Tragic Glass ([info]tragic_glass) wrote,
@ 2004-12-05 03:47:00
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Traditional Amber Games
Once upon a time, Amber games followed the premise of the ADRPG: the PCs are children of Zelazny's princes and princesses (giving us the phrase 'elder Amberites' which always seemed like it should be for characters who get age-based discounts on meals at Bloody Bill's) in a post-Patternfall War setting. Usually these games involved the PCs being gathered because A) the universe was being eaten or B) the elders had a particularly trivial errand for the PCs to perform (retrieve Fiona's emerald bracelet that she had lost somewhere).

Few of these games seem to be run anymore. Games with PCs as children of the princes and princesses are no longer the rule but are now the exception. Partly for that reason, I've given thought to running one.

Various questions to consider when planning a traditional Amber game follow:

1) Are the PCs all roughly the same age? If so, why? Why did all the notoriously infertile Amberites all suddenly have kids around the same time? If they are not the same age range, how great is the range? And how do you handle PCs of vastly different ages? Whether hey are all about the same age or there is a considerable difference in their ages, how old are PCs allowed to be?

2) If alive prior to Patternfall, why didn't Brand stab one or more of them instead of stabbing Martin?

3) If alive prior to Patternfall, What were they doing during the war and how come Corwin never mentions them?

Discuss

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[info]immlass
2004-12-05 03:05 pm UTC (link)
HOC is a traditional "youngers" game.

In HOC, PCs range in subjective age from about 18 to about 500, which is roughly equivalent to Random. In Amber age, the oldest is actually older than Corwin (he left Amber when Eric was a child) and the youngest is about 17 (Random's child, which he unknowingly concieved not long before he left for his last trip into shadow).

One of the children in HOC is a son of Brand, originally conceived for the purpose described. He got away from his father early, depriving Brand of the opportunity to sacrifice him. Martin was a second choice. Most of the other PCs/cousins weren't known of or if they were, were watched.

There are two groups of PCs in the war: the ones left in Amber and the ones who fought in Chaos. Team Chaos was small (6), and Corwin missed most of their actions. He may have mistaken most of them for nobles. Most of Team Amber wasn't around during the part of the war he was involved with. Those who were were often out of his way (Bleys' daughter and Fiona's son, who were secretly active--the former was a spy in Amber and the latter was stationed in Rebma as a diplomat) or stayed out of his way during the crucial moments (Eric's son and NPC daughter, who were kept out of his way during his brief time running things in Amber). Others were simply not known until the last minute--Martin brought one in at the last minute on Oberon's orders. A couple of them arrived late during the Regency because they were stranded in shadow until Patternfall.

Um, yes, thought about this a LOT. There's enough flexibility to insert a few kids, but more than a couple overlooked by the author requires explanation.

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[info]immlass
2004-12-05 08:53 pm UTC (link)
Oh, and just to clarify: All of the PCs are built on (not counting contribs/experience) the same points. Some have had more opportunities than others, but that's not just a matter of age. Trump Artistry, Sorcery, and pretty much anything beyond Pattern requires explanation in the background.

In fact, some people who weren't in Amber much have had to explain how they walked the Pattern.

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[info]cochese
2004-12-05 07:33 pm UTC (link)
Amusingly, for campaigns our group tends to be go pretty much standard Amber. I'm the rogue duck who plays the weird shit (weir, Lords of Chaos, Buddhist shark-men, anthroporphic hamsters...) but generally everyone else plays a Younger of some sort.

For #1: I usually don't pin people down to being the same age. They're all of comparable power, assuming you believe the game mechanics are remotely balanced. I think there's a meta-game aspect to it in that it's hard to justify being vastly older than everyone else, but no more talented/powerful.

One interesting take I've seen on this was in the very short-lived Coffee Amber, the pickup campaign that we did for a while. We were all teens within a few years of each other, and essentially after Patternfall all the Elders were much more fertile than before. In TTAB, though not strictly a traditional Youngers game, is still about the next generation of kids. In that the kids were all part of a controlled breeding program of Corwin's to provide more people able to walk the Pattern. Really, with the right technology and magic, you can make an Amberite fertile.

For #2 and #3, I can't say that those questions ever really concerned or interested me. There's a lot of people that just never came up in the Corwin series for one reason or another: Mirelle, Delwin, Sand, Dalt. And Corwin doesn't really spend a whole lot of time in Amber interacting with people. In the 4-5 years that take place in the Corwin series, most of that is Corwin's imprisonment in the first book. A lot of people come together for Corwin's little powwow in the library, and then they all scatter. It can be a fun creative exercise to come up with elaborate explanations, but it's not really that urgent of a matter. The kids don't need some grand explanation to explain their pre-Patternfall presence.

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[info]harlequinaide
2004-12-05 09:17 pm UTC (link)
1) Are the PCs all roughly the same age? If so, why? Why did all the notoriously infertile Amberites all suddenly have kids around the same time?

When Dworkin created the pattern, he built in a safeguard to keep the Chaos problem (too many people in line for the throne all killing one another) from happening, along with the "time moves more slowly" condition. When Oberon rewrote the pattern, he left out the safeguard (which he was only dimly aware of, not being privvy to Dworkin's good ideas - just the crazy ones). Some pre-Patternfall kids are around, but very few. And since they knew that Very Bad Things happened to Osric and Finndo, and that Eric possibly killed Corwin, most people hide their kids, like Random did Martin.

Age is rarely an issue, because people who want to be old will just slip off to a fasttime Shadow and spend a few centuries in school, or something. I tend not to restrict this, because if a little knowledge is a dangerous thing, than a lot is even moreso. And people who've been around a long time are more likely to have made enemies who will plague the players.

2) If alive prior to Patternfall, why didn't Brand stab one or more of them instead of stabbing Martin?

Brand found out about Martin by accident, we know that. Consider that if Eric, Bleys or Fiona has kids, they will be well sorceled away, Benedicts kids will be hidden in exactly the right way, Julian's will be in the stables, etc. Random was the only one careless enough to leave a trail. (Or compassionate enough to leave wittnesses alive.)

3) If alive prior to Patternfall, What were they doing during the war and how come Corwin never mentions them?

Why would he? He doesn't mention his own son until the very end, and between the amnesia and the screaming narcicism, I'm not entirely sure he'd notice if one of his siblings had children in the first place. The people who matter are the people with power, and the people who are (potentially) between him and the throne. His sisters barely get a mention, unless he's in love with them, the next generation would be even further out of his field of vision. So, lots of reasons, most of them having to do with the fact that he's a prick. ;-)

Last one: And how do you handle PCs of vastly different ages?
I've been thinking about this while I've been writing. I think I handle it the same way I do PCs who have different specialties or personalities. Extreme age is just another skill set, depending on how they play it. I've got one Very Old PC who spent a lot of time in other dimensions, and so is effectively the same practical age as the other PCs. I kind of prefer older characters, because it gives me more to work with, in terms of backstory. I loves the backstory.

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[info]tristam
2004-12-06 05:41 pm UTC (link)
In many of the traditional younger games I've been in, questions two and three are part of the character quiz. If you can't explain it, you can't be in the game. And let's face it, because I was hidden in Shadow at the time pretty much answers both questions satisfactorily. It was Martin's birth being the center of so much gossip and his relatively public upbringing in Rebma that made him the target.

The real question you need to answer is this. Why is now the time of the younger's emergence? Why do you no longer need to be hidden and why would you thought to be of use now when you weren't of use during the Patternfall war?

As for the age thing, I've seen games that stretch the gamut from some youngers older than some Elders to the fresh youngster just done his first Patternwalk. But as the points stay the same, the player has to explain the how the background fits the points. Under one GM the trade off was this. The older your character was the more serious the Elders took you. So the youngers had the puppy factor where important things they said tended to be discounted but they were somewhat lenient when it came to your mistakes. The older characters had everything taken seriously, pro and con. In a few games, I've seen age auctioned off as a stat so you could place yourself in the birth order where you wanted. The older got secrets about long ago events and the younger got the puppy factor.

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[info]arrefmak
2004-12-08 02:45 pm UTC (link)
Eternal City is a traditional Amber game.

1) I think the age factor can be worked into the PC write-up. The backstory explanations will tell you a lot about what the Player wnats for a niche, so this discussion is nothing but good for the game's long survival. When I started ATEC, the range of ages was 13 to 50. But I've seen good startups that used 15 to 500.

I would work very carefully on backstory, because I think there are ingenius ways that older kids could be introduced to the story. Sand and Delwin are an example of this. Oberon claimed forty-some children.

I would not start the Players at different point levels. Not.

2) Let's face it: Martin was a readily accessible and neglected child. He didn't have Random's protection. And how much did Brand think Random's protection was worth? Martin didn't want Rebma's protection--even if Brand had considered the Rebman throne dangerous to his plans. Llewella screwed up in liking Brand, too. Whatever backstory you suppose for Martin, he left Rebma without protection and headed off on his own into shadow. Was Martin naive? Well sure--in hindsight.

But remember: killing a blood relative was something only the King could do before Brand. Messing up a relative was fine and almost encouraged. Eric held off killing Corwin when he had motive, method, opportunity, and few witnesses.

So Llewella had little reason to think her brother Brand was fishing for blood when he gulled her.

Why didn't Brand use Rinaldo? Your canon campaign has to solve that little issue--I think that's an intriguing point.

3) In ATEC, I started twenty years after the war. Most of the 'kids' were born either during or right before or right after. They didn't figure in the war because most of them were shadow-born. In ATEC, fertility is the GM's province solely. The question to answer is "why now?"

Why the influx of youngers? Is it because elders have died? Is it because the King has commanded a search of shadow for by-blows so that the 'Martin' incident won't happen again? Infinte shadow is your statistical roulettte wheel. There might be amberites out there no one knows about. So "why now?" is pretty important.

Corwin's account all but ignores Martin and makes nothing of brothers and sisters that are alive like Delwin. Corwin is too rushed and driven to look both ways before crossing the street and he short shrifts all the women.

Which brings me to the question that ought to be asked about startup PCs:

How do you handle the women in Amber society? Do you burden female PCs with the bias that runs through the books? Do you slant the commoners' gender expectations? Do you ask the Players not to play women?

Do you outlaw women in pants?
:)

I think the easiest answer to this is a double-standard society. Female PCs get a lot of minor friction if they don't conform--but no one can stop them because they are royals. People talk about them. They get stared at. They have people respond poorly to aggression. They are underestimated. They have to do things twice as well to get half the credit.

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(Anonymous)
2004-12-14 09:58 pm UTC (link)
1 - All PCs are exactly the same age, conceived on the same day, as Amberites are only able to get pregnant or father a child once every ten years or so.

2 - Martin was just the first name on Brand's hit list. If he'd missed Martin, the next to go would have been "Player Character 1".

3 - Corwin was ashamed to mention them and was hoping Merlin wouldn't ask about relatives.

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Traditional Amber Games
[info]khelladon
2004-12-22 02:20 am UTC (link)
Once upon a time, Amber games followed the premise of the ADRPG: the PCs are children of Zelazny's princes and princesses (giving us the phrase 'elder Amberites' which always seemed like it should be for characters who get age-based discounts on meals at Bloody Bill's) in a post-Patternfall War setting. Usually these games involved the PCs being gathered because A) the universe was being eaten or B) the elders had a particularly trivial errand for the PCs to perform (retrieve Fiona's emerald bracelet that she had lost somewhere).

Few of these games seem to be run anymore. Games with PCs as children of the princes and princesses are no longer the rule but are now the exception. Partly for that reason, I've given thought to running one.

Various questions to consider when planning a traditional Amber game follow:

1) Are the PCs all roughly the same age? If so, why? Why did all the notoriously infertile Amberites all suddenly have kids around the same time? If they are not the same age range, how great is the range? And how do you handle PCs of vastly different ages? Whether hey are all about the same age or there is a considerable difference in their ages, how old are PCs allowed to be?

In my game Amber Under Seige characters are allowed of any age they can give a complete history for before starting the game. Two are over 200 because the backstory they gave shows they have lived that long. Both have parts of the history since Patternfall written into their history, one was a warrior at the Battle at the Abyss and the other was locked away in a shadow whlie she was growing up.

2) If alive prior to Patternfall, why didn't Brand stab one or more of them instead of stabbing Martin?

Brand knew Random was not protecting Martin so he was free to be used as a handy bottle of Pattern Ereaser fluid if the rumors were true. If however Martin's blood didn't work or wasn't enough Brand would have had to move on to the next but sadly protected child on his list.

3) If alive prior to Patternfall, What were they doing during the war and how come Corwin never mentions them?

Corwin never talked about them because Corwin is annoying snob. The kids would only be someoen to talk about once they have power over Pattern. And with his memory as messed up as it was he forgot about most and didn't really care about the rest.

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