Seeing Finarvyn's and Jason's ideas about "diceful" Amber gaming, I'm wondering: Do we know if Roger ever mentioned playing Amber with dice. So far, I haven't found anything. I can imagine (but that's pure speculation) he wasn't as vehemently against it as Erick was. But was he?
Personally, I'm open to trying new methods. We played Amber with Everway cards, and it was a huge, resounding success. Now, I'm playing with the idea of using my own, tried and true (30+ games based on it) minimald6 system (http://darkwormcolt.blogspot.com/p/minimald6.html) for one session.
I'm interested in your opinions.
Norbert
Given the uber competence of your average prince or princess of Amber, in minimalD6 are you a level two Amberite and just on a different scale from mortals? Would it be more like you would only roll when something was actually a challenge.
If I had to use dice, my default system would be Fate Accelerated Edition because it would be so easy to apply the base attributes to approaches.
Todd, yes, I would only roll if something was a real challenge to an Amberite – and even then, I'd consider granting advantage only for the most extraordinary attribute/power scores.
Quote from: Norbert G. Matausch;1073063I'm wondering: Do we know if Roger ever mentioned playing Amber with dice. So far, I haven't found anything.
My understanding is that Roger was never really "into" role playing games, with dice or without. I believe that he played a couple of sessions with Erick to see how the game worked, but I've never seen Zelazny offer any real opinions about RPGs.
I think that the problem with most folks setting up Amber campaigns using standard RPG mechanics is that they get the scale all wrong. Because an RPG is designed for a "regular" person to be a "regular" stat/skill/class/level value, everyone makes Amberites at uber-high values that essentially break the mechanics of the rules they intend to use. Much better to take Erick's approach and let a standard Amberite be the regular value and let lesser characters/NPCs/monsters be
below this. An approach like this will help to preserve the mechanic of the RPG as designed instead of breaking it.
Quote from: zircher;1073069Given the uber competence of your average prince or princess of Amber, in minimalD6 are you a level two Amberite and just on a different scale from mortals? Would it be more like you would only roll when something was actually a challenge.
My thought here is that challenges are relative. Corwin faced a lot of challenges, but shadow creatures were typically not one of them. If "Amber level" becomes the standard, one can run Corwin just like other characters in D&D (or any other RPG rules set) but if he fights a bunch of guards they might be single hit point creatures. There would be quite a few Amberites or creatures of Chaos which could still be powerful enough to get regular monster stat blocks.
That type of scale adjustment would (I think) preserve the feel of Amber without breaking the spirit of the rules.
Just my two coppers. :cool:
Quote from: finarvyn;1073171My understanding is that Roger was never really "into" role playing games, with dice or without. I believe that he played a couple of sessions with Erick to see how the game worked, but I've never seen Zelazny offer any real opinions about RPGs.
I have an anecdote to contradict that.
For years I ran community radio stations, and probably the coolest thing I got to do was interview Melinda Snodgrass. She's an unsung hero in Science Fiction media. Snodgrass was the chief Story Editor on the third season of
Star Trek: The Next Generation. She was brought on after writing the second season episode "Measure of a Man" (the one where they put Data on trial), which she sold as a spec script on the suggestion of her friend George R. R. Martin. Martin was writing scripts for the Ron Perlman starring TV show
Beauty and the Best at the time, and encouraged his friend Snodgrass into TV writing.
Melinda Snodgrass knew George R. R. Martin through their share New Mexico role-playing game group, which also included Roger Zelazny. They met weekly for a few years (I have no idea when, I'm guessing late 70s or mid 80s?) and played GURPS. She said they played other systems too, but she didn't remember exactly what, but most of the time it was GURPS. I asked, "Why GURPS?" and she gave me a hand-waving explanation about how they (or at least she) only used the rules when they didn't know what to do. She said they played in a pirate setting, an ancient roman setting, and a pulp setting that would eventually inform George R. R. Martin's
Wildcards series of short stories.
If Roger Zelazny can be in a weekly GURPS game, he was definitely a big role-playing geek.
//Panjumanju
Well, that's cool and here I thought I couldn't put Zelazny on a higher pedestal. :-D
Quote from: Panjumanju;1073782I have an anecdote to contradict that.
If Roger Zelazny can be in a weekly GURPS game, he was definitely a big role-playing geek.
Interesting. I don't think that I had heard that he was in a weekly game of anything.
I'm fairly certain that two groups are being confused here:
1) the Santa Fe writers' circle which Martin, Zelazny, Snodgrass, etc. were a part of
) Martin's GURPS players
There was a lot of overlap (Superworld spawning Wild Cards, for example) but Wujcik's description of gaming with Roger makes it clear that Roger wasn't a gamer at all, and Martin's intro to Wild Cards made it clear that Roger wasn't a part of the Superworld campaign either.
Quote from: Jason D;1074282Wujcik's description of gaming with Roger makes it clear that Roger wasn't a gamer at all
This was always my impression. I remember something about Erick introducing Roger to ADRP, with the impression that it was a new and rare experience for him. That's why the GURPS comment surprised me.
Quote from: Jason D;1074282I'm fairly certain that two groups are being confused here:
1) the Santa Fe writers' circle which Martin, Zelazny, Snodgrass, etc. were a part of
) Martin's GURPS players
There was a lot of overlap (Superworld spawning Wild Cards, for example) but Wujcik's description of gaming with Roger makes it clear that Roger wasn't a gamer at all, and Martin's intro to Wild Cards made it clear that Roger wasn't a part of the Superworld campaign either.
I could well be misremembering. The interview wasn't specifically about Zelazny, and this was 10 years ago now.
However, I'll point out that most people I introduce Amber Diceless to think it is a strange, new, and eye-opening experience. So goodness knows.
I'll see if I can find a copy of that interview.
//Panjumanju
I, too, had always had the impression that Roger wasn't a roleplayer, both from what I read in articles and the way I interpreted my short-lived email correspondence with Erick.
Huh, I always thought Zelazny played in Martin's supers game before they worked on the Wildcards series.
Quote from: Panjumanju;1073782Melinda Snodgrass knew George R. R. Martin through their share New Mexico role-playing game group, which also included Roger Zelazny. They met weekly for a few years (I have no idea when, I'm guessing late 70s or mid 80s?) and played GURPS. She said they played other systems too, but she didn't remember exactly what, but most of the time it was GURPS. I asked, "Why GURPS?" and she gave me a hand-waving explanation about how they (or at least she) only used the rules when they didn't know what to do.
Quote from: Norbert G. Matausch;1074731I... had always had the impression that Roger wasn't a roleplayer, both from what I read in articles and the way I interpreted my short-lived email correspondence with Erick.
At the time that Erick Wujcik had demonstrated his Amber DRPG game to Zelazny, despite Zelazny's interest in table-top RPGs he was still at that time in the habit of avoiding such indulgence as he believed that table-top RPG role-playing would taint his creative writing process. After Zelazny was diagnosed with cancer however he allowed himself to indulge in such things as table-top RPGs [via joining the above mentioned New Mexico GURPS group], "and he came to enjoy them very much"; the essay titled
Role-Playing Games starting on page 491 of
The Road to Amber (https://www.nesfa.org/press/Books/Zelazny-6.html) anthology and fellow GURPS player Walter Jon Williams (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Walter_Jon_Williams)' eulogy
A Singular Being from the
Power & Light (https://www.nesfa.org/press/Books/Zelazny-2.html) Zelazny anthology even list and describe some of the [GURPS] RPG player-characters that Zelazny played, including starship xenochaplain Schuyler Sky who recited a variant of
The Agnostic's Prayer (https://homepages.inf.ed.ac.uk/rmayr/zelazny_agnostic.html) [from Zelazny's
Creatures of Light and Darkness], which Williams describes had Zelazny's fellow RPG gamers "in stitches" of laughter. (In that last year of Zelazny's life Williams had also invited Zelazny to play in the Amber DRPG game that he GMed; Zelazny wanted to join Williams' Amber DRPG game but sadly Zelazny's severely declining health made the extra 50-mile drive infeasible for him, and he had hidden his struggle with cancer, otherwise Williams would have happily offered to relocate his Amber DRPG game closer to Zelazny. Alas, despite playing in GURPS games, Zelazny never got to participate in an Amber game.)
Quote from: Thanateros;1083164At the time that Erick Wujcik had demonstrated his Amber DRPG game to Zelazny, despite Zelazny's interest in table-top RPGs he was still at that time in the habit of avoiding such indulgence as he believed that table-top RPG role-playing would taint his creative writing process. After Zelazny was diagnosed with cancer however he allowed himself to indulge in such things as table-top RPGs [via joining the above mentioned New Mexico GURPS group], "and he came to enjoy them very much"; the essay titled Role-Playing Games starting on page 491 of The Road to Amber (https://www.nesfa.org/press/Books/Zelazny-6.html) anthology and fellow GURPS player Walter Jon Williams (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Walter_Jon_Williams)' eulogy A Singular Being from the Power & Light (https://www.nesfa.org/press/Books/Zelazny-2.html) Zelazny anthology even list and describe some of the [GURPS] RPG player-characters that Zelazny played, including starship xenochaplain Schuyler Sky who recited a variant of The Agnostic's Prayer (https://homepages.inf.ed.ac.uk/rmayr/zelazny_agnostic.html) [from Zelazny's Creatures of Light and Darkness], which Williams describes had Zelazny's fellow RPG gamers "in stitches" of laughter. (In that last year of Zelazny's life Williams had also invited Zelazny to play in the Amber DRPG game that he GMed; Zelazny wanted to join Williams' Amber DRPG game but sadly Zelazny's severely declining health made the extra 50-mile drive infeasible for him, and he had hidden his struggle with cancer, otherwise Williams would have happily offered to relocate his Amber DRPG game closer to Zelazny. Alas, despite playing in GURPS games, Zelazny never got to participate in an Amber game.)
Fascinating. Thanks for sharing.
Really, it is just all about the timeline. :)
Thanateros, thank you for this really fascinating insight in rpg history. Thank you!