Green Ronin, George RR Martin, and delays on A Song of Ice and Fire.

A few months back I made a post on how excited I was for the still upcoming Song of Ice and Fire game that Green Ronin is putting out. Judging from the design notes and free preview Green Ronin put out the game looks like an excellent adaptation that focuses on the family politics of the fantasy world, has brutal combat, and a simple conflict resolution system as to not get in the way of the war and behind-the-thrown intrigue. In short, this game looks amazing and I'm slightly pissed that it didn't come out this summer, that it didn't come out in October, and that when Green Ronin now says it will be out in early 2009, that I doubt them.

But why is the game not out yet? It was scheduled to be out months ago. Green Ronin says it's done. It's time for some super easy detective work:

From Green Ronin's website in an update before Gencon:

The game itself is finished and entered layout a couple of weeks back. However, we are revising the release date to October. We had really hoped to debut the game at GenCon, but things always get more complicated when licenses are involved. As fans of the series already know, George R.R. Martin has been hard at work on the next volume, A Dance with Dragons. Basically, there was no way we were going to get in the way of George finishing the book. That, of course, must be his priority. So, we're going to take a couple of extra months to polish the game and make it look truly spectacular. Then we'll launch it in grand style. We may release the PDF version of the game earlier, but the printed game will come out in October.

From this it's very clear that the good folks at Green Ronin have done their job. They made, what design notes and a free preview adventure indicate to me, a quality game. George RR Martin is ruining this. Let's not even talk about the delays with A Dance With Dragons. All Martin needs to do for Green Ronin is skim through the book, or hell read the damn thing over a few hours, and then tell them they have his seal of approval. Over several months he has not been able to do this. Yet the man can't stop updating us on his football teams. 

To completely contradict my rage at Martin for this, I am excited about the HBO series of A Song of Ice and Fire. I hope they at least get a whole first season of A Game of Thrones made.