Game of Thrones RPG: Four Ways to Play in Westeros
If you want a Game of Thrones RPG, you have four real choices today. You can run A Song of Ice and Fire Roleplaying, the tabletop game built on George R.R. Martin’s novels, with a group of friends. You can play Game of Thrones: Kingsroad, the action RPG from Netmarble. You can join a play-by-post roleplay community and write a character alongside other fans. Or you can play inside the books yourself, as your own character, with a narrator that has read the text and answers whatever you type. Which one fits depends on whether you want a table of friends, fights on a screen, a writing circle, or simply more time in the Westeros you just closed the book on.
This guide goes through all four, says plainly who each one is for, and ends with how to try the last one tonight without paying anything.
What people mean by a Game of Thrones RPG
The phrase covers three different wishes, and it helps to know which one is yours before you pick.
- You want to play the game of thrones itself. Scheming, marriages, sworn swords, a house to raise or ruin. You care about intrigue more than about combat. This is the tabletop wish.
- You want to fight your way across Westeros on screen. A sword, a class, a map to explore, bosses to beat. This is the video game wish.
- You want to step into the books. Meet the lords and smallfolk as Martin wrote them, walk the Kingsroad the chapters describe, and make choices the story never offered. This is the reader’s wish.
Most fans carry a little of all three. The table below shows where each option lands.
The four options side by side
| A Song of Ice and Fire Roleplaying | Game of Thrones: Kingsroad | Play-by-post roleplay | Play inside the book | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| What it is | Tabletop rulebook | Action RPG video game | Forum or Discord writing | Written game in a browser |
| Players | A group, one runs it | You, online | You plus other writers | Just you |
| Rules | Its own system | The game’s controls | The community’s own | None to learn; you type |
| Story | Made up by your group | Written by the studio | Written together, slowly | Grows from your choices, grounded in the novel |
| Best for | Groups who love intrigue | Players who want action | Fans who love to write | Readers who want the book’s own world |
The claims about the tabletop game were read from its official site in September 2026, and those about Kingsroad from its site in October 2026.
A Song of Ice and Fire Roleplaying: the tabletop game
A Song of Ice and Fire Roleplaying is published by Green Ronin. Its own page heads itself “The Game of Thrones RPG” and describes the idea like this:
“Now you can tell your own tales of the Seven Kingdoms and play the game of thrones in A Song of Ice and Fire Roleplaying from Green Ronin Publishing.”
The design choice that sets it apart is that play is centred on noble houses, not only on characters. As of September 2026 the page explains that this “provides a ready-made rationale for adventures and helps focus the campaign.” Your group builds a house together, and the house’s fortunes rise and fall with what you do.
The game has two core books. The rulebook covers “everything from character and house creation to intrigue and mass combat”, and the Campaign Guide describes Westeros region by region. An adventure, Peril at King’s Landing, is there to get a first campaign moving. Green Ronin also offers a free 32-page Quick-Start PDF with six pre-generated characters and a short adventure, which is the cheapest way to find out whether your group enjoys it.
Pick it if you have a regular group and the part of the books you love is the politics: alliances, betrayals, and the slow cost of a bad marriage.
It is weaker for anyone without that group. Somebody has to learn the rules and run every session, holding the whole realm in their head while they do it.
Game of Thrones: Kingsroad: Westeros as an action game
Game of Thrones: Kingsroad is a video game from Netmarble. As of October 2026 its site invites you to scan a QR code to play, offers a PC version, and runs regular seasonal updates with events; its notices also mention in-app prices. You make a character, pick a fighting style and travel Westeros on screen.
Pick it if you want to see the castles and the snow, fight in real time, and come back for new events over months.
It is weaker for the reader’s wish. You act through the game’s controls and its written quests. You go where the map allows and do what the quest asks, and the people you meet say the lines the studio wrote.
Play-by-post roleplay: writing Westeros with other fans
The oldest way to roleplay in Westeros online needs no product at all. Fan forums and Discord servers run long games where each member writes one character, a moderator keeps the timeline, and posts go up a few times a week. Many are set in an invented house or a period the books only mention, so nobody has to play Tyrion better than Martin did.
Pick it if you love writing prose as much as reading it, and you enjoy a slow story shared with other people.
It is weaker for anyone who wants to play tonight. You wait for replies, communities come and go, and the world is only as consistent as the moderators can keep it. Our guide to solo role playing games covers what to do when you would rather not wait for anybody.
Playing inside the books themselves
The fourth way is the newest. You give a narrator the novel itself, and it reads the book before you begin: the places, the people, how they speak, what they know and what they hide. You are shown what the reading costs before anything is spent. Then you make your own character, step into that world, and type what you do. There is no list of choices. You can walk beside the plot, cross its path, or ride somewhere the book never went, and the narrator keeps the world consistent with what the author wrote.
This is what LLM RPG does. You upload a copy of a book you own, as a
.txt or .epub file, and it builds an atlas of that book’s world before your
first scene. Because it works from the text rather than from a preset, it works
for A Game of Thrones and equally for any other novel on your shelf.
Pick it if what you miss after the last page is the world itself, and you would rather be a hedge knight on the Kingsroad than learn a rulebook or a game controller.
It is weaker for players who want pictures or a group. It is a written story, read and typed, like a patient game master who never tires. It also needs the book file, so you use your own copy.
For the wider field, see AI roleplaying and AI game master. If you liked this for Westeros, our Lord of the Rings roleplaying game and Harry Potter role playing game guides do the same for Middle-earth and Hogwarts.
What it takes to start each one
| Option | How to start | What you need |
|---|---|---|
| A Song of Ice and Fire Roleplaying | Download the free Quick-Start | A group and a game master |
| Game of Thrones: Kingsroad | Install the game | A PC or phone |
| Play-by-post roleplay | Join a community and apply | Patience and a character sheet |
| LLM RPG | Open the site in a browser | Nothing for the first five turns |
With LLM RPG you can play a ready-made world for five turns with no account at all, and signing up adds free credits. The current plans are on the pricing page.
How to start a Game of Thrones RPG tonight
If playing inside the books sounds like your kind of game, this is the whole path from nothing to your first scene.
- Try it with no account. Open a ready-made world and play five turns. A few minutes tells you whether typing your own actions suits you.
- Sign up with your email if it does. You get a one-time code, no password.
- Upload the book. Choose the volume you want to live in, as a
.txtor.epubfile from your own copy. The narrator reads it and builds the world before you play. - Make your character. A younger son sent to the Wall, a maester’s apprentice in Oldtown, a sellsword who reached Winterfell a day too late. You are a new person in the book’s world, so you can be anyone.
- Type what you do. “I ask the innkeeper which banners rode south this week.” “I take the letter to the rookery and read it first.” The narrator answers in the book’s voice and remembers what you did, including the promises you break.
When a table or a video game is the better choice
Be honest about the evening you want. If you have friends who love scheming against each other, a tabletop game gives you betrayals nobody else will ever have, and A Song of Ice and Fire Roleplaying is built around exactly that. If you want to fight in Westeros and see it rendered, Kingsroad is the one that shows it. If you want to write alongside other fans for months, a play-by-post community is where that happens.
A written game fits a different moment: you have just finished the last chapter, the next book is not out, and you want to stay in that world as yourself. That is the moment it was built for.