Hello all,

I am brand new on these forums so hopefully it is the right place to post this, let me know if I am mistaking here

Long story short, I am preparing an Amber Chronicle and my players not being big fans of the diceless system, they like the sound of dice in the early morning, so I have worked on a marvel Heroic RPG Hack for my campaign.

The first draft is now ready and therefore I wanted to submit it to your knowledgeable eyes for feedback, critics and more if affinity

You can find the pdf version on Scribd
http://fr.scribd.com/doc/230985651/Amber-Heroic-Roleplaying-Game-Hack

Thanks, looking forward to read any comments!

Full discolsure: I'm entirely biased towards the Diceless rules as written - or at least with minor deviation. That being said, I'm not sure the MWP Marvel Superheroes Cortex and Roger Zelazny's Amber are a very good fit.

//Panjumanju

I'd like to look at it, but SCRIBD hates me and I can't get to it.

@Panjumanju

I am a big fan of the diceless myself but some of my players are very allergical to the approach, unfortunately.

Regarding rulesets, I looked at several systems, Fate being one of them, but I found out that Cortex + in the light approach taken by Marvel heroic RPG was working very well, at least on paper.

Amber characters are almost Gods and the power set approach from Marvel RPG kind of fits for the definition of Amber powers. I also like the pool system and Plot point one in regard of the relation to shadow and inherent capacity to mold it for a Pattern or Logrus initiate as a part of the game system itself.

@finarvyn

I have also put the files here - http://dl.free.fr/rJx9JlOxv
hopefully it does work better for you

Cheers

The Amber Diceless system by Erick Wujcik has been, perhaps rightly, criticised for not emulating the source material well enough, but one thing it does do well, in my opinion, is dividing characters into more-or-less agreeable Attributes for comparison – Strength, Endurance, et al. These are circumstances that come up for just about every character Zelazny writes about.

The strength of Margaret Weiss Production's Marvel Heroic Roleplaying engine, in my opinion, is that it does not have standardised Statistics or Attributes, and instead it prioritises only what is remarkable about the character. In my opinion when MWP put out sourcebooks where every superhero written in it had enhanced reflexes and enhanced endurance, the whole thing crumbled from trying to impose an after-the-fact statistic system, which just didn't suit the system.

Zelazny's characters have more similarities (between their heritage, goals and circumstance) than differences, and MHR is really only good for differences.

That's why I don't think it's a good fit.

Maybe if you take more Cortex+ elements from Smallville it could evoke more content. I'm not sure. I've heard of lots of Fate games using Amber, too. You have a lot of Fate terms in there, I see, but not being familiar with that system I couldn't point out its influence.

Good luck!

//Panjumanju

Very interesting elements, thanks for feeding the discussion this is exactly what I was looking for in order to iterate on the hack 1st draft.

I am not a specialist of the Marvel Heroic RPG to the point where I can really comment on that part but I do agree with you regarding the Diceless one.

I guess I totally forgot to add some kind of "design direction" to my initial post in order to position the hack better. let's do this very quickly

1. Goal was to find a Game system involving dice but as light as possible to do not end-up too far away from the original diceless
2. Idea was to get away from the traditional attributes in order to reintroduce them differently in a sort of comparative approach like the diceless does as no system I found really manage the idea of I am the best at... as well as the diceless does
3. Last kind of directive was to find a game system where the notion of Shadow manipulation could be integrated into the game system itself

So long story short, to adress some of your points:

1. Affiliations from Marvel system have been replaced by attributes called Finesse, Power and Resistance. Basically, all of them are important, they will be used in pretty much any roll and define some interesting criteria, partially psychological, for your character
2. Distinctions remain pretty much the same, only adding 1 that is called Son of and relates to your family bonds
2. Power Sets are called Heritage Sets and are closed, meaning you can't really create new ones, you use what powers are described in the diceless with few modifications coming from some fate Hacks. So you will find Pattern imprint, etc...
3. By default each character as an Heritage Set called Blood of (order, chaos or unknown heritage). 5 Power traits define those heritages and cover enhanced strength, stamina, Psyche, senses and reflexes. In addition, they give a SFX called inhabitant of a true realm wich provide an advantage on Shadow interactions and a limit like sensitivity to the Pattern for Blood of Chaos. I believe that all this together allow the same result you have in the diceless and the idea that characters are "all the same" but they are better at different things with the same sort of granularity if it makes sense.

Cheers!

In a similar gaming area, have you considered looking at Fate?  My understanding is that some of the earlier editions were specifically written to run Amber games in Fudge.

Yes I have, I actually used few elements from the Fate adaptation to Amber like Blood of Order that were brilliant ideas I think.

So fate was the first system I looked into and I realized after reading Marvel Heroic RPG that Cortex + in this very light approach is actually extremely similar to Fate. Main differences are the use of a Doom Pool (I actually call it Fate Pool in the Hack for Amber), the step concept in a way and the dice in the end.

Main reason why I have looked into Cortex + vs Fate is that Fate dice are very special and some of my players being old school veteran just don't like them. I thought about using D6 instead but then it is me who is not a big fan of D6 systems. Additionally, I really like the step mechanic as used in Cortex + as it allows a very interesting granularity I think and solve the issue of representing the superiority of someone from Amber or Chaos when you interact with Shadow but also the interaction between Amber and Chaos.

Quote from: robiswrong;761630In a similar gaming area, have you considered looking at Fate?  My understanding is that some of the earlier editions were specifically written to run Amber games in Fudge.

What I heard was that FUDGE came out of being an Amber Diceless hack where the designer wanted to reintroduce dice. It grew from there.

Quote from: Lord3joke;761634Main reason why I have looked into Cortex + vs Fate is that Fate dice are very special and some of my players being old school veteran just don't like them.

There's no reason why you couldn't keep the dice stepping. That's an easy thing to add in.

//Panjumanju

Yup this is correct, it is how fudge was initiated

Indeed you can easily implement the step-up mechanism to Fate but then except the dices and the use of the pool, differences between the latest version of Fate and Cortex + light are basically none except the dices being used and therefore the success probabilities I think.

Quote from: Lord3joke;761260@finarvyn

I have also put the files here - http://dl.free.fr/rJx9JlOxv
hopefully it does work better for you

Well, I can't read French and it was a puzzle at first to figure out how to get the file, but I finally got there. Reading now.

Sorry for that, this hack was worked on under the Corwyn's pattern influence, very Early XXth century Paris style