Using Amber for Star Wars

[JongWK]

Here's a thought: could a Star Wars game be run with the Amber rules?

It sounds odd, but if Psyche is replaced by Force, you're halfway there. Strength and Warfare could be gutted for Combat and Piloting, or alternatively Strength could be ditched in exchange of some other "attribute," or just stay as it is.

What's your take? :est:

[Arref]

Sure.
I've used the Amber system to play several genres.
You can easily redirect 'conflicts' by choosing new attributes to conflict over.

[finarvyn]

This got a mention in the "Amber In Spaaaaaace" thread a while back.
http://www.therpgsite.com/forums/showthread.php?t=3258

I ran a Star Wars version of Amber and it was a lot of fun.

In place of Psyche I called it "the Force" and used it pretty much like a combination of Psyche and Sorcery. I had a list of Force powers and characters with a higher Force number had access to more of them.

The other thing that was fun is that my teenaged son (who has played but never GMed a RPG session) was able to rely on his knowledge of the movies to rank the characters. What this did was to set up an attribute ladder of sorts for the NPCs. After the auction I took the rankings we had come up with and matched them up with the numbers from the auction and created my point values for the NPCs from there. (For example, I wanted my newbie force users to have a Force attribute similar to Luke Skywalker in the Return of the Jedi movie, so I set Luke's Force atrribute roughly at the highest value from the auction.)

He had a blast ranking the characters, it took us maybe a half hour to set up our scale, and he got a useful introduction to the "behind the curtain" part of being a Game Master. (Of course, I kept the final attribute ladder a secret from him. Can't divulge all of my little secrets.... )

[Otha]

There's a rule among swine gamers: "Any good game can, with some effort, be used to play Jedi."

Amber is a good game.

Therefore, with some effort, it can be used to play Jedi.

Personally, I like a different game better than Amber, but Amber would be good, too.  Personally, I would use it for a post-Return Jedi, when they are being trained and reconstituted by Luke and any other survivors he can round up.

[SunBoy]

There's a rule among swine gamers: "Any good game can, with some effort, be used to play Jedi."

LMAO. That surely speaks loud and clear.

Personally, I would use it for a post-Return Jedi, when they are being trained and reconstituted by Luke and any other survivors he can round up.

Now, I don't see why. If you play Republic Era, you'll get more "amberite on amberite" slugfests, i.e., there are a whole lot of Jedis around. In Empire, you'll get "amberite on shadows" kind of stuff, where any force user can beat the living crap out of roughly anyone. Methinks New Republic would be the hardest. A lot harder to balance. Well done could be cool, though.

[Otha]

To me one of the things that marks an "Amber" game is that the PC's are part of a very small minority of people who are vastly more powerful than everyone else.  To me, that says, "Jedi among the New Republic".

[finarvyn]

I think that either era would work, but it seems like the early I-II-III movie era is more Amber-like because there were more people with the force. My assumption is that the common person didn't have the ability to use the force, but that there would be a decent number of NPCs able to compete with the PCs in that area.

In the IV-V-VI movie era, the PCs overpower the NPCs to the point where the game might not be as fun (unless a person wants to bash dozens of stormtroopers at a time).

[Otha]

Isn't that true of a regular Amber game too, Fin?

[finarvyn]

Sort of, but the IV-V-VI era is kind of like Amber without Elders. PCs might overpower the universe without the same kinds of challenges as would be provided in I-II-III.

Two different styles, that's all! :-)

[Otha]

So IV-V-VI is like a throne war... no problem!