Game of Thrones Preview

The Guardian is offering a new, unfortunately hands-off, preview for Cyanide’s Game of Thrones RPG, which nevertheless offers a good overview of the title. Here’s a snip:

Despite the characters’ carefully crafted back-stories, you can choose between three character classes for each, and there’s plenty of scope for character development there are five main attributes (strength, agility, luck and so on) that you can level up, skill points for different weapons and a complex ability tree. Plus there is a character traits system which forces you to offset strengths against related weaknesses a sensible-sounding but nevertheless innovative system for an RPG. The character development side of the game so important for RPG buffs looks pretty well designed.

Game of Thrones has a conversation system which shows your character’s thoughts, rather than what he will actually say.

“Each option creates a branch which takes you in a certain direction, and you can’t go back, so it’s not about trying all the options until you get the right one,” Sechi says.

He talks up the importance of the choices you make both in conversation and your actions: “Some choices influence how each chapter plays out there’s one point of entry to each chapter, but several ways to get to the end, though. And you might find that a choice you make has an impact seven chapters later for example, people you freed might join you late in the game when you’re assembling a fighting force.”

Correct me if I’m wrong, but advantages/disadvantage mechanics are hardly an innovation in role-playing games, so I’m frankly kind of confused when The Guardian mentions them as such. Goldfish memory, I guess?