Bidding on Everything?

[jibbajibba]

You know, of course, that, being with points or ranks, the 1st can be surpassed, and thus has to be wary

Yes and no. Under the Amber ranking/experience system so long as the rank 1 guy puts 1 point of xp into warfare he can never be surpassed (unless I misread that ...) Likewause fromt eh auctiont eh rank 1 guy knows thay start the game at the top. And if I read hte amber rules correctly a guy on Rank 1.5
is actually has no more chance of beatignthem then someone at rank 2....

But the point is moot The point really is that points are in someway "simpler" than ranks whcih is just daft.

[Croaker]

Yes and no. Under the Amber ranking/experience system so long as the rank 1 guy puts 1 point of xp into warfare he can never be surpassed (unless I misread that ...) Likewause fromt eh auctiont eh rank 1 guy knows thay start the game at the top.

IIRC, the GM sets the ranks above 1st, and the guy is essentially climbing blind: You say "I want to increase my warfare, then buy up my sword". Unless you actually buy the sword, you don't even know if your warfare efforts were successful, which is something I like.

So, say, 1st is ready to spend 10 points for warfare. 1,5st is willing to spend 15 points. Does any of them get the rank? They don't know, until they face each other. The rank could cost 1 point. It could cost 20. It could cost 11, meaning the challenger becomes the new champion.

Repeat a few times: Unless the 1st consistently puts warfare as his priority AND is willing to spend as many points as his challengers, he can't be sure to still be 1st.

Likewise fromt the auction the rank 1 guy knows thay start the game at the top.

And how does that differ from the guy that spend the most points?

And if I read the amber rules correctly a guy on Rank 1.5 actually has no more chance of beating them than someone at rank 2....

Actually, he does. That's all the difference between "behind" and "almost as good".
So, if he's, say, 1.5 and has even one rank better in Strength or Endurance, he should win.

But the point is moot The point really is that points are in someway "simpler" than ranks whcih is just daft.

You actually find it simpler to compare, say, 50 to 43 to 31 than 1st to 2nd to 3rd? o_O

[Xanador]

So, say, 1st is ready to spend 10 points for warfare. 1,5st is willing to spend 15 points. Does any of them get the rank? They don't know, until they face each other. The rank could cost 1 point. It could cost 20. It could cost 11, meaning the challenger becomes the new champion.

Repeat a few times: Unless the 1st consistently puts warfare as his priority AND is willing to spend as many points as his challengers, he can't be sure to still be 1st.

Reading the auction rules again, specifically #5, that's not the way it works. First place auction winner will always be first. " Anyone, after the auction, can buy up, even spending as many points as the first place winner, but they can never beat, or equal, whoever gets first place."

Which is one of the reasons why I personally don't like the ranks. If you want first in warfare,or any other stat, you should need to spend appropriately to maintain the position. But, as written, you don't need to you could just sit on your laurels and never worry.

[Evermasterx]

Reading the auction rules again, specifically #5, that's not the way it works. First place auction winner will always be first. " Anyone, after the auction, can buy up, even spending as many points as the first place winner, but they can never beat, or equal, whoever gets first place."

Which is one of the reasons why I personally don't like the ranks. If you want first in warfare,or any other stat, you should need to spend appropriately to maintain the position. But, as written, you don't need to you could just sit on your laurels and never worry.

Actually in "Shadow Knight", the second book of ADRPG, page 248, Erick Wujcik in the FAQs about this point says:
"... if the original first place bidder stalls a couple of times, while someone at 1.5 keeps pushing, then I let that other player create the next rung."

[Croaker]

Reading the auction rules again, specifically #5, that's not the way it works. First place auction winner will always be first. " Anyone, after the auction, can buy up, even spending as many points as the first place winner, but they can never beat, or equal, whoever gets first place."

Which is one of the reasons why I personally don't like the ranks. If you want first in warfare,or any other stat, you should need to spend appropriately to maintain the position. But, as written, you don't need to you could just sit on your laurels and never worry.

You misunderstood.

1) What you describe is only at the beginnning of the game. I was talking (and assumed Jibba was too, with his "1 point") of later advancement, as per ADRPG p141

2) How is this any different from an auction with only points? If you do a bidding war and the winner ends up at 43 points and no one can spend more after the auction? Unless you allow people to spend more point than him before play, but then, why do an auction at all???
The fact that, with ranks, you're still slightly better at chargen that someone who spends as many points as you in late chargen is just a little boon (a carrot, too) for the one who won the Auction, which is something I like and find actually usefull

[Xanador]

Actually in "Shadow Knight", the second book of ADRPG, page 248, Erick Wujcik in the FAQs about this point says:
"... if the original first place bidder stalls a couple of times, while someone at 1.5 keeps pushing, then I let that other player create the next rung."

Ah my copy of SK is buried somewhere. Still that seems to be a house rule or judgment call of his rather than an actual rule change.

Croaker

"1) What you describe is only at the beginning of the game. I was talking (and assumed Jibba was too, with his "1 point") of later advancement, as per ADRPG p141"

I can't find anything on page 141 about lower ranked players being allowed to progress beyond the first rank player. I don't think auction rule five is just for the beginning of the game. If it was then putting it in is rather pointless. The language is too strong and absolute for something that is open to change.

Lastly look at the elders, the first ranks are definitely not up for play, no one among that generation is going to replace Benedict in Warfare or Gerard in Strength for example. Those who are the best are just that and the auction is designed to replicate that situation among the players generation.

Anyway that's a lot of space dedicated to a rule I don't even use.

2)  If you don't do ranks then you do away with the auction as well. No ranks, no rungs, no need for an auction to establish them.


Using only points is what was used in the longest running game I participated in and it worked fine, it certainly was not like chess with only pawns. However that's a separate topic not to derail this one anymore.

[Evermasterx]

Ah my copy of SK is buried somewhere. Still that seems to be a house rule or judgment call of his rather than an actual rule change.

here is the full Q&A:
http://dl.dropbox.com/u/7863092/first%20rank.png
Erick admits it's a hole in the system and proposes a solution. Proposed by someone else could be a house rule, but proposed by the author, for me it's a clarification of a rule.
Personally, I use ranks among the PCs and points against external obstacles.

[jibbajibba]

2)  If you don't do ranks then you do away with the auction as well. No ranks, no rungs, no need for an auction to establish them.


Using only points is what was used in the longest running game I participated in and it worked fine, it certainly was not like chess with only pawns. However that's a separate topic not to derail this one anymore.

I use points but I use the auction, albeit in a different format.

When you have 200 or 150 point characters or when you use partial powers so a base use of Pattern say is just 10 or 15 points then you do need an auction as the players need to understand the flavour of the game. So if a PC wants to be really good at Warfare they need to know how much other players are bidding in warfare so they know where to pitch their numbers.
In one game 35 from 150 might be the top warfare score in another it might be 80 you need to give the PCs an idea of relative levels.
Also the auction is fantastic it's probably the most original and captivating element of the Amber system, far more so than it being diceless. The auction as written is flawed (owing to high bidders being able to shut down the auction) but with very little adjustment it is awesome. And as Pundit would say without the Auction Amber just becomes another point buy system.

[Evermasterx]

I use points but I use the auction, albeit in a different format.
...
Also the auction is fantastic it's probably the most original and captivating element of the Amber system, far more so than it being diceless. The auction as written is flawed (owing to high bidders being able to shut down the auction) but with very little adjustment it is awesome.

It looks like you have changed everything, apart maybe retaining the 4 stats. You included skills, used partial powers, modified a flawed auction, and considered the diceless feature as minor.
I'm not saying this intending you are wrong, because if you and your players have fun, it's alright! I'm saying that because I would like to know if there is a gamemaster using the rules as they are, or at least about 95% of how they are written.
The only thing I found confusing in the books is Conjuration.
For me the diceless feature was what absolutely hit me the first time I read ADRPG. And I don't agree: the auction it is not flawed. Instead I agree: it's a stroke of genius in inducing rivalry between the players and it works everytime.

[Croaker]

I can't find anything on page 141 about lower ranked players being allowed to progress beyond the first rank player. I don't think auction rule five is just for the beginning of the game. If it was then putting it in is rather pointless. The language is too strong and absolute for something that is open to change.

Sorry, the french version is a whole lot clearer on this, because, IIRC, they benefited from Eric's insight.
The bit about advancing beyond 1st rank refers to peggy's character. This was clarified for english players later as applying also to 1,5st characters.

Clarified, not changed.

Actually, you're the first person I've ever seen to take the "you can't progress beyond the 1st if he doesn't progress" stance.

Lastly look at the elders, the first ranks are definitely not up for play, no one among that generation is going to replace Benedict in Warfare or Gerard in Strength for example. Those who are the best are just that and the auction is designed to replicate that situation among the players generation.

1) Like the characters post-auction, the elders are at a precise moment in time.
I don't know if most GM do Elders advancement (I did, of a sorts), but, like the characters in the books progress over the course of the books (remember Corwin discovering he had become better at warfare?), there's no absolute reason, should benedict become lazy, eat junk food, and go to 300lbs, that, say, corwin couldn't beat him if he keeps training and getting better.

2) The 1st ranks are up for play, if only in the sense that, if you mix and match versions, you can have a game in which Benedict - Ideal Warrior (135 pts in Warfare) is not the 1st in warfare compared to, say, Finndo - Ennemy of Amber, Deirdre - Walkyrie of Amber (186 points) or Eric - Exploiter and opportunist.
Moreso, benedict was born before Deirdre or Eric. Thus, there must have been a time when he was better than them, and they latter surpassed him through their efforts. Wouldn't you agree?

This goes the same for Psyche, Strength and Endurance.

2)  If you don't do ranks then you do away with the auction as well. No ranks, no rungs, no need for an auction to establish them.

That's when, then again, you do differ from most people playing Amber: As far as I've seen, even the people who use points (I did, when I didn't understood ranks perfectly) usually go through the Auction, although the ones who don't are a sizeable minority.

But even then. You let people put whatever points in an attribute. No auction. When they begin play, you're still gonna have one player who is better than the rest, period. So what's the difference?

[jibbajibba]

It looks like you have changed everything, apart maybe retaining the 4 stats. You included skills, used partial powers, modified a flawed auction, and considered the diceless feature as minor.
I'm not saying this intending you are wrong, because if you and your players have fun, it's alright! I'm saying that because I would like to know if there is a gamemaster using the rules as they are, or at least about 95% of how they are written.
The only thing I found confusing in the books is Conjuration.
For me the diceless feature was what absolutely hit me the first time I read ADRPG. And I don't agree: the auction it is not flawed. Instead I agree: it's a stroke of genius in inducing rivalry between the players and it works everytime.

Yeah Pretty much

My position on Amber is pretty complex I guess. I was playing Amber using D&D ruels or my own rules or whatever since I read Nine Princes in 1981. In about 1988 a mate and I worked out our own Amber system. Oddly it was diceless. This was before the internet (well before it for us ) and we existed in splendid gaming isolation. It was this 'version' of Amber that gave me stuff like using a travelleresque profile for each shadow and walking shadow by manipulating this profile. Now my diceless system was unplayable, the combat was kind of extrapolated from Top Secret crossed with En Guarde so you had a complex scissor-paper-stone comparison combined with a skill level and set move sequences which you could learn and master .

Anyway the point of al that was to expalin that when the ADRPG came out (I think I first saw it in '91 or it may have been '92) I bought in to it straight away and started my first Campaign. But the feel I got was that this Amber was very much Erick's Amber and certainly not really my Amber. Rules wise I have always erred towards complex over simple and options over narrative. Now Amber changed a bunch of my preconceptions but not all of them.

To me the fact that in the books characters refer to skills, Corwin refers to his medical training, miltiary leadership etc meant that my Amber needed to express that and Erick's "so the PCs can just choose whatever they know" just didn't suit. My mind had already spun out games in which Amberites found themselves in worlds where they didn't understand the technology or the magic or where tey were or ... etc ... In my Amber 6 shadow dwellers were a challenge for 3 Amberites and a pack of dogs. Anyway I felt the need to express it so ...

Dicelessness is not as revolutionary as it looks. A lot of games prior to Amber were letting you 'take 10' as I believe it is now called in D&D language, ie. if your skill in a skill /stat exceeds some level in comparison to the difficulty of the roll you can assume a base level of success. In addtion games like Top Secret and En Guarde had introduced combat systems based on a comparison of tactics rather than a simple roll, although to be fair often the comparison led to a modifier rather than a simple success. So from that stand point I never thought Dicelessness was as revolutionary as everyone else did. As I said my own efforts at homebrewed systems had already been heading in that direction and for a non-linear stat progression like Amber it seemed like a neater solution than DC Heroes Log. sytem or bunnies and burrows mutli-scale one (although I do think B&B is a very elegant solution).

Going back to the auction it's the base mechanics of the auction that are faulted not he concept. You need more structure round it. The problem is the high bid.
You open the Warfare auction initial bids come in. Player 1 bids 5 player 2 3 player 3 none and player 4 85. No one can now bid beyond 85 so the auction is over. In play you end up with Rank 1 = 85 points, Rank 2 = 5 , rank 3= 3 . Now not only does that ruin the player concepts that players 2 and 3 had it also means that player 1 now rank 2 in warfare can never improve, it is just not feasible for a PC to keep storing XP until they have 80 points of it and then speding it to be not quite as good as the other guy. Equally player 2 with 3 points is rank 3 they can never surpass rank 2 although they might invest 2 xp to be rank 2.5.... so the way the stat works in play has broken. In my early games these types of bids were common.
You can fix it. You can fix xp by adding intermediate ranks so player 1 isn't rank 2 he is rank 6 and there are other ranks he can buy up to. But if player 1 really wanted to play a warrior guy it's not a great option.
The best thing to do is fix the auction. So you get things like only bidding up in ante steps (say no more than 5 in any bid), blind auctions, let players bid up into the gaps between ranks etc etc ...

On the mater of XP the base (english rules ) I thought it said that Rank 1 guys can increase their skill by spending xp creating new ranks. I didn't recall it saying that the GM needed to set the gaps for those steps (aside from layering in NPCS from that players generation) rather that the PC set their own ranks. Now in practice this means if i put 1 xp into that attribute I will always outpace the person behind as I am setting the steps and you can only gain 1 rank at a time. So the only time rank 1.5 could surpass rank 1 would be if rank 1 spent nothing and so rank 1.5 then set a new limit for rank 1. By spending just a single point rank 1 then sets a new limit which the rank 1.5 guy has to buy upto before then can , next time, try to buy above it.

[Evermasterx]

Yeah Pretty much

Going back to the auction it's the base mechanics of the auction that are faulted not he concept. You need more structure round it. The problem is the high bid.
You open the Warfare auction initial bids come in. Player 1 bids 5 player 2 3 player 3 none and player 4 85. No one can now bid beyond 85 so the auction is over. In play you end up with Rank 1 = 85 points, Rank 2 = 5 , rank 3= 3 .

Thank you for your exhaustive explanation. Now I understand much better why you've chanced so much.
For the auction, I continue to disagree. Player 4 is a master in warfare, but in the other areas is null and void (can't even get the pattern imprint, UNLESS YOU PERMIT PARTIAL POWERS!). And if with that choice he will be able to kick the asses of the other players, that means that the other players and the game master (above all) aren't doing their job well.
What I'm trying to say is that the rules are linked together and if you change something in Paris, it coud start raining in Tokio...

[jibbajibba]

Thank you for your exhaustive explanation. Now I understand much better why you've chanced so much.
For the auction, I continue to disagree. Player 4 is a master in warfare, but in the other areas is null and void (can't even get the pattern imprint, UNLESS YOU PERMIT PARTIAL POWERS!). And if with that choice he will be able to kick the asses of the other players, that means that the other players and the game master (above all) aren't doing their job well.
What I'm trying to say is that the rules are linked together and if you change something in Paris, it coud start raining in Tokio...

Oh I have no problem with the guy that bids stupid on Warfare gimping his character (and Partial powers or not it's still gimped) but the problem is in the RAW he has also gimped everyone else.

[Evermasterx]

Oh I have no problem with the guy that bids stupid on Warfare gimping his character (and Partial powers or not it's still gimped) but the problem is in the RAW he has also gimped everyone else.

You're alright, but a player of this type probably doesn't have understood the game.
You must not change the rule just to repair his stupidity. Before the auction, the rule and the spirit of the game must be discussed. If a player like that insists in that intention, unless he can present an interesting motivation in doing so, probably will ruin the whole game (not for the warfare, but because a power gamer is not suited to ADRPG).
You can do 3 things:
1) ok, go on. Maybe he will play in an interesting way and everybody is happy.
2) ok, go on. Then let him meet a disguised elder equally matched with his warfare, and clearly superior in endurance.
3) simply don't let him play, because this player probably want to kill the other player without an "in character/in game" reason: let him play a wargame or doom (I like both of them a lot!), not amber.

One of my players bid strong (52) on Psyche, for the fear of being controlled by the others. And on the other stats too, but not that much. And couldn't buy broken pattern. He bought a devotee at the Courts of Chaos, because he was interested in the Logrus, to acquire it later.
You should have seen his face when I asked him how he intended to reach the Courts without the ability to walk in the shadows... and having shown to the other players (some of whom took the broken pattern) that he do not trust them at that point.

[jibbajibba]

You're alright, but a player of this type probably doesn't have understood the game.
You must not change the rule just to repair his stupidity. Before the auction, the rule and the spirit of the game must be discussed. If a player like that insists in that intention, unless he can present an interesting motivation in doing so, probably will ruin the whole game (not for the warfare, but because a power gamer is not suited to ADRPG).
You can do 3 things:
1) ok, go on. Maybe he will play in an interesting way and everybody is happy.
2) ok, go on. Then let him meet a disguised elder equally matched with his warfare, and clearly superior in endurance.
3) simply don't let him play, because this player probably want to kill the other player without an "in character/in game" reason: let him play a wargame or doom (I like both of them a lot!), not amber.

One of my players bid strong (52) on Psyche, for the fear of being controlled by the others. And on the other stats too, but not that much. And couldn't buy broken pattern. He bought a devotee at the Courts of Chaos, because he was interested in the Logrus, to acquire it later.
You should have seen his face when I asked him how he intended to reach the Courts without the ability to walk in the shadows... and having shown to the other players (some of whom took the broken pattern) that he do not trust them at that point.

You see I know I can fix that whole thing by just saying at the start of the auction "we bid up in maximum steps of 5 points. You submit a hidden starting bid of 0-5 points and the lower bid then opts to bid " and all those problems go away.
And whilst your examples are fine I have seen PCs bid high in Warfare say 85 out of 100 and then say "right I am in the Amber military" and build their whole character round a loyal officer template. To be honest a character who bids that much in Warfare then spends a handful of points on some str or endurance and an item for pyschic protection can do very well if they just sit in Amber. Yes of course they have weaknesses but they can cover most of them and if you use the RAW without a skill system they are also a master at all forms of strategies and tactics from lockpicking to spycraft....  

On the topic of partial powers ... if you don't use them then what do you do when someone with the 6 point Amber devotee and 3 points of bad stuff walks the pattern? Give them 50 more points of bad stuff and full access to all the power of the pattern? Kill them? How would you diferentiate between 30 points of bad stuff and 50 points in the same game you are trying to differentiate between 0 and -1.

I love ADRPG but it does at times feel to me like a 1e game that is just begging for a 2e treatment.