A Sword Without a Hilt: A Song of Ice and Fire/D&D 3.5 Crossover​

I've been enjoying this crossover recently, the basic premise is that following the death of Darry, Visery's gains magic and as a result, isn't completely destitute. The story then progresses from that point. It has some interesting ideas, and updates regularly. With it being a quest, I don't always agree with the voters (though if some people from DLP join the quest and start voting that would help), but generally the story progresses in a good fashion.

link: https://forums.sufficientvelocity.c...song-of-ice-and-fire-d-d-3-5-crossover.27579/

 

Be Warned: DragonParadox is the QM for that quest, which Is why i have avoided it like the plague.

 

Any particular reason you dislike him so much?

 

Anyone who ever played any ASOIAF Quest hates him. DragonParadox is obnoxious, hypocritical, stupid, highly defensive of anything he likes to the point of deludmebt, stupid, a huge Lannister and Targaryen fan prone to wanking them to the highest level, dislikes when the GM does not make the life for players easier, is very thin skinned about criticism, a huge White Knight for no reason at all, stupid and definitely one of the worse players I had ever the displeasure of meeting.

The problem is that he isn't a complete retard, he has shallow compelling arguments that can easily convince the players who are unwilling or unable to actually read them beyond what is written and think what he says actually means. He's poison to any quest since he doesn't give up until the GM lost his patience completely, and thus after ruining the experience for anyone who actually makes the effort.

Yeah, DragonParadox sucks. Hard. Maybe he changed in the last year since he was basically expelled from all ASOIAF Quests I follow.

 

Following up on what Nazgus asked, is DP a bad QM? A bad story teller?

I don't have the time or passion to get involved in quests, but that doesn't mean I won't read them afterwards. Can he tell a good story?

Edit: Ninja'd by Invictus. Question answered.

Edit 2: Alright, I'm nipping this in the bud. That's enough flaming of DragonParadox. While calling him stupid three times in one sentence is somewhat childishly amusing, we don't need any further derail along those lines. You can talk about him calmly and dispassionately in relation to his quest if you want, but personal attacks, flaming, etc. are off limits.

Invictus I suspect you're incapable of talking about DragonParadox dispassionately. If you must, then post carefully on that topic ITT.

 

As a writer DragonParadox was strictly mediocre, I read a few of his omakes to see that while he could writer humor somewhat, he did not have very original or good ideas. Not bad, he could write a coherent plot, and his humour was hit and miss most of times. If I had to rate them it would be a 2.5/5 for everything non-humour, 3/5 for most of his humorous ones and 3.5/5 for the best ones. Like I said though, its been a long since I saw him.

What he was though, was unbalaced, favoring Overpowered Characters and pushing for them all the time. I wouldn't trust him to be partial nor to make tough choices, specially if he was displeased with them.

Edit: HA! I can do impartial!

 

I have been participating in this quest from near the beginning, although I'm falling behind at the moment because there are multiple updates each day. I joined because I don't know much about d&d and wanted to see how a character levels and develops with time.

For the quality itself. The speed of updates means that spelling isn't superb, there are a lot of skipped letters and homophones in there. However, as a QM, without ever having interacted with him before, I've not seen anything exceptional. He doesn't receive much in the way of criticism, but such that I've seen he's not been terribly emotional. I am surprised to hear of his history. So far, he's been an impartial QM, and he's never come across as too leading or invested.

I mean, I trust Invictus' and probellum's opinion, which is why I'm so surprised. As to fan wank over targaryen's and making the players lives easier. There's definitely been some dangerous situations, and I've assumed it's the dice that saved characters not him personally. We are playing a Targaryen, but again, I put that down to player choice. I'd never have guessed his bias, as at the start of he quest he wrote an update for one of the lannisters that he was excited about, as a preview.

Interesting to see the reaction here. If there's anything putting you off, or anything I'd suggest that might put you off, it'd be 1) spelling/writing quality. He's not top tier, but I ignore that in favour of the update rate 2) Player choices. Sometimes I feel wise decisions aren't made, but I know so little about d and d that I am content to just see what happens as I don't always understand the argument.

 

Speaking personally as to my experiences with DP...

He's certainly one of the more difficult players to be found on SB/SV, and more than once I've gotten quite rude with him due to his personal conduct on multiple Quests we both participated in or I GM'd. In regards to his Quests, I've only looked at the LOTR/WHF one, but quickly looked away.

From what I saw there, he's quite given to letting players run rampant (which is consistent with how he acted elsewhere that I saw), and his writing certainly isn't the best. The former is more of a philosophical difference than anything else (or at least I'd treat it as such if he wasn't so terrible about it), but the latter is just a pure quality point.

Rapid-fire updates or no, there needs to be some standard otherwise you've basically got any fanfiction.net dreck circa 2010 which is not gonna read well on a second run-through if it even does on the first.

 

Hence why I spoke specifically of the Swiss, who were trained to not be flanked. Scotts ain't Swiss. Neither are Macedonians.

 

I haven't read the Blackfish SI but Invictus, I assume what is meant by swiss pike square is this. By design you can't flank that. You're probably thinking of the macedonian phalanx.

 

True enough, I actually forgot about the infantry square. That's a strong strictly defensive formation, very useful, except when you have to move. Or the enemy has lots of archers. Or worse, crossbows. Particularly, I would throw wildfire on them, small artillery like scorpions and ballistas would be lovely too, since sitting ducks and all. So, lots of holes there. But yeah, derp moment on my part. I kept coming back to the phalanx after everyone said 'no idiot, its a square!"

So yeah, without strong heavy cavalry support enough to overcome the other side's, they would be easily crushed. That's an insanely hard formation to mantain, specially if you need to move or reform. That's why I can't buy SI 'inovating and changing the world' as small as it is, because for change you need a favorable social context, and this comes to mind just at first: How did he know how to train these men? How did Blackfysh, a man with no land and thus no income, got the money necessary to spend at least half of an year all but training those men and equiping them with the (very expensive) needed armor and weapons? Where he would do that? And so goes on...

Well, fuck that SI, regardless. What I want to ask is, did anyone take a look at the doc? I'm just finishing organizing it, and I wanted to hear opinions.

The main pull are how these very different Targs branchs (I consider the Blackfyres nothing more than an Essossi branch for the effect) are competing for the throne, and how it affects the world they live in. Steffon would have to learn how to navigate this fractioned world, and choose where his allegiances lay. I want to write a very personal and introspective quest, so there will be no CKII Elements and the bare minimun of Empire Building&Management.

I'm going to use the system Cxjenious created derived from Droman's and Chengar's, and I'm inclined to make it DLP-Exclusive, if I have enough support. Anyone interested?

 

They can move just fine. And wildfire ain't that easy to use bub. Hence why it's almost never used. There's a reason the Swiss pike men dominated medieval infantry combat. Stop throwing salt, Jean. I'm sure plenty of military commanders thought the same thing. Wasn't until the advent of guns that Swiss pike men went by the wayside. I'm looking at your chart now. I'll edit in what I think.

 

But Cx... If I can't throw salt, how I'm supposed to survive??? And bah, wildfire would just set everything on fire and kill everyone. A happy ending for a SI if I ever saw one.

 

Yeah, double what he said on Swiss pike.

Basically, they learned from young ages to walk in such lockstep formation that they could maintain a pike square moving at a full sprint, even up and down terrain like hills.

If you surrounded them and shot them to death with crossbows you could kill them, sure. But that took a lot of men to do, since their main tactic was to form multiple pike lines and charge balls deep into the closest organized mass, which caused a hell of a lot of chaos.

Another reason Swiss mercs were so popular was their policy to show no quarter to other mercs. They slaughtered their competitors to a man or died trying, which was a pretty good business model.

The point of Swiss mercenaries wasn't that they were invinceable, it was that beating them came with such a horrifically disproportionate butcher's bill that most kings intending to conquer Switzerland (and there were several) straight gave up after only one or two battles.

 

You can also hide your ranged units in the square if you want more of a tercio as well so the vulnerability to ranged weapons isn't as severe as you think it is. You're also under the impression that a sustained volley of fire would cause massive casualties. It wouldn't. I don't remember what bows are most common in westeros but I can assume it's some variant of the shortbow which fared pretty poorly against all types of armour.

 

They use longbows.

 

Huh, rereading GoT, the Lannister are explicitly said to be using pikes in a square formation. Interesting...

Also, Cxjenious waiting for your comments!

 

Yeah, that's what I was trying to tell that guy. They can wheel and take an enemy in the flank and everything.
Invictus, I'm wondering what effect all the changes to the continuity will have. I don't really remember who is who, so I'm just wondering why you decided to go this route.

 

One and foremost is that I believe that GRRM used quite a bit of contrived decisions to make both the Realm prone to a major civil turmoil à la alliances from WWI and House Targaryen to be at its most weak. - Summerhall and how everyone met and formed alliances during the war even though that never happened before, and specially widespread marriages and warsships like that.

Second that most of these changes are something that would either make the Quest more interesting (Olenna as Steffon mother, the Blackfyres are still a threat, Aerys isnt going same path as canon...) or things I’ve wanted to try (a more diverse Targ dynasty that isnt limited to two people, Blackfyres, Westeros and Essos interacting more).

Third, it limits both metagaming and the players attempt to try to take the crown for themselves, something that always irked me. This also stops fix attempts at their tracks. Summerhall not happening lets me show the player first hand why the search for dragons is utter folly (see the long line of disasters brought by this, Stannis falling to Melisandre insanities and Summerhall comes to mind).

Other changes I’m making is because I utterly despise them, like the Long Night and the prophecies being true, always, in a way. Dragons and magic too, GRRM magic is... shitty to say the least, and dragons as dumb flying medieval nukes without equal both annoy me deeply takes out a lot of the fun of the Quest, since DRAGONS is a feasible answer to almost eveything.

 

Personally, I always thought that all prophecy in ASOIAF is a load of bullshit and you can take most of the 'magic' with a grain of salt as well. The prophecies always seemed more like vague horoscopes than anything set in stone and the fools taking prophecy seriously are an example of Martin's critique of religion that is a running theme in his sci-fi work. I feel pretty much every fanfiction that takes that 'prince who was promised' stuff as sacrosanct has missed the point.

As for the dragons, they kind of exist as a metaphor within the story - nukes, as you call them. Martin was a conscientious objector to the Vietnam war and in Dany's story the dragons (and the Unsullied) somewhat are a reflection of that idea that just because one side has a more advanced/powerful/disciplined force, doesn't mean that they could just topple governments without some consequences and it definitely doesn't mean they should either.

Your quest outline looks interesting.