Why Amber Should be Played Diceless
A roleplaying game, distilled to its essence, can be divided into two parts: story and mechanics. The story portion includes elements such as background, setting, character personality and so forth. The mechanics element forms the framework needed to make consistent the attributes possessed by the gameworld and its inhabitants and to regulate their interaction.
It may be a story element that a character is a world-class pool player, but it is the mechanics element that determines exactly how good a pool player he is and how well he plays in any given tournament.
There is a trend today in gaming to place as much emphasis as possible on the story element at the expense of the mechanics. I suspect that this is in response to an earlier trend to emphasize mechanics over story. I feel that both paths are flawed.
To emphasize mechanics over story is to lose oneself in a sea of number-crunching and page-turning. Creativity gives way to accountancy and the game becomes stilted and lifeless. After all, no matter how detailed the system, the numbers only ever tell half the story.
But to engage in the obverse is to invite a host of other problems. A roleplaying game is not a novel, a play or a movie. It has no script. It has no ultimate author. There are those who would say that the Game Master is the ultimate author. If this is true than the players are merely effects and are ultimately only present to write dialog for the Game Master's protagonists and perhaps to appreciate her storytelling skill. If this is what they enjoy, then let them have at it.
I prefer a game in which the players work with the Game Master to create the story. The Game Master will have her plots, but they are flexible in the face of the actions of the players. For this, or even a semblance of it to be true, the mechanics must be clear to all involved. The mechanics help both the Game Master and the players understand how the world works and the place of the characters in it.
To continue the example of the pool player, saying that he is "world class" is good. Understanding that in the HERO system he has the skill Professional Skill: Pool Player 17- tells you that indeed, they don't come much better than he is. Knowing that in FUDGE he has the skill Superb Pool Player gives you roughly the same information.
The Game Master can put this into clearer perspective by providing skill levels of known players. For example, she might arbitrarily declare that the top ten players in the world currently are Superb, while the other tour mainstays are Great. She might even provide an example of greater skill, perhaps saying that Willie Mosconi was Legendary.
The mechanics work together with the story elements to form a cohesive whole. This is a concept that should be kept in mind in any roleplaying game, but becomes especially important when adapting outside source material, such as that of a series of movies or novels, to a game. Creating the feel of the source material's universe is critical.
Many people, however, assume that this is handled on the storytelling end and treat the mechanics as an afterthought. This is a mistake. While it is true that the Game Master must use the story elements to create the proper atmosphere, problems with the game mechanics can blow that feel quickly.
For example, say the Game Master has seen every episode of Buffy the Vampire Slayer more than once. She's spent large amounts of time going over her non-player characters, local history, character backgrounds and making all the nuances fit. She may even go so far as to plot her games like episodes from the show, complete with introductions and tags.
If this Game Master, who has worked so lovingly to craft her game, then runs it using the Storyteller system it will crash and burn. Why? The mechanics of the system will not properly represent the world as represented in the series. The werewolves won't work: Buffyverse werewolves are aggressive animals in wolf form with no apparent intelligence or personality, not fierce warrior-shamans with multiple forms and various tribal and lunar affiliations. Vampires won't work for similar reasons. Can they be made to work? Probably, if sufficient effort is put into the mechanics to iron out the differences. This would require a number of modifications before you could begin to have a good translation though.
It is this reflection of the setting in the game mechanics that makes Amber a difficult setting to run. Almost any world you can name is in shadow, and most if not all the PCs will have power over shadow. This, however, can be addressed by sufficiently raising the power level of the chosen system.
The real problem with running Amber is a subtle one, but one that is reflected completely throughout all ten books, plus at least four of the short stories (as of this writing there are two I have not read). Those with power over shadow, and in this I include both Amberites and Chaosites, are immune to the vagaries of random chance. In general they have the power to cause chance to favor them, but even without active effort they succeed or fail based entirely on ability combined with planning (their own and that of others).
Consider the following examples:
Bleys fights his way up Kolvir. He seems to have been caught accidentally and pulled over the side. It is later stated that Bleys was escaping, abandoning Corwin to Eric's wrath. The implication there is that Bleys had a means of escape even without Corwin's trumps. This makes sense, since we know that at the very least, Bleys had a set of his own. Of course, Bleys is a sorcerer and Corwin didn't understand why he threw Bleys his trumps — it is not unreasonable to suppose that Bleys had lain a spell on Corwin that was triggered by his "accident."
Corwin fights a tremendous pitched battle at sea and later fighting his way up Kolvir. He takes wounds, but no one scores a critical hit.
There are plenty more such examples scattered throughout the series. Now the argument can be made that these were plot devices, the same as are used in all novels. In Amber, though, there is a difference. In Amber, nothing happens at random. From Corwin's coming across the wounded Lance in a shadow like his Avalon to Merlin's being "rescued" by Vinta Bayle, Zelazny seemed to go out of his way to insure that everything that just looked like random chance was in fact connected back to someone's plans. In battle, no one ever lands a lucky shot - their strategy, ability and pure force of will either prove to be enough or they don't.
In a game with dice, eventually, someone will succeed or fail purely on the basis of a particularly good or bad roll. For most games that's fine; for Amber that's just the sort of thing that can lead to ruining the feel of the game. Imagine a training session in Castle Amber. A young Amberite is fencing with Benedict. A good roll for the player and a bad roll for the game master and the young Amberite scores a hit. On Benedict. Let me repeat that: one good roll for the player and one bad roll for the game master and the young Amberite scores a hit on Benedict.
Now most people would not make you roll for a training-session duel. So, worse, let us assume that was an actual, formal duel. Now, instead of a lucky hit in a training session, functionally impossible to begin with, we now have a young Amberite scoring a hit on Benedict when it means something. This is not Benedict's fight with Corwin by the Black Road, where Corwin, "the second-best swordsman around," got the edge on Benedict only by having and using well his superior knowledge of the terrain to pull a trick. This is a formal duel in Castle Amber, where the terrain is neutral and both combatants are rested and ready. In other words, these are ideal circumstances, yet the dice still provide the chance that the young Amberite might have a prayer of harming Benedict.
Now consider that the dice provide that chance to some duelist out of shadow who is not even the equal of our young Amberite. This would blow the feel of the game faster than almost anything else that can happen.
But that holds true for the elder Amberites, who in almost all cases would be NPCs. They can, of course, be handled by GM fiat and thus remove the possibility of anyone disturbing the flow of the game that way. What about the younger Amberites, the main characters of Merlin's Saga: Merlin, Luke, Jurt, Martin, Coral and so forth? They are of the same age, roughly, that player characters would be, and are thus on about the same scale. They are also every bit as immune as their predecessors to the random factors that influence the lives of those who are native to shadow.
Jurt fails at many things not because he is unlucky but because he is clumsy and does not plan. Whether he is attempting to kill Merlin, crossing an icy plateau, shadowmastering a way in his closet or stealing a sword, he does not consider the ramifications of his actions, only the prospect of immediate gratification.
Luke plans, trains and studies to excess and succeeds at practically everything he tries. He even manages to kill Caine, an elder Amberite. The only person who continually gets the better of him is his mother, an adept schemer herself who has been tampering with his life so long that she is sure to know where his blind spots are.
Merlin's entire life is an excellent example of how plot and counter-plot can appear random. Was his birth the natural conclusion of the blossoming affection of Dara for Corwin? No, it was a calculated (on her part) breeding project to produce a fit king of Chaos. Merlin assumed that his April 30th assassin was a random shadow psychopath, but the whole series of attempts was part of an intricate vengeance plot. Were they foiled by random good luck as he suspected of more than one occurrence? No, they were foiled either by his best friend or his guardian demon, as appropriate. The list just goes on from there. In fact, Zelazny uses Merlin's assumption of luck and accident at times to demonstrate his naïveté.
To use mechanics for an Amber game that rely on a random factor like dice is to damage the feel of the setting and thus make for an inferior gaming experience.
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I'm aware, however, that there are those who feel more comfortable having some sort of random factor involved in their games. For those of you unwilling or unable to attempt it, or who find that diceless simply doesn't work well with your group, I will soon present a few alternatives.
Those of you who wish to share their views on the subject, of course, may contact me.
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http://home.earthlink.net/~fintach/Amber.html
![:]](http://www.enworld.org/forum/images/smilies/devious.png "Devious :]")
"in Amber DRPG terms" and not "in Amber terms."
