Quote from: Cole;465353I don't understand what you mean by that.

I have some issues with characterization in the series, but I don't see how characters "moving the story forward" has to do with their roundedness of portrayal.

I meant it as a separate criticism.  Protagonists being denied the chance to make a difference defies standard "epic fantasy" tropes, but it happens all the time in GoT, to the point where it's almost like you can tell GRR did it just out of defiance of the genre, rather than to help the story.

I think that's where some people are getting frustrated, or why they feel it may move "slow", because you build up to these points where you're like "Alright, they're going to do something awesome!", and then something happens that completely sidelines the character and they end up not doing anything substantial.

I'm going to start the first book soon, and I'm going to give it an honest shot.  I'll probably enjoy them a bit more if they get into the characters more than the show has.

Quote from: FrankTrollman;465172Back in 1989, Shadowrun 1E had special fake future-swear words that it used exclusively instead of real swear words. SR4 in 2005 used the real ones. That's pretty common. The 80s were prudish and people lived in fear of Tom Hanks. In the 21st century, we say Fuck.

-Frank

1-3E used Frag and such, it wasn't until Catalyst games took over that they started using Fuck....I wonder if catalyst did not get the rights to the shadowrun language...

As For "its got dragons so its just for kids" I remember seeing "Death to Smoochy" in theaters and the first time Robin Williams yelled out "I'm Rainbow Fucking Randall" I actually seen parents pick up kids and run out of the theater...so some dim-whited parents believed just because it had a big Rhino Costume, that it was for kids....

Ok, keep in mind I am going only from the TV show; I have not read the books.

Quote from: Peregrin;465368I meant it as a separate criticism.  Protagonists being denied the chance to make a difference defies standard "epic fantasy" tropes, but it happens all the time in GoT, to the point where it's almost like you can tell GRR did it just out of defiance of the genre, rather than to help the story.

I don't agree with you, unless you construe "make a difference" only as "and then it saves the day!" or something like that. Generally it seems like at any given juncture a character makes a choice, and there are large consequences. Most everything that happens with, let's say, Ned, seems to follow from his active choice up to the point where he is imprisoned for treason (and arguably after, one might say that his false confession prevents his daughter's murder even if not his own.) For example his choice to support Stanisz over Cersei or even Renly seems to lead directly to Petyr turning on him. His motivations sometimes seem contrived to me but not the mechanics of the drama.

Quote from: Peregrin;465368I think that's where some people are getting frustrated, or why they feel it may move "slow", because you build up to these points where you're like "Alright, they're going to do something awesome!", and then something happens that completely sidelines the character and they end up not doing anything substantial.

I don't really see where you are coming from. I guess there are a couple examples, the one I can really think of at the moment is Sandor holds back Sansa from pushing Joffrey but most of the main characters are pretty decisive agents, Catelyn, Rob, Tyrion, Danaerys, Drogo, etc. I mean, it is an ensemble cast and given conflict some characters lose out but compare the medieval conflicts he is partially making homage to, characters rise and fall.

I am not saying that GoT is Shakespeare level material but it sort of strives to work in the narrative form of the history dramas. I don't find it a failing that there is not one central protagonist who always gets to have his tvtropes "crowning moment of awesome" at the requisite 15 minute story beats, if that is what you mean.

If the show moves slowly, and I do think it does at times, I think it has more to do with the characters being long-winded and the scripts'  tendency to have an exposition heavy tell-not-show approach that is probably partly inherited from previous price-by-weight fantasy epics and partly a creature of budget restraints.

Quote from: Peregrin;465368I'm going to start the first book soon, and I'm going to give it an honest shot.  I'll probably enjoy them a bit more if they get into the characters more than the show has.

Again, I can only speak for the TV show. I do think the characterizations can ring false at times, Ned sometimes seems to speak and act as a straw-man for concepts Martin wants to deconstruct rather than out of any understandable human motivation, several characters (Cersei, Jamie, Petyr come to mind) can be weirdly preachy about their amorality in a mustache-twirling way that I find grating and artificial, etc. But I still don't really follow your earlier criticisms - maybe I'm not sure what you're comparing them to.

Two examples that might help clarify what I mean.

******SPOILERS IF YOU HAVENT SEEN THE SHOW******








Tyrion being knocked out before the battle for apprently no reason.  He's constantly trying to get ahead but continually denied for no other reason than to defy heroic tropes.  He could have made a decent general and his character could have evolved a bit, but instead they deny his character this chance and his character remains static.

Joffrey had a few seconds where he was like "Wait, why is Stark saying I'm not the true heir??", which would have made for an interesting character development, but instead they brush it off and he just remains the same without any more interesting internal conflicts that could add more dimensions to his character.  He becomes another de-facto Lannister.

This isn't so much paying homage to historical dramas as it is just continually keeping characters flat.  And from what I've heard from people who have read the books, and even like the books, is that this continues to go on for three more books.

Again, I'm going to give the books more of a shot because I think it may do a better job of characterizing who everyone is and maybe shedding light on some of the internal conflicts the characters go through, and it might make them a bit more three-dimensional.

Quote from: Peregrin;465486And from what I've heard from people who have read the books, and even like the books, is that this continues to go on for three more books.

This is demonstrably false, but as i won't enter spoiler territory for you, you'll have to take my word for it.

Quote from: Peregrin;465486Tyrion being knocked out before the battle for apprently no reason.  He's constantly trying to get ahead but continually denied for no other reason than to defy heroic tropes.  He could have made a decent general and his character could have evolved a bit, but instead they deny his character this chance and his character remains flat.

I took this for a homage to Bilbo getting k/o'ed at the battle of the five armies and thought it was a funny turn. It seems to me that his evolution is being made Hand in stead of Tywin, but again I don't know anything that happens after the end of the season.

Quote from: Peregrin;465486Joffrey had a few seconds where he was like "Wait, why is Stark saying I'm not the true heir??", which would have made for an interesting character development, but instead they brush it off and he just remains the same without any more interesting internal conflicts that could add more dimensions to his character.  He becomes another de-facto Lannister.

If this never pans out, yes, that would be a wasted opportunity. (That moment of realization might have had something to do with his decision to override Cersei and have Ned killed, maybe, though? It would be interesting to later find some reference to that, but I would not really expect it either.)

Quote from: Peregrin;465486This isn't so much paying homage to historical dramas as it is just continually keeping characters flat.

I don't think it's a homagebut I don't think it's "keeping characters flat" either, I just mean to say that there are a large number of characters no one of which seems to be the main central figure, and as characters come and go not every potential plot thread for every character is going to come to fruition; the value of some of them is going to vary from taste to taste - myself I would be interested in seeing Joffrey address his heritage but if Tyrion proved to be a great battle hero I think I would have found that corny.

Quote from: One Horse Town;465487This is demonstrably false, but as i won't enter spoiler territory for you, you'll have to take my word for it.

Alright.  

I already own the first book, so I'm at least committed to finishing that.  It's not like I don't want to like the series, either, as medieval-esque low-magic fantasy is right up my alley.

Quote from: Cole;465488I don't think it's a homagebut I don't think it's "keeping characters flat" either, I just mean to say that there are a large number of characters no one of which seems to be the main central figure, and as characters come and go not every potential plot thread for every character is going to come to fruition; the value of some of them is going to vary from taste to taste - myself I would be interested in seeing Joffrey address his heritage but if Tyrion proved to be a great battle hero I think I would have found that corny.

I guess so.

I still enjoyed the series.  There was a lot to like, for all of my complaints.  I've just been trying to figure out what's bugging me, and why other people don't seem to like it so much.  Maybe I'm being a bit zealous since I'm so used to most fantasy fiction being throw-away.

To get slightly back to the original question, I'm British. As Ian Warner said earlier in the thread, we use swearing as whitespace. I find the slight preciousness amongst non-Commonwealth Anglo-Saxons about swearing (fuck it, North-Americans, you know who you are) to be hilarious.

Most Scandanavians I know (mainly though MMOs) are very fluent in English-swearing.

That said, in normal RPG rulebooks? Probably not. In flavour and atmospheric text, definitely.

Best,
D.

Quote from: Peregrin;465331When you're a little kid, you want obvious big bad evils (like the original Star Wars), you want globe-hopping plots and adventure, not characters examining their political agendas in a godless world where nearly everyone's a jerk.

I beg to differ.  Game of Thrones is a POLYTHEIST world where everyone's a jerk.  

JG

I'm pretty sure that "polytheist" and "godless" are not necessarily incompatible statements. Both in the literal sense and in the social sense.

RPGPundit

Quote from: RPGPundit;465657I'm pretty sure that "polytheist" and "godless" are not necessarily incompatible statements. Both in the literal sense and in the social sense.

RPGPundit

Well, in GoT prayers DO work.  That may only be because the "magic level" is going up since the birth of the dragons, but most people believe in some kind of god.  Which of course has nothing to do with the level of cursing in the series.

JG

Quote from: James Gillen;465758Well, in GoT prayers DO work.  That may only be because the "magic level" is going up since the birth of the dragons, but most people believe in some kind of god.  Which of course has nothing to do with the level of cursing in the series.

JG

Hmm.  Well, up till now in the TV show I haven't seen anything that would indicate the literal existence of the gods.  Maybe its in the novels, but so far the magic I've seen in the show has all been of the "arcane" variety with no direct divine intervention I could see.

RPGPundit

There is this wonderful scene in Vampire Slayer where the villain questions the existance of the Warhammer World gods.

I think he has a point. Priest powers have been bound spells for more editions than I can remember and there are a few pieces of fluf that hint that the "blessings of sigmar" are just the Chaos gods playing silly buggers!

Quote from: RPGPundit;465883Hmm.  Well, up till now in the TV show I haven't seen anything that would indicate the literal existence of the gods.  Maybe its in the novels, but so far the magic I've seen in the show has all been of the "arcane" variety with no direct divine intervention I could see.

RPGPundit

Well, that's my point.  "Godless world" could mean one of two things.  It means either that people don't believe in gods- which is not the case in GoT- or that there ARE no gods.  The idea that people can pray to gods and get magical results doesn't necessarily mean that the gods are out there as objective entities- like I said, it could just mean the "magic level" is going up and thus such prayers have results.  But in that case it's not a godless world, in that people DO believe in gods and have reason to believe that their prayers bear fruit - even if the gods aren't actually there.

JG