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Message: <blockquote data-quote="DerKastellan" data-source="post: 7980563" data-attributes="member: 6902208">It all sounds fine until you really deliberate what the shift away from the random means. Random means "In principle, I could get lucky even if I'm not the best." In Amber, the best-laid plan wins, if you manage to bring your high attributes into play and tend to avoid being pinned on your low ones.People have compared it in this thread as moving from the probabilities of Risk to the chess. And that lays bare the problem at the core more clearly. Amber is not a story game (some have claimed that) because it does not really share shaping the story around. (Like a game like Spark tries to.) Amber is a game of strategy, and if the wits in the group are unevenly distributed, the smarter player should be more successful. In a game of D&D somebody can opt to play somebody who just hits things with a pointy stick and contribute to overall success. Being clever surely can give you advantages but everybody can play. In a game like Amber there is no true spotlight protection. Even if you are best at Warfare you might be still outwitted. When the wizard in D&D is out of spells it's down to the fighter to hold the line. That's their spotlight, just as slinging spells of mass destruction is the wizard's. In a game of Gumshoe, pools fulfill a similar role - you overspend, you're in trouble later. You chose what you will shine at. You can chose to shine at certain things in Amber, too, but the other player will always try to undermine your strengths, and if they are better at this type of thing, your strengths might not help you at all.Unless played with a story-oriented and fair attitude, Amber could easily devolve into a series of "I'm smarter than you" chess moves that might alienate players who aren't really into that type of thing - for any reason. Be it that they don't have the requisite skill, be it that they don't have that attitude. Amber sounds like you find out who could be a villain among your fellow gamers really fast. Just wait until somebody displays the combination of smart, ruthlessness, and some creativity to get their way.And I guess that's good game design if you consider the source material's apparent gist and what the game can evolve to and devolve into. There's nothing wrong with that but I would personally find it tiresome. As a GM you also have not only to have a good grasp of this key skill, but also a good narrative sense when to play to win and when to play to lose. Something most RPGs don't require of you, come to think of it, because they are not truly competitive at the core. It's a wholly different mindset. A D&D GM sets themselves up to lose constantly, for example, to keep the campaign going.What might be an interesting alternative is Hero Quest 2 by Robin D. Laws, the ever-experimenter. It is a cheating system from the core in that the GM decides when the players should fail and when they should win, setting difficulties accordingly. The players decide what things they are more likely to succeed at. But they still might win - and make the story entertaining - by making that one roll. It can create interesting story twists yet most of the time plays as planned. All you have to do is get over the inner sense of heaving at setting nonsensical difficulties - or getting really good at creating situations that justify it, in which case you might wonder, why not do that in any other RPG anyway?</blockquote>

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