Using Amber for non-Amberite based PCs

[Sajber]

Hey there! I'm Sajber, new to these forums, and new to Zelazny's world of Amber as well, compared to how long you people have been along for the ride. Beware: long topic! Any help is greatly appreciated, though. =D I read the books (and the short stories) first time about 2 years ago, and loved them. I read them again in the beginning of the summer this year, and now I'm at it again. The reason? An RPG, what else! =P

So, I'm trying to figure out what type of Amber universe I want to run. I've tried sitting down and figuring out the mythology/history for quite a while, and I keep coming up short. There are always more details that I've missed, and when I try to incorporate them they always just raise new questions. I've read the DRPG books (both of them), but I'm not wholly sold on Wujcik's version of things. I went looking for answers on Amber forums, alas, to no avail... Just more questions!

So, I really don't know what I'm doing at the moment. I guess I'd like to ask if there are any more or less complete and/or comprehensible version of the Amber mythology out there, other than Wujcik's. Are there ones where just the Corwin saga is canon, as well as the entire series as canon? I generally just feel hopeless and stupid as to this part of the project, I can't seem to get a grip on things. Maybe I'm just too new at the world...

Secondly, which I guess would be a little more practical, is the RP campaign I'm GMing right now. It's based on another ruleset (swedish "EON", but I doubt you've heard of it) and has its own setting (called "Mundana"). However, it lends itself quite readily to be used in Amber's world. I got that idea when I read the books again this summer, which was just after the campaign had started.

The PCs are from Mundana, a generally low-magic setting. None of the players have read Amber, most not even heard of it. This is really what got me started: I wanted to introduce the Amber universe gradually, with all it's mysteries and intrigues, to the players and PCs. It would not be "normal" Amber campaign (as from what I can gather from the threads on this forum anbyway) in that the PCs won't have control over Pattern (or any other powers). They would be characters in the Amber world that somehow gets thrown into the middle of it all. They would somehow be important to the Amberites and/or Chaosites.

The only "Amberesque" things the PCs have encountered so far are these. Some guy in Mundana had curiously amassed an army, which he used to try to take over the country the campaign is currently in. He had a wizard of some kind under his control (using a magical slave necklace) which could level a city to the ground, something which is super-duper-mega powerful in Mundana. God-like, even. During the course of preventing this, the PCs met Fiona (the real one, mind you) who has some sort of interest in them, but why is anybody's guess. She helps them win the day, kills the bad guy, and it turns out the wizard is one of the PCs long-lost cousin. Oh, and the army? Vanquished, but it turns out (when they met it in the field) that it comprised on red and hairy humanoids that clearly don't belong in Mundana.

My thinking when I wrote those parts? Well, Mundana is part of the new multiverse that was created when Corwin made his own Pattern. When I read the books, it seemed to me that most shadows they visited were very low-magic, if any magic at all (that the Amberites didn't bring with them, that is). I thought that Corwin's Pattern somehow interfered with the Power Lines already in place and in equilibrium between Dworkin's Pattern and the Logrus. This interference caused some shadows connected with Corwin's Pattern to gain a whole lot more power lines, i.e. more inherent magic that anybody can use.

This interested Fiona a great deal, since it was so rare in "normal" Amber. Turns out that she knows that one of the PCs are clairvoyant, which is even more impressing. She wants to find out more about Mundana, it's powers and weird inhabitants. But where did the red and hairy army come from? Fiona thought she was the only one who had come to Mundana, but if an army from somewhere else were brought here obviously somebody else must also know about it. Who can it be...?

What do you think about it, so far? Don't hold back with any critique, I want it to make as much sense as possible from the standpoint of the books. Some of things were pulled out of my ass during play (such as the "can level cities"-thing), and might therefore not fit quite right, but I can't really unmake them for the players. Fiona was planned, and as a more or less "good" character, at least for now. She did help them stop the army, after all.

How would you introduce players and characters to Amber in a way that keeps the mystery and feeling of the Corwin books? (Or not like the books necessarily, but at least in a way that was interesting enough that the players would like to know more about the world and the way it worked.) How can you make the characters have at least some impact on the world without them being able to traverse shadow, at least by themselves? What "Amber powers" could they gain without being related to the Amberites/Chaosites? Not super-fond of the Broken Patterns myself, but are there other things that might work?

Gah, I have so much more to ask, but I think I'll leave it at that for now. This topic is already way too long! Really, I don't know where to go. All this week I've been trying to get somewhere, but I've just lost the fire. This morning I felt like giving up, it just seemed to immense a problem to grapple with! So, with that, any help at all is greatly appreciated!

Sajber

[Sydius Mendoza]

I don't see how you can give them amberite/choasite powers without the blood. But that's not to say you can't go anywhere with it. The party could all be scions of amber that are part of some weird child raising experiment being put on by the elders. Some thing like a cabal of elders that wants a generation of amberites that can work together and are loyal to each other, but above all else loyal to their benefactors. They could have been spirited away at birth and raised on a common shadow, or could somehow have been brain scrambled via Trump contact to the point of amnesia by a high psyche elder ( cough, cough, Fiona, cough). The group could be play a pivotal role in a throne war. Or not, IDK. I'm a long time fan of the books working on my first DRPG campaign myself.

[AshenHaze]

I personally have never really felt any desire to play an Amber game where the character's were not Amberites.  My feeling is that by taking that away you are really removing the whole point of playing Amber in the first place.

It sounds as if you're concerned about a couple of things, the first that your players have not read the books and thus would be unfamiliar with the setting, and the second that you don't have a handle on the workings of the universe.

Amber is hard to run for people not familiar, and if the whole group isn't I would suggest tailoring the game so that all of the players are unfamiliar with the concepts of shadow etc.  You have the right idea about introducing the universe slowly, and a shadow where strange things are going on and an unknown adversary would be a great starting point for that.

If you are dead set against having the character's be Amberites, I would take some time to ask yourself whether you are really interested in playing Amber, or just like the idea of a Diceless RPG.  Part of what makes Amber special (in my opinion), is that nearly every important person in the game will be a family member, a cousin, uncle brother or sister.  You are connected to your enemies, coupled with the blood curse and family pressure it adds a whole new dynamic to dealing with enemies.  Sure you can kill them... but how will the rest of the family take that.

Taking away Amberites also removes the ability to move between shadows readily, to be able to find whatever you want... but to have to struggle for what is actually of value.  In what you would suggest you would either have to make the party all have some pattern replacement for moving through shadow, in which case why not just have them be Amberites or Chaosites.  Or restrict them to a single shadow except with intervention from real Amberites.  Which seems like at that point your story could be better told in a different system.

If your concern is not knowing everything, well there aren't really answers.  I've run several Amber campaigns in which the powers and whole universe make up have been entirely different, and played in games which were vastly different from my own take.  Amber is not a game that you usually enter into knowing everything.  But whats important is that's not important, as an Amber Gm you need the key ideas, the players some plots... but the world is so fluid and with so few limitations that your players will never fit into any sort of neatly planned adventure (and nor should they).  When GMing Amber the best advice I can say, is be ready to improvise constantly, and don't be afraid to do so.  You control the whole universe, if you make a mistake you can fix it.

This is sort of rambly, and I'm sorry.  Just thought I would give you my take.

[RPGPundit]

I've often considered doing a non-amberite non-chaosite Amber campaign, but I've never actually gone and done it.  I think it would take a bit of work, but it'd be damn interesting as an experiment.

RPGPundit

[finarvyn]

I'm trying to figure out what type of Amber universe I want to run. I've tried sitting down and figuring out the mythology/history for quite a while, and I keep coming up short. There are always more details that I've missed, and when I try to incorporate them they always just raise new questions. I've read the DRPG books (both of them), but I'm not wholly sold on Wujcik's version of things.

You ask some good questions about campaign creation and there isn't a simple answer that would work for everyone, but I'll toss in a few thoughts.

1. You would want to identify what kinds of elements are most important to you and/or what elements make up "an Amber" type game. For example, the interaction of characters, the competition beween players, the conflict of law versus chaos, or whatever.

2. There are many pre-existing settings which would fit Amber well. For example, the King Arthur story has good guys and bad guys and magic items (Excalibur) and wizards (Merlin). You could take one of those and import the Amber rules. When I think about Amber I think of genres which are cinematic. The heroes should be able to do heroic things and they should be able to beat bunches of bad guys. Amber can be done with pulp fiction, science fiction, fantasy, and other types of genres.

3. Bottom line is whether you make up a setting or adopt one out there already, look for something that has an Amber-like attitude and style. You don't need to follow Zelazny's lead exactly but instead might look for ways to bring in the parts of Amber you like best and go from there.