noman
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Note: this is a long post that I've had to break into two parts. It's about Amber diceless and its related systems. May not be of interest to you unless you're curious, familer with the system, or just bored at work.
Part 1 begins.
The context
So let's talk about Amber and its clones.
I (mostly) remember the time I discovered Amber. It was '91 or '92 (I think). I walked into my local gaming store, to be greeted by this guy minding the store:
We glared at each other as I made my way towards the comic book section. I was there to pick up my weekly load of a gazellion X-Men titles. Because I wanted to be Wolverine and Storm was hot.
Then I saw it, setting regally on a shelf on the TTRPG section of the store. This majestic beast:
It was the art that grabbed me. No, not because of the redhead. I wasn't even sure she was a she. It was the abstract, almost psychedelic style of the art that caught my eye. Most TTRPGs at the time had covers that featured Frazetta-style men and women bearing swords and casting spells at some poor beastie that was just minding its business when these photogenic assholes showed up at its lair. No, this chick (or guy, or whatever), is just standing there, upon a field of possibility. She wasn't fighting anything. She wasn't casting any spells. She was just standing there, holding knives and incense burners and being mysterious.
I thought to myself, "This bitch is up to something."
So I burned my nerd budget for the next two weeks on the book: Amber Dicelss Roleplaying.
I got back to my place (home, my dorm, an apartment...I'm not sure), and cracked open the book. Within its simple, black and white script and art, its chaotic formatting, I found a world I never imagined.
It was diceless, first of all. Which was impossible! Inconceivable! It was the primary barrier to entry for my players to play the game. "No dice? How the hell do you play a game without dice!"
I got a lot of that. A lot.
But for me, it wasn't the lack of dice. It was the scale of power. No TTRPG, anywhere (with the possible exception of Nobilis, which came out later), came anywhere close to the scale of power Amber represented. A starting, 100 point Amberite could typically destroy any high-power character from other games, waltz though deadly dungeons, and make Alpha Complex's Computer his bitch, all without much effort at all. You were playing cosmic, god-like characters on a scale I had never before seen in a game. How do you run a game like that?
I spent well over a decade learning how.
I was a terrible GM. Seriously. I was awful. I did all the things that are now my major, GM pet-peeves. But I learned, I grew, and I improved. Over time, I got pretty good at it.
Amber was my jam. I ran it almost excursively. Sure, I dabbled in running a few other games, but they never lasted long. I'd get bored, end them quikcly, and return to Amber. The lessons I learned as a GM and my style of gamemastering was formed though the use of this game. It shows. My games are hella lethal and heavy on politics and intrigue.
There were some unfortunate side-effect, however.
First, I became a bit of a diceless snob for a while. I found the use of dice boring and obsolete, and while I kept my opinions to myself, out of courtesy, you could cut slices out of the disdain I felt and serve it on a plate, like cake.
I grew out of this, thankfully, as I matured. Still, every time I hear or see some gamer talk trash about diceless systems, having clearly never played one, I want to slap a bitch.
The second problem was I became a total bastard. While some religious groups were worried D&D was turning people to Satan, Amber did something much worse to me: It turned me to politics. While my buddy was reading the latest issue of Soldier of Fortune for his Cyberpunk 2020 game, I was studying Machiavelli's writings as if they were a religious text.
The reason for this was simple: my players were clever. I had to be more clever than they were. A fact made more challenging because the Elder Amberites are master manipulators and schemers with centuries of experience playing the Amberite equivalent of 3D chess against one another. I had to get really cunning, really ruthless, and really sinister very quickly just to keep my players challenged.
I mean, look. Most of the NPCs in Amber or the Courts of Chaos are evil: either lawful evil, neutral evil, or more usually, chaotic evil. And they've got that perfect combination of being too powerful for their own good and cunning as all hell. I had to learn how to manage this as a GM in such a way as it was fun for my players. For the most part, excepting a few titanic failures, I was successful.
I blame Amber for turning me evil. :eek:
I'm trying to grow out of this too, but it's a slow, difficult process. :p
The scale of power
As I mentioned above, Amber offered a scale of power unlike anything I've ever seen. Even today, with a few games that promote demigod-level gameplay such as Cypher System's Gods of the Fall, Sine Nomine's Godbound, or Savage Suzerian, none of these games come close to the power level approached by Amber. It could take months or even years of gametime for a Godbound character to take control of one of the major nations of Arcem. An Amberite could take over the whole realm in a weekend.
One of the main reasons why I obsessed over this game for so long was because of the scale of power. No, not because I was a powergamer who ran games for other powergamers. I welcomed a certain degree of optimization at my table, so long as the player wasn't a dick. The thing to remember here is the character points in Amber don't matter. What makes a character deadly isn't its points, his powers, or his artifacts. What makes an Amber character deadly is the player. Good players make deadly characters. They'll dominate bad players with more powerful characters simply because there's no gaming metric for being a cunning bastard.
No, it's the dynamic of power itself that interested me. I loved watching what my players would do. For many of them, the strongest characters they ever had was something like a level fifteen AD&D mage. Small fry to an Amberite. There was often quite a bit of system shock at first.
Some players wanted to build. They'd set down roots and build a kingdom. Then an empire. And then try to take hold of an entire universe. A few tried to take over Amber.
Others concentrated their efforts into becoming effective agents of the crown: assassin-sages who stood loyal to the King (or Queen) and gathered power for the sake of the realm.
A few wanted to explore the mysteries of the Amber universe. They were the most challenging, forcing me to scramble to figure out and write up my own universe ahead of schedule. I learned very quickly to get my notes done before I even thought about running an Amber campaign.
Others wanted to play diplomat. Stop the wars. Stop the bickering. Bring some common sense to the game politics. Some of these became very formidable, being able to actually strong-arm a few of the Elder Amberites into getting on board with the New Peace.
A few wanted to hide in their personal shadow and dick around. They did nothing. It didn't matter what I dangled in front of them to get them hooked into the game, they just wanted to fuck around in he safety of their personal universe.
Quite a few imploded. Spectacularly. They'd go on rampages. Burn their own works down. Turn on their allies. It was crazy and campaign ending. They usually did this when I threw a big chunk of new power at them. They couldn't handle it.
It was fantastic to watch. Power does weird things to people. Even fake power.
End of Part 1.
Part 1 begins.
The context
So let's talk about Amber and its clones.
I (mostly) remember the time I discovered Amber. It was '91 or '92 (I think). I walked into my local gaming store, to be greeted by this guy minding the store:
We glared at each other as I made my way towards the comic book section. I was there to pick up my weekly load of a gazellion X-Men titles. Because I wanted to be Wolverine and Storm was hot.
Then I saw it, setting regally on a shelf on the TTRPG section of the store. This majestic beast:
It was the art that grabbed me. No, not because of the redhead. I wasn't even sure she was a she. It was the abstract, almost psychedelic style of the art that caught my eye. Most TTRPGs at the time had covers that featured Frazetta-style men and women bearing swords and casting spells at some poor beastie that was just minding its business when these photogenic assholes showed up at its lair. No, this chick (or guy, or whatever), is just standing there, upon a field of possibility. She wasn't fighting anything. She wasn't casting any spells. She was just standing there, holding knives and incense burners and being mysterious.
I thought to myself, "This bitch is up to something."
So I burned my nerd budget for the next two weeks on the book: Amber Dicelss Roleplaying.
I got back to my place (home, my dorm, an apartment...I'm not sure), and cracked open the book. Within its simple, black and white script and art, its chaotic formatting, I found a world I never imagined.
It was diceless, first of all. Which was impossible! Inconceivable! It was the primary barrier to entry for my players to play the game. "No dice? How the hell do you play a game without dice!"
I got a lot of that. A lot.
But for me, it wasn't the lack of dice. It was the scale of power. No TTRPG, anywhere (with the possible exception of Nobilis, which came out later), came anywhere close to the scale of power Amber represented. A starting, 100 point Amberite could typically destroy any high-power character from other games, waltz though deadly dungeons, and make Alpha Complex's Computer his bitch, all without much effort at all. You were playing cosmic, god-like characters on a scale I had never before seen in a game. How do you run a game like that?
I spent well over a decade learning how.
I was a terrible GM. Seriously. I was awful. I did all the things that are now my major, GM pet-peeves. But I learned, I grew, and I improved. Over time, I got pretty good at it.
Amber was my jam. I ran it almost excursively. Sure, I dabbled in running a few other games, but they never lasted long. I'd get bored, end them quikcly, and return to Amber. The lessons I learned as a GM and my style of gamemastering was formed though the use of this game. It shows. My games are hella lethal and heavy on politics and intrigue.
There were some unfortunate side-effect, however.
First, I became a bit of a diceless snob for a while. I found the use of dice boring and obsolete, and while I kept my opinions to myself, out of courtesy, you could cut slices out of the disdain I felt and serve it on a plate, like cake.
I grew out of this, thankfully, as I matured. Still, every time I hear or see some gamer talk trash about diceless systems, having clearly never played one, I want to slap a bitch.
The second problem was I became a total bastard. While some religious groups were worried D&D was turning people to Satan, Amber did something much worse to me: It turned me to politics. While my buddy was reading the latest issue of Soldier of Fortune for his Cyberpunk 2020 game, I was studying Machiavelli's writings as if they were a religious text.
The reason for this was simple: my players were clever. I had to be more clever than they were. A fact made more challenging because the Elder Amberites are master manipulators and schemers with centuries of experience playing the Amberite equivalent of 3D chess against one another. I had to get really cunning, really ruthless, and really sinister very quickly just to keep my players challenged.
I mean, look. Most of the NPCs in Amber or the Courts of Chaos are evil: either lawful evil, neutral evil, or more usually, chaotic evil. And they've got that perfect combination of being too powerful for their own good and cunning as all hell. I had to learn how to manage this as a GM in such a way as it was fun for my players. For the most part, excepting a few titanic failures, I was successful.
I blame Amber for turning me evil. :eek:
I'm trying to grow out of this too, but it's a slow, difficult process. :p
The scale of power
As I mentioned above, Amber offered a scale of power unlike anything I've ever seen. Even today, with a few games that promote demigod-level gameplay such as Cypher System's Gods of the Fall, Sine Nomine's Godbound, or Savage Suzerian, none of these games come close to the power level approached by Amber. It could take months or even years of gametime for a Godbound character to take control of one of the major nations of Arcem. An Amberite could take over the whole realm in a weekend.
One of the main reasons why I obsessed over this game for so long was because of the scale of power. No, not because I was a powergamer who ran games for other powergamers. I welcomed a certain degree of optimization at my table, so long as the player wasn't a dick. The thing to remember here is the character points in Amber don't matter. What makes a character deadly isn't its points, his powers, or his artifacts. What makes an Amber character deadly is the player. Good players make deadly characters. They'll dominate bad players with more powerful characters simply because there's no gaming metric for being a cunning bastard.
No, it's the dynamic of power itself that interested me. I loved watching what my players would do. For many of them, the strongest characters they ever had was something like a level fifteen AD&D mage. Small fry to an Amberite. There was often quite a bit of system shock at first.
Some players wanted to build. They'd set down roots and build a kingdom. Then an empire. And then try to take hold of an entire universe. A few tried to take over Amber.
Others concentrated their efforts into becoming effective agents of the crown: assassin-sages who stood loyal to the King (or Queen) and gathered power for the sake of the realm.
A few wanted to explore the mysteries of the Amber universe. They were the most challenging, forcing me to scramble to figure out and write up my own universe ahead of schedule. I learned very quickly to get my notes done before I even thought about running an Amber campaign.
Others wanted to play diplomat. Stop the wars. Stop the bickering. Bring some common sense to the game politics. Some of these became very formidable, being able to actually strong-arm a few of the Elder Amberites into getting on board with the New Peace.
A few wanted to hide in their personal shadow and dick around. They did nothing. It didn't matter what I dangled in front of them to get them hooked into the game, they just wanted to fuck around in he safety of their personal universe.
Quite a few imploded. Spectacularly. They'd go on rampages. Burn their own works down. Turn on their allies. It was crazy and campaign ending. They usually did this when I threw a big chunk of new power at them. They couldn't handle it.
It was fantastic to watch. Power does weird things to people. Even fake power.
End of Part 1.
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