Forever Amber?

[kookalouris]

Anyone up for an online Amber Diceless RPG based on the books by Roger Zelazny (you don't have to know the setting or have the rules. Just bring enthusiasm)?

Fair warning, I love the idea of Amber, just not the main characters. PCs would not likely interact with the main characters in the stories.

If I get two interested posters by this time next week, I will write more. Otherwise, I will take the hint...

 

[Thanee]

Hmm...

Yep, interest is there. I love the Amber books and also have both of the rulebooks.

Bye
Thanee

 

[Nightbreeze]

I am all in for such a game.

Given the fact that you don't like the main characters, how do you mean to organize the campaign? Will it revolve around the events in the books, or you are thinking about something else? Almost everything in the books relates to the main characters, so it may be hard to completely avoid them. Perhaps start in the Courts of Chaos? They were basically unexplored until the 6th book.

At what point of the story you want to place it? Before or after the end of the first pentalogy?

 

[Deuce Traveler]

I'm interested in hearing more...

 

[kookalouris]

Thanks to all who responded. Let me answer your questions as best as I can...

I believe that the Amber Diceless system and the setting of Amber are very well suited to a PbP setting. Most pen-and-paper games can be adapted to posting but Amber DRPG is particularly easy to do so. The rules are simple, based on interpersonal bidding, not dice. And when creating universes at will is one of a character's minor powers, game balance can't really be abused...

Let me praise the late Mr. Zelazny, his characters are well-written and perfect for the story he was trying to tell. But for my purposes, here are the problems I have with Royal Family of Amber.

• The characters are ruthless opportunists at best, sadistic psychopaths at worst. I prefer to GM people trying to be heroes, even flawed heroes.
• With literally every imaginable universe at their beck and call, the entire family fights for a merely political prize, the Crown of Amber.
• The characters are rather similar and terribly WASP. Oberon seemed to have a pretty narrow view of what his family should be like and the kids haven't fallen from the tree.

I realize that these sentences have probably alienated true Amber fans. This is one reason why I am not promoting the game at a purely Amber-related forum or message board. But I want to be honest with you. Purely canon Amber games are available for those who want them (and I mean that in the best possible way).

So, what kind of fake jewel am I offering, if not real Amber?

First, when the game starts with the characters being godlike immortals, there is nowhere to go but down. So I want the game to start as Nine Princes of Amber did, the protagonists believing that they are human, in a perfectly ordinary world, slowly learning how 'shadowy' that understanding is.

Secondly, I want the characters to at least feel young. We change more in the first decades of our lives than in the later decades. And I imagine immortals stay pretty consistent over the centuries.

Third, I want to start the game with a strong family bond. In the end, the only real threat to the characters is each other. So let's give the characters something to lose.

My basic pitch is this,

This characters start out as a collection of orphaned siblings. They have no particular reason to believe that they are special at game start. The world they start out in is probably here and now, Shadow Earth, but whatever shadow they are in, it is dull and humdrum. They are raised by caring foster parents who take the place of the parents the kids barely remember.

Powerful magics have made the characters seem as normal, perhaps even boring, adolescents. This magical masking hides the children from pursuers, but necessarily prevents the children from knowing their true selves.

Of course, as in these kinds of stories, something goes terribly wrong and the kids are forced to realize their destiny early...

Think of Luke Skywalker just before his family buys those two beat-up droids on Tattooine. There's no reason to think he is anything special at the start of the movie.

Doctor Who fans may be reminded of the episode 'Human Nature' where the Doctor took on a human identity so convincing even he believed it so as to escape powerful enemies.

Who are the children's parents? Who is hiding them? Who is pursuing them? What disaster made this all necessary? The good news is that those answers can be tailor-made to the characters and the game. Let any probable players tell me what period of the books and what parents they would like for their characters. The important thing is that the game starts out with the kids thinking that they are normal in a perfectly mundane setting...

That's enough for now. If anything I have written is a deal-breaker, I understand...

Also, DT, it's good to hear from you again...

Gerry

 

[Deuce Traveler]

And I'm glad to see you haven't given up on running this here on ENWorld. I'm up for this, although I will have to think carefully about the character I will play. Will we be making our characters' unknown, secret background or will you? What is the age range of the PCs? When will this occur in the Amber series?

 

[Thanee]

Do you also want the characters to be more of the cooperative kind, working together against a common goal?

That would certainly be more up my ally than the setting-implied Amber-cutthroating.

Also, would you do the Attribute auction? When we played Amber, quite some time ago, we usually skipped that and everyone just picked Attributes (without knowing what the other characters had, of course) and the Ranks were then set afterwards, just going from highest to lowest. Also when leveling up you could simply improve the Attributes point by point. It's a bit easier to handle that way, too, which might be useful for PbP. But the biggest advantage for PbP is, that new characters can be brought in, easily, without screwing up the whole auction result.

Bye
Thanee

 

[kookalouris]

DT, a GM has to be an enternal optimist.

Right now, I don't quite have the time to give as lengthy and polished reply as I would like but I want to y'all's questions sooner rather than later.

You may make your character's background as long as it won't work against the game (and trust me, I am hard pressed to think of a character that wouldn't work) OR I will come up with a background for your character, whatever YOU want. You can even be one of the characters in the Amber series (we will assume there is a very good reason why such a powerful being has been reduced to an ordinary teen).

Don't forget, there are infinite variations of the Amber family themselves throughout Shadow. Even Corwin can't be sure if he is fighting for the One True World, or just the One True World he knows of. So we don't have to stick to established continuity. And characters can be effectively duplicated, slightly different versions from slightly different shadows (different brands of Brand, for example).

Also, if every possibility happens in Shadow, then every story or character you have read about has happened somewhere in Shadow, you may be able to bring your favorite character from ANY story into the game.

In short, just suggest a background, 99% will work. The only real caveat is that your character is somewhat more than a self-centered would-be tyrant (this includes the Princes of Amber, but your prince may have had a moral awakening. Besides, given Eternity, even selfishness or mere power would get old after a long while).

At game start, most of the people around your character (including your character) will think the PC to be somewhere around the ages of 11-17, the characters true age (chronological, apparent and mental) is up to the player.

Given that different shadows have different timeflows and that these timeflows can be set (relative to Amber) by powerful enough beings, I can easily set the game to whatever period of the books the players want.

More specifics about the game will depend on the particular mix of player preferences. For example, if every player wants to be the descendant of a particular Prince (do Amber Princesses have children?), that will be a different game than if the players want to be an Amber breeding experiment from the Courts of Chaos.

Here are (as I see them) the two basic approaches to the game, with near-infinite variations between the two...

About a generation (subjective time) before the game starts...

A war for the Pattern is fought between two powerful forces (Law and Chaos?). One side wins, but not decisively. The losing side is able to save some of the children and warriors of their side to safety. As the exiles are being tracked not just physically, but mentally, spiritually and magically, it is necessary to disguise the rebels as children, physically and mentally, even to themselves. A group of powerful guardians is caring for them but their pursuers are more powerful and discover them early...

APPROACH ONE: The rebels are being hidden by what is left of their family retainers. There is no question of their loyalty to the kid's initial cause.

APPROACH TWO: The kidnapped kids are being raised by their enemies who hope to raise them as powerful warriors for their side and eventual comeback.

Whatever the true motives of the kid's guardians, it is necessary to them that the kids be raised in a happy environment with a need to right 'moral wrongs.' So the game will start with what seems a truly loving family. This will add drama later when the character's realize their true selves and learn they are the children of mortal enemies, or the mortal enemies themselves.

I mean, Corwin and Eric couldn't have hated each other from their cribs. And their mutual hatred becomes more poignant if they once loved each other.

As far as bidding, here is my provisional idea...

All characters start as HUMAN in all stats, with no powers bought or points bid. As the game progresses, the character may bid to their full 100 points, freely at times, restricted at others. This is the game effect of the children slowly realizing themselves to be demigods. Your character's true self may have been a 500 point uberhero but this game deals with the short span of their eternal life where they remember who they are or once were...

So, let's say that Brother A and Sister B have learned that they are mortal enemies and are fighting for power. Both can bid for their Warfare stats, but once those points are spent, they are committed to that stat. So, both siblings have to decide how important is this fight and the Warfare stat to the rest of the game. So the player with the highest Strength in the early phases of the game may not be the highest at the end of the game if another player really wants it more.

I'll stop here for now, let me know what you think. Nothing is cast in stone and I'm not married to anything...

 

[kookalouris]

To maximize the game's chances, I have setup a duplicate thread at PbPHouse

Forever Amber?

 

[Nightbreeze]

Hmm, well, I understand your objections to the principal characters, and I can find some common ground. But then, I think that there are some exceptions (corwin and merlin are not exactly savage and ruthless tyrants, as well as others).

I will have to think about the character. One problem that I can see with your approach to the backstory is that the players will have to decide in advance whether all of them are part of Chaos or Law (it was Logros and the Design, wasn't it?)