Upgrade your account to a Community Supporter account and remove most of the site ads.
Rocket your D&D 5E and Level Up: Advanced 5E games into space! Alpha Star Magazine Is Launching... Right Now!

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="Michael Tree" data-source="post: 1004930" data-attributes="member: 1455">Some of these comments are dead on, but others are either misleading or patently false.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."</blockquote>

Verification