Wooooah there's a Chronicles of Amber roleplaying game?? Personal note to check *that* out later! Is it any good? We're playing 3.5e right now, but I'm kinda due to run another game sometime.
(I might need to reread some, though... I read the books so long ago, and I think I only read the first... 3? I stopped on a pretty apocalyptic and explanatory note, but there were more books apparently.)
There's 10 books in all, and there is a Great Book of Amber that puts them all together in one item.
Some guy also acquired the rights, and wrote 3 more prequel books about Oberon after Roger Zelazny's death. They're highly controversial. Friend of mine who ran our Amber campaign says the first book is lacking, but it picks up and gets fun in the 2nd. Probably worth checking out if you're not a purist.
The game is great, but probably not for everyone. It's diceless. So you'll want a good, fair GM. It has rules. There just aren't any impartial mechanics for resolving things.
Each player gets 100 points to spend in character creation, and it begins with The Attribute Auction. A bidding war for 4 stats
Psyche: Your aptitude for magical type stuff, and general awareness
Endurance: Self-explanatory
Strength: Also self-explanatory
Warfare: Your aptitude for general knowledge, skill, agility, reflexes, and things of that nature
In the auction, you're bidding for rank. You'll know exactly where you stand vs the other characters when its over in the 4 attributes. After the auction and in the course of the game, you can raise these and rankings can change... EXCEPT... whoever wins the auction in each stat sets the ceiling. The other players can never surpass them, or develop that attribute further than 1 point beneath the top rank. The game really pushes the Amber flavor of the story's characters being paragons of whatever they represent in the multiverse, and all other life throughout only shadows of them. If you win first rank in warfare, you are the Benedict of your group. If you win first rank in Endurance, you are the Corwin, who just keeps fucking going... to the point of digging with a sharpened spoon as he plots his revenge for decades after being tossed in a dungeon cell with his eyes plucked out.
After the auction, you can buy other stuff.
Powers (Pattern, Logrus, Trump Artistry, etc_)
Allies
Shadows (as in your own personal kingdoms and worlds in shadow)
Artifacts
Etc
There's a really good inventory of well-described stuff with point values. Artifacts are especially fun.
And then there's good stuff/bad stuff, which is one of the more interesting mechanics I've seen in an RPG...
If you want more points in character creation, you can take on "bad stuff" to get them. Or if you want to forego spending all of your points in order to have "good stuff", you can do that also. This represents a cross-section of many things. Bad stuff literally means the world is against you. The GM will write inherent disadvantages, more powerful adversaries, etc against you in the story. It represents general bad luck. General nuisances and setbacks will hassle you in the course of play. It's also your charisma and mentality. If you have bad stuff, you will leave a more negative impression on people, and you will have a more negative, pessimistic impression of the world. Good stuff is basically the opposite of all this.
And then you play. And everything's basically resolved by common sense. In a straight contest, the higher ranking will win, with as much flavor depending on the disparity in attributes as the players/GM would like. But of course, circumstances and maneuvering always play a part. Benedict is the best fighter in the Amber universe. Period. But Corwin could still draw a fight out with him on the defensive long enough to lure him into a trap. Amber's a world of intrigue and power plays. You can't be stupid.
Sounds like a situation that would result in a lot of bickering and routinely soured participants... but this wasn't my experience. The Amber campaign I played in was my favorite roleplay experience ever. But I admit there were factors that probably lent to a stable game -- mainly that we had a decently mature and experienced bunch of players, and most of us had all just finished playing a 2 year D&D campaign together all under the same GM.
I was an angsty as fuck kid (19-20 years old, I think?), when we played this game. Must have been somewhere in the years 2002-2004. Long time ago. This was the last really successful campaign I've been in that lasted more than a few months. :/
My character lived with an abusive family on a cyberpunk-ish future earth, until he snapped one day, overpowered his dad, and stabbed him in the throat while protecting his sister. Don't remember how old I said he was, but still a small child. He ran away in shock and panic after doing this and lived as a homeless street orphan stealing stuff, until taken in by a mysterious martial arts master who cleaned him up and taught him some civility and self-control. He went on to school to study to a frontier level in both neuro and computer science, and used these skills to construct an AI representation of his sister, who he never stopped pondering the fate of after he left. Moved on when it started to feel too much like the confines of a career, and lived as a vagabond artist, fighting to be left alone anonymously in an absurd, increasingly overbearing world... until that world was engulfed in a shadow storm that kicked off the beginning of the game.
I managed to win first rank in both Endurance and Warfare with this character, but human-level strength (zero in game terms). Was middling in Psyche. He kept the knife he killed his dad with, and made it a minor artifact that was incredibly sharp and durable. He basically fought with pure agility, and cut cut cut. But we didn't have very much combat in the game. Also went for weeks without sleeping.
He traveled around on a hoverbike that was encased in a sleek-looking smooth, glossy, egg-shaped black shell... also a minor artifact made to be near indestructible.
He was a self-taught Trump Artist, who didn't really understand the power, but channeled it through his computer sunglasses. He would take digital photos of interesting or useful places he'd visit and turn them into Trump cards. And he could browse and make use of his inventory of digital Trump cards without anybody knowing what he was doing (unless they could sense it through high Psyche). He interacted with the computer sunglasses via micro-implants in his ears for audio and in his fingertips that allowed him to type on any solid surface. He had stiff panels installed in the pockets of his trenchcoat, and would always have his hands stashed away, tapping his fingers. The AI was a point-bought ally who also lived in those sunglasses, who constantly ran analysis on whatever was going on, could tackle informational tasks while his hands were otherwise busy, and was a super-badass in digital space. For example, I was once in a high speed chase on the streets of a modern world. I had her check online traffic monitors to figure out the best route, while manipulating nearby traffic controls and vehicle computer systems to clear my path and hassle the pursuers. Also had her look up online recordings of the chief of police and impersonate him on a phone call to summon SWAT on an adversary.
I had a small amount of bad stuff at the end of character creation... so he was, even in mechanical terms, an angsty super-prodigy (as any Amberite would be on a shadow world but formidably intelligent and skillful by Amberite standards), who rarely slept and brought a techno-wizard aspect to the mostly fantasy setting. It was crazy fun. The multiversal nature of the setting combined with the loose mechanics allowed me to easily do basically anything I thought was cool with my character, and despite 8 or so players all approaching the game with the same off-the-wall mentality, it played really smoothly for about a year. Would have loved to keep going, but real life started kicking people's asses, and eventually the GM gave it up.
Years later, the GM told us what he had planned for our characters. Mine was apparently insane. The AI wasn't real. My character actually did all the things it did without realizing it, because he was just that super-talented and capable of multi-tasking, but also deeply broken. And I described him as always having his hands in his trenchcoat pockets, secretly typing away.
I would absolutely play Amber again... but there are few games more rarely played out there.
Also, Amber has the coolest goddamn implementation of magic I can think of. The concept of lynchpins creates this perfect balance between ritual and improvised magic. Fucking love it.
Poll
Author
Topic: Re: Dungeons & Dragons / PNP games thread: COBRA!!! (Read 939822 times)