A Game of Thrones, Yearning for Birthright

About a week ago, my wife and I power watched season one of A Game of Thrones on Blue Ray. My animosity towards George R.R. Martin aside, I enjoyed the season and found it refreshingly tighter then the books.

However, this is not a review. AGoT has been reviewed to death. Watching the series made me yearn to once again play Birthright.

For those not familiar, Birthright was a setting published by TSR in 1995. In the setting, characters were rulers of domains (this was possible even at 1st level!). There was much political backstabbing (at least in my campaigns) and of course war always loomed.

I really got into Birthright at the time. It is the only setting published by TSR that I ever used in my campaigns and I used it for several years. One of the attractions for me was that the characters each had a bloodline that was derived from a dead god. There was a war of the gods many years ago in which all the old gods perished and new gods rose in their place. However, not all of the old gods power was transferred to the new. A fraction of it (a lot in godhood terms) was transferred to their followers. Some followers had only trace bloodlines, while others had great bloodlines. It was possible to increase ones bloodline by killing another blooded character, giving the game a very Highlander appeal.

The game was originally designed for 2nd edition AD&D, and this was the system I usually ran it with; however, I once played a GURPS (3rd ed.) version of the game, and a dedicated online fan base put out a 3rd edition D&D version that I used for a year or so as well.

I have, to the best of my knowledge, every expansion ever published for the setting. I haven't had an urge to play it in years. For the past ten years, my game of choice has been Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay, and when I do play D&D, it is an old-school version. I've played with both the BECMI Cyclopedia rules and Basic Fantasy Roleplaying Game.

But damn! Watching Game sure makes me want to pull the Birthright material out of storage and maybe convert it to Basic Fantasy Roleplay, or for kicks, use it with 2nd ed. AD&D (although my 2nd edition games were mostly 1st edition games with a few good ideas from 2nd ed. thrown in for flavor).

GRRM's "A Dance with Dragons" -- Do I Care?

GRRM has finally finished the fifth tome in his "Song of Ice and Fire" series. The release date is July 12, 2011 and this time, he promises he isn't just making shit up. I had lots of enthusiasm for this series during the first three books, but after waiting too long for book four (five years) and finding the fourth volume lacking, my inertia for the series waned. For those not familiar, Martin's books really cooked all the way to the end of book three. Book four moved away from the main characters and took the story no-where (shades of Robert Jordan). Martin followed this sucker-punch to his fans by first promising a fast turn around between books four and five, but ultimately he made us wait six more years. That makes a total of eleven years without the story moving forward.

I resisted reading George Martin's "Ice and Fire" books. Years before, I was talked into Robert Jordan's Rand Land books a go (The Wheel of Time). I gave up after five books in total despair and cursed the terminology "Epic Fantasy". The only reason I ever picked up A Game of Thrones by GRRM, was I was deployed in the Middle East (this was shortly after the events of 9/11) and couldn't afford to be picky about my reading materials, due to the fact that they were in short supply. I picked up AGoT, only because it was long and was a fantasy novel. I enjoyed it so much, I begged my wife to purchase and mail me a copy of book two, A Clash of Kings. I ripped through both volumes while deployed. When I returned stateside, I bought a copy of A Storm of Swords. Finishing that in mid-2002, I waited three more years for book four A Feast for Crows, for which I all ready stated my disappointment.

One of my long time players is a fan of the series, I talked him into reading it. He plans on buying his copy of Dance on publication date, and has even recently re-read the first four books. I'm not so sure I will.

I am leaning towards waiting for a few reasons. The foremost is, I wish to express my anger with Martin for leading his fans on for eleven years. I plan on doing so by not purchasing his book in hard cover. I may wait for the paperback, but I prefer to wait until I find a copy in a used book store. I don't want one penny of my money to go to GRRM.

Fuck him.