Amber GM Maturity

[Artifacts of Amber]

JIbba

one and two may be true for my games.

Three much less so because I go off book pretty quickly. I don't negate cannon so much as expand on it.

Four and Five I wouldn't allow in any game much less Amber. Rules abuse is a player issue not game. So I deal with it as such.

I'm hoping that was mostly tongue in cheek

The Artifacts and Sorcery is the primary reason Amber could use a second edition. I know everyone does their own thing with it now and while my house rules are easily recognizable as Amber it is slightly different.

[jibbajibba]

JIbba

one and two may be true for my games.

Three much less so because I go off book pretty quickly. I don't negate cannon so much as expand on it.

Four and Five I wouldn't allow in any game much less Amber. Rules abuse is a player issue not game. So I deal with it as such.

I'm hoping that was mostly tongue in cheek

The Artifacts and Sorcery is the primary reason Amber could use a second edition. I know everyone does their own thing with it now and while my house rules are easily recognizable as Amber it is slightly different.

I don't think I was clear with point 3. I don't mean echoes in terms of plot or background I mean echoes in terms of texture and character.

So if I create a character called Serge who background is that he has taken a deep cover role fro Oberon in shadow tracking down agents of Chaos. If I make him cynical and wary, knowing that Oberon is obviously manipulating him but playing along because the opposite of being a pawn of Oberon is to be an enemy of Oberon. If his interests are classical art particularly sculpture and his perfered fighting style is a mix of Savate and his weapon of choice is a quarterstaff. I am make that character feel so like a book character you as Gm will peer far less closely at my actions If on occasion I explain that sequence and order are all important in this matter, or note in passing to my opponents that I am not playing fair because this is not the Olympics... well...

[RTrimmer]

iv) is so very ADRPG (or a wide section of it), so very un-Zelazny, so very WOW or anime-esque, and why a lot of people jettison or nerf the A&C system.

Actually I was just aping the OP in a kind of circular way they claim no bad GMs so I claimed no bad players as a reason why a GM might appear good....

In reality the things that let you succeed as an Amber player are

i) Good Role playing - because Amber GMs tend to favour players that play PCs that "fit"

ii) Creative understanding of the rules system and ability to construct an argument as to why the interpretation you proffer is so eminently reasonable.
 
iii) A reasonably photographic memory of the novels. This will help you immeasurably in points i and ii above. If your PC does things that have an echo of characters in the books they fit better and the GM lets you get away with more.

iv) The ability to abuse the fuck out of the item generation system is incredibly useful, especially if you can do it in a way that seems so eminently reasonable. A 16 point primal chaos Axe is a chump move but a sword with Amber rank tactics, able to speak and Sing in Songs and Voices and mold shadow reality will cost you 12 points and be able to set all sorts of stuff for you by manipulating he shadow environment to give you advantage, turn ground to quicksand, vegetation into tangle vines, staircases to paper, even if the opponent doesn't have a magical blade turning that into something that will easily shatter or bend my personal favorite though was the spell cards.... each hard can rack a single spell cost 1 horde quantity .... cost 3. sweet and so very Amber.... I had to let the guy get away with it.

v) (oh and if you do use sorcery take note of all the stuff Mandor and Merlin do as they use it to replicate just about every other power )

[jibbajibba]

iv) is so very ADRPG (or a wide section of it), so very un-Zelazny, so very WOW or anime-esque, and why a lot of people jettison or nerf the A&C system.

Actually rampently ridiculous items are pretty Zelazny to be fair especially fromt eh second series of books.

Look at the various items we see in play

Frakir - simple and cheap but could be very exploitable in an actual game
Mandor's Balls - A very ADRPG item this. Basically enables you to use the gamut of Sorcery powers at instant speed removing the tedious prep
The Spikards - as above but with an additional Power source
Greyswandir - moves from being a blade that can destroy chaos critters because its inscribed with the Pattern to an item that can disable socreries, defend against various attacks etc

In the second series Zelazny has the time to reflect on what you could actually do with an infinite amount of time so you get characters like Merlin who have all the powers. Sorcery becomes the everything power out of which everything else looks like a subset. Etc etc

So I think the item creation rules are fine and I don't tweak them much at all though I cap them typically with a 4 point (3 ranks) in any one thing.

I have never had a PC who's item has tipped the balance in their favour overly much and I have seen some incredibly clever items

[RTrimmer]

All examples from the second series, which moved from the fairly gritty, stab you in the face fantasy noir of the Corwin series to the Chosen One waving his spikard or aiming his uber-daemon at problems.

Even in the Merlin books, until he gets a spikard Merlin is strictly limited by the up-to-a-dozen (less, really) spells rule. And this from a Logrus sorcerer, with spells hung on and explicitly powered by the Logrus. Which, btw, makes sorcery a power worth one hell of a lot more than 15 points.

Frakir demonstrates better than 4 point aggression, 2 and then 4 point Int, 2 then 4 point psychic sensitivity, 2 or 4 point damage resistance, 2 point Stamina, better than 4 point Vitality, 2 point psychic resistance, 1 point movement ... 27 points or more. Arguably more powerful, in game terms, than the Jewel of Judgment. But then Merlin is decent in all his Atts, is an initiate of Pattern and Logrus (at least partially Advanced), a Shapeshifter, a Logrus Sorcerer, at the least. Upwards of 277 points without a spikard, a 32 point damage item to start. Merl is the pawn of Dworkin, Dara, Suhuy and the Logrus Itself.

Your "sword with Amber rank tactics, able to speak and Sing in Songs and Voices and mold shadow reality will cost you 12 points and be able to set all sorts of stuff for you by manipulating he shadow environment to give you advantage, turn ground to quicksand, vegetation into tangle vines, staircases to paper" does things you can maybe do with 75 points of Pattern and in combat time, which AP can't. At 12 points everybody can afford one.

Mandor's balls: 16 point damage to start -- plows through dozens at a time -- and, really, with some items like that plus the literally squad-sweeping Logrus use Merlin demonstrates in the same fight, Chaos could not have lost the battle in The Courts of Chaos without trying really hard. And combat is reduced to directing drones and waving your arms.

Spikards: above. OK with authorial handwavium driving the plot, not so much in a game.

Greyswandir never does more damage than what Corwin's Warfare and Strength can account for. Lords of Chaos bleed fire; mixed blood Merlin does so when in Chaos. Bleed out and burn up. Disabling sorceries isn't that big a trick until the Merlin series jacks sorcery up to a major power.

Actually rampently ridiculous items are pretty Zelazny to be fair especially fromt eh second series of books.

Look at the various items we see in play

Frakir - simple and cheap but could be very exploitable in an actual game
Mandor's Balls - A very ADRPG item this. Basically enables you to use the gamut of Sorcery powers at instant speed removing the tedious prep
The Spikards - as above but with an additional Power source
Greyswandir - moves from being a blade that can destroy chaos critters because its inscribed with the Pattern to an item that can disable socreries, defend against various attacks etc

In the second series Zelazny has the time to reflect on what you could actually do with an infinite amount of time so you get characters like Merlin who have all the powers. Sorcery becomes the everything power out of which everything else looks like a subset. Etc etc

So I think the item creation rules are fine and I don't tweak them much at all though I cap them typically with a 4 point (3 ranks) in any one thing.

I have never had a PC who's item has tipped the balance in their favour overly much and I have seen some incredibly clever items

[RPGPundit]

The way I see it, Chaos lost because ultimately the pattern trumps everything else.  Chaos creatures can't survive in areas of high-order, they needed the black road to even reach Amber.  Whereas Pattern gets easier and easier the less structure there is to a place.  Pattern in the Courts themselves should be a super-weapon.

[RTrimmer]

And human soldiers could survive in highly Chaotic places?

In the Merlin series Mandor uses the Logrus in Amber castle itself.

There's no on-page use of super-weapons in The Courts of Chaos. RZ probably hadn't even invented the Logrus yet.

The Merlin books are not viably sequels to the Corwin books. If the Courts had Trump Artists, shapeshifting spies, significant numbers of Logrus Masters, a few Advanced LMs and a decent strategist or three, they win. They don't even need Black Roads. They don't even need troops from Chaos, they can recruit/shanghai in the realm of Order.

[jibbajibba]

All examples from the second series, which moved from the fairly gritty, stab you in the face fantasy noir of the Corwin series to the Chosen One waving his spikard or aiming his uber-daemon at problems.

Even in the Merlin books, until he gets a spikard Merlin is strictly limited by the up-to-a-dozen (less, really) spells rule. And this from a Logrus sorcerer, with spells hung on and explicitly powered by the Logrus. Which, btw, makes sorcery a power worth one hell of a lot more than 15 points.

Frakir demonstrates better than 4 point aggression, 2 and then 4 point Int, 2 then 4 point psychic sensitivity, 2 or 4 point damage resistance, 2 point Stamina, better than 4 point Vitality, 2 point psychic resistance, 1 point movement ... 27 points or more. Arguably more powerful, in game terms, than the Jewel of Judgment. But then Merlin is decent in all his Atts, is an initiate of Pattern and Logrus (at least partially Advanced), a Shapeshifter, a Logrus Sorcerer, at the least. Upwards of 277 points without a spikard, a 32 point damage item to start. Merl is the pawn of Dworkin, Dara, Suhuy and the Logrus Itself.

Your "sword with Amber rank tactics, able to speak and Sing in Songs and Voices and mold shadow reality will cost you 12 points and be able to set all sorts of stuff for you by manipulating he shadow environment to give you advantage, turn ground to quicksand, vegetation into tangle vines, staircases to paper" does things you can maybe do with 75 points of Pattern and in combat time, which AP can't. At 12 points everybody can afford one.

Mandor's balls: 16 point damage to start -- plows through dozens at a time -- and, really, with some items like that plus the literally squad-sweeping Logrus use Merlin demonstrates in the same fight, Chaos could not have lost the battle in The Courts of Chaos without trying really hard. And combat is reduced to directing drones and waving your arms.

Spikards: above. OK with authorial handwavium driving the plot, not so much in a game.

Greyswandir never does more damage than what Corwin's Warfare and Strength can account for. Lords of Chaos bleed fire; mixed blood Merlin does so when in Chaos. Bleed out and burn up. Disabling sorceries isn't that big a trick until the Merlin series jacks sorcery up to a major power.

I agree with all of that but ... I think it just proves that uber items are entirely somethign that Zelazny is prepared to use.
The fact that they come largely fromt eh second chronicle doesn't void the fact that they are still written by the same guy.

And don't let me get started on Ghost....

[RTrimmer]

True, but the really awful things, the spikard and Ghostwheel, are in the hands of one guy, the Chosen One of the series about whom much of the multiverse does indeed revolve. How many Chosen Ones can you viably have in a game?

But it's the wide-spectrum combat-time Mold Shadow Reality for 4 points that boggles me the most. It's not twice (8p), not 4x (16p), not 8x (32p) as fast as API, but more; 64 points? = 52 points of Bad Stuff pretending to be a sword. Stormbringer and the One Ring dream of being that badass.

I agree with all of that but ... I think it just proves that uber items are entirely somethign that Zelazny is prepared to use.
The fact that they come largely fromt eh second chronicle doesn't void the fact that they are still written by the same guy.

And don't let me get started on Ghost....

[jibbajibba]

True, but the really awful things, the spikard and Ghostwheel, are in the hands of one guy, the Chosen One of the series about whom much of the multiverse does indeed revolve. How many Chosen Ones can you viably have in a game?

But it's the wide-spectrum combat-time Mold Shadow Reality for 4 points that boggles me the most. It's not twice (8p), not 4x (16p), not 8x (32p) as fast as API, but more; 64 points? = 52 points of Bad Stuff pretending to be a sword. Stormbringer and the One Ring dream of being that badass.

The trouble with Amber though is that everybody is The Chosen One

Mandor's Balls are insanely powerful (ooh err misses...) so long as Sorcery is insanely powerful.

Now I love powerful items. I hope the PCs remembered to build some cos my NPCs will have bucket loads of them

But powerful isn't as much fun as clever or flavourful. So I have a great Sword called Solace that has
Extra Hard (1)
Detect Magical forces (2)
Implanted Power Word - Magical Disrupt (1)
Speak and Sing in Tongues and Voices (4)
Unrack Name and Numbered spells (4)

So Solace's purpose is to destroy magic and magical creatures. It will disrupt the first spell cast at the user and has the ability to dissipate hung spells. Though it can't do that if they are hung in the Logrus or Pattern (that would be an 8 point ability)

[RPGPundit]

And human soldiers could survive in highly Chaotic places?

They can when Amberites are using the pattern.
In the chaos invasion of Amber, the Chaosians had to use an Insanely Complicated Plot to create the black road, to alter Amber's environment to make it survivable to chaos demons.  But the Amberites' 'black road' (or golden road, or whatever) is something they can create just by willing it.

In the Merlin series Mandor uses the Logrus in Amber castle itself.

Yeah, but he's Mandor; logrus master and sorcerer supreme.

The Merlin books are not viably sequels to the Corwin books. If the Courts had Trump Artists, shapeshifting spies, significant numbers of Logrus Masters, a few Advanced LMs and a decent strategist or three, they win. They don't even need Black Roads. They don't even need troops from Chaos, they can recruit/shanghai in the realm of Order.

And yet both series are Canon.  The Chaosians DID need the black road, even though they had all of those things.  That's what Amber's canon says.  So it's up to us to figure out why that would be.

[jibbajibba]

They can when Amberites are using the pattern.
In the chaos invasion of Amber, the Chaosians had to use an Insanely Complicated Plot to create the black road, to alter Amber's environment to make it survivable to chaos demons.  But the Amberites' 'black road' (or golden road, or whatever) is something they can create just by willing it.

Yeah, but he's Mandor; logrus master and sorcerer supreme.

And yet both series are Canon.  The Chaosians DID need the black road, even though they had all of those things.  That's what Amber's canon says.  So it's up to us to figure out why that would be.

I think its fairly obvious that Zelanzy simply hadn't thought of the way Chaos worked.
We see many chaos creatures traverse shadow with no ill effects int eh books.
The Game has no insistance that to travel in Amber you need to have Pattern or Barimen blood or anything.

Now if you wanted to try and reconcile the books with the unfolding Amber universe you have a few options

i) Chaos creatures can not cross shadow as you near the Amber Pole. Those that do manage it due to - Advanced power, Amber Blood or pttern imprint of some kind even if that is not explicitly presented
ii) The Black road is simply a corridor through shadow that anyone can use as a path if they know how. the Chaosites don't need the black road but with it they are able to traverse shadow despite having no innate travel power. To make this work we have to say that Logrus can't move armies through shadow just individuals.
iii) Prior to the inscribing of Corwin's Pattern the Pattern is strong enough to create a barrier of sorts, stronger the closer you get to Amber, that prevents Chaosites from accessing it. Either they are blocked or their routes become diverted and they end off off in shadow somewhere else. The events of hte first Chronicles weaken the barrier and so Amber is now accessible

[RTrimmer]

No 'golden road', Benedict used Dworkin's Trump of Chaos central's doorstep.

No matter how good Mandor is at using the Logrus he can't make it stronger against the Pattern a couple of hundred yards from a Pattern.

The Black Road: no Chaos Lord uses Trumps in the first series, except for Merlin. Who has met with Grandpa Oberon.
Fiona says, "Dworkin had mentioned it primarily as an example of the pervasiveness of the Pattern in everything that gives us power—even the Trumps contain the Pattern, if you look closely, look long enough—and he cited it as an instance of a conservation principle: all of our special powers have their price. The greater the power, the larger the investment. The Trumps are a small matter, but there is still an element of fatigue involved in their employment." -- SOTU

For the LoCs to not employ Trumps to move armies or plant spies in Amber, to not take advantage of shapeshifting spies militarily, to not use the Logrus in any useful way in battle... The advantage needn't be the Pattern's superiority, the idiocy or cultural taboos of the Chaosites are more than enough, though neither idiocy nor taboos make an appearance in the second series.


The 'Corwin's Pattern weakened or eliminated resistance to the Logrus' argument works. The Logrus could only reach Amber via flaws caused by Martin's blood. Logrus Trumps wouldn't work in the realm of Order prior to the CP's creation. Etc. (Though it means that the Pattern would have been weakened for the big battle in The Courts of Chaos.) But that also means that the LoCs could then curb stomp Amber thereafter, but didn't. Though Mandor knows details like the existence of Bloody Whosit's. So the Patternfall War was a game, a bit of dickery by a faction of bored LoCs. And the Logrus' desires are not congruent with those of the movers and shakers in Chaos; maybe they like things as they are.

Though that makes Dworkin's interest in putting Merlin on the throne of Chaos sensible. A friendly King of Chaos could give him the time to restore the status quo ante.

But then Amber still exists only at Chaos' pleasure if you use that bit of handwavium.

They can when Amberites are using the pattern.
In the chaos invasion of Amber, the Chaosians had to use an Insanely Complicated Plot to create the black road, to alter Amber's environment to make it survivable to chaos demons.  But the Amberites' 'black road' (or golden road, or whatever) is something they can create just by willing it.



Yeah, but he's Mandor; logrus master and sorcerer supreme.




And yet both series are Canon.  The Chaosians DID need the black road, even though they had all of those things.  That's what Amber's canon says.  So it's up to us to figure out why that would be.

[Artifacts of Amber]

I tend to run it this way

1) Not all of the courts were part of the Black Road War. a couple major houses and some minor ones. The Courts as I run them wouldn't all get together too much infighting etc.

2) The Black Road was a ton of black threads woven together to make a passage way from chaos to amber. One big enough for an army . This allowed people who could not travel in shadow to make it to Amber.

3) Chaos creatures and Demons (two different things in my games) can move through the thin veils in Chaos and find moving in the sterner shadow barriers more difficult as they got closer to Amber, Hence the black road.



as for the items discussion I rewrote the Artifact rules to clarify them. They are still really close to what the books have so an item designed using the books ports right into my rules. My sorcery is also better written.

As far as Mandor's Balls go they are sometimes artifacts (meaning he has a few as items) other times they are manifestations of his sorcery so a giant ball bashing stuff is no different if he magiced up a battering ram. just part of his personal style.