Tuzenbach said:
And so, perusing the wonderful 1E Castle Amber module, one can see the recommendation made for the works of Clark Ashton Smith, upon whose world of "Averoinge" setting the module is based.
OK, so, none of the man's books are in print. Now what?
Others have pointed out places you can get his collections, so I won't repeat anything. I will say, however, if you can get a copy of "Rendezvous in Averoigne", do so. It's worth it for CAS's beautiful prose if nothing else.
Also, if you can find it, I'd recommend picking up "The Book of Hyperborea". It contains all of the Hyperborean cycle of CAS' work, and comes in a beautiful pulp-style paperback edition. It was still available by direct order from Arkham as of 5 years ago; may not be available any more. It doesn't have much to do with his Averoigne cycle (the sorceror Eibon is the character in one story, and his ring is the story of an Averoigne tale, but that's about it), but if you like CAS, it's a must have.
Has anyone who has successfully ran the module also read up on Clark Ashton Smith's material? I guess what I'm asking here is, how necessary is it to know Smith's concepts when running Castle Amber?
Not at all. You are given all you need in the module to run things. However, if you do have access to the materials, you can develop the Averoigne section of the module much more fully and completely.
In fact, I've often thought that X2: Castle Amber could be a full campaign in and of itself if done properly. The initial castle is a bit too difficult for 1st level characters, but if you flesh out the opening stages- play up the mysteries plaguing Glantri with several encounters in the wilderness and towns that the adventurers clean up. Get the PCs up to the recommended levels and then have the Princes summon them to deal with things (builds into the idea of having these PCs be worthy of the attentions of the nobles), and then have them sucked into the Castle.
Get them up to mid-levels in the Castle, then plop them over to Averoigne. There you can flesh out the necessary encounters (Sword of Sylaire, Ring of Eibon, Potion of Time Travel, Viper-Circled Mirror) with the actual source material ("The Enchantress of Sylaire", "The Beast of Averoigne", "The Holiness of Azedarc", and "The Colossus of Ylourgne", respectively) as well as add in a bunch of the other short stories ("The Maker of Gargoyles" would make a nice side adventure, as would "The Mandrakes", "The Disinterment of Venus", and "A Rendezvous in Averoigne". "The Mother of Toads" and "The Satyr" would both make interesting side quests.) You could flesh these out even more with
a) a couple of the synopses of stories CAS never wrote ("The Oracle of Sodoggua" and "The Doom of Azedarc" would be good ones
b) Setting the adventures and stories in the actual time periods in which they were set chronologically (as the stories were written) rather than all at the same time, which the module does. They'd need to have a good supply of potions of Time Travel, either from Azedarc (an unholy pact) or Moriamis, or possibly Giles Grenier.
c) Flesh out the adventures with actual historical french backdrops. The Hundred Years' War was going on around the time of "The Beast of Averoigne"; the Crusades were a backdrop to the attitudes of the time (even though the actual dates don't really crossover with any of the stories), the conflicts between France and England were ongoing.
You could get the PCs to some really high levels this way (and would need to, if you want to use the Flesh Colossus from the ELH for the Colossus of Ylourgne; which was its likely inspiration). Then you might have to raise the challenge level of the last portion of the adventure, in Stephen Amber's tomb, but it would create a really nice coda to the campaign.
Also, another idea that I personally have used and that you might consider is to look at/read up on the Amber family from Roger Zelazny's "Chronicles of Amber" series. Though they are not credited like CAS' stories are, I still feel to this day that the Amber family of the module must have been inspired by the early Chronicles of Corwin that Zelazny wrote (I think he would have only had one or two out at the time X2 was printed). I find it really helps to flesh out the "eccentric" d'Ambrevilles and makes them much more than just NPCs to hack up.
Other possibilities include setting the Castle in Ravenloft (the Grey Mists just scream to be set there), and fleshing out the Castle into more than just a dungeon crawl- give the NPCs goals; maybe Richard actively dislikes Guillaume and the PCs could work with one or the other to remove their faction from power or something.
Can you tell I've put a little bit of thought into this?
