Elder Amberites Presence/Absence Effects

[RPGPundit]

In any Amber campaign, I've found that the flavour of the game is certainly very affected by the Elder Amberites, and more specifically by which of them are "around" or not around in the campaign at any given time. Not around might mean they're dead, lost, captured by some foe, or choosing not to interact with anyone at this time.
Of course, this is also affected by who the PCs' parents are.

Have you made strategic use of this, or taken notice of this, in your own games?

RPGPundit

[Ivanhoe]

On my now dead campaign, I used this to give a lot more importance to the PCs. I changed a bit the end of the patternfall war : Fiona dead in a kamikaze operation against the Logrus, Bleys prisoner of some Chaosian family that refused the end of the war, Julian very badly wounded (lost two legs but still escaped on Morgenstern thanks to Bleys), Brand dead, Deirdre dead. Corwin went to his Pattern to spend a few centuries there. The Unicorn did not choose Random but instead ran into Shadow with the JoJ. Random was still chosen by all the present elders to be a regent.

This gave the PCs the status of master pieces, if not of players themselves. Suddenly, the son of Erik saying he his the rightful heir was not that ridiculous, the son of Benedict was a token followed with interest and the daughter of Corwin looked like the key to some unknown powers.

[jibbajibba]

Take 'em all out bar Dworkin and Oberon. It goes back to the Deus ex machine/ Mary Sue debate that cropped up when discussing Dr Who on the main forum.
Simply I don't really trust myself not to get carried away with roleplaying the NPCs to the expense of the players. It's different when I have NPCs that are the same power as the PCs but I never really considered keeping elders arround for that I rather fit my NPCs intot he gaps left by the players, main plot drivers aside.