p>\n

This is typical. The Lord of the Rings<\/em> isn’t really about armies battling each other, but that’s what we get in the games. A book based on Les Miserables<\/em> would probably be about fomenting revolution and defending a barricade. Moby Dick<\/em> would be a whaling business sim (with maybe an environmental message.)<\/p>\n

But Tolkien’s books at least have the advantage of multiple races and some magic powers so you can get experiences like Battle for Middle Earth II<\/em> or an MMO. The magic in Martin is even more subtle – and much darker – than anything Tolkien describes, but all the armies are pretty much the same. Sure, over the ocean you have peoples who resemble Mongols, Arabs and Africans – each with their own military system – but the Seven Kingdoms of Westeros are all feudal European armies. They even have trebuchets.<\/p>\n

So how do you capture a game about gaining a throne without making the armies the be-all and end-all? By making legitimacy count. Each of the feuding houses has a claim based on different terms. One simply wants to secede. Another claims that the natural born heir isn’t the natural born heir, so the brother should inherit. Which brother would make the best king? Then there are those who think in simple terms like controlling the capital.<\/p>\n

All of which makes me think about Kingmaker<\/em>, the great Avalon Hill<\/a> game of backstabbing and childstealing in the aforementioned War of the Roses. It remains a classic board game, and was converted to a quite buggy game for the Amiga and PC. Just like Westeros, titles could be distributed, there could be multiple claimants to the throne and armies are only part of the problem. This is the model that any Martin game should follow.<\/p>\n

Of course, computer games don’t do deceit well. Either the AI opponents end up clueless backstabbers or gullible pawns. Uncertainy is a key factor in the page turner, and there is a twist in book four that relies entirely on a character thinking he\/she was in control of events, only to discover the opposite. So the real attraction of the books can’t quite be translated well.<\/p>\n

So, like Middle Earth, Westeros may be doomed to be just another setting, a place that gamers associate with specific people and specific events but content to have simply as a sandbox to mill around in. I’d love to have some brilliant developer take a crack at a fantasy Kingmaker<\/em>, or any other game that used personality traits to surprise the player and not simply as income or battle modifiers<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I don’t read a lot of fiction. And I read even less fantasy literature, Tolkien excepted. But I thought that some good fantasy reading would make a nice Christmas gift for my geeky wife and everyone I asked – everyone – recommended the same series: George R. R. Martin’s still-in-progress Song of Ice and Fire. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false,"jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false}},"_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[9,95],"tags":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p5GFeQ-9a","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/flashofsteel.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/568"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/flashofsteel.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/flashofsteel.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/flashofsteel.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/flashofsteel.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=568"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/flashofsteel.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/568\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3124,"href":"https:\/\/flashofsteel.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/568\/revisions\/3124"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/flashofsteel.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=568"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/flashofsteel.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=568"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/flashofsteel.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=568"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}