Do you run Amber the way Zelazny went about writing it?

[Kevin]

While it doesn't help so much with anticipating the PCs, (who'd want to do that anyway?) knowing the landscape is a real blessing in Amber. Very few game worlds are so fully fleshed out.

[gabriel_ss4u]

That is a great part of my campaigns, I make maps and try to familiarize myself in my mind about the feel of the shadows, at least some of the key ones.
I try to get a little poetic, but only when it seems natural to do so.

Any good campaign has an idea where it's going and allows 'going with the flow' to transition scene to scene. Sometimes on the fly, sometimes achingly prepared and anticipated, (if even by only the GM). What is true is great games have a way of unfolding with the players, as much as the game-master, writing the play. An end that could only be achieved in harmony. I miss games like that.
Hey everybody, glad to be back surfin the net, I'll get to some of these posts soon, if ya know me, gimme a holla.

[RPGPundit]

Welcome back!

[Nihilistic Mind]

When you RUN Amber, do you run it that way? Do you introduce new stuff, new characters, menaces, etc, without really knowing where you're going with it? Or is that too hard?

RPGPundit

Yes. I have a basic outline for things and certain plot points here and there, but for the most part I try to give meaning to the things Player Characters focus on. That's what I do to reward Player creativity.

[weilide]

Thought you all might find this of interest. Zelazny, on writing Nine Princes in Amber: "I did not plan Nine Princes of Amber in advance. I was not sure exactly what sort of situations Corwin was going to get into after he woke up in the hospital. It was a good trick to have him learn the answers along with the reader. The discovery of identity is intrinsically interesting. I thought there was a story about to emerge, and I just sat there plotting what would happen next."

And, written with just Princes behind him: "Oberon is not dead, and I am still not certain whether Corwin will ever reign in Amber –– though I suspect he might wind up in that position. If so, he will discover it to be a very rough job." (Kovacs, Christopher S. "'And Call Me Roger…': The Literary Life of Roger Zelazny, Part 2." In Power & Light. Volume 2: The Collected Stories of Roger Zelazny. Eds. David G. Grubbs, Christopher S. Kovacs, and Ann Crimmins. Framingham: NESFA Press, 2009. Pg. 545)

Interestingly, it is also mentioned in this piece that Zelazny initially considered writing each book from the perspective of a different character, with all of them focused on the car accident.

Incidentally, I have purchased the first two books in NESFA Zelazny reprints and they're both good fun, although I suspect the second may be of slightly more interest to the Amber crowd than the first.

[RPGPundit]

Yes, I'd heard those quotes before. It makes the novels that much more amazing, and obviously the author too.

RPGPundit

[Croaker]

This makes me wish I was able to shadowshift, in order to read all those alternate Amber tales

[weilide]

Yes. We got Corwin, Random, Merlin, Luke, and Frakir as first person narrators but even more would have been such a treat. Likewise it would have been really interesting if each book in the series covered the same span of time from a different perspective. Not that I don't love the series as it is…