Video Game / Crusader Kings II: Game of Thrones Mod

Crusader Kings II: A Game Of Thrones is a Game Mod for Crusader Kings II, set in the world of George R.R. Martin's A Song of Ice and Fire series. Players will be able to start at various points in Westerosi history, starting from the year before Aegon I's conquest of the Seven Kingdoms, to the Conquest itself, right up to the beginnings of A Clash of Kings and A Feast for Crows. The full (v1.0) release of the mod was released in November 2015, after an extensive series of open beta releases.

Discussions on the mod can be found here, and at its own sub-forum at Paradox's CK II forum (Paradox requires people who seek access to the mods sub-fora of their games' fora to register a product key for the relevant game).

Like some CK2 mods, A Game of Thrones was ported to Crusader Kings III incorporating the brand new mechanics of the game.

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This mod provides examples of the following tropes:

• The Ace: Many characters from canon have impressive stats, e.g. Varys, Tywin Lannister and Littlefinger; in fact, many characters have stats in the 20s, which is rare in vanilla.
• Adaptational Attractiveness: The Ibbenese in the source material are said to have many archaic features similar to the Neanderthals of our world. In the mod, they are given Celtic portraits, which look just as human as anyone else.
• Adaptational Badass:
  • Cersei Lannister in the A Feast For Crows bookmark. In canon, Cersei was "only" the Queen Regent for her son. In the bookmark, she becomes the Lady Paramount of the Westerlands and Lady of Casterly Rock. This means having her own council and armies. Ironically, due to game mechanics, she cannot be Tommen's regent.
  • Thanks to the game's mechanics, it is very easy for Aegon the Conqueror to defeat Dorne, the one kingdom he couldn't bring down in canon. He doesn't even have to lose Rhaenys and her dragon. Alternatively, Aegon can forgo going after Westeros and attempt to forge a new empire in Essos...but what is stopping him from doing both?
  • The Reyne-Tarbeck alliance in the mod actually matches Tywin's force, making it possible for them to win their rebellion. In canon, the Lannisters outnumbered the Reynes 2-1 before even calling their banners.
  • Littlefinger's land in the Finger is described as being so small that it has barely a dozen families in it. In the mod, his garrison alone already has 700 soldiers, putting him on the same level as most minor lords.
  • Stannis can simply siege King's Landing to submission in this version, thus sidestepping the wildfire altogether. In addition, since KL is located on a river, any reinforcement will face river crossing penalty and get utterly crushed by Stannis, thus preventing Tywin's relief force from turning the tide as it does in canon.
• Adaptational Heroism: Generally speaking, players will be likely to eschew the Stupid Evil actions of Joffrey or Ramsay out of pragmatism alone, unless roleplay is being attempted. Through careful education, avoidance of the crueler decisions, etc. it's perfectly possible to have the two and others turn out to be relatively decent people. With some luck, you can even turn them into genuine heroes.
  • Roose Bolton has a quite high opinion of Robb, so it's unlikely that he will plot against him (unless you are playing as him, of course).
• Adaptational Villainy: Due to game mechanics, Theon will never have his Heel Realisation, and instead remains with the Ironborn if he survives A Clash Of Kings. The Northmen will also be more inclined to assassinations and plots than they would be in canon, and it's perfectly possible to have Ned Stark or other characters engaging in tyrannous behaviour under AI control.
  • Due to how the AI functions in regards to claims, Robb Stark or any of his siblings are likely to war against Edmure Tully for the Riverlands, despite it being totally against character.
  • If Raiding is set to unrestricted (allowing any army to become raiders, not just Ironborn and Dothraki) then the normally peaceful Summer Isles almost always become vicious, raiding any wealthy coastal counties and often denying your demands of reparations.
• Age Lift: While the mod is mostly based on the books, the ages are closer to the TV series. This is likely for the best as a good deal of the major characters would be underage rulers and thus, controlled by regents.
• Appeal to Force: If you have a dragon, "rights" and "claims" mean nothing and you can declare war wherever you please. Why? Because anyone who objects can take it up with your dragon. Just be careful, because even dragons can be killed.
  • Ditto with the Free Folk, pirates and corsairs, who can invade and take your or anyone else's territory via the right of "I got more men than you".
• Back from the Brink: In any starting scenario after the fall of Sarnor bookmark the Sarnori will have had their kingdom crushed by the Dothraki and reduced to the city of Saath. However, the player can retake the land that was lost.
• Battle Couple: Daenerys and Young Griff in the last two bookmarks, if the player chooses so.
• Badass Bookworm: Tyrion, being that he has the Scholar Trait.
• Badass Decay: Tyrion in the A Feast of Crows bookmark. He's exiled to Essos, he has both the Kinslayer and the Excommunicated Trait, and he is disinherited. It will take player intervention for him to bounce back from this.
• Being Good Sucks / Being Evil Sucks: As with the base game and the setting of the mod, No Good Deed Goes Unpunished, with it being hard to take power without being fairly selfish and ruthless about it, and with enemies, rivals in particular, happily taking advantage of your mercy to plot another day. But being a callous douche to your vassals is just going to make your reign and road to power extremely difficult. See Laser-Guided Karma and Video Game Cruelty Punishment for examples.
• The Bad Guy Wins: You can play the Lannisters, the Boltons, the Greyjoys, and any other villain you can think of, and make sure they come out on top. If you play your cards right, you can even make the Starks as a house cease to exist.
• Bash Brothers: Ned and Robert in Robert's Rebellion. They're guaranteed to have high opinions of each other and their stats make them both a very capable partnership.
• Black-and-Grey Morality: Unless you're playing them, you'll inevitably come up against some vicious bastards in the form of say, the Boltons, the Wise Masters of Yunkai, or Maegor Targaryen in the historical bookmarks, but few of the heroes are without their flaws, and it's impossible for all of them to get what they want, with Stannis, Aegon, and Daenerys likely to come to blows to take the same throne.
• Blood Magic: Rulers who follow R'h'llor get magic from sacrificing prisoners that allows them to protect themselves or their loved ones from violent death, or to heal wounds, diseases, or other ailments.
  • With Holy Fury, other faiths may select the Blood Magic reformation to access these abilities as well. Reformable religions include Valyrian, Drowned God, and Old Gods, all of which have their own histories of blood magic.
• The Brute: Ser Gregor Clegane, as per canon.
  • Dumb Muscle: His stats are 20 Martial, and zero for everything else.
  • Offstage Villainy: In most cases, you can only start after he did the horrible things he did in the books. If you start before then, then he probably won't do those things.
• Butt-Monkey:
  • From the A Feast For Crows bookmark, we have Edmure Tully. He's already lost the Lord Paramountcy of the Riverlands, and more often than not, Riverrun is wrested from him as well and granted to Littlefinger. To say nothing of what happened to him in canon...
  • From the A Clash Of Kings bookmark, we have Joffrey. Lousy stats, just about everyone important to him holding the Iron Throne hates him. His marriage to Sansa also brings no alliance to the table, as Robb is warring against him as well. This makes it all the more impressive if you can survive while playing as him.
  • Also from A Clash Of Kings we have Robert Arryn. Weak, Slow, Stutter, and all of his stats are 0.
• The Caligula:
  • Aerys 'The Mad King' and Joffrey are present and playable, with Maegor 'The Cruel' as playable in the historical bookmarks. As with the source materials, they are pretty brutal deconstructions, as the only way to win with them is to actively avoid the Stupid Evil behavior that got them killed in canon, and even that's not gonna prevent their vassals from hating them anyway.
  • The 'Tyrant' character trait is a good indicator if someone is at least halfway to being The Caligula. If Robert executes all the Targaryens after winning, he'll have a large enough tyranny level that will likely get him into several wars in the aftermath.
• Canon Immigrant: Although the Forresters exist in both continuities, the mod features the show's/game's version of the house rather than the books. Asha Greyjoy refers to the Forresters as a clan rather than a noble house, so we know for certain that they are vastly different from their game counterpart.
• Came Back Wrong: Characters who are resurrected by R'hllor magic will often lose positive traits or gain negative ones, reflecting how being brought back from the dead seems to permanently alter a person's mind and memories.
• Celibate Hero: Ludwin, Brienne, and Hodor all have the celibate trait. The Night's Watch, The Maesters, and the Septons try to invoke this by preventing their followers from marrying.
• Child by Rape: Tyrion Tanner, Lolly Stokeworth's bastard in the Feast of Crows bookmark. Craster's daughter wives also count as this. Also, the children born from Salt Wives and Slave Concubines (or at least the ones who hate their owners). Also, see Prison Rape below.
• Christmas Mode: Roger Zelazny appears at your holding on the real world date of May 13th, his birthday. If you throw a feast in his honor, he leaves you with a copy of The Lord of Light.
• Church Militant: Depending on the Crown Laws, the Faith of the Seven may have an established military order that can hold lands and act independently of the Iron Throne, though rulers can go out of their way to defy this by cutting the Faith authority down to this lowest rank. The Faith Militant Uprising bookmark deals with the war between Maegor 'The Cruel' and the order.
• Cool Sword:
  • Valyrian steel swords, which provide bonuses to characters' martial and personal combat abilities. As in canon, certain families start with their own, with names and histories, while still others can recover swords that were historically lost; the remainder can go on quests to yield "generic" (though no less awesome) swords — which, in later versions of the mod, can now be reforged into named swords of their own through player action.
  • House Dayne has Dawn, a sword made from a fallen star with similar properties to Valyrian steel. However, the requirements for wielding it are more restrictive: you must have the highest level of combat skill and be an honorable knight of house Dayne in order to claim it.
  • Characters that are Chosen by Rh'llor get the chance to get their hands on Lightbringer if they make a proper sacrifice.
• Crossover: If the player plays the mod while the Sunset Invasion DLC is active, there is the possibility that the Aztecs from the base game might show up.
  • Crossover Ship: Marry any canon character to an Aztec invader.
• Cursed with Awesome: Taking the Iron Throne as a R'hllor worshipper, particularly Stannis. On the one hand, you have a chance to be Favoured or even Chosen by R'hllor which gives numerous benefits, including resurrecting, healing, or increasing the odds of taming a dragon. But the vast majority of your vassals will be of the Faith of the Seven, and will consider you an infidel, giving opinion penalties, and making it difficult to arrange marriages, and therefore non-aggression pacts. Religious and faction revolts are common, and trying to institute any laws will be difficult.
• A Day in the Limelight: The mod also allows non-Westerosi factions to be played (e.g. the Free Cities of Essos & the Summer Islands), as well as lesser houses mentioned offhandedly in canon (e.g. the Crakehalls, Reynes & Umbers).
• Darkest Africa: The continent of Sothoryos is a jungle landscape host to uninhabited ruins, diseases outdoing the Great Sickness in skin-crawling body decay, and the Brindlemen, who worship dark gods and are said to eat their fellow men, even the dead. The crown jewel of the region is Yeen, an abandoned city that "disappears" any inhabitants who try to stay. Good luck trying to colonize the region.
• Deus ex Machina: During the event to get a Valyrian steel sword, you get attacked by pirates. Normally you have to either fight them (which triggers a duel), flee (which is unlikely to succeed) or ram them (success depends on the ship you chose to construct). However, if you have the Chosen By R'hllor trait, you can simply pray to the Lord Of Light and he will literally blow up the enemy ships.
• Did You Just Punch Out Cthulhu?: If a character in battle tries taking on a dragon (which can defeat armies and wipe out entire courts), then he has an extremely low chance of success. But if this character actually does succeed in killing a dragon, he earns the nickname "the Dragonslayer" as well as the Dragonslayer trait and a hefty amount of prestige. This is especially impressive considering how near-impossible dragons are to kill in canon.
• The Dragonslayer: Characters who manage to face and defeat a dragon in combat receive a trait (and nickname) to commemorate the feat. It also gives them a bonus in future fights against dragons to reflect the fact that they now know the dragon's weak points firsthand.
• Droit du Seigneur: The Right of First Night is an available law that can be installed. While inactive by Robert's Rebellion, the early historical bookmarks will have it permitted by default.
• Dwindling Party: The Starks and Baratheons are prone to this.
  • During Robert's Rebellion, only Eddard, Benjen and Lyanna are around.
  • In A Clash of Kings, Renly, Stannis and his daughter Shireen are the only Baratheons left.
• Earn Your Happy Ending: To counter the above, you can play as any of the heroes, from Eddard, Robert, Robb, Stannis and more, and ensure they succeed and survived if and where they failed in the books. Robert can turn out The Good King, Eddard may survive King's Landing, Robb can win the North's independence, and Stannis may take his place as Robert's true heir, if you make the right decisions and strategies to win.
• Fed to the Beast: Reflecting what happened to Rhaenyra Targaryen in canon, Dragon Riders can execute prisoners by feeding them to their dragons.
• Feuding Families: One of the mod's unique features is a "blood feud" mechanic to replicate the historical Blackwood-Bracken and Forrester-Whitehill feuds. Other feuds can arise (or end) over the course of the gameplay.
• Fix Fic:
  • If you start in the Robert's Rebellion bookmark, and somehow Robert Baratheon not only survives but also succeeds in overthrowing the Targaryens, then it is almost assured that Lyanna will not only be alive but will be able to marry Robert after the war. Think about what that means. After losing his father and his brother, Ned is able to save his sister's life. Robert will marry the love of his life and will probably keep his act together. The Lannisters will never work their way into King's Landing via marriage to Cersei. Joffrey will never be born, and won't execute Ned. The whole civil war that takes up most of the series will never have even happened. Can you say Happily Ever After?
  • Jump ahead about 15 years to the A Clash of Kings bookmark and you can play Robb Stark. With the right maneuvering, you can make a good marriage alliance, crush the Lannister armies, capture King's Landing, execute Cersei and Joffrey and establish yourself as the King in the North, then march back north and drive off the Ironborn if they declared war on you. With a bit of luck, you can get Sansa back alive, and Arya will reappear, meaning the whole family is reunited (minus poor dead Ned) and returns to an unsacked Winterfell. Basically, if you're feeling sour over how things turn out in the books, it is within your power to kick Westeros up several notches on the Sliding Scale of Idealism Versus Cynicism.
    • If Robb has the Ambitious trait, he can claim the Iron Throne when he takes King's Landing and wins the War.
  • Players can even attempt this with the historical scenarios provided in the bookmarks, if one feels up to it. For one, you can play Rhaenyra Targaryen, the first and only Queen of the Iron Throne, whose disastrous reign as a consequence of the war with her half-brother led to a deep seated prejudice against female rulers amongst Westerosi. Here, however, you can rewrite history and have her win the war, shattering the Heir Club for Men mentality imposed upon the kingdom, and ensure Rhaenyra's long and happy rule as Viserys I's rightful and preferred heir. You might even be lucky enough to have her son Lucerys escape his death at the hands of her other half-brother Aemond.
    • To replicate the change in attitudes, setting the Iron Throne's Inheritance laws to Cognatic will not only remove the negative opinions modifier for being a woman or having a female heir, but will also allow firstborn daughters to inherit ahead of their younger brothers.
• Founder of the Kingdom: Pirates and corsairs who have gathered enough territory can decide to give up piracy in favour of ruling as a king or emperor, effectively forging an empire from the region they've conquered.
• Gambit Pileup: The AI characters will be engaging in plots against you or each other, but it will be taken to an extreme when you're on the Iron Throne. It's not unusual to find yourself facing 100 plots within a year of rule, and you'll be tempted to just give up asking plotters to stop due to the sheer volume of conspiracies taking place.
• Game Mod: Is one to Crusader Kings II. Aside from the obvious, there's plenty of sub mods available, and certain mods for the base game can be applied to this.
• Game-Breaking Bug: A common issue that hasn't been fixed in years is that the mod will stop being able to save altogether after a certain year, usually 8301. Some sort of script will fire on January 1st, 8301 that crashes the game anytime the player tries to save it. The only patchwork solution to this is to save the game on December 30th, 8300, then edit the save file to January 2th, 8301 and load it. Saving will work fine for the year, but the 1st of January next year will crash the game again, forcing the player to repeat the previous process. It's reported that the problem will eventually go away and save will start working again, but it's also reported that the problem will return after a while.
• Gender Is No Object: While female rulers suffer some opinion penalties and most locations still have male-preference succession at the very least by default (outside of Dorne), as long as the succession laws allow for it, women can be granted or inherit titles, and in fact are much more likely to do so than in canon, where the inheritance laws are a little more nuanced. If they have a high enough martial stat, you may even have female commanders in charge of troops, with Maege Mormont being a good example.
• Good Samaritan: If a character is a prisoner, slave, or salt wife, you can plot to rescue that character. You can do this even if you have never met this character before in your life.
• Great Escape: If a character is in jail, enslaved, or is a salt wife, then other characters have a chance of hatching or supporting a plot to set that character free.
• Good Girls Avoid Abortion: Can be either invoked or defied in one event. If your lover gets pregnant, she will ask you if you want her to drink moon tea (which is the Westeros version of Plan B). You can either tell her to, or you can ask her not to. The option asking her not to literally says "Would you kill my unborn child?"
• The Good King:
  • Robert Baratheon immediately after defeating Mad King Aerys; if he manages to save Lyanna, then he'll probably stay that way.
  • Robb Stark is certainly this as well, considering how good his traits are.
  • There are several historical characters as well who fit this description.
    • Harmund Hoare has the traits Kind, Just and Honorable, unusual for an Ironborn king. Naturally, he was mutilated and murdered.
    • Bran "the Builder" Stark, who founded The Nights Watch AND The North.
• Great Offscreen War: In addition to the conflict at the heart of the books and series proper, the mod also allows you to start from many other pivotal events mentioned in the backstory as well, from the Bleeding Years and Aegon's Conquest all the way up to Robert's and the Greyjoy's Rebellions.
• Guide Dang It!:
  • Dragons. While the process of getting the eggs and hatching them have been detailed, the chances of actually getting the eggs unless you're working in the correct bookmarks is ridiculously slim, reflecting the decline and rarity of dragons in present day Westeros. And unless you have the right stats and intel, taming the dragon is still something of a challenge, especially if you're playing any character that's not a Targaryen. This has been alleviated somewhat after the rework to incorporate the changes from the Reaper's Due DLC and patch, as dragon hatching and taming can now be made selectively easier or harder at the start of the game.
  • To a lesser extent, the trial system and the duels system. For the former, the Hand of the King or the equivalent will take charge of questioning the defendant. However, the chances of the trial going in your favour is dependant on the Hand's Diplomacy stat, instead of the Stewardship the Council position technically judges them on, so a good Hand is someone who is good in both stats, not just Stewardship. For the duels, victory seems to be dependant on the Duel Skill Multiplier, but it can go either way depending on which of the three options you are presented with. Generally speaking, save scumming, cheap as it is, is probably the best way to deal with the random nature of the event.
• Haunted Castle: Harrenhal, if starting after the War of Conquest bookmark. Being burned to near-ruins means the holder of Harrenhal gets a hidden "unlucky" modifier.
• Heir Club for Men: With the exception of Dorne, all of Westeros practices male-preference primogeniture. However, if a ruler finds themselves with daughters, and no male heir, a random event may pop up where you can choose to enforce this trope in the form of agnatic succession, or defy it by installing absolute cognatic succession.
• Hero of Another Story: Due to the limitations of the game engine, characters who do not have any land or titles are not playable despite their importance in canon (e.g. Arya and Brandon Stark).
• Hope Spot: If you play as Robert in Robert's Rebellion, and if you win the war, then Lyanna will be freed from Rhaegar's prison. However, this does not mean she's safe: if the Tower of Joy event goes badly than she'll die anyway.
• The Horde: If the Wildlings manage to hold onto the Night's Watch for long enough, they'll become this, with an invasion force of up to 80000 men looking to take control of the North. The best way of preventing this is either aiding the Night's Watch in repelling them, or restoring the Watch as soon as possible.
• Hot Consort: A literally hot one in Daenerys if she gets married in the last two bookmarks.
• A House Divided: When the Iron Throne is at war, the realm will fracture as the various Lords Paramount gain temporary independence. The Lords Paramount can either help their "former" liege in the war, remain neutral, or declare permanent independence by reviving the pre-Conquest Kingdom titles of their region (In the case of the Riverlands, they have the Kingdom of the Trident). Of course, there are also the many civil wars in canon.
• Human Sacrifice: R'hllor magic is fueled by burning captives. The more highly-ranked the captive, the more power you get.
• Informed Attribute: For all their cunning and subversive actions in canon, if Varys and Littlefinger have a high opinion of you, you are generally safe from being a target of their schemes.
• I Was Quite a Looker: Depending on the timing, the player can easily find a young Olenna Redwyne, Brynden Tully or even Maester Aemon. Conversely, they can also see how beautiful folk (e.g. Rhaegar, Cersei and Daenerys) would look like in old age.
• Kick the Dog: Players are able to execute prisoners, flay them as the Boltons, take salt wives as Ironborn, and so on, with more options via mods. Some of the AI characters have some notable ones however.
  • While Robert may be merciful if he wins the Rebellion, there's a real possibility of him executing the entire Targaryen family, Rhaegar's infant children included.
  • If the war between Robb and Joffrey is protracted long enough, Joffrey may decide to execute Sansa.
  • If Daenerys or Ageon take The Iron Throne in The Feast Of Crows bookmark, then the innocent Tommen will be executed.
• Laser-Guided Karma: Even if Joffrey wins the war, it is still virtually assured that he will get assassinated (usually by a Martell). Likewise, winning with Aerys 'The Mad King' is an exercise in futility unless the player breaks character and plays him as The Good King, as despite his army, he's up against the combined forces of the Riverlands, the Vale, the North, and the Stormlands, and even his own wife despises him enough that she'll likely be willing to join any plots against him.
• Last of His Kind: By A Feast For Crows, Stannis, Shireen, and Edric Storm are the last of the Baratheons, and Aegon and Daenerys are the last of the Targaryens. Depending on how the scenario plays out, either house can recover, or become completely extinct. Players can also intervene in any of the bookmarks and ensure that any of the houses can be eliminated if they so choose.
• Last Stand: There is an example of this trope before the game even begins. The loading screen shows a dragon standing on the ground, about to breathe fire and burn an entire army to a crisp. Is the army fleeing? No: they're staying and attacking the dragon despite there being no way whatsoever to kill it.
• Legally Dead:
  • If you look in the House Stark family tree, you will find an ancestor named Brandon The Shipwright. He has a trait saying that he went missing and is presumed dead. This is a Shout-Out to how he tried to cross the Sunset Sea in the books and presumably drowned. Since he lived two thousand years before the first bookmark, he is probably dead now. If you have Sunset Invasion active, there's a small chance that the Aztec invaders will be led by one of his descendants.
  • Likewise, Arya Stark is also missing in the A Clash of Kings scenario, and Arya, Bran, and Rickon in the A Feast for Crows one. Unlike Brandon the Shipwright, there's a small chance that they might actually reappear under the right circumstances.
• Let's You and Him Fight: A valid way to let your enemies wear each other out before mopping them up.
  • In A Feast For Crows, Tommen can and should allow Stannis and Young Griff to tear each other up.
  • Similarly in A Clash of Kings, this is the best way to win when playing against the Iron Throne, especially as Stannis. Since you'll be up against the Westerlands, the Reach, and the Crownlands, each of whom have at least 20K troops, while you have less than that, waiting at the border, letting Mace and Robb duke it out, and then besieging King's Landing directly, assaulting it when the option appears, is usually the quickest way of imprisoning Joffrey and winning the war.
  • You can also apply a variant of this where your allies beat up your enemies while you gather your forces - particularly useful when in command of the North, as your armies can take a year to gather at the border.
• Little Green Men: The population of The Thousand Islands, a single county at the north-eastern edge of the map.
• The Load:
  • The Riverlands is this to Robb Stark in A Clash Of Kings. Tywin can win the war easily by besieging provinces in the area. Due to game mechanics, Robb can potentially lose his war without even fighting a battle.
  • Unsurprisingly, Joffrey is this to Tywin in the same bookmark. Often, it boils down to which load weighs down which side first.
• Made a Slave: Depending on your realm's crown law settings regarding the practice of slavery, it is possible to not only buy slaves, but also to enslave anyone in your dungeon who does not own land.
• Massive Numbered Siblings:
  • The Stark family has six children.
  • Let's not forget Craster and Lord Frey, both of whom have an absurd amount of children.
  • The mod even includes the ambition to have five children.
• Mêlée à Trois: Starting from the A Clash of Kings bookmark, it is literally possible to have five "kings". See Mythology Gag below.
• The Missionary: Rulers have a small random chance of being visited by Red Priests of R'h'llor seeking converts. They can choose to imprison the missionary, leave them free but ignore them, or listen to their preaching and embrace the missionary's faith.
• The Mourning After: Some characters, such as Tywin Lannister and Daenerys Targaryen, get flagged with a special "Widowed" trait in certain scenarios that prevents them from getting married again, to represent the fact that they're still mourning their spouses. Other characters can gain this trait when their spouses die (if they aren't responsible themselves).
  • If Lyanna dies at The Tower Of Joy, Robert gets an event giving him a 20% chance of becoming depressed.
• Mythology Gag: The mod is based on the books and not the series, but Talisa Maegyr does exist as a daughter of one of the ruling families of Volantis and her traits match those of the series-original character. She also resembled her show counterpart until the Volantines were patched to have Valyrian white hair.
  • While the War of the "Five" Kings is technically a misnomer (only four active at any point in the conflict), the A Clash of Kings bookmark adds a fifth king as the scenario proceeds, in the form of Young Griff.
• Nonindicative Name: The A Feast For Crows bookmark contains plotlines from A Dance with Dragons, as both books are contemporary to each other.
• Off the Rails: Pretty much a given, though the player can seriously screw things up if they so wish. For example, assassinating Hoster Tully as Ned Stark, and then pressing Cat's claim on the Riverlands, thus allowing Robb to become Lord Paramount of the North and the Trident when he inherits titles from his parents.
• Original Character: Since the player's actions can and do alter the game world in serious ways, there's a good chance that they, and other characters, will not have the same children that the cast did in canon. There's also a number of pre-generated OCs, who fill in the blank spots in each house's history (since we don't know the name of every Stark at Winterfell for instance). Furthermore, many of the non-Westerosi factions are primarily comprised of OCs since there isn't a lot known about them in the books and the series. Finally, the Ruler Designer DLC for the base game can be used with the mod to create your own character to replace one of the canon ones from the very start.
• Out of Character:
  • As the King, you can knight Sandor Clegane.
  • As Ned Stark, you can legitimize Jon Snow.
  • Before it was made impossible to make a close relative your Court Dwarf, Joffrey giving Tyrion the position would actually *improve* his opinion of the king. If Joffrey had actually tried doing that in canon, Tyrion would have been pissed off.
  • As Joffrey Baratheon, you can actually be somewhat competent.
• Out of Focus: The Others are not featured in the gameplay, despite being the ultimate source of terror in canon.
  • As of a recent patch they have a chance of appearing during harsh winters. In the latest version, they are totally in, and the A Feast for Crows bookmark is guaranteed to have the "Fall of the Wall" event firing.
• Outside-Context Problem: The Aztecs from the base game can show up near the shores of Westeros, ready to conquer and sacrifice thousands of lives for their gods. Not only do they come from a land far beyond the known world but they have dragons.
• Palette Swap: Jon Snow and Young Griff look identical, but with different colored hair. Following The Reveal in the TV show, later patches have had an option to enable an event confirming them as half-brothers.
• The Plague: More common than in canon, though it depends on the mood of the game engine. Individual characters can also get pneumonia (not mentioned in canon) or just a generic illness.
• The Pioneer: There are multiple abandoned provinces which are only ruled by ruins. If you have enough money (and they are really expensive), then you can colonize the province. Your colony will only succeed if you make the right decisions and sink enough money into it.
• Pragmatic Adaptation: Whichever facts the canon is silent on (e.g. unnamed sons and daughters of the various lords and kings), the developers fill in the gaps in ways that fit the spirit of the series (e.g. generate names that fit the style of the houses). In a number of cases (such as much of eastern Essos), some things have been made up almost whole-cloth simply because the game engine needs something concrete to work with in order to make that part of the world function.
• Pragmatic Villainy: Necessary in order to survive. To wit, Maegor 'The Cruel', of all people, can avoid his fate in canon and have a long, successful reign, but only by avoiding the acts that gave him the 0% Approval Rating amongst his vassals.
• Prequel in the Lost Age:
  • The chronologically first bookmark (originally a submod) is called "Century of Blood", set immediately after the Doom of Valyria. The Targaryens are practically fresh off the boat on Dragonstone, a few other dragon riders (including the legendary and ambitious Aurion, who can resurrect the Valyrian Freehold) survive in Essos, the Dothraki have only just begun their campaigns against the great cities of Sarnor, and the infamous Gogossos has not yet been tainted by the touch of the Red Death.
  • "Century of Blood" has since been joined by a small set of other submods that push the timeline even further, allowing you to play in the Valyrian Freehold at the height of its power before the Doom, the ancient kingdoms of the First Men during the Andal Invasion, or the principalities of the Rhoynar defending themselves against Valyrian encroachment.
• Prison Rape: If you hold a character as a prisoner, and if that character is the right gender for your orientation, and if you do not have the kind, honest, or honorable traits, then you do have the ability to invoke this trait and force yourself on prisoners. Doing so automatically results in you getting the cruel trait or the ruthless trait (depending on which one you don't already have), and in both the character and said character's spouse hating you (-60 opinion). The opinion modifier is literally called "forced yourself upon me/my wife".
• Purposely Overpowered: Dragons. Even a fairly young and weak one can give the army it's supporting a decisive edge in battle. For the older and more powerful ones (such as Balerion in the Bleeding Years and Conquest starts), it's more like the army is there to support the dragon. While dragons can be (rarely) killed or crippled in the normal course of any battle, the only reliable counter is having a dragon of your own duel against it.
• Railroading: Generally averted.
  • For Daenerys in the last two bookmarks, the player can choose to follow the path she took in canon or go to Pentos and marry Young Griff, or reject the marriage proposal and attempt to claim the Iron Throne by herself.
  • In the A Clash Of Kings bookmark, the Red Wedding is unlikely to occur, due to engine limitations. Nevertheless, Players will have Robb marry Roslin Frey in a hot second, because they're afraid of the Red Wedding. However, due to game mechanics, the various wars can swing either way.
  • It is worth mentioning that recent updates leave the bookmarks with much less wiggle room. Want to marry Margaery as Robb and deprive Joffrey of his Tyrell Alliance? Too bad, she starts out married to Joffrey! Want to make Renly accept Stannis's terms so they overthrow Joffrey together? Sucks for you, Renly starts out already assassinated! Playing as Robb and think sending Theon to The Iron Islands is a bad idea? Guess which event you don't get a choice in?
    • On the other hand, the game lets you choose start dates off-bookmark. A good choice is to rewind to 20 Twelfth Moon 8298. Margaery is unmarried, Renly is alive, Theon is with Robb and Iron Islands tend to attack Lannisters.
• Really Gets Around: One of the ambitions your character can get is to "make the eight," i.e. to sleep with one woman from each of the Seven Kingdoms (plus the Riverlands).
• Realpolitik: Both Crusader Kings II and A Song of Ice and Fire delve into the concept, and this mod is no different. Alliances and Non-Aggression Pacts are maintained through dynastic marriages, but these can dissolve over time with the death of either partner or the passing of the house rulers. Houses, such as the Starks and the Baratheons, that used to work well together may go to war due to the new rulers not being as chummy to each other as their predecessors, and players will often find themselves looking to the Iron Throne in the search of more power, or simply due to the current ruler badly mismanaging the realm. Relationships shift, friendships lost, new allies found, new enemies made are a constant sight to see.
• Related in the Adaptation: Aegon V and Maester Aemon's sisters canonically had children but we don't know in which house. Here, one of them married into House Tarth, meaning Brienne would be a cousin of the modern Targaryens through her great-grandmother.
• Revolving Door Revolution: Depending on how the AI plays out, it's entirely possible for the Iron Throne to go through rulers like popcorn. Stannis may overthrow Joffrey, only to be overthrown by Daenerys or Aegon, to be in turn deposed by some other candidate, likely due to the AI encouraging rulers to be as much of a dick to their vassals as possible, and even vassals who entirely like you refusing to help when a mega war occurs. This is much less likely to happen if the player takes the throne, possibly due to players having much more common sense.
• Rising Empire: There are several de jure empires that have no holder but can be created either by AI or player intervention e.g. the Empire of the Summer Seas, or the Ghiscari Empire. The Bleeding Years deals with Volantis reforming the Valyrian Freehold and attempting to retake much of Essos. And of course, the War of Conquest deals with the rise of the Iron Throne in Westeros.
• Rocks Fall, Everyone Dies: If you play as any of the Good Masters of Astapor during the Clash of Kings bookmark, than seven minutes into the game you will get an event stating that Daenarys used her dragon to sack the city and killed all the good masters. This automatically kills you and turns Astapor into a kingdom, meaning game over. And no, refusing to trade all of your unsullied for one of the untamed dragons is not an option.
• Royally Screwed Up: The Targaryens have a special mechanic simulating the dreaded "Coin Flip of the Gods": there's a 50% chance of a Targaryen, born incestuously, getting the "lunatic" trait. The Seven/Old Gods/R'hllor help you if he/she is first in line to succession.
• Screw the Rules, I Have Connections!: You can potentially knight your sons who are otherwise unqualified to be knights under certain conditions, at the cost of prestige. Oh, and you can knight your wife and daughters as well.
• Self-Imposed Challenge: There are tons.
  • If you are playing as one of the Starks, you might want to keep the family together during the War of the Five Kings.
  • Conversely, you might try to play as Mad King Aerys and prevent the Targaryens from losing the throne.
  • If you are playing as Littlefinger, then you will try to marry Catelyn at some point.
  • In game, some of the ambitions your character can pick seem like this, such as: obtaining a Valyrian steel sword; obtaining a dragon egg; and sleeping with a woman from each of the Seven Kingdoms, among others. All of these are actual ambitions your character can pick.
  • Speaking of dragon eggs, you are going to find yourself attempting to become a dragon rider at some point in the game. This is just an inevitability.
  • Play as the Wildlings. At the start of 'A Clash of Kings', you'll be up against the Night's Watch, who have between 4 to 6K men, while you'll likely have at most 3K. Almost immediately after, the White Walkers will declare war on you with an army of up to 8K, sandwiching you between a rock and a hard place. You'll also have a permanent 70 opinion penalty due to being a wildling and a deserter as Mance Rayder. Winning this scenario requires strategy, technique, a shit ton of luck, or just outright cheating.
  • A playthrough of Lady Stoneheart is difficult for similar reasons, as you possess few allies, a 3K man army with relatively mediocre commanders, against the entire force of the Iron Throne. Since you don't have any lands either, you can't save without winning the war in one playthrough, making save scumming useless.
• Sex Slave: It is possible to buy one in places where slavery is legal. Followers of the Drowned God can also take "salt wives" while on raids. Likewise, characters with the right traits can rape prisoners at will.
• Shout-Out:
  • Your courtier may come forward with claims that your heir is a bastard, to which you may respond, "Ah yes, a 'bastard'" and dismiss that claim.
  • Self-Referential Humor: The Shout Outs to the source material from the vanilla game? Still here:
    • "[Girl] was supposed to work on her embroidery, but she clearly favors another kind of Pin." ^note  Arya Stark much prefers practicing with her sword Needle to embroidery.
    • With regards to an event of a child discovering you and your lover - One of the options is "The things I do for love."^note Damn it, Jaime.
    • Another related event involves disciplining a child who insists on climbing the old tower. ^note Damn it, Bran.
  • When you make it your ambition to find a Valyrian Sword, you will get a chain of events. One of the events in the chain is choosing who to bring along, it is called, for example, The Fellowship of House Baelish.
  • Also on the quest for a Valyrian Sword, you might get attacked by pirates. The Pirate is Captain Spack Jarrow.
  • Still the same event chain: If you're a Chosen of R'hllor, you get the option to appeal to him to destroy the pirate ship with fire. The event that follows is titled "Through the Fire and Flames".
  • In The Reach, there is one province called The Ring. During the Bleeding Years bookmark, The Lord of The Ring is Saron. Likewise, the island of Oakenshield is ruled by a man named Durin in the same period.
  • The names of Dragons are randomly generated, but four of those names are Toothless, Fusrodax, Neltharion and Smaugon.
  • There's a minor holding in Dorne named Shady Sands. Other holdings in out-of-the-way places include Candlekeep and Arrendelle.
• Shown Their Work: For starters, the developers actually edited game portraits so that the portraits for many characters looked close to how Martin described them in canon. In short, if you have difficulty visualizing the terrain and locations found in canon, this mod helps immensely.
• Sibling Team:
  • Aegon and his sister-wives as per canon.
  • Depending on how things play out, Jon and Aegon can become this.
• Silliness Switch: Again, The Aztecs from Sunset Invasion if you have the DLC. But with dragons.
  • If you want a more canonical alternative, you can check the "Brindleman Invasion" option. This enables the invasion of the orc-like horde of the Brindled Men of Sothoryos, a people that exist in canon, but still never invaded anything outside Sothoryos in Martin's books. Having Westeros or Essos overrun by thousands of these man-eating runts is still pretty silly.
• Slave Liberation: Slave revolts, if successful, result in the leader of the revolt taking over the nation and setting himself and his fellow slaves free. Liberators can then go on to attack other slavery-practicing kingdoms to emancipate their slaves and add freedmen to their levies by destroying slave camps in captured provinces.
• Slave Mooks: One possible building available to slave-holding factions is the slave camp, which allows you to raise 1000 light infantry. However, your morale for light infantry is 50% less than normal.
• Slavery Is a Special Kind of Evil: Slave owners have an opinion penalty applied to their relations with non-slave owners.
• Something We Forgot: Normally when you go on a quest for a Valyrian steel sword, the result is that you get a generic Valyrian steel sword which you can have reforged into something more unique. If you are playing as a family that has historically lost their sword, however, the quest ends with your character regaining it.
• Spanner in the Works:
  • Euron Greyjoy is this to Tommen, should he wrest the Reach from Mace Tyrell.
  • Likewise, and from the same bookmark, Aegon attacking Stannis to secure the Stormlands as a stepping stone to his own play for the Iron Throne can effectively doom the latter's chances even if the invasion itself fails.
• Spared by the Adaptation: Vargo Hoat and the Brave Companions in the A Clash Of Kings bookmark. Also counts as Karma Houdini.
  • In canon, both the Targaryens and Lyanna died during Robert's Rebellion. In the Game of Thrones mod, Lyanna is likely to survive while Robert is likely to merely exile the Targaryens (due to the tyranny penalty that an execution would give).
• Stations of the Canon: In the last two bookmarks, Daenerys can choose to return to Westeros as Young Griff's bride. However, only the A Feast For Crows bookmark contains the Golden Company's canonical decision in A Dance with Dragons to occupy the Stormlands first.
  • There is also Dany's visit to the House of the Undying in the A Clash Of Kings bookmark, complete with the canonical way of escaping the place ( always choose the door to the right).
  • See Spared by the Adaptation above. Jaime Lannister still has the "Crippled" trait.
• Statuesque Stunner: Lyvia Clegane, the OC who serves as Gregor "The Mountain That Rides" Clegane's daughter and heir runs a pretty good chance of becoming this. She'll come with the "Huge" and "Strong" traits (both of which increase most character's attraction to her), and depending on the other randomly generated traits she receives can end up fairly attractive, despite her parentage.
• Sword and Sorcerer: Stannis and Melisandre.
• This Is Unforgivable!: Some characters will have the 'Demand Vengeance' opinion penalty against you, making it near impossible for them to go above 0 opinion, and guaranteeing that they will join any factions or plots against you. Robert and Ned will feel this way towards Rhaegar for kidnapping Lyanna, so winning as Rhaegar, keeping the throne, and ensuring they all stay alive will be a herculean task.
• Together in Death: If Lyanna dies at The Tower of Joy, then Robert gets an event with a chance of becoming depressed. If he DOES get the depressed trait, then there's a chance he'll commit suicide.
• Upbringing Makes the Hero:
  • If you start out playing as Joffrey in the Clash of Kings bookmark, making him good is surprisingly easy. Just replace Cersei with a mentor who has the most positive traits.
    • This is fitting when you consider that Joffrey got as evil as he did as a result of being raised by Cersei and picking up her worldview. In game, if you play as Joffrey and leave Cersei as the mentor then it is noticeable how she always chooses the bad options when child raising events pop up.
  • If you play as Sweetrobin then invoking this trope is especially vital. He starts out with zero in every stat, so a good education is the only way to ensure he does not grow up to be useless.
• Video Game Caring Potential: Keeping the Starks together during the War of the Five Kings? Sure, it's difficult, but you'll want to do it anyway.
  • Reuniting the Starks and putting them back into power after the Red Wedding? Worth It.
  • We also have Robert's Rebellion:
  Eddard Stark: Lyanna will be safe.
  • Also, once Robert wins, his AI is unlikely to execute the Targaryen family (as that would gain tyranny points), and will instead simply banish them.
  • You can play as any canonically evil character and make them into a decent person.
  "Joffrey seems nice to everyone. He has gained the Kind trait."
• Video Game Cruelty Potential: It's a CK II game, at the end of the day. For starters, you can turn canonically kind characters into unsavory monsters.
  "Eddard Stark is now known as 'the Cruel'".
  • Playing as the Boltons, it's possible to flay captured prisoners.
  • Drowned God followers, including the Greyjoys, will opt to drown their prisoners. ''How'' they do it, though...◊
  • Followers of R'hllor can burn prisoners at the stake.
  • Characters with any of the Ghiscari Cultures can crucify prisoners.
  • As king of the Iron Throne, you can pass two unique crown laws. One is to give nobility the right of first night, the other is legalize slavery.
  • Slaveowners can rape their slaves, beat their slaves, castrate their slaves, or sacrifice their slaves.
  • Though Robert will often spare the Targaryens after winning the war, there's always a chance of him going in the other direction and executing the entire family, the children included.
  • Dragon riders have the option of feeding prisoners to their dragon when they execute them, much as Aegon II did to Rhaenyra at the end of the Dance of the Dragons.
  • Normally, execution options are fairly standard for rulers, with a generic ruler (not Bolton or Ironborn or dragon rider, etc.) being restricted to beheading or hanging. A character with the Cruel trait, however, gets an impressively long list of horrific ways to kill their victims, such as disemboweling them, walling them up alive in a tomb, breaking them on the wheel or sawing them in half.
• Video Game Cruelty Punishment: Oddly enough, this trope is more present than it is in the vanilla game.
  • There are new traits like Tyrant, Dishonorable, Ruthless, Slaveowner, and Slave Trader. All of these have a negative effect on your relationships with other people. Some, like Tyrant, have a negative effect on your prestige intake.
  • Traits like Craven, Cruel, Impaler, and wroth are much harder to get rid of.
  • If you are caught assassinating someone, you better pray to the Old Gods. Followers of the Seven are likely to get excommunicated for such acts.
  • Unless it's in a war and/or the action is lawful, executing captured enemies is almost never a good option, even if it prevents them from striking back in the future, as your vassals will likely take offense to such tyrannous acts. Calling for trials beforehand is usually the better course of action.
  • While some cultures will hate you for abolishing slavery, all of Westeros with the exception of the Ironborn will loathe you for putting it into practice. Unless you are playing in Meereen, Astapor and the like, legalizing slavery is very much political suicide when dealing with vassals.
• Vestigial Empire: New Valyria. Though if you play as that faction you can try to defy this and rebuild the Valyrian Freehold.
• What If?: The moment you unpause the game, the game engine takes the characters into different directions from canon. Also, with the right bloodlines (Targaryen/Blackfyre) and some visits to various locations, it is hardly difficult to hatch dragon eggs: in canon, this has stumped many people of said bloodlines, and killed quite a number of them.
  • In some cases, events present a choice between doing the canonical thing, and doing something else. For instance, in the Bleeding Years bookmark (which starts two years before Aegon began his conquest of Westeros), Aegon Targaryen is presented with a choice to join the war against Volantis' New Valyria as he did in canon, or side with the Volantenes.
  • One of the more popular of such choices, judging by the popularity of various After Action Reports where the players make it, is having Jon Snow accept Stannis's offer to legitimize him in exchange for Stannis's help in securing the North in the AFFC bookmark.
• Winter Warfare: Much like in canon, the AFFC bookmark starts with Stannis locked in a winter war with Roose in the North. It's surprisingly easy for Roose to win said war by simply holing up inside his castle and letting the northern alliance freezes to death.
• Won the War, Lost the Peace: Ever a possibility, especially with Stannis: While it may be easy to win the Iron Throne, keeping it is difficult due to the Short Reign penalties, having the foreign religion of R'hllor, and several powerful vassals like Tywin hating you for usurping their titles, displacing their preferred ruler, and being a traitor in their eyes. If Shireen takes the throne, she'll have it harder due to all the above, being a female ruler in a patriarchial society, and having generally poorer stats than her father.