Hello!
I saw this mod idea and was fascinated since I’ve also come to love Westeros. While reading through this thread there were some things that came to mind that I thought that I might share, as well as possible have to give some bad information that may or may not be known. While there seems to have been a fair few attempts at a Westeros mod, none to my understanding, have manage to make it off. What I’ve seen I’d say that to my eyes your mod would seem to have a pretty good possibility to make it, and I hope it will.
First I must however deliver the bad information, which may or may not be new to you. I hope you people are aware of Martin’s stance on fan-fiction (and I’ve come to understand it as all matter of fan products, but I may be wrong)? Which is very negative, to say the least, and he considers it a copyright infringement, as well as has emotional views regarding its use. It’s of course sad that he has taken this position, but I figured that it would be better to let you know now in case you didn’t, than discover it when then a juridical hammer, or some other shit, would come down on you.
However once the bad news is out, I thought that I would add my own thoughts, ideas and suggestions. Now I’m not a modder so some, if not all, of these ideas may be impossible to do or demand far too much work to be worth. That is however of course something that the real modders are in a much better position to make judgment on than me. I do however hope that I’ll be able to add a few ideas that can help and perhaps make useful inspiration even if rejected in their original form.
the weakest is the Greyjoy invasion.
Wouldn’t it be possible to just add the Greyjoy as one House among others since, to my understanding, there are mods that have managed naval travelling and battle, which should thus lead to the possibility the Ironborn invading without a special invasion? Or am I wrong here?
Dragonguards-Toughest of Targaryen cavalry they ride special warhorses with dragon-like helmet and a horn used to pierce their enemies on charge(so they kill them),and some dragon wings(made of iron,just as ornaments).The Dragonguards also have special tactics:When riding they use lance dealing crouching damage while on foot they use tough bastard swords.The Dragonguard's warhorse cannot be bought(it is got only if you join the Targaryen as a gift).They are unlootable and immune to Lance Crouching,Spear Bracing and Shield Bashing.
Now I haven’t read all the books so I may be wrong, and please point me out if I err. But isn’t this a bit too much to make them immune to various stuff? I mean hell yeah, I’d support a group of real badass knights coming with the returning Targaryen, if they exists in the books, but isn’t this a bit too much? I mean they are still humans, right?
Permanent death for player and lords
This is a function that I fully support. But I do have one question; will there be a system for new lords to appear as well? While lords and “ser whatever” died fairly frequent in the books, there are often children and relatives to replace them and a few new Houses are even added if I’m not mistaken. The reason to bring this up is that, in my experience, the lords in M&B tends to be very risky with their lives, and thus falls in almost every battle they take part in (more or less guaranteed when confronting the player’s party). Will there be some form of system to prevent the Westerosi nobility for exterminating itself in the first month or so of the war?
House Frey:Occupies the Twins.Led by Walter Frey it is an ally to House Stark,but after some times joins House Lannister and automaticaly claims most Stark proprieties killing their lords,just like in the book.Winterfell comes to Tywin,of course.
This actually seems to me to be a VERY BAD idea. I don’t think it would make much sense to have them join the Lannister as a script, or that the Starks should be scripted for extermination. It makes it almost meaningless to play with the Starks I’d say if you’re certain to have this turn of event no matter what.
House Greyjoy:Occupies their islands.Greyjoy units have andvantage fighting on ships.They all start an invasion after quite some time.
Well what invasion? Balon’s invasion of the North? Euron’s invasion of the Reach? Wouldn’t it simply be better to just let them invade or so without having them scripted. Or allowing a chance for them to either go North as in the books, or perhaps, if the player can convince Balon Greyjoy of it with much Persuasion to join with Robb, and thus attack the Lannisters?
The White Walkers:Wildlings,Undead and White Walkers as powerful Lords,They start an invasion but they have no towns.
I may have got this wrong but would you place the Others and their undead in the same faction as the Wildlings? That makes little sense to me since the Wildlings pushes for the Wall in order to get away from the Others. I’d actually suggest splitting them up.
While I do not think that a specific Greyjoy invasion, unless made so that the player can get to influence where it strikes or that there may be some random element in this, is a good idea there are other invasion plans that I do think is a good idea. Having the Targaryen return with an invasion is good, although instead of only one place of landing, maybe have a random selection between different parts that were discussed by Daenerys and her advisors as possible sites to give it an element of surprise to the player.
Other ideas for invasions are of course also Mance’s in trying to break through the wall and the Others’ drive south.
As for starting class I’ll throw out some ideas for males and see what you think. I may add others later for female characters which in many cases would be the same, but probably not in all:
General
Peasant-starts with ok physical stats but very low on various “learned” based skills and stats but very little equipment and almost no money.
Outlaw-starts with good stats with things like tracking, seeing and looting, but very only some basic equipment and almost no gold, and hardly much in either the social or the intellectual fields.
Septon-starts with some social and mental stats and attributes as well as healing and persuasion things that good and some starting equipment and money
Maester: Lots of intellectual stats and attributes as well as social ones, but not very physical inclined. Starts with some equipment and money
Merchant-starts with many social stats and probably both some degree of gold and also some levels of trading, persuasion and inventory. Starts with little equipment but with some wares and/or gold.
Sellsword-starts with good physical stats and fighting based stats and attributes as well as some starting equipment
Smuggler-probably has some ok physical stats and basic for fighting but is best with various things like looking, any naval related stats, trading and persuasion. Starts with some wares, some basic armory and gold, maybe even a ship as well.
Hedge Knight-like the sellsword only but also with a bit better equipment and perhaps also with a personal arms
Man-at-arms: A preference for fighting and physical stats, as well as getting to start as working for a faction along with a amount of renown. Breaking with this faction would have a medium large penalty to renown and faction relationships as he’s branded a traitor.
House Knight-starts with ok stats in all areas but with dominance on the physical and fighting inclined part as well as a significant starting renown. The character may also get to chose a House which one is associated with, and breaking that with faction would lead to severe loss of renown and faction relationships as he betrays his own House. Until such a betrayal is done, perhaps the character should wear that faction’s symbol as his own? The character starts with some pretty good equipment.
Lordling Knight-Like above, except more and better, but also that breaking with one’s House gives a very big penalty in every area imaginable. Including giving a pretty bad starting reputation with the faction one switched over to.
Lord-As above but also starting with a castle and being even better and with a focus on fighting and some social and intellectual stats and attributes fitting for a lord. Probably replacing some minor character, and may get to choose arms for one’s House, or just get the one from the lord one replaced. Of course breaking with a faction causes waves across Westeros and the brand “traitor” firmly placed on one’s head. This type of treason should really leave a social and status-concerned backlash for the character.
Exile-well it’s hard to say, but there may be some alternatives to decide what manner of exile the character is and from where, and thus get the starting stats and attributes. As well as equipment and gold.
Specific
Wildling-good physical stats and things like healing, tracking etc. but not much more and will probably have a pretty bad quality equipment.
Other-well extremely good physical and fighting stats, and some decent leadership things as well. But otherwise social is dead and the character would probably only be able to interact with other Others. Will probably have the kick-ass Other equipment but won’t be able to get much else and will find itself in constant war with all the humans. Maybe render that dragonglass weapons makes a lot of extra damage against this?
Night’s Watch-starts with ok stats in fighting and social abilities, as well as some other things like tracking, healing and stuff, and with some good equipment. The character can however only belong to the Night’s Watch and can be expelled for some scripted reasons, like going south to far. If once expelled the character is a bandit and cannot join any other faction under any circumstances.
Factions
One of my favorite topics is how to make the factions in a Westeros-based mod. The way I see it, there are two ways.
First is to go the way of having the dominant Houses as factions, along with some others as well
Factions would be (and in these factions would probably be sworn Houses):
House Stark
House Lannister
House Tully (although they and the Starks should perhaps be put together)
House Martell
House Tyrell
House Greyjoy
House Arryn
House Targaryen
House Baratheon of Dragonstone
Secondly I’d think that there might be the possibility to have each contender to the crown as being a faction, and those who supports them be part of their faction
Factions would be:
The King on the Iron Throne (Joffrey)
The King in Highgarden (Renly)
The King in the Narrow Sea (Stannis)
The King in the North and King of the Trident (Robb)
The Queen Across the Water (Daenerys
The King of the Isles (Balon)
Except for these factions there would of course also be others who would operate in different fashion.
One question that I did spend some time thinking upon was if it would be possible to show the smaller houses, and feudalistic structure or society which is very unlike the modern state. Having monolithic structures of factions would of course act very much like modern state. An idea that I had was this. In order to show the smaller Houses, and indeed Houses at all, would be to make a scripting sequence that connected NPC:s with each other and caused to them to react somewhat alike in case of joining and deserting a House. I’ll make an example below.
Let’s say that we have the faction House Tyrell with a bunch of its lords as an example, a possible set up would be like this.
Mace Tyrell (faction leader of House Tyrell and family head of House Tyrell (meaning two “House Tyrell”, one faction and one House))
William Tyrell
Garlan Tyrell
Loras Tyrell
Garth ”the Gross” Tyrell
Moryn Tyrell
Alestar Florent (family head of House Florent)
Alekyne Florent
Axell Florent
Colin Florent
Leyton Hightower (family head of House Hightower)
Baelor Hightower
Garth “Greysteel” Hightower
Gunther Hightower
Humfrey Hightower
While different names they are all part of a single faction, and will be counted by the computer as that. However they will also have some scripts internal to the family in which case that the members the families are also connected with their family heads, and will be scripted to follow the family head in any changes on allegiance.
The scenario would be this. Maybe the character is part of House Lannister and has managed to get a very good relationship with Alestar Florent through various means and actions, maybe hovering around 300+. The character then come over to Alestar Florent and asks him to change his allegiance from House Tyrell to House Lannister. Having this great relationship Alestar Florent agrees and switches sides to House Lannister.
Now the scripting comes into effect and all other members of House Florent makes a test to see how much they have in relationship with Alestar Florent and either Mace Tyrell (or the highest Tyrell relationship at all). If any member of the House of Florent would have, maybe twice/thrice, as much in relation with Mace Tyrell as with Alestar Florent they stay with House Tyrell, otherwise they also change colors and join House Lannister. It would also be great if castles are scripted, so that those castles belonging to characters that switch sides also switch sides. If the same situation would apply to Axell Florent then only he personally along with any villages or castle that he may have would change since he isn’t the family head and the other Florents wouldn’t even need to test their loyalty. Any party from any now hostile faction in a castle or town held by the Florents would be either kicked out, or instantly engaged by the garrison. Similarly if a relation gets to bad characters may leave a faction and potentially drag their Houses along with them out. A cool thing would be to have it as indoors/street fighting, but this could of course be too much work for what it would give.
The benefit of this system would be to allow also lesser Houses to be shown without them having to be an entirely different faction and show how the politics of House allegiance seems to work in Westeros. Also it would prevent the fragmentation of Houses, as by the normal “rules” of M&B when a faction is defeated their lords tends to scatter across the world which may or may not be that likely to actually happen in Westeros with the Houses and their member, even if it would of course also be possible.
The problem is of course that this would require a shitload of scripting, which I understand that the makers of the mod may well find too much to bother with and with so much scripting the risks for bugs becomes pandemic. But I hope that it may provide some ideas, even if the concept as I put it is rejected.
Now my suggestion for factions would be the following
The King on the Iron Throne (would include Joffrey (followed by Tommen) as faction leader and have the Lannisters with sworn Houses, as well as those Houses sworn to King’s Landing as part of their faction, and tries to destroy all other pretenders to kingship)
The King in Highgarden (would have Renly as faction leader and have the Tyrells with sworn Houses as part of their faction, and will try to destroy all other factions with claims to kingship)
The King in the Narrow Sea (Stannis is the faction leader and starts with the Houses Sworn to Dragonstone and a force of mercenaries, will try to destroy all other factions with claims to kingship)
The King in the North (and King of the Trident) (Robb Stark is the faction leader and leader of the Starks with sworn Houses and House Tully with sworn Houses with him, will probably just try to destroy all who attacks them)
The Queen Across the Water (will come with an invasion force…and seek to destroy all other factions with claims to kingship)
The King of the Isles (and the North) (faction leader is Balon Greyjoy and leader of House Greyjoy with its sworn Houses, and will probably under Balon just seek to take land either in the North in the West, but under Euron will probably try to destroy all other factions with claims to kingship)
Wildlings (faction leader is Mance Rayder, and with various bands of Wildlings who pushes south and will try to set up a kingdom in the south beyond the wall)
Clans of the Mountain (probably no actual faction leader but a few different Clans that raids and lots as much as they can, although they can be negotiated with and recruited)
Bandits (probably no actual faction leader and just roams around to raise hell and kill and loot as much as they can, kind of like the bandits in vanilla, everyone hates them)
Brotherhood Without Banners (Lord Beric is the leader and they’ll attack any enemy force they find, but otherwise probably stay more or less passive unless the character can convince them of otherwise)
Night Watch (Lord Commander Mormont, the Night Watch of course stays still and defends the wall against all comers from the north)
Others (probably no actual faction leader but will try to drive south and exterminate the humans)
Neutral Lords (they would just be patrolling around their castles and chasing off or engaging any smaller parties that comes within, or retreat to their castles and try to defend it, and with no real faction leader)
When only one of the Kings and Queen remains and the others are vanquished then that faction could perhaps switch its name into “King/Queen of Westeros”, if the character would like to play.
In my view it would be a mistake to use the Houses as basis for factions due to the fact that after all, it’s about different people who makes a claim to the throne and gets support from Houses to press that claim. By themselves the Houses don’t seem that fascinated with fighting, and without a candidate with a claim they don’t seem to make much of a fuss. Just look how Tyrell switched to Lannister when they lost Renly, even though their army was mostly left intact.
Of course getting to kill one of the candidates should in no way be a small feat since it would eliminate that faction, unless there are heirs to the throne, as in the case of King on the Iron Throne and the King of the Isles. The Night Watch and possibly the Wildlings would probably also get new faction leaders (definitely in the case of the Night Watch), in which case it might be possible to replace them with new leaders.
I hope something good came out of all this text. Once again I’d like to wish this mod the best of luck.
