Amber Diceless
- Thread starter Crothian
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Afrodyte
Explorer
There are other diceless RPGs out there, most of them independent, that could be more to your liking. Amber, from what I've seen so far, is huge, which may be more than you want if you just want to play with a diceless system. An indie roleplaying group I am a part of is a great resource for finding these games. At the Forge, there is a lot of discussion about independent games and support for aspiring designers too. If anything, it'd get you thinking about roleplaying and RPGs in a more thorough manner. There is a mailing list related to the Forge that is specifically for roleplaying independent games over the internet. It's a yahoo list called indie-netgaming.
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Mike Sullivan
First Post
The last three big campaigns that I ran were all Amber. I got to Ambercon Northwest, and I've played the game pretty regularly since it was first published.
Broadly speaking, I feel it's a game that teeters on the edge of greatness, and could have badly, badly used a second edition. The game as presented in the main book suffers from being over-focused on creating a campaign in the unique style of Erick Wujcik, the author of the system. Erick's take on Amber is an interesting one, but also a limited one.
It absolutely is a game that takes a lot out of a GM. It's a game that tends to polarize people -- either they're at best unimpressed by it, or they love it to death and want to play it a LOT. That's how I was when I got it -- after about a decade of experience with it, I can more frankly acknowledge its many flaws, but I still think it's a great game.
Broadly speaking, I feel it's a game that teeters on the edge of greatness, and could have badly, badly used a second edition. The game as presented in the main book suffers from being over-focused on creating a campaign in the unique style of Erick Wujcik, the author of the system. Erick's take on Amber is an interesting one, but also a limited one.
It absolutely is a game that takes a lot out of a GM. It's a game that tends to polarize people -- either they're at best unimpressed by it, or they love it to death and want to play it a LOT. That's how I was when I got it -- after about a decade of experience with it, I can more frankly acknowledge its many flaws, but I still think it's a great game.
Macbeth
First Post
For a list of FREE RPGs, at least some of them Diceless, go to www.homebrew.net/games/
Here you can find a comprehensive list of free RPGs, maybe even one that is to your liking.
Here you can find a comprehensive list of free RPGs, maybe even one that is to your liking.
Michael Tree
First Post
All the best roleplaying experiences I've had were with Amber, and I've played many other games, and have played with numerous Amber GMs. The reason why they've been such great roleplaying experiences is that the system is entirely transparent. While roleplaying a character, it's possible to be in character 100% of the time. That's not possible in almost all other RPGs, including D&D. Why? Because in those other games you have to break character to use the game mechanics. Any time when you're rolling dice, checking your character sheet for modifiers, is time that isn't spent being your character and describing your actions.
The system can work wonderfully, but with a bad GM it can be terrible. For an Amber game to work well, you need:
- A GM that you trust. A Knights of the Dinner Table game could never play Amber, because they'd all be suspicious of the GM's rulings.
- A GM that isn't an idiot. It's very easy for an Amber GM to railroad his players, or to interpret the attributes as religious gospel, never to be altered. In a conflict, the basic rule is "all other things being equal, the character with the highest attribute wins". You need a GM that pays more attention to the first part of that than the second, and is open to craftiness, strategy, and trickiness.
- Mature players. The Amber genre does indeed encourage in-character rivalries and plotting. Many amber games don't have plotting, but to run one that does, you need players who don't take it personally. In my experience, the worst inter-character conflicts are the ones that are thinly veiled inter-player conflicts. Amberite plotting also doesn't involve killing people in their sleep or acting like petulant adolescent a-holes.
- Creative players. "I hit it with my sword. I hit it again. I hit it again." becomes awfully boring awfully quick. The setting also is more rich when played with players with imagination, because the characters can literally travel to any world they can imagine.
For running other genres, I've found the following:
- Amber can work great for many games, but it works best for games whose combat involves humanoids vs. humanoids. Humanoids vs. huge monsters can also work, but not quite as well.
- The combat system works best for one on one duels and mass battles.
The system can work wonderfully, but with a bad GM it can be terrible. For an Amber game to work well, you need:
- A GM that you trust. A Knights of the Dinner Table game could never play Amber, because they'd all be suspicious of the GM's rulings.
- A GM that isn't an idiot. It's very easy for an Amber GM to railroad his players, or to interpret the attributes as religious gospel, never to be altered. In a conflict, the basic rule is "all other things being equal, the character with the highest attribute wins". You need a GM that pays more attention to the first part of that than the second, and is open to craftiness, strategy, and trickiness.
- Mature players. The Amber genre does indeed encourage in-character rivalries and plotting. Many amber games don't have plotting, but to run one that does, you need players who don't take it personally. In my experience, the worst inter-character conflicts are the ones that are thinly veiled inter-player conflicts. Amberite plotting also doesn't involve killing people in their sleep or acting like petulant adolescent a-holes.
- Creative players. "I hit it with my sword. I hit it again. I hit it again." becomes awfully boring awfully quick. The setting also is more rich when played with players with imagination, because the characters can literally travel to any world they can imagine.
For running other genres, I've found the following:
- Amber can work great for many games, but it works best for games whose combat involves humanoids vs. humanoids. Humanoids vs. huge monsters can also work, but not quite as well.
- The combat system works best for one on one duels and mass battles.
Michael Tree
First Post
Some of these comments are dead on, but others are either misleading or patently false.Zweischneid said:
The Good:
You can be as good or as evil as you like because this setting and the system makes it easy for the GM to cope with it.
Yes and no. The setting works best with evil that is grand and visionary, evil that is passionate, and evil that results from the ends justifying the means. Evil for the sake of being eeeeeviiiiiil doesn't really fit in. In D&D terms, any evil action that the player explains by saying "because I'm chaotic evil, that's why" is out of place.
The Bad:
The game can be hosed by someone with far more knowledge and savvy than the rest of the players.
The game mechanics rewards creativity in actions, true, but that is up to the GM to arbitrate. I suspect that the reviewer played with a bad GM and/or players, and wrote his review accordingly.
It tends to encourage far more backbiting than is healthy for any RPG. That's a matter of taste.
If you're not there for character generation, you'll never be better than everyone else at anything. (This assumes that you'll be let in at all, and most Amber GMs I know don't do that.)
The former is true. The latter generally is not.
Someone like the guys in "Knights of the Dinner Table" can run amok and it would take railroading with bullet trains to stop them.
So don't play with people like that. Unlike in most other games, a mindlessly running amok character can be safely ignored while the rest of the players get on with the story.
[/b]Unless the GM is more sadistic than the worst Paranoia GM, it's damn near impossible to separate PCs from their items. This allows players to create PCs who couldn't move through Shadow unassisted, and their high stats make it impossible to take the items away without another round of railroading. [/b]
See my comments above about the reviewer playing with bad players and GMs. Any GM who feels the need to constantly take away PCs items is a bad GM. Of course, NPC amberites are just as tricky and conniving as PC ones, so if they can gain an advantage from temporarily messing with a PC, they'll do so.
The Ugly:
There is a major fantasy bias. Players who move away from straight fantasy will have problems reconciling their assumptions with how it is in Amber. (Chthulu is nothing to an Amberite.)
Amber is not straight fantasy at all, but it is its own unique genre, which includes the concepts that shadow worlds aren't really real, and Amberites can manipulate and shape them. If Cthulu is a shadow creature, he's nasty but can be beaten. But in a Cthuluesque Amber game Cthulu shouldn't be some random shadow, he should be a Great Old One of tremendous history and power, and the game world should be adjusted accoding. I've played in a few Cthulu-esque Amber games, and they were all terrifying.
It is impossible to surpass your PCs' elders in ability. Don't even bother. This is one of the major elements that isn't inherent to the game, but as Mike Sullivan mentioned, is a part of Wujick's unique game style, which he impressed on the book.
Unless you're knowledgable and savvy, you'll never win a fight when your stats don't hand you the victory. (Remember, there are no dice or any other randomizer involved.)
This is true, if you assume that there are no other extenuating circumstances at all. If facing off against a plainly superior foe, saying "I hit him. I hit him again." will fail. Against a superior foe you need to be tricky, or manuipulate the situation so your advantage. If you're fencing with someone who's a better fencer, just trying to outfence them is dumb. Use your advantages. If in that situation your character is stronger, make use of that strength. If your character has a better endurance, or is fresher, fight defensively and try to tire your opponent out. etc.
There is no such thing as a viable Amber campaign that doesn't involved a direct (and usually personal) threat to the PCs *or* a plot to destroy the whole of existance somehow.
This is patently false. While those are standard ideas, the above statement is no more valid than saying "there is no such thing as a viable D&D campaign that doesn't involve going into a dungeon, killing things, and taking their stuff."
Cthulhudrew
First Post
I've only played in one "live" session of Amber Diceless (and was less than impressed, though that was probably due more to circumstances not dealing with the game system). On the other hand, I've played in several PBeM Amber Diceless games, and they have been some of the greatest roleplaying experiences I've ever had. The Diceless rules may not work very well in tabletop sessions (at least, according to some replies here- as I noted, I'm not a very good judge on that point), but, from my experience, there is no other real good system for PBeM gaming out there. The games I played in were very player driven (though they required a well versed GM to handle all the multiple plot threads going on and what would have been confusing timelines otherwise), and the level of antagonism that some have pointed out as a downside actually (IMO) led to more interesting and creative experiences than I got in game sessions of DnD and other games. It's a different sort of game, though. If you're looking to introduce your friend to a roleplaying game like DnD (a team sort of game), Amber probably isn't the best choice. If he just wants to learn a system that is heavy on roleplay, and roleplaying PCs against one another, then I'd definitely recommend it.
PA
First Post
Crothian said:Thanks for the replies!! I knew if I wanted to learn about anything RPG related, this was the place to post.
You have given more then a little bit of info and also a few alternative RPGs to try to hunt down at Gen Con. Thanks!!
If you're at Gen Con, go to the Guardians of Order booth. They will be selling Tri-Stat dX for 1 buck (instead of 10).
Seule
Explorer
Note: Mark Mackinnon of Guardians of Order was (and maybe still is) a huge Amber fan. He ran Ambercon North for a couple of years, and the GoO name is an Amber reference, I believe. Plus their early logo (no idea about now) included a unicorn, another Amber reference.
This is all my personal opinion, not vetted by Mark or any GoO employee. I haven't played in a game of his in years.
--Seule
This is all my personal opinion, not vetted by Mark or any GoO employee. I haven't played in a game of his in years.
--Seule
