Resolving conflict in Amber without GM favouritism

[jibbajibba]

I am not sure sure about the ranking thing. In one of my games as I say I dont use ranks I just use the score. You have 56 warfare he has 38 you will probably win. If I have 2 players with 38 warfare versus one with 56 even if teh 56 is the highest score in thegame he is proabably going to loose. Anyone that doesn't think this is correct might understand Amber but they have never been in a sword fight.
For me the stength of the Amber novels isn't that the characters are so superhuman its because they are so human. If Bleys and Corwin cornered Eric they would win, in fact any 2 out of 3 of these would beat the other 1. I think in the first 5 books Eric and Corwin would take Benedict. In the second 5 books Benedict , along with a few other characters have lost something of their humanity and become a lot more mythical (the pattern ghost Benedict versus the Logrus ghost Borrel for example).
Imagine in the real world. Tyson when he was at his prime was untouchable Rank 1 he could take big powerful fighters down in 2 3 rounds but you have to say you put tyson in with 2 of them at the same time he will loose. If Amber looses that edge of reality it looses what makes it special. Then they are all just supermen.
So I would tend to just add up the total points on each side and use that as a guide for resolving 2:1 or many on many situations. If 3 characters combine their Psyches it seems that they can break through a psychic barrier sure if one of them is really trying to slow them down and isn;t adverse to slipping a dagger in when she gets the chance all the better. And there is always a way to make sure you only need to fight on opponent at a time just fight on the stairs on Kolvir or use that power word for something useful for a change.

If one of your charcters wants to be sure of being able to take the 2 closed to them in any attribute then they had better bid bloody big.

[RPGPundit]

You can do the exact same thing with the ranks; I had pretty much said so in my post, that a single 1st ranked guy against two high-ranked opponents is in a very tough situation.

RPGPundit

[Arref]

Guidelines or quick 'logic examples' of stretching out combat would be a good thing for the second edition. Existing ADRPG is often cited by game designers for the clarity and examples used in the rules.

Creating those examples, as Tony says, is hard work.

Because every conflict changes/mutates constantly. Attribute conflict is a problem with several axis of intersection; with several possible directions for twisting into a new shape. Few Players might expect a 90 pt Warfare guy to lose to five 20 pt cousins in one campaign, yet at least one poster has suggested that the numbers could be read that way. Zelazny sets limits such that Bleys does not win against a thousand swordsman even with the 'position' odds in his favor on the stair, but if they were 1 pt soldiers, would your GM rule they lose to Bleys or win?

Position matters. Endurance matters. Stuff matters.
Seven different powers that could alter a fight, across four main attributes and Stuff. And that doesn't even touch the genre/social conflict of killing a relative and earning their death curse!

If you are adept at juggling/judging such a model with so many vectors of complexity and solution, and your players buy into it, you've earned that esteem.

I find the complexity much more rewarding than typical conflict systems in other rpgs. I find that Players are much more riveted/anchored to their PCs actions in this complexity. In Amber DRPG, I'm never sure of the outcome even though it is often Very Clear who is advantaged by Attribute and environ.

PCs in this game, even if they are poorly Attributed for the conflict they are caught in, are legends. They do not easily fall--- even wounded or beset by terrible consequence.

So a PC who thinks he can 'single stroke' a cousin isn't quite in-genre in their expectations. As EW points out above, each face off is a drawn out business very likely to be interrupted by Family or something/someone rather than settled as suddenly as knocking aside a mortal.

[jibbajibba]

Good points but 1,000 men can't fight 1 the most you can manage is about 6 at a time then it comes down to endurance.

I have always had issues with the finality of the ranks and their relative nature. as I say if my top player have 56 warfare and my second has 50 that is a mucher closer fight for me than 3rd on 34 and 4th on 3. I also dont; liek the guy who is top knowing it and only fearing GM driven combatants. For that reason I do the auction blind in 2 rounds and the final ranks and scores are not reveled to other players. The only way to find out if you are better than brother Lucian is to challenge him (this then led us to a skill system as no one would be willing to challenge a player outright in an important stat but challenging them to write the best poem or paint a perfect portrait of Lady Risa was far safer, but that is for another thread) .

There are clear examples in the books where players combine stats, that was what I was aluding to when I noted the combined psyche idea above. When Brand is rescuded by the combined will of his siblings and breaks the barrier set by Fiona (and Bleys?) even though she is actively increasing the resistance you have a clear example of many lower ranks defeating a higher rank. I think this sets a precedent.

[Arref]

Good points but 1,000 men can't fight 1 the most you can manage is about 6 at a time then it comes down to endurance.

I agree with the premise if you use it as a general rule. Of course, in infinite shadow those soldiers might be 12 inches tall and have crossbows or be red furry guys and have automatic projectile weapons. Suddenly you can be attacked by twelve to a hundred guys.

Strength and Warfare benefit from this 'position' notion. Psyche does not, even by canon.

Yes, combining attributes is another area that could use better examples. It is easy to imagine seven relatives (avg 15 psyche) pushing past Fiona's block on a trump (avg 90? psyche). But then there are also 'negative' attributes to consider. Should Fiona enlist a Chaosi helper, do her efforts 'decrease'? Pure numbers get very mixed results in conflicts.

[Otha]

Another subject you've left out so far are subconscious biases.  Of course it is always good to play with your friends, but some people are better friends than others, and some characters' stories are better stories than others, and the GM in his heart of hearts can cheer for one character over another for any number of reasons.  GM's can even "fall in love" with their NPC's and their NPC's stories.

Imagine the frustration you feel as a GM when, in the midst of a diced game, the dice fall against you, along with a sharp strategy and good teamwork on the part of the PC's, short-circuiting a huge amount of work in preparation.  Yes, as a mature GM the thing to do is to put the invalidated material aside and find a place to re-tool and re-use it later... but haven't we all been tempted to fudge things so that our hard work isn't discarded?  Don't tell me the temptation isn't there when running Amber games.

This kind of bias is impossible to rule out!  Even in supposedly "fair" diced games, everyone has seen this kind of favoritism.  In a game with a judicial conflict resolution system, I can't see it being any less of a problem.

Yes, there's little to do about it without getting rid of the judicial conflict resolution system.  

One possible change is to put the job of arguing for the success of an NPC in different hands than the GM.  If someone at the table is the official NPC's advocate, then the players can see more of the process and it's more likely to be fair.  

Another possible change is to allow the disputants in a conflict to decide between themselves who wins and how, and only have the GM step in to alter the result when there is something entering the consideration that the PC's are unaware of.  

Finally, it can pay off for the GM to lay his logic out for the players.  It's dirty pool, in my opinion, to have some unknown influence changing the outcome of a battle without giving the PC some clue as to what might be changing things, and what steps might be taken to deal with it.

I realize that some of these ideas diminish the "power" of the gamemaster's role in the game, especially the heretical notion that two players can decide for themselves who wins a fight and how... but then I'm already branded a heretic anyways, so why fight it?

[Lee Short]

I totally agree.  I mean, I wasn't ignoring it ... the question of "How long?  How bad?" (as I said) was the very next step after I compared the stats.  But the player who jumped to the leg-chopping was clearly not expecting that next step to be part of the equation ... and he wanted to kvetch and complain about it in order to try to socially achieve the result he wanted.

My point was that removing the ability for the players to roleplay for advantage in the end result didn't in any way slow down their desire to jockey for favor, it just shifted it down to the next arena I had to judge on (How long?  How bad?)

Now if I wanted to have objective standards for that too then I could write up some formulae about how many ranks, what type of endurance, how long they fight and how slowly the damage accumulates.  I could modify that by combat stances and all of that.  But that's an awful lot of house-ruling.  As it was, I just said "Guys, I'm usin' my judgment here, let's move on."  It didn't work too well, but that's down (mostly) to the people involved.

I do think that the first step of saying "I'm not going to use my GM judgment in this way" undermined my ability to later say "But I am going to use my GM jugment in this different way."  People heard me as having promised different degrees of objectivity, and having divested myself of different amounts of authority.

That can get tricky to communicate.  Very tricky indeed!

I agree that this is a tough problem.  I personally tend to take the easy way out:  don't play with people who will kvetch and complain like that.  Or, rather, don't play with them a second time.  

The obvious answers are:  come up with some rules that encode this for you, and/or talk about it with the play group before the game.  But those aren't really useful solutions, because you can never hope to cover all the items of contention that might come up.  I think the best you can do is to cover the high value targets.  And be upfront with your players about what kind of behavior you will and will not tolerate.

[PGiverty]

Thanks so far for the answers. I absolutely do not want this thread to drift to alternative GM power distribution models, nor am I suggesting at all the the GM is not the final arbiter. As I said, I know how to make a judgement as a GM, but I am looking for mechanical guidelines to help me interpret the victor in a close conflict between players.

[RPGPundit]

Another subject you've left out so far are subconscious biases.  Of course it is always good to play with your friends, but some people are better friends than others, and some characters' stories are better stories than others, and the GM in his heart of hearts can cheer for one character over another for any number of reasons.  GM's can even "fall in love" with their NPC's and their NPC's stories.

Imagine the frustration you feel as a GM when, in the midst of a diced game, the dice fall against you, along with a sharp strategy and good teamwork on the part of the PC's, short-circuiting a huge amount of work in preparation.  Yes, as a mature GM the thing to do is to put the invalidated material aside and find a place to re-tool and re-use it later... but haven't we all been tempted to fudge things so that our hard work isn't discarded?  Don't tell me the temptation isn't there when running Amber games.

This kind of bias is impossible to rule out!  Even in supposedly "fair" diced games, everyone has seen this kind of favoritism.  In a game with a judicial conflict resolution system, I can't see it being any less of a problem.

Yes, there's little to do about it without getting rid of the judicial conflict resolution system.  

One possible change is to put the job of arguing for the success of an NPC in different hands than the GM.  If someone at the table is the official NPC's advocate, then the players can see more of the process and it's more likely to be fair.  

Another possible change is to allow the disputants in a conflict to decide between themselves who wins and how, and only have the GM step in to alter the result when there is something entering the consideration that the PC's are unaware of.  

Finally, it can pay off for the GM to lay his logic out for the players.  It's dirty pool, in my opinion, to have some unknown influence changing the outcome of a battle without giving the PC some clue as to what might be changing things, and what steps might be taken to deal with it.

I realize that some of these ideas diminish the "power" of the gamemaster's role in the game, especially the heretical notion that two players can decide for themselves who wins a fight and how... but then I'm already branded a heretic anyways, so why fight it?

Your ideas are asinine. The only "solution" needed is to have a mature GM. Amber isn't for emotionally or intellectually immature people to run.

If you can't trust that your GM will be fair, you have NO FUCKING BUSINESS playing in an Amber campaign with him.

RPGPundit

[TonyLB]

Your ideas are asinine. The only "solution" needed is to have a mature GM. Amber isn't for emotionally or intellectually immature people to run.

So the world is divided into (1) mature people, who will never have a problem running Amber and (2) people who have encountered problems running Amber, and who can therefore be shown conclusively to be immature.  Did I read that right?

[RPGPundit]

So the world is divided into (1) mature people, who will never have a problem running Amber and (2) people who have encountered problems running Amber, and who can therefore be shown conclusively to be immature.  Did I read that right?

look at the post I was responding to: that poster was suggesting that GM bias is a major problem in Amber, and the "problems" he was describing had nothing to do with the system, they all had to do with hypothetical scenarios of GMs abusing their power to help their friends, their pet NPCs, or the plot.  His suggested solutions had nothing to do with developing a better understanding of the system as it is, they had everything to do with REVISING the system to take away power from the GM.

In light of that, I'd that whatever you read had fuck all to do with what I was saying, or what the original poster had said.

RPGPundit

[TonyLB]

Avoiding bias (and even the appearance of bias) is a worthy goal if you intend to sit in judgment on your fellows even in this small way.  Paying attention to the matter doesn't mean that you think you'd otherwise be corrupt and abusive ... just that you want all the help you can get in being as fair and objective as possible.

How is that the sign of an immature person?

[RPGPundit]

Avoiding bias (and even the appearance of bias) is a worthy goal if you intend to sit in judgment on your fellows even in this small way.  Paying attention to the matter doesn't mean that you think you'd otherwise be corrupt and abusive ... just that you want all the help you can get in being as fair and objective as possible.

How is that the sign of an immature person?

If you can't take the heat, get out of the fucking kitchen.  Power-devolution schemes, besides being a blatant bit of ideological nonsense from the GM-disempowerment fanatics, is just hanging over your power to a half-dozen biased people, and a recipe to create even more conflicts and struggles in your group.

If you're the GM, you need to get over your biases through discipline, not try to run an RPG through fucking committee.

RPGPundit

[Otha]

So your answer to, "What do you do about subconscious bias that you may not even be fully aware of" is "Don't do it"?

[RPGPundit]

So your answer to, "What do you do about subconscious bias that you may not even be fully aware of" is "Don't do it"?

No, you can acknowledge that you might have some bias you aren't even consciously aware of, without knowing exactly how those biases pan out.  And while I always advocate psychological self-inquiry to discover these things about yourselves, as far as we're concerned you don't really NEED to know what said biases are. You just have to know that they exist, and make an extra effort to be fair.

Hell, playing Amber might, if you're observant, work as a way to let you find out what those biases are.

Anyways, the answer is certainly not to voluntarily castrate yourself and let your players take over the game, so that now you have five or six guys with hidden biases instead of just one.

All REAL RPGs need a strong GM. But no game moreso than Amber.  Amber needs a strong GM more than any other RPG out there, because there is no other advocate in the game beside the GM, and practically no limit to what players can do aside from the GM's judgment and ability to moderate situations.  Any suggestion to disempower the GM is not just ridiculous but based on a clear desire to destroy the game.

RPGPundit