Favorite versions of characters

[RPGPundit]

To me the huge cast is one of the things that makes the Amber RPG amazing.

Let me ask you this: If you were playing Lords of Olympus, would you feel the same way? Would you want to run it without the actual Olympian Gods around?

RPGPundit

[Tolknor]

To me the huge cast is one of the things that makes the Amber RPG amazing.

Let me ask you this: If you were playing Lords of Olympus, would you feel the same way? Would you want to run it without the actual Olympian Gods around?

RPGPundit

I have not played LoO but would sure have liked to.  I think I would have treated certain main figures in the same way i treated many of the Elders. Visible, around, busy, at arm's reach.   It would have depended on how much access the players had.  Greek Mythology has plenty of lesser gods, demi-gods, and heroes as well as hosts of bugeyed monsters to keep the PCs active without pitting them against Zeus, Posiden or Hades directly.   Certainly i'd want the PCs to interact with them.  

My only concern in comparing them is that despite great powers and great resiliency, the Amberites are still mortal creatures;they eat, sleep, pee, sneeze, get out of shape, were born in reasonably normal methods and a huge silver spike shoved from ear to ear will still kill them dead as Julius Caesar.  

I'm not sure that i would ever run the gods of Olympus as killable.  At most they can be inconvenienced by defeat but would find someway to reappear.  

Now if a player manages to stick a silver spike between the ears of Perseus I'll let him stay dead.  And, i might give him some big points for hacking off Percy Jackson's noggin.   Just sayin...

[RPGPundit]

I have not played LoO but would sure have liked to.  I think I would have treated certain main figures in the same way i treated many of the Elders. Visible, around, busy, at arm's reach.   It would have depended on how much access the players had.  Greek Mythology has plenty of lesser gods, demi-gods, and heroes as well as hosts of bugeyed monsters to keep the PCs active without pitting them against Zeus, Posiden or Hades directly.   Certainly i'd want the PCs to interact with them.  

That's quite true; most of them are detailed in the LoO book (well, the demigods and monsters; I don't really do anything on Greek mortal heroes; there's a sourcebook waiting to be written!).

My only concern in comparing them is that despite great powers and great resiliency, the Amberites are still mortal creatures;they eat, sleep, pee, sneeze, get out of shape, were born in reasonably normal methods and a huge silver spike shoved from ear to ear will still kill them dead as Julius Caesar.  

I'm not sure that i would ever run the gods of Olympus as killable.  At most they can be inconvenienced by defeat but would find someway to reappear.  

In LoO with rules-as-written the gods are killable.  This is somewhat backed up by the mythology too; there were Titans, for example, who outright died in the war with the Olympians.  And gods certainly eat and sleep in the myths, and plenty of them were born with the "normal methods". And of course, gods do the "normal method", too for that matter.  You can kind of infer that at least some gods do all those other things you mentioned as well.

RPGPundit

[Tolknor]

That's quite true; most of them are detailed in the LoO book (well, the demigods and monsters; I don't really do anything on Greek mortal heroes; there's a sourcebook waiting to be written!).



In LoO with rules-as-written the gods are killable.  This is somewhat backed up by the mythology too; there were Titans, for example, who outright died in the war with the Olympians.  And gods certainly eat and sleep in the myths, and plenty of them were born with the "normal methods". And of course, gods do the "normal method", too for that matter.  You can kind of infer that at least some gods do all those other things you mentioned as well.

RPGPundit

Fair point.  A campaign would have to get pretty rough for players to send Zeus down to sleep with the fishes as it were.  The gods were certainly a randy bunch.  Zeus got around, though that seemed to not go over well with the wife.

[RPGPundit]

Fair point.  A campaign would have to get pretty rough for players to send Zeus down to sleep with the fishes as it were.  

For the players to do it? Yeah, that would be quite the powered-up campaign, to be sure.

But someone else, maybe; one of starting campaign premises in the book is to set off the game with "Zeus is dead!".
Mind you, there's also a chance he can be faking it.

RPGPundit

[Tolknor]

For the players to do it? Yeah, that would be quite the powered-up campaign, to be sure.

But someone else, maybe; one of starting campaign premises in the book is to set off the game with "Zeus is dead!".
Mind you, there's also a chance he can be faking it.

RPGPundit

I'm not sure that, as a player, i would believe Zeus or Oberon are dead.   Caine certainly manages coming back.

[RPGPundit]

I'm not sure that, as a player, i would believe Zeus or Oberon are dead.   Caine certainly manages coming back.

That's what makes it work, actually.  The likelihood of their coming back makes it very hard to buy the "death".

In my last Amber campaign I killed off Caine relatively early-on, and everyone expected that he'd come back any minute now, only he was really dead. I even threw in a few red herrings that kept up the notion that he might still be doing things from behind the scenes, but these were either false reports, fakes, or plans he'd set into motion before his death.

RPGpundit

[Croaker]

Nice

Now, a way of doing something like this for Oberon would be to go all foundation-like.

So, he left messsages and clues for the PCs, predicting things and elders behaviour, which lead them either to believe he's not dead at all, or that he was a genius. And then, something unexpected happens, and the previsions and advice they've come to rely upon are all off.

[Tolknor]

In my last Amber campaign I killed off Caine relatively early-on, and everyone expected that he'd come back any minute now, only he was really dea

RPGpundit

Nice!  It reminded me of a conversation i had Caine have with a PC.  I based Caine's role as spymaster on the character of Arakasi from Raymond E. Feist and Janny Wurts books of the Empire Series.  In it Arakasi has a vast spy network and if he disappeared another would come to Mara and reveal himself as the new Acoma spymaster.  

So i had Caine tell a PC that if he was killed it would not matter.  Another Caine would come to Random and fill the role of Spymaster, taking his role as Caine.  Of course he might have had trouble making it work but the player sure believed the hell out of it.

[RPGPundit]

That's pretty funny; infinite Caines!

Its interesting how much one can play with the whole "Caine is dead" thing; in another campaign I had him dying multiple times, always faking his death, until he actually died for real, and nobody believed it was true.

RPGPundit

[Taewakan]

I did a spread sheet with all the NPCs' stats and then made my own using the best attribute from each of the versions of the NPCs.

Then I apply the old Age and Treachery vs. Youth and Skill adage, modified by the Age and Treachery and Skill imperative - which is why Benedict is still around and Oberon stuck around for so long. Then I run them the way I interpret them based upon the books and damn the points.
Benedict can be tricked and beaten, even in a duel.
The Lord Regent can be cursed.
Grandpa can go insane.
The king can be kidnapped.
Chaos can invade Amber.

Dworkin?
Now that the Pattern has been "repaired" he is probably the single most powerful being in the Amber-verse. Part of me doubts that he even cares about things like the order of succession.
When the PCs start rivaling the Elders in attributes and skill, they might have a chance to glimpse a small part of the labyrinth that is the plot-board in Dworkin's mind.
You can bet that Dworkin has put more actual distance between himself (The Primal Pattern) and Amber. I know that the rule is to keep your friends close and your enemies closer, but he made that mistake once and it cost him his sanity and his heir's life.
He is not likely to make that mistake ever again.