Player Character and their children

[Erick Wujcik]

How would YOU handle those situations and the subject of PC children in general in your campaigns?

In the first Amber Diceless campaign, Mike Kucharski's character Morgan was determined to create allies for himself. He wandered out into Shadow, shape-shifted himself into a psionic wolf form, and found a mate (I'm skipping over the role-playing, but there were obstacles).

I responded by recruiting a suitable number of new players, and holding a special Attribute Auction. The new players were given a modified character sheet, one where there were different costs and options (including a massive discount for Shape Shifting).

The end result was the Wolfling Campaign which was extensively described in Amberzine, mostly in "Morgan's Children," written by player and campaign chronicler, Cathy Klessig.

A great time was had by all... but Mike found parenthood to be a pretty aggravating experience, dealing with a half-dozen unique player characters, plus he never managed to rid himself of his wolf-wife.

Erick


Illustration of Morgan, on the cover of Amberzine #2:

[jibbajibba]

I have dealt with kids a couple of times. In one case a Character, Reuben, bought 2 Amber allies at 6 point each to be his children, Conrad and Torbjorn. Torbjorn was a hothead and got himself into fights a lot and was a great hook to get Reuben out of his comfortable chair in Amber. Conrad was a would be sorceror and as such was heniously manipulated by another PC and turned against his dad in a pursuit for more power. Hey when they had to kill him I allowed him to recoup the 6 points ...

In the same game Hugo has a creature called Iago that was like a shapeshifting chaos demon. Since kids seemed to be about Hugo had Iago shapeshift into a cute little ginger haired kid that could hang about being sweet and find out what Conrad was after so Hugo could use it to turn him.
It all worked out rather well to be honest so I think Amberite kids are great.

As for Clones, Pattern Ghosts and the like. Bit tricky here if the clones are formed like pattern ghosts they could probably approach Amber but if there were technological creations in my world they would be limited to one or a small range of shadows. I work to the higher the tech the fewer shadows it works in principle.
If there were magic, pattern ghosts or empowered shadow copies then they are going to be just as sneaky and manipulative as the real version and so all of them will be looking for Power and apt to take over after why would an Amberite want to be number 2.

You could by a 'clone' army as an item at character gneration time, or named and numbered or whatever and that would be the only time I would give a player total control. But even if you allowed say a 16 point manipulate shadow power and Amberite endurance, strength etc they named and numbered copies of yourself would cost ... 60 or so points so ... you would probably need them to survive anyway.

[Nihilistic Mind]

Things turned out pretty good with the PCs' kids. One of the PC died and is going to play as his progeny (with less points and a lot of baggage), while the other one keeps worrying about his daughters and their need for independence and getting side-tracked.

I'd definitely let player characters have kids again. It has created great roleplaying situations!

[RPGPundit]

Here's a side question for raising amberites: would those children raised in Shadow be less powerful than say those raised in Amber, or the Courts of Chaos? I'm not talking about education (yet) or their lineage, but about the proximity to Real Planes of existence... Substance, if you will.

Since its the blood that matters, I don't think that they will be physically weaker, but they may be weaker in other ways, socially weaker mainly. Not trained in the ways of Amber.

RPGpundit

[gabriel_ss4u]

Croaker   -   oooo, nice idea Croaker!

<"I wouldn't let a character...">  (fill in the blanks)   ---  there are GM's that still use this approach? I thought Amber would weed alot of those out. No personal attack Trevelyan, as I don't know you... but how frustrating is it to ANY player to hear that in a mutiverse that supposedly 'anything' is possible?

 ---  My rule is, if it doesn't fit in the campaign, it's worth discussing and open to debate, but not during game play obviously.

 ---  
 I agree, and like it.

 ---  
remember the quote - "I knew the Shadows would lie for me" as said by Corwin when speaking of his appearence and his true age. Any long-lived entity seems immortal to one of a signifigantly shorter life-span.
(oh, I see you remembered that too, Crafty.)

Beautiful, love the input Erick  ---  speaking of Amberzine ( how many available, and how much, I'm practically poor -but neeeeeed them so much.
I had several and had them all appropriated from me.)

[Trevelyan]

<"I wouldn't let a character...">  (fill in the blanks)   ---  there are GM's that still use this approach? I thought Amber would weed alot of those out. No personal attack Trevelyan, as I don't know you... but how frustrating is it to ANY player to hear that in a mutiverse that supposedly 'anything' is possible?

I wouldn't read it as a personal attack.

It is a slight misrepresentation of my point which was that "I wouldn't let a character breed a large family on a whim since all the evidence seems to suggest that Amberites are relatively infertile."

In answer to the general point about frustrationg players, there is a significant difference between saying "No!", and saying "That's going to be difficult and will require a lot of work". In the Amber setting it is clearly not the case that anything is literally possible, characters, both PC and NPC, have their limitations, and relatively slow rates of reproduction appear to be among them. It's most appropriate to say that Amberites breed at the speed of plot since children pop up when they would be most likely to develop the story. Of course, the wider plot is in the hands of the GM, so a player cannot simply say "I'm gonna shag until I have an army of offspring" and expect things to go easily. At the same time, a PC who looks into the apparently aweful fertility record of his family, investigates methods to increase his chances and  possibly endulges in a little shape shifting to swing the odds (those crazy chaos types seem to have the edge in the breeding stakes) would fare far better.

[gabriel_ss4u]

I wouldn't read it as a personal attack.

It is a slight misrepresentation of my point which was that "I wouldn't let a character breed a large family on a whim since all the evidence seems to suggest that Amberites are relatively infertile."

Thanks
I didn't... just wanted to make my stand/opinion.
I read some of the other things you've posted.... I like your style... where are you located?

(I'm new to this posting thing. I was once upon a time addicted to aol Masquerade Ball Chat Room back in the early to mid 90's and haven't really chatted w/people much and never really blogged, so it's still all new to me in this era. Thanks for your patience... I really am in respect of alot of these Amber gamers I read. Wish I had the time & funds to make one of the Ambercons. .... sigh

[Trevelyan]

I read some of the other things you've posted.... I like your style... where are you located?

Ah, flattery! My Achilles heal :deflated:

I'm based just outside of London in the UK. I never seem to have time to make it to a Con either, but there are plenty of ideas knocking around here.

[Jefferson Krogh]

If a character with Pattern wanted to find a Shadow where he would be especially fertile, as a GM I would certainly let him find it.  I'm not sure why a PC would deliberately create extra hostages or targets for his enemies, though.

[Nihilistic Mind]

I'm not sure why a PC would deliberately create extra hostages or targets for his enemies, though.

Well, you're assuming the character actually cares for his offspring. Using them, the way Oberon used his, was the player's main goal... In this particular case, anyway.

It's more likely the PC is reprimanded by an elder for his careless breeding: more Amber blood around means more blood to erase the Pattern with.

[Croaker]

And this may be one of the reasons why amberites are so infertile