Quote from: Mike the Mage;1038648Wow. Jealous much?

No. Why? Does a less than glowing review of something popular indicate jealousy? Or does it indicate the person's actual opinion?

Quote from: Skarg;1038653Dwarf, Drow, who can tell them apart?

They all look the same to me.

Quote from: BoxCrayonTales;1038603Basically, the Dothraki do not make any sense as human beings. Every single aspect of their culture violates basic human psychology and they are literally stupider than monkeys. They are just caricatures for Dany, the main character of that story thread, to contrast against.

They don't make any sense militarily either. They are light cavalry who rely on hair-on-fire charges. Martin gave them bows but neither he nor the show-runners ever have them engage in fire-and-maneuver. They are infuckingsane and should have been wiped out in their first serious fight. And good riddance.

Quote from: Krimson;1038694They all look the same to me.

Demihumans, pfft. Go figure.

Quote from: Kyle Aaron;1038660No. Why? Does a less than glowing review of something popular indicate jealousy? Or does it indicate the person's actual opinion?

If it is a review you were aiming for, then I suggest you  play the ball and not the man: His weight and diet, as you imagine it, have nothing to do with his literary works.

For example. an appreciation of Handel's Water Music should not be based on the fact that the compser was a bit chubby and snuck off to guzzle port in his room instead of sharing it with dinner guests.

Nor should an obituary of the neurophysicist and writer of the best-seller The Thorn Birds read like this:

QuoteCOLLEEN McCullough, Australia's best selling author, was a charmer. Plain of feature, and certainly overweight, she was, nevertheless, a woman of wit and warmth.

Unless you are a writing for The Australian and wish to piss off the rest of the literary world.

https://www.theaustralian.com.au/arts/the-thorn-birds-author-colleen-mccullough-dies-on-norfolk-island/news-story/4df21f435226642fcf481cce11700c89?nk=bc5f2f4580008915d085cf23f7d47f10

Quote from: BoxCrayonTales;1036823That was actually a big problem with Game of Thrones that took me right out of the story. The Dothraki, who are human (played by a rag-tag bunch of actors of various skin colors), are portrayed in a way that is completely at odds with any society that has existed in history on Earth and generally resembles the orcs of D&D. The Dothraki believe agriculture and construction is satanic, they always have sex in public, murder is common and normalized, women are treated as chattel, they destroy everything in their path, have no sense of tactics or warcraft, etc. They are not remotely believable as a culture.

Bullshit, man. They're just "fantasy Mongols", though admittedly, not exactly well-presented:).

Quote from: BoxCrayonTales;1038603Their economy makes no sense, as they supposedly cannot comprehend buying and selling. The concept of buying and selling (whether bartering or currency) is so simple than even monkeys understand it. Martin cannot even keep himself consistent as right afterward the Dothraki are shown to run a protection racket.

And that's just funny. There are real cultures that consider trading to be beneath them, so exchange is made by gift-giving, which is explicitly mentioned about the Dothraki in the books.

But then you also wrote this.

QuoteDiscard your pretensions and delusions of morality! Play evil campaigns as the default. I guarantee that a campaign where the party are literally murderous hobos who butcher villages with impunity will be vastly more entertaining and cathartic than those lame goody-two-shoes campaigns where paladins mow down orcs with impunity. Orcs are just humans in makeup, so why equivocate?

So I can safely conclude you're just trolling;).

Quote from: Krimson;1038622Svartálfar also known as myrkálfar. "Both the svartálfar and Svartálfaheimr are primarily attested in the Prose Edda, written in the 13th century by Snorri Sturluson." They are also dwarves.

Reading real mythology is so enlightening. I am surprised that so many authors mutilate it into something silly.

Quote from: Kyle Aaron;1038624Well, is this the face of a scholar? No, it's just some guy who was too lazy to research the Wars of the Roses properly. He shouldn't be writing books, he should be DMing an AD&D1e open game table, where lazy plagiarism, cliches and silliness are welcomed. And I speak as such a DM.

Yea verily.

Quote from: Skarg;1038653Wow, well I'll defer somewhat to your superior time investment in thinking about how implausible they are!

I was willing to cut Martin a little bit of slack as with the rest of his world which seems to be only aiming for slightly more credibility than a typical RPG fantasy world... it is after all a different (yet remarkably Earth-derivative) planet, with a bizarrely variable seasonal system, impossible populations & logistics unless the people and plants and admitted to be rather non-human (or probably even if they are) and at least in the TV show and art, ridiculously tall vertical constructions, dragons that grow from eggs to enormous in a few years, etc.

It still does better than most fantasy RPG & film settings I've seen at being somewhat self-consistent.

I do not have a problem with that. I do take issue when people praise Martin for being realistic when his work is anything but. It is grimdark fiction, a genre which is defined by focusing excessively on anthropogenic suffering.

Quote from: AsenRG;1038807Bullshit, man. They're just "fantasy Mongols", though admittedly, not exactly well-presented:).

That's putting it mildly. Every fanfic I have read which focused on them either rewrote them extensively or used them as target practice.

Quote from: AsenRG;1038807And that's just funny. There are real cultures that consider trading to be beneath them, so exchange is made by gift-giving, which is explicitly mentioned about the Dothraki in the books.

Please provide citations because I would be very interested in knowing of these cultures and the historical reasons behind their customs.

The gift giving is never mentioned after the first book, since it was a contrived excuse to maintain Dany's narrative at that time. I find it one of the weakest and most boring parts of the story, and I would have preferred something where... and this is just of the top of my head... Drogo married her specifically for her claim to the throne because he wants to conquer Westeros and then send its armies to conquer Essos or something.

Quote from: BoxCrayonTales;1038952Please provide citations because I would be very interested in knowing of these cultures and the historical reasons behind their customs.

Here you go; Gift Economies.

Quote from: AsenRG;1038807Bullshit, man. They're just "fantasy Mongols", though admittedly, not exactly well-presented:).

Horribly presented. If the Mongols had been anything like them there would have been no Mongol Empire.

Quote from: WillInNewHaven;1038963Horribly presented. If the Mongols had been anything like them there would have been no Mongol Empire.

I think Mongols are hard because the average fantasy reader audience knows that they are vaguely cool horse-archer nomad 'barbarians' that kicked the 'civilized' world's butt and during the era of Genghis Khan conquered the largest area of land ever achieved... but not really how or why (other than maybe 'they were just that badass'). I'm not going to defend Martin's work--other than to reverse it and say that if GRRM's work had been anything like real history there would have been no GRRM (rich famous author). I will say that he played into his audience expectations very well (so, awful all the way to the bank/crazy like a fox/etc.).

Quote from: Willie the Duck;1038969I think Mongols are hard because the average fantasy reader audience knows that they are vaguely cool horse-archer nomad 'barbarians' that kicked the 'civilized' world's butt and during the era of Genghis Khan conquered the largest area of land ever achieved... but not really how or why (other than maybe 'they were just that badass'). I'm not going to defend Martin's work--other than to reverse it and say that if GRRM's work had been anything like real history there would have been no GRRM (rich famous author). I will say that he played into his audience expectations very well (so, awful all the way to the bank/crazy like a fox/etc.).

Exactly. My theory is that if you get 10 experts on various subjects you can destroy any fictional story.

Quote from: Chris24601;1038958Here you go; Gift Economies.

Yep. The first time we had cultures with gift economies in our RPGs was when some of my friends in the early 1990s started running semi-historical ancient Celtic campaigns. I thought it was pretty interesting how readily the players (in our groups, anyway) took on the idea with enthusiasm, as well as wealth measured mainly in livestock, and also having feasts and sacrifices that an accountant might tend to assess as throwing away wealth. But the players quickly understood that it's a great way to gain allies for when you may need them at some point in the future, and to gain reputation, and to have peace instead of excessive cattle-raiding and casualties, and that sometimes you just have more than you need, and the best use of spare goats or cattle can be to give them to someone who currently doesn't have enough, so you gain them as a friend instead of having them come take your excess animals in the night (and possibly ending up killing your night watch).

Quote from: Chris24601;1038958Here you go; Gift Economies.

Okay, that article only proves my point. Real gift economies occur in small communities where everyone can remember everyone else, not hordes of tens of thousands where people regularly killed each other for trivial reasons.

I still think my "Khal Drogo, Conqueror of Worlds" idea is better than the story we got.

Quote from: Ratman_tf;1038973Exactly. My theory is that if you get 10 experts on various subjects you can destroy any fictional story.

Case in point, spacebattles delivered this epic smack down.

Back to the topic of orcs, I read a story about Amazonian orcs which took time to explain the rationale behind their culture. They considered orc men to be brutish and stupid, so they reinforced their numbers by raiding human villages and indoctrinating the captured. This was used as a framing device for femdom orc/human erotica.

Quote from: Mike the Mage;1038806If it is a review you were aiming for, then I suggest you  play the ball and not the man: His weight and diet, as you imagine it, have nothing to do with his literary works.

Yes, they do. Because at his current rate of progress, and his size, he's going to die before he actually finishes his current literary work.

I suggested that the quality of his writing and world-building was more on the level of a good DM than a good writer. And his lifestyle habits are likewise more those of a stereotypical D&D player than a writer, who should be drinking and smoking more.

Since both his writing and his lifestyle more closely resemble that of a DM than a writer, this is what he should be doing. And yes, I'm judging him. I know we're not meant to do that these days, but that's just who I am.

Quote from: BoxCrayonTales;1038998Case in point, spacebattles delivered this epic smack down.

Holy crap! I haven't been this mezmerized by an internet thread since the days of Star Destroyers versus the Enterprise!