Amber Revisited: Zelazny's Classic Series

[Thomas Shey]

I agree. I tried to ruin the game in college back in the early 90's, but it was a nightmare. The entire attribute system is purely self referential. My strength score of 3rd (27) does nothing to tell me what I can and can't do. The problem is that 3rd (27) doesn't tell me how strong I am - it just tells me that I'm stronger than everyone in my group except Bob and Leslie (and they don't know how strong they are either). I know that baseline Amber strength is greater than normal human and that 3rd (27) is better than that, but is it good enough to pick up a couch and use it as a weapon (like Corwin does very early in the first story)? Well, who knows? What about if your strength is 1st (123)? Well, who knows? Every contest in this game is an arm wrestling contest between you and another party member; and that's when the "system" works best. Once a contest involves something not in your party, the whole thing breaks down. The "system" wants you to narrate your rank/number, but without providing any context for what that number means.

Yeah, we know Amberites (and Chaosians far as that goes) are superhuman, to some extent in all four attributes (though what exactly that means with Warfare in particular is, shall we say, muddy) but there's obviously a difference between Fiona and Gerard and what that difference is is pretty much in the wind in the game, and even in the books you only have a couple scenes to base that on and that's with two characters who are probably at the far ends of the Amberite scale from each other.

Like I said, I was on a diceless MUX years ago, with traits that started out vaguely similar to Over the Edge (but decided over time they needed things a little more specific than that if they were going to be useful), and they at least were working in a superhero setting so they could at least use various published characters as benchmarks. It was still pretty vague but it gave you something to work with.

 

[GreyLord]

Great, this thread has gotten me to dig up my old Amber books and debate about reading them soon.

On the Attribute system, against humans, you are basically beyond what any of them can do, go wild. It's only when you face your fellows that they really need to be considered. Just as you would in the books, your imagination may be your only limitation.

 

[Zaukrie]

I couldn't finish them. But it was at a point I didn't finish several books, so it could be me.

 

[Blue]

That would be me.
I love Lord of Light, Roadmarks and have fond but vague memories of Today we Choose Faces and Bridge of Ashes. But Amber? I tried the first novel three times, and I think I never got beyond the hospital before closing the book and putting it away in disgust. What a despicable protagonist! Sure, most of Zelazny's characters are not straightforward good guys, but I always could relate to them on some level, often from page one. But this guy? I just wanted him to die right there and then. I really hated the guts of him. And mind you, I made it through all seven books of R. Scott Bakker's Prince of Nothing series, which should take the crown for despicable protagonists with Kelhus. But somehow, Corwyn felt worse to me. I can't put my finger on it, because it seems I deleted most of it from my brain. I just knew that I couldn't spend one more page listening to that sadistic SOB congratulating himself on his awesomeness.

As Snarf said, the first chronicles are all about Corwin's character growth -- if you start high you limit the total range you can do.

This is one of the strengths of the series, I'm sorry that him starting with so much room for improvemnet was written so successfully that it turned you off to a fantastic series.

 

[Blue]

I adore the First Chronicles. My issue with the Second Chronicles is just that I don't care about the protagonist nearly as much. That said, I've done multiple rereads over the decades and always read all ten books -- how can you stop?

I owned Amber Diceless RPG, never ran it, and almost played it. I was on a week long camping trip during the summer between college semesters with a bunch of friends, and that was going to be a nighttime activity. But we had 13 people interested in playing, and the GM and his assistant decided to do the bidding a bit different with so many people -- a first round with all but the top four being the lowest rank, then the top four could up their bids (if they wanted) for a final round of bidding. I was both smart and lucky and ended up 1st rank in three of the four attributes and 4th rank in Psyche.

We never got around to playing, and the assistant GM at a later point when we were chatting mentioned part of it was how my character would outclass so many of the other players so they'd had to design a special antagonist just for me.

 

[jolt]

Great, this thread has gotten me to dig up my old Amber books and debate about reading them soon.

On the Attribute system, against humans, you are basically beyond what any of them can do, go wild. It's only when you face your fellows that they really need to be considered. Just as you would in the books, your imagination may be your only limitation.

And that's great, assuming that everyone in your group has read the books and knows the internal context for everything the game thinks it's doing. I find it interesting (in a bad way), that even in the rules many of the examples show the GM and player arguing about what means what despite all of them having read the books. Now imagine trying to explain to someone who hadn't read the books. Even in a narrative heavy game, you need more direction about what things mean (particularly with core mechanics and attributes) than just expecting players to be imaginative.

 

[Snarf Zagyg]

And that's great, assuming that everyone in your group has read the books and knows the internal context for everything the game thinks it's doing. I find it interesting (in a bad way), that even in the rules many of the examples show the GM and player arguing about what means what despite all of them having read the books. Now imagine trying to explain to someone who hadn't read the books. Even in a narrative heavy game, you need more direction about what things mean (particularly with core mechanics and attributes) than just expecting players to be imaginative.

I've discussed this before ... but briefly-

I still remember when I purchased the Amber DRPG (diceless RPG). I was so excited! But I kept reading it ... and reading it ... and reading it. Because I absolutely, positively, could not understand how to play the game without dice despite the instructions and examples in the book.

Why? Well, at that point, I was so thoroughly brined in the late '70s and 80s era of RPGs ... that I literally could not conceptualize an entire TTRPG that did not use dice. You have to recall that it came out at the tail end of the "overcomplicating era." One of the games that I remember playing before it was Living Steel, which was based on the Phoenix Command ruleset. Sure, there was a lot of indie games pulling in other ways (which I have described) but I wasn't aware of them. And while I had played games trying new things (WEG's Ghostbusters, which introduced the dice pool, or Top Secret with meta currency) ... all the games fundamentally used to dice.... more dice or less dice ... but dice to resolve situations.

Finally, a little more than year after I got the book, I tried playing it with a group. And it was only by playing it that I finally understood how this diceless system worked in practice. I couldn't reason my way to it- I had to do it. Which is something I've also discussed in the context of FKR, etc. Now, what Amber Diceless was doing was just transposing, in the first written example of its kind, the same style of play that others were already employing when it came to D&D.

So yes, I do understand your criticisms, but I can also tell you that they are beside the point. You can play it. It may not be for you- but it certainly is for many other people. Although I do think that there have been more recent versions that, with the experience of the time we have had since it was first introduced... may be more clear to you. After all, 5e "makes more sense" than the LBBs, or Holmes, or 1e, but no one would say, "I read AD&D, and no one could play it." Because people did.