It definitely makes sense for the nobles to favor an ambitionless senior monarch in an arrangement like the kingdoms of Westeros. Their real need for anyone in that capacity is really kind of limited. The primary role for a central king in such a structure is as a top-level dispute arbitrator. If you can’t get someone…

I’m guessing you didn’t wear a lot of bright colors...

If he shows up and he’s prepared...

I think they may know they want a “Bad Boy” jerkweed antagonist, but disqualified Steve by making him interesting and sympathetic. So, here we are. It’s not inconceivable that they’ll keep him around awhile to give more impact to his eventual demise.

Which was apparently what Steve was supposed to be, until Joe Keery’s performance impressed the showrunners.

True... forgot that Austria was just kind of “keeping the dream alive” thereafter. The rest still holds.

That was how the Holy Roman Empire worked, but after a few centuries the Hapsburgs (an inspiration for the Lannisters) pretty much had all the electors in their pockets, and held the title pretty solidly until the Empire ceased to exist after World War I.

Producing heirs was so important to the feudal structure that they did indeed talk pretty frankly about it. There were some kingdoms where it was traditional for there to be witnesses to the consummation of a royal marriage to try to minimize disputes over possible infertility.

Welcome to King’s Ramping.

These cases frequently get discussed, out of all proportion to their frequency, in first-year law school, because they’re an attention-grabbing way to discuss sanity and state-of-mind issues in legal theory.

While he likely has one, he might well have written those comments himself. The guy is always marketing.

Some really “lite” rule set like Fiasco I agree would be a better approach than D&D, but as you note, the show manages to balance everything with skillful writing. As a GM, though, not only do you not want to “railroad” players, players have a way of missing what you think are obvious “cues”, while creating conflicts,…

I’ve run enough V&V/superhero games to know that balancing the Iron Mans and the Hawkeyes can be done, but that’s typically in an environment of friendly mutual support, which is kind of the philosophical opposite of Rick and Morty ;)

Stranger Things D&D seems to simply let players play D&D characters similar to the ones the kids play in the game — no major structural problems there.

I played a skirmish game of the fight on Pegasus Bridge (a gorgeous scale model) at a miniatures convention a few years back. I was playing the German side though — a squad of clueless draftees mostly getting their throats slit in the dark by the British “ninjas”. It was a high bar of success for the British, though,…

But nobody ever mentions the Russians

I think I’d swap the people who like and dislike the end of Game of Thrones in those groupings. Rick and Morty’s a tougher call, though. I think that overlaps a lot of Venn diagrams, and there are a substantial number of people who still love the show while being appalled by the fan antics.

TIL... I’m sappy enough to tear up reading a plot synopsis.

My mother-in-law had a cockatiel land on her head one day when she was on the carport at her farm in Tennessee. She took it in and it lived with her for somewhere over 20 years until she passed away, and we inherited it.

C.A.U.D.s -- ...Avian Underground...