Amber Straight up? Or with a twist?

[Headless]

When people run Amber do they run it straight Zelazney?  Or do they mix it other stuff.  

How about Olympus?  It's a game that lends itself to lots of flexiblity.

The game I ran just used the rule set, it was my own setting.

[finarvyn]

I've run things different ways. I really enjoy a straight-up Amber setting, where I can use a lot of Zelazny's ideas and make use of the storyline that he started. That's probably my favorite use of the Amber rules.

On the other hand I've run shorter campaigns for Star Wars, Dresden Files, Barsoom, and superhero using ADRP rules and those were pretty fun as well. I think that the secret is to find a setting which is "cinematic" rather than gritty -- which would include superheroes and/or gods, or magic, or similar fantastic things.

[Matausch]

On the other hand I've run shorter campaigns for Star Wars, Dresden Files, Barsoom, and superhero using ADRP rules and those were pretty fun as well. I think that the secret is to find a setting which is "cinematic" rather than gritty -- which would include superheroes and/or gods, or magic, or similar fantastic things.

That is so cool! We did the same thing with straight-up cyberpunk (worked well) and Hong Kong action (worked well, too). Admitted, I used Everway fortune cards sometimes to get some randomness into thecyberpunk game (because it was very gritty).

[finarvyn]

Yeah, I think that the key to ADRP is that the heroes are "supposed" to win or they are "supposed" to lose since the GM gets to pick the power level of the enemy. This means that heroic style adventure tends to work well as long as the players can take a clue from the GM as to how the battle is going. The worst is when a player is clearly inferior and he says "I just keep fighting anyway" since that really kills the mood and the player feels railroaded instead of stupid. So your post makes a lot of sense, that HK Action would fit the system well but cyberpunk might be a bit more iffy.

I forgot that I ran Lord of the Rings and Highlander using ADRP, too. Highlander worked well because things tended to build up to classic swordfights where one guy finally lost his head, but LotR not so well since battles tended to be more "even" in nature and a clear winner wasn't as obvious much of the time.

[Matausch]

Thanks for that reply, finarvyn. Makes a lot of sense.

Maybe it's just me, but I think I notice a tendency in old school-D&D and OSR circles to "accept" Amber more willingly than it happens in storygamer circles.

[Headless]

Cool.  How did you run Highlander? Or Dresden?  I doubt you had pattern, or Trump.

I was more asking about genera mixing the a complete jump though.  For instance, do the Sidhe (high fey) ever show up in the Forest Arden? Does the Dragon Host from Raymond Fiest ever invade the gods play ground of Classical Greece?  

Some of the art from the original 2 books sugests a cyber punk theme, any one ever build a decker and try to do a run on the pattern?

[Turiya]

Cool.  How did you run Highlander? Or Dresden?  I doubt you had pattern, or Trump.

I was more asking about genera mixing the a complete jump though.  For instance, do the Sidhe (high fey) ever show up in the Forest Arden? Does the Dragon Host from Raymond Fiest ever invade the gods play ground of Classical Greece?  

Some of the art from the original 2 books sugests a cyber punk theme, any one ever build a decker and try to do a run on the pattern?

In my game I have periods where the Fey are very integral to the current plot, and then sometimes they are very quiet.  I did just have an army of Elves invade Arden, with an ancient (and insane) Julian's help.

I've used a number (stolen) of different adventures in the past, including one character getting trapped in Middle Earth (fictional Shadow) and one of the cities I have used is based on Night City from the Cyberpunk 2020 game.

If it makes sense, I just borrow the setting, if it doesn't, its usually someone was given a hallucinogen or something else that is clearly a fictional place.

Going back to the original question though, I ran a short-term campaign where Flora sold out the family during the attack on Chaos and Amber lost big, and then went after Amber.  Unfortunately the two players were at each other's throats, but they survived at least.

I'm running a game right now called 'Eight Princes in Amber' where the bullet that put Corwin into the lake was a little too accurate and put him in a grave.  So of course I have to rewrite the books in my head, if Corwin didn't show up.  That old time travel thing about "If you could go back in time and kill Hitler, great, but then someone else would just be Hitler" seems to be working pretty good right now.  Bleys recruited one of his sons to play the part of Corwin during the attack, and didn't do anywhere near as well as Corwin did.

I also heartily agree with Finarvyn about the cinematic style.  I try to get my battles, political scenes and major events to be that way.

[finarvyn]

Cool.  How did you run Highlander? Or Dresden?  I doubt you had pattern, or Trump.

Highlander was pretty straightforward, where Strength and Warfare were the norm for conflict. When you defeated another Highlander it would add to your Psyche mostly, and a little extra on the other three stats. Not too many Powers in Highlander, but I allowed for folks to come up with special sword moves or greater speed or other things they thought would be neat. Then I would charge them points accordingly. I wish I had kept the list.  :-(

Dresden Files was a bit more complex. The main Power was wizardry, and you could put points into sub-powers which were essentially spell groups such as Veil and Shield and Blasting. I tried to keep the categories of spell pretty generic and let each character add in the F/X to go along with their style of casting. Points in the group told me how strong the casting was, but Psyche gave control and the ability to fine-tune the effects. Other points could be spent on being a fey or paladin (Michael) or other neat things that reflected characters in the series. I'd have to look around to see if I have notes on that campaign or not. (I had it all typed up at one point, but that was a couple of computers ago and so it may be lost forever.....)

[edster]

I don't know if you'd call this a twist, but I try to keep a feeling closer to the first couple books in the series where it seems Corwin and co. weren't quite as powerful as the game makes them out to be. Partially because of the spirit of the books as also I find few players want a cutthroat game of player vs player so I respond by making the regular humans and shadow things more dangerous. If the players won't fight eachother then I gotta bring the risk from somewhere and it can't always be some Chaos Lord of the week.

In 9 Princes, the six grey men who follow Random to Flora's are not considered fodder that they can just walk towards and cut to pieces. In Guns of Avalon, Cowrin wanders shadow wary of what he encounters. I also think Corwin's description of Benedict was exagerated just to make his later defeating of Ben sound better. This lead Wujeck to give all these crazy senses and skills to Benedict and other super-maxed Warfare characters.