Otherwise, there's dealing with the Drow and perhaps going with Relath to the PoW. The former can be put on a shelf safely, the latter can be delegated.
The Drow are a non-issue that we can ignore indefinitely and I would be very happy if we can do the same with the PoW.
Assassinating the Bey is very much a political action.
The deciding point to shove it in this month and no later was not his loot, or the desire for his death.
It was showing off to the Shaitan.
This is clearly not a dungeon run or regular adventure, as you may see by the fact that we just spend 3 days gathering information, rather than shooting off some divinations and going in.
I strongly disagree here. To me, a true political action must answer yes to this question: "Does the outcome of this action meaningfully impact the political situation of Viserys Targaryen?"
And the answer here is a flat no.
We already are allied with the Shaitan. We are not planting our own pawn in the Beys place. We are not protecting ourselves from the Bey plotting against us or similar.
Once this action is done, we get +10 Friendship Points with the Shaitan and replace one set-piece with a slightly differently shapes one.
So the actions feels entirely meaningless.
Ah, yes. That focus some people have on Planetos. Can't say I feel the same.
Maybe because I'm not a D&D veteran, so the Planes are new to me. But I think DP's interpretation of them would be anyway.
I actually find them as interesting as Planetos, or more so. And generally less unplesant, Westeros and most of Essos really are shitholes even long before the fiends and Deep Ones came back.
So I don't see any reason to focus on Planetos over other places, besides the obvious one that we have already made a kingdom on that dump, so we have to care about that of course.
-- The following part became rather ranty and I apologize in advance to anyone who may or may not be offended, especially to DP, but this kept bugging me for weeks if not months and it needed to get out. --
See, you are kinda ignoring that it's also a ASOIAF crossover and that part feels sorely neglected for the last months, if not longer. The driving force behind nearly everything happening on Planetos are either Devils, Illithid or some other random outsider threat. The only moments were this isn't the case is when we do stuff involving the Old Gods and even that one is not really uniquely ASOIAF. Most of our actions on Planetos could just be copy-pasted over to a generic D&D world.
Take for example Sothoryos. It's a canon name, but otherwise it might as well be any other random jungle continent form any random setting. Which isn't so much DPs fault as the issue of the place being barely fleshed out in canon. But as we keep threading far away from canon most of the time, this won't really change. And stuff in Westeros itself, where canon is strongest? It always involves Devils these days. Even the wildfire thing devolved into thumping random devils. Corbray and Grafton? Devils. Danar and Alyssa? Random celestial, made out of spare parts from Baelor the Blessed, true, but ultimately still a random celestial.
It was really fun to dig into the Corbray and Grafton situation OOCly, but ICly, it's just another Devil plot to deal with. The whole matter still was great fun, because it's interconnected with the setting and had the context necessary to feel alive, but stuff like the Bey are self-contained dungeon runs. Intrigue focused maybe, but there is little functional difference between a random Shadowrun job and a random D&D dungeon crawl. They are self-contained tasks which are using a limited amount of set-pieces, while the Grafton matter happened within the continuity of the Vale, where we know many more set-pieces and can easily dig into a wiki to discover more.
Which is why I'm decidedly meh on Valyria. It will be a dungeon crawl with some namedropping and a bit of ASOIAF flavored loot and lore, but ultimately, it's a self-contained thing with a clear start and end.
But the appeal of ASOIAF is this vast, interconnected world that is living, breathing and interacting with itself even outside the current viewpoint. And all those dungeon pokings and the planar stuff have really begun to tear that appeal down for me as they simply
can't deliver on this. People can deliver on this. Repeated interactions with those people can deliver on this.
But just look at our interactions with Myr and Sarnor. We pop in, throw down demands, offers and asking for fealty, then pop back out and pay it no mind for months. Little changes in between and Lady Phassen and Sarnor-Dude-Who-Isn't-Even-Relevant-Enough-To-Remember-His-Name are basically faces of entire regions. Lys was fun because we dug deep enough to find out about the local dynamics and could meaningful interact with them, but Myr was already much flatter and Sarnor basically card-board. That our shenanigans in Lys got zero true focus lately, except for a minor status-report, is also a big let-down for me, as a lot of time and effort went into planning that particular thing. But we never got beyond implementing Phase 1, never had to implement any of the contingencies, run damage control or try to manipulate other people to preserve our plan.
So... yeah... Not much appeal to me right now in even doing intrigue. Or politics. These actions are blips that feel disjointed, rushed and weird most of the time, as they get so little screen-time and so few characters and situations to work with that they became meaningless. Doubly so with the walk-over in Sarnor and the, frankly, entirely nonsensical thing with the loyalist Salamanders. But look at the original Salamander diplomacy and notice one thing: 2 chapters of talking, then we are back on track for 10+ chapters of murdering some people who don't matter to the narrative beyond their role as targets.
Can we... stop doing combat? And have all our plots devolve into "kill this Outsider to win"?
Because that is what is feels like most of the time these days. Either that or complete walk-overs.
