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Season 4 has started! The link to the new site is:

http://s1.zetaboards.com/GameofThrones/index/

Empire Registration will begin this Friday, 10/17, at 8 p.m. central time (9pm for any other east coasters out there)

A Map with sea routes planed and redone.

Hey Guys,

Gunslinger and I have been working on a new approach to The Game of Thrones RPG, trying to figure out what would make the strategy element more fun since it hasn't changed much over the past seasons. We are almost finished with a new board which includes the following elements:

#1- No alliances: Since the game has a fairly small player base and because there is a tendency to end early, we figured that alliances are no longer needed. Plus, it makes for a lot more secret alliances and backstabbing

#2- Rewards for PVP: A lot of the time it seems much safer and more lucrative to just keep going after NPC cities rather than go for your fellow players. Therefore, we've added a few new rules to make player killing a good strategy

#3- Movement costs: Before, everyone's armies were sort of floating around ready to be used anywhere. In this season there will be costs and limitations to moving battalions. New units are bought at a player capital and have to be moved to adjacent cities. This means that players will have different armies on different fronts, meaning that new strategies can and must be used to make sure your forces aren't too spread out and make sure you can defend key cities. This also allows for new aggressive strategies like trying to sneak behind enemy lines and take him with his pants down.

These and other new rules lead to a much more interesting and complex game. Gunslinger and I think that the core group of players from the past seasons and newbies will all find it a fresh start and a ton of fun. I would love to see what the interest would be for a new season... who wants to play?

Just reminding you guys that you do all have permission to do more than reply to NPC battles. You can move battle threads, update the Library, approve purchases, etc. I've just noticed most of you aren't really doing any of this, so I thought I'd remind you.

Anyway, keep up the good work.

To make things easier, I'm changing a few things about how the alliances work. This is due to an error in granting mod powers which prevents me from granting moderator status to our NPC mods. To get around this, I am removing the alliance groups from the forum and instead making the alliance forums password-protected. This will allow me to make a Moderator group, allowing the NPC mods to get their abilities.

I will PM the alliance forum passwords to the members. The alliance leader can request a new password by PMing me.

I'm leaving for vacation tomorrow and will not have internet access for about a week. Empire registration will still begin on the 1st with gameplay beginning 1-2 weeks later. Sometime today I will port the old rules over from the 1st site and have the mass E-mail sent to all registered users. When I return I will look over and approve the registered empires, and we will go on from there.

Sorry for the lack of updates and info from my end, but I've been pretty busy. Things should pick up soon, however.

Direwolf and Athidoc should now have admin powers. Let me know if there's a problem

So Gunz is moving on to something new, which is cool because I'm sure whatever it is will turn out fun and original even if its not SOIAF based.

But I think it would be good to get an idea of who still wants to play. The lay claim idea might have been flawed, but all the npc's are taken so its all pvp from here on out. I've noticed that most people have stopped coming on very much so it might be that nobody really feels like finishing the season.

If we do keep going, I'm sure the game will move on a bit faster now that the posting rule is in place. But maybe the pace is still too slow...

I for one would like to keep playing but I think that it might be a good idea to tweak the rules a bit to make stuff move faster (like maybe only 2-3 days for posting or something similar). Who else wants to keep going and if so, do you think that anything needs changing?

Time is always against us.

I'll try to keep things short and simple, but this is not simple and you’ll have to bear with me if I ramble on. I’ve been somewhat busy lately and haven’t been able to post. In my other time, when I did have time to get on, most of the time I didn’t. However, I've also had time to think about this board, what it is currently and where I want it to go. I wasn't there to oversee much of the PvP last season, and now that I've seen it this season it's definitely different than I had hoped. I wanted to create a fun strategy game that everyone could participate in, one that had a small learning curve.

And so at first I modeled this very much after a similar game I had played, Expanse of Empires. After some time though I wanted something different, something with a bit of strategy but a bit of roleplaying as well. And so I remade the board, got everything done in about 12 hours, and opened it up. Thanks to the help of one of my good friends, the board thrived at first. My first thought was 'success!' I had made a board that I not only enjoyed but one that other people enjoyed.

But then my internet failed. The Game still carried on; I had picked up a far hardier member group than I had anticipated, ones that did enjoy my game, ones that carried the weight when I wasn't around to carry it. And so I made this board, a new board with a somewhat new system for the second season. I was excited, and put everything up without much thought. Nothing of this had been tested, and I didn't even know how great the stuff from first season worked since I wasn't around to see it. Instead of fine-tuning the old rules, I put some new stuff in for fun, thinking it would make the whole game more complex and entertaining.

That, I think, was my first major mistake. You see, while the NPC battles from first season were sluggish and seemed unneeded, Laying Claim, for myself at least, was even worse. It destroyed what little time people interacted on the board; you get on, lay claim to a few cities, then get off without much thought. Sure, there was still PvP action, but that was also a flawed system as I have come to see. Yes, systems have flaws, and some flaws are hard or impossible to work out, but these are glaring flaws that need to be removed.

That leads me to the second major mistake (or perhaps I should call it the first). The big mistake. I tried to craft a game like Expanse of Empires; yes, I changed the system, made it manageable with the resources I had readily available. But I made the game in an effort to bring back what I had 'lost' inside. I should have seen this, should have entirely made it my own even if it meant going off course to make a better end product.

You see, I wanted to attract a larger community. First season was excellent, we had a lot of players, not all of them stayed but it was great to see how everybody liked the game. Then this season came. I rushed it, and we had all of the old members. Not that I don't like you guys, you guys are great, you guys are what keeps this game moving. But I wanted a universal game, a game accessible to anyone and everyone.

So, what am I leading up to? What is my point with all this rambling? Am I going to shut this board down, call it quits and bid you all farewell? Part of me, a small part, wants me to do that, wants to just give up. But I will not give up; I will still attempt to help with this season (I might resign my empire however). But after this season? I don't think it will lead to season three. There will be something on the other side of the bridge, but not what we were expecting, not what I was expecting. I'm going to craft something new, something similar perhaps to this, but something that is in fact its own. I want to make something unique, something for everyone. Whether or not it will be related to George R.R. Martin's A Song of Ice and Fire I can't say. That is where I will start, but I'm going to shoot for the best thing possible, and if that means setting the Song aside and doing something new so be it.

I can't give you an estimated time on how long this board will take to be completed. I don't even have a rough draft, and I'm beginning anew completely with just a keyboard and a word document. You're free to do whatever you wish with this season now; continue if you will and I'll try and help make it a fun experience for you. Once the new board is complete you will all be emailed. I can't guarantee it will be anything like this; if you're here just because this is G.R.R.M then you probably won't be satisfied.

I hope you all can understand. I made a product and I wasn't satisfied with it. I will still market that product for what time it has left, but in the end I'm going to shift to my new product. I hope you all will shift with me.

I pray the grass will be greener on the other side.

Long days and pleasant nights,
~The Gunslinger

OK, this is a problem that we had last season and it seems like its becoming one in this season as well.

The rules state that if an attacker/defender fails to post for an extended amount of time they lose the battle and their troops. However, there is no official amount of time given to show what "extended" entails. In diplomacy, Gunz just said that he was thinking about changing it to 4 days, which I think is pretty reasonable, but idk if its official yet since it isn't actually in the rules.

Gunz, could you post here saying what the deadline should be for posting? Also, I think that no one should be penalized until the rule is official... do you agree?