Castle Amber - your experiences?

[Olgar Shiverstone]

Nope, Clark Ashton Smith's Averigone (sp?) stories.

Great module -- quirky, and a railroaded intro (you're surrounded by a dark, deadly mist that you can't escape ...) but still fantastically fun. I've run it about three times, twenty years ago.

 

[Prince of Happiness]

I think I've played this adventure twice with a DM who'd also like to introduce some other weird stuff of his own into it.

Once I played a thief character I named "Locke" who had blue hair (any guesses where I got that name? ) who got to the word/puzzle/trap in the dungeons. I remember saying:

"I'll cross across the letters that would spell out 'G-O H-E-R-E,' not the ones that spell out 'G-O H-A-R-E."

DM: "..................Make a saving throw."

Me: "D'OH! A 1!!!"

DM: "Ok, you've been turned into a hare."

Me: "WHAT?!?! I WALKED ACROSS 'GO HERE!!!'"

DM: "Well, that's where you messed up...you did the sensical thing, remember?"

Me: "Damn, well you got me there!"



Another time, in the garden, I crossed the fountain to get the treasure chest...whoops! I should have realized, that wasn't water...that was a grey ooze!

One of my favorite adventures of all time.

 

[Cthulhudrew]

Did this adventure have anything to do with the Amber chronicals by Roger Z?

Not explicitly. The only source credited as inspiration were the "Averoigne" short stories by Clark Ashton Smith, a contemporary of H.P. Lovecraft. The latter half of the adventure takes place in the Averoigne setting, which is a province of France on medieval earth (c. 1100 -1500 AD- at least that's when most of the stories were set.)

For my money, though, I'm convinced that Zelazny's stories must have inspired the design of the module. The name "Amber" as the surname for the characters, as well as the fact that they are world travelers and powerful entities and have all sorts of quirky and machiavellian plotting going on... seems a bit too coincidental.

On another note, the "Land of Grey Mists" into which the Amber family was pulled was the inspiration for the later "Ravenloft" modules.

 

[pogre]

One of my favorite modules!

Beware of the Hunt!

 

[Templetroll]

the group I was playing in was generally cool, but.... The GM would let his wife look through the modules he bought and decide what she wanted to play in next. When it came time for gaming she might or might not decide to join us, we never knew ahead of time. Another player, very conversant with the rules was "kind of co-GM" so he read through each module and would help us along if we seemed to not be taking the right path... :\ We once accused him of complicity with some bandits since he seemed to "know to much".

With this one we were on some mission to find an artifact before an evil group found it. We knew they were about as close as we were so we were really hot on it. For some reason I never did fathom the GM decided that we needed a "break" and that he would run Castle d'Amberville. I'll state at the beginning that he was befuddled by the fact that we didn't seem to be spending time exploring and enjoying the place. Our entire time there was spent on trying to find the way out.

We did have some fun moments - The co-GM liked to play druid wizards, we called them "electric druids" because he always had shocking grasp and lightning bolts instead of fireballs. Well, my monk was the only one who failed his save in one of the magical traps and was afflicted with lycanthropy. I decided that he would be wolfish and make a pass at the wizard (GM's wife, who actually showed up that time!) which she thought was hilarious. Then the electric druid tried to tell me to behave and that ticked off my character so he wolfed out. A sweet, but all too short, battle followed and they subdued the poor lil werewolf. I got some good shots in on the other guy but he made all his saves, dagnabbit. The party also agreed that an immediate cure was needed for the my monk so the rest of the party would be safe. I love it when I roleplay well enough to scare the other party members.

 

[drnuncheon]

Did this adventure have anything to do with the Amber chronicals by Roger Z?

Only in that I bought the first Amber novel when I was a wee thing, thinking it might explain just what the #$%& was going on in X2.

J
...it didn't.

 

[Mark Hope]

Great adventure - run it more times than anything else (except maybe Desert of Desolation). Always the perfect excuse to lay on the Monty Python French accents. Most groups seem to wander into the feast very early on, which produces massive amounts of overindulgence and rampant paranoia in equal amounts. The last time we played it through, the party thief ended up becoming a ghost, which the paladin found extremely enjoyable as he decided that he would now be able to turn him whenever he stepped out of line. Usually we end up with at least one dead character after mealtime.

Richard Amber the Lionhearted wound up being dubbed Richard Amber the Lionheaded by one early group, much to his annoyance. The ogre in the next bedchamber has, to this day, never managed to utter so much as a word. Every group I ever ran through the place has attacked her en masse, resulting in a very messy end for the poor old dear.

In the garden, one group decided that they were going to have their wicked ways with the "helpless young maid and her unicorn". A few rounds of lewd behaviour were brough to a sudden end when she tranformed herself into her true gold dragon shape. "I am bowing! F***ing chronically!" was one player's considered comment. In a later version of the adventure I made all of the Ambers into an incestuous family of vampiric fiends. The gold dragon was replaced by a particularly nasty vampire-babe who drained a good few levels before she met her pointy end.

The vampire roses / grab grass combo once almost wiped out the entire party after a series of spectacularly failed saving throws, but subsequent groups started lobbing around fireballs as soon as they spotted that anything was amiss. Usually, at some point after this, the group would start to fall prey to internal bickering and even full-blown infighting. One party in particular was extremely bad and a three-way feud developed, which ended up with one character being beheaded and another (the party ranger) having his leg amputated while comatose from black lotus blossom. And it only went downhill from there.

The one-legged ranger ended up becoming a werewolf and losing his ranger status and the beheader/amputator became a lord of Glantri (he later went to similarly behead two or three other PCs in his career at various times when under the effect of charm spells). One hapless character became trapped in amber as a fly right at the very end. When Stephen Amber was doling out wishes to have lost PCs restored, the trapped fly's player was virtually jumping up and down, begging to have his character restored. No such luck. Mr. Beheader used the last wish to get himself a winged warhorse as a steed, crushed the amber, squashed the fly and gave it to the party wizard, who used it as a spell component. Tough nuts, as they say.

 

[rogueattorney]

For my money, though, I'm convinced that Zelazny's stories must have inspired the design of the module. The name "Amber" as the surname for the characters, as well as the fact that they are world travelers and powerful entities and have all sorts of quirky and machiavellian plotting going on... seems a bit too coincidental.

Nope. The "Amber" in the title refers to the family being trapped in the castle "like a fly in amber" until their release through the actions of the pc's.

I love this adventure. Like many of the early (A)D&D modules, it can be run as a fairly straightforward "get the macguffin" adventure or expanded into a fairly complex campaign. Like B4 (also written by Tom Moldvay) I think it requires a bit of work on the part of the DM to really be done right, but that work is worth it since the ideas in it are so golden.

R.A.

 

[Byrons_Ghost]

I think I've played this adventure twice with a DM who'd also like to introduce some other weird stuff of his own into it.

Once I played a thief character I named "Locke" who had blue hair (any guesses where I got that name? ) who got to the word/puzzle/trap in the dungeons. I remember saying:

"I'll cross across the letters that would spell out 'G-O H-E-R-E,' not the ones that spell out 'G-O H-A-R-E."

...

I forgot about this aspect of the square. I never caught on to it when I played through the module, but when I started running it every group of players I've had put that phrase together. Too bad it doesn't work. Actually, I'm convinced that the square was just randomly picked from some medieval book or another, and the author had no intention of putting an actual phrase it the puzzle- it's just coincidence.

Another amusing aspect is that the bad stuff happens to players who cross over the middle rows, while the stat boosts are the two outermost rows of the square. After seeing what had happened to the rest of the party, the cautious warrior just shrugged and walked over the last two rows (I think the party thought they had to activate all the squares or something), and ended up getting the only bonuses in the room.

It's weird to hear about all the infighting and character deaths from the module, I don't think I've ever seen anyone loose a character too it. I'm not sure why, as there is some definately deadly stuff within. I think it's mostly because the groups I've played it with are older players, who remember how weird 1st ed and OD&D modules can be, and so are expecting to have to do things like watch out for fountains full of grey ooze and that sort of thing.

 

[JohnBiles]

I ran this for a friend of mine during a sleepover. We had a ton of fun; the adventure was often bizarre, but we were 14 and didn't mind. The ogre who wanted a tea party made us laugh so much I think we almost woke up his parents.

For Mystara, this adventure was very important to its development, as the d'Ambervilles and especially Etienne were important to Glantri.