Crusader Kings 2: A Game of Thrones mod adding massive eastern continent

[Ols]

Isn't the difference that a lot of it is caricature? A lot of the cultures don't have a direct equivalent, and a lot of you seem to want to shoehorn them into one when they're supposed to be several. They have influences, but since cultures are a result of their environment and their surroundings it's hard to try and come up with a load of circumstances that have never existed to generate something new.

 

[FireDevlin]

All I know is that despite limitations, that dude (GRRM) has given me hours upon hours of enjoyable respite from the real world for a minor amount of cashola.

 

[CzokletMuss]

Every fantasy borrows from ours in one way or the other, however many writers try to make something special out of it.
GRRM doesn't try much. However, that is the point: Westeros is supposed to be as similar to our world as possible and be plot-focused rather than lore-focused.

Yup. So don't get mad for pointing out the obvious - who cares that a teenager can come up with a world like this, brilliant characters and their intriguing stories are what we like this books for.

 

[Velorian]

Maybe you can't imagine this, but it is possible to create something new. Westeros is based on characters not the world so it isn't that important - we get generic medieval-ish setting with knights and dragons. Boring. But take a look at "Dune" for instance - this was brilliant (I know the book has 50+ years but when it was created it was completely new). So don't tell me that nobody can't create anything fresh - maybe just fantasy is exhausted as a genre. But there are others.

Most fantasy settings are like this, quite frankly what makes it somewhat unusual is the low-magic setting and the high focus on power politics in a feudalistic setting. It's a quite unusual series, the fact that the world is similar to real world cultures in many ways does not make it uninteresting to me. If anything it makes it more interesting.

Fantasy is hardly an exhausted genre, anything you can think of that isn't based on reality would be fantasy, so if it's exhausted then you are stating that nothing new can be thought off. Something like the Mistborn series seemed rather new-thinking to me, but really some types of stories would be ruined by mixing too many new elements into it. If you are going to place a high focus on realistic power politics including all sorts of completely unknown elements would distract from the main story.

 

[CzokletMuss]

Well if by fantasy you mean any unrealistic genre (horror, s-f and so on) than I agree. However Tolkien-style with Important Artifacts, Ancient and Wise Race, Forgotten Knowledge, Brave and Honorable Humans and Evil Minion Races and of course Big Bad Guy set in medieval-ish setting are certainly finished, I don't know any fantasy novel which use all this and still is fresh.

Based on realistic political games and grim, harsh low-magic world: "The Witcher". Not the game, but the books; Sapkowski use a lot popcultural references, Celtic mythology and Slavic "feeling" in the story and the world is obviously based on Europe (Nilfgaard being Ivan the Terrbile's Russia and so on). But knows this and just play with the ideas.

 

[SDSkinner]

Fine, the Valyrians are Roman in their basis, but usually a franchise needs a "fallen empire" style nation or ethnicity to explain why things are as they are and it's difficult not to let Roman undertones drift in.

It is perfectly possible to do Olmec/Toltec, Chinese, Egyptian or other cultures for fallen empire background. Or Incans. Seriously they would be perfect for a background; what could be better than a continent divided up between the corpses of dead rulers?

 

[Ols]

It is perfectly possible to do Olmec/Toltec, Chinese, Egyptian or other cultures for fallen empire background. Or Incans. Seriously they would be perfect for a background; what could be better than a continent divided up between the corpses of dead rulers?

Well, it's the basis for why the Free Cities are Republican. Since it was a Freehold, a Republic, it's hard to pick anything else.

 

[Velorian]

Well if by fantasy you mean any unrealistic genre (horror, s-f and so on) than I agree. However Tolkien-style with Important Artifacts, Ancient and Wise Race, Forgotten Knowledge, Brave and Honorable Humans and Evil Minion Races and of course Big Bad Guy set in medieval-ish setting are certainly finished, I don't know any fantasy novel which use all this and still is fresh.

Based on realistic political games and grim, harsh low-magic world: "The Witcher". Not the game, but the books; Sapkowski use a lot popcultural references, Celtic mythology and Slavic "feeling" in the story and the world is obviously based on Europe (Nilfgaard being Ivan the Terrbile's Russia and so on). But knows this and just play with the ideas.

Tolkien's works were based on real world myths, same as Song of Ice and Fire. I agree that's difficult to think of truly new things in conventional low- and high-fantasy, but then that's not really the point of those stories. As long as they are placed in a logically consistent world, then how "new"/unique that world is, is quite irrelevant to the story which is almost always based on the characters. It's a sub-genre that isn't meant to be truly unique so by this standard it isn't a mediocre world, not unless there are logical inconsistencies.

Most science fiction works are also based on prior works, and very few of them can be said to be truly creative (though there are a few), at any rate for such a story it's usually more important to think up new elements unless its based on near-future earth.

 

[CzokletMuss]

You've just repeated what I said - in most cases story and characters are important, not the world.
And yes, most of the s-f is crap too.

 

[illathid]

I also think it's important to note that GRRM's books can largely be read as a deconstruction of the fantasy genre. That deconstruction wouldn't work if the setting was more original. So I don't see the generic nature of the setting as something "mediocre" (i.e. a negative), but rather as part of a larger positive.

 

[Slym]

A completely innovative novel would be really hard to read, because there would be nothing to relate it to.

 

[rashtrakut]

The Doom of Valyria has many similarities to the fall of Atlantis.

Bravos incorporates many aspects of Venice and once aspect of ancient Rhodes.

Yes Martin has derived his worlds off many real world examples but it is simply not a one is to one comparison. There is a bit of borrowing across the cultures too..and the depth of his borrowing is far more fleshed out than what Robert Jordan did in the Wheel of Time.

Also unlike the Wheel of Time and many other series he has bothered to flesh out true religious diversity and conflicts among those faiths...Yes many of these faiths are derived from others, but they are not true carbon copies either. Also he has shown the good and dark side of most of the religions displayed so far.

I disagree that this unimaginative carbon copying. It takes talent to weave the diversity into a coherent narrative and then add multidimensional characters.

 

[grisamentum]

Well, it's the basis for why the Free Cities are Republican. Since it was a Freehold, a Republic, it's hard to pick anything else.

Freehold does not mean "republic." It just means it owned its own lands.

Which is why the name "Valyrian Freehold" has always annoyed me. It makes no sense at all. Every independent and sovereign power is a freehold. Unless you're somehow renting your kingdom from another kingdom, in which case I guess you would be a leasehold kingdom. IT MAKES NO SENSE. GRRM is a good soap opera plotter but that's about it. The dialog is atrocious, the pacing is garbage, the characterization and descriptions are bland:

In those days, the smell of leather and blood had clung to him like perfume. Now it was perfume that clung to him like perfume...

/groan

Part of the reason the pacing is so bad is because, as GRRM himself, puts it, "The tale grew in the telling." In other words, HE IS MAKING IT UP AS HE GOES ALONG.

 

[CzokletMuss]

Which is unprofessional (I guess) but interesting - since he didn't know what he wants to do with this in the end, this is more like AAR than a coherent narration. Think about it - he created characters who have to act accordingly to their situation and objectives. This "the story writes itself" and he doesn't have that much freedom because he didn't have the vision of the whole thing in the beginning.
Anyway, does anyone know why is it taking so long to finish the next book? I've heard that this is due to some plot problem (aka "this doesn't make sense! what have I done?"), is it true?

 

[grisamentum]

The Doom of Valyria has many similarities to the fall of Atlantis.

Besides the "lost civilization" thing, there really are not a lot of similarities at all. And who are the Atlantean refugees who then proceeded to conquer all of Europe? It's not much of a similarity at all except "part of a landmass disappeared a long time ago."

 

[grisamentum]

Which is unprofessional (I guess) but interesting - since he didn't know what he wants to do with this in the end, this is more like AAR than a coherent narration. Think about it - he created characters who have to act accordingly to their situation and objectives. This "the story writes itself" and he doesn't have that much freedom because he didn't have the vision of the whole thing in the beginning.
Anyway, does anyone know why is it taking so long to finish the next book? I've heard that this is due to some plot problem (aka "this doesn't make sense! what have I done?"), is it true?

Yeah, he's discussed it before as the "Meereenese Knot" -

http://gameofthrones.wikia.com/wiki/Meereenese_Knot#In_the_books

That wiki isn't exactly right, but without spoiling too much, yeah, this is kind of the problem, and it's still a problem going in to the next book.

 

[User29]

I really want to play this mod but I'm currently watching this series and I don't wanna see spoilers

actually the mod is very careful about putting spolier tags in the descriptions, so all you need to know for not spoiling it is the start up date. after that, it's just like ck2. everything is different.

EDIT: badly Emu'd I shoulda just kept reading

 

[Mauer]

I thought the meereenese knot was solved last book at the end, gosh, I hope this doesn't mean we get innumerable chapters set in Essos again.

 

[Darkgamma]

Reg, you seem to have missed the forum to place this in

 

[apg]

No, the 'north' as in the north of england, hence why all the actors speak northern english... not scottish lol though there are a few. The programme is full of lancastrian, derbyshire, yorkshire, sheffield type accents. Deffinately not scotland....