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Author Topic: A few questions  (Read 9592 times)

Yahuda

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A few questions
« on: January 02, 2010, 08:15:56 PM »
Hello, I have a few questions about ADRPG. But before the questions I must say that I'm not good with English. So please answer me with basic English, like my sentences. : )

1) Do shadows contain every possibility? Every? Everything that players imagine? Is there any restriction about that? Does fairies, witches, dragons, death stars, blue police boxes, frogs which can eat Mt.Kolvir,  armies of billions men waiting to attack Amber, viruses which affect everyone except Corwin, etc. exist?

I think my other questions are same with this first question.

2) Can a player (who has pattern imprint) travel from London, to Mars or Tatooine by using pattern power? How much time will it... (err, I couldn't find the verb) Can s/he go to Japan from Spain faster than a plane? Can a player use pattern to go between places in an exact shadow, like this world we live? (Shadow Earth, I mean)

3) Let's say that Corwin shifts shadow and finds a place where he meets with Borwin and Dorwin, who look exactly like Corwin? Can Dorwin and Borwin be stronger than Corwin in all attributes? Can they shift shadow? Can they walk pattern?

4) What about time travel? Can Corwin go to Back to the Future shadow and steal DeLorean to go back in time? Or blue police box in Doctor Who. Or a spell which lets you travel in time.

5) Trump cards allows a player to reach other persons or objects. How big? How much? How many?

6) Can a player get pattern power in late game, without walking the pattern? Or with walking the pattern? (I know, we can "buy" powers but how does this work? Must player walk the pattern after spending points to get the pattern power work?)

7) Is killing an Amberite easy or have I misunderstood some rules? Can I trump-trap anyone to an owen which is 192740912874 celcius hot? Does psyche can block trump-trap? Or sorcery?

8) By the way, why shifting shadow blocks sorcery? I mean, if Corwin walks to a shadow which is the same with previous, except a coin on the ground will this shifting cancels spell?

9) I couldn't understand how Corwin gets Grayswandir. Grayswandir was in Castle Amber. Corwin walks through shadow to get Grayswandir. But the sword was in Amber, the place where shifting shadow is impossible (or really hard) Did he get a copy of Grayswandir? Or did he get Grayswandir?

I think this is a bit 'more' than a few questions. But there is no Amber player that I know here. Actually, I don't think that anyone plays Amber in my country. So I can't play ADRPG (but I'm working on it to play with my friends). So I haven't seen any Amber game.

But I would love to read a game. Where can I find?
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Croaker

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A few questions
« Reply #1 on: January 03, 2010, 09:25:15 AM »
Okay.
First, know that this can vary from GM to GM. I'm only telling you what I perceive to be the most commonly accepted answers.

1) Yes. Yes, yes and yes. The restrictions being
- Some things are less probable than others, and thus harder to find. For exemple, a virus that can kill anyone in Amber save corwin might require centuries of constant Shadow Searching. And since the characters aren't aware of this fact, they could assume it's impossible to find.
- IMO, Pattern "negates" this sometimes, fixing certain things. So anything is possible, so long as it doesn't contradict the rules of reality as set by the pattern. This might be as light or heavy as you like. For exemple, this virus might be efficient in a given shadow, but utterly useless (and even impossible to exist) in Amber.

2) London to tatooine: Yes. Time depends on skill with pattern, psyche, stuff, and the relative "distance" between the 2 shadows, which depends on their similarity: It's faster to go from our earth to Jack Bauer's than to tatooine, for exemple.
Japan to spain: Heavily GM-dependant. I'd say probably no, since shifting shadow would still have him in Japan, and going to a shadow where he's instead in japan, then coming back, might require more time.
Going between places: Sure, but you gotta exit the shadow and go far enough, then come back.

3) Stronger than corwin: Sure. Check n°1. Shift Shadow: Sure: There are creatures able to do it, so no problem here. Walking the Pattern: I'd say no. Unless one of them happens to have Amber blood. In fact, IMO, Pattern "reduces" probabilities to a set number of facts, thus countering the shadow's chaos-based infinity.

4) Mostly no. IMO, it might be possible inside a given shadow, but, outside, time has still passed (You exist the shadow after you entered it), or it is "false" time travel, where you in fact shift shadows (This is my favourite answer).

5) Depends heavily on GM's judgment. I'd use psyche as Strength lifting capacity for this.

6) Getting Pattern without walking it: No. With walking it: Yes, sure! You walk the pattern, and then spend the points/take bad stuff. If you don't, you don't know how to do things, although you might learn. Most GM use Partial Powers to simulate this: You buy shadow walking, curse ability, Hellriding... as separate abilities.

7) Hard. Very hard. But not imposssible. Trump trap: yes you can. But he has to fall into the trap, you can't just wave it at him ;). And a lot of things can block your trump trap, beginning with a simple power word.

8) It doesn't block it. It's just that physical laws vary from Shadow to Shadow. The more diverse, the more so. That's why in Star Wars shadows, there are sounds and explosions in space, and not in Shadow Earth.
So, if a given spell requires water to boil at 100°C, while in another, it boils at 110°C, your spell won't work.
For your shadow exemple, these are sufficiently close that your spell would work without problem.

9) He gets grayswandir. How? What happens if, say, eric was holding or seeing it? Well, I'll pass ;)
 

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A few questions
« Reply #2 on: January 03, 2010, 12:31:42 PM »
Quote from: Yahuda;352764
Hello, I have a few questions about ADRPG. But before the questions I must say that I'm not good with English. So please answer me with basic English, like my sentences. : )

1) Do shadows contain every possibility? Every? Everything that players imagine? Is there any restriction about that? Does fairies, witches, dragons, death stars, blue police boxes, frogs which can eat Mt.Kolvir,  armies of billions men waiting to attack Amber, viruses which affect everyone except Corwin, etc. exist?


Shadow can contain everything that you mentioned; but some of these things might be much harder to find than others.

Quote
I think my other questions are same with this first question.

2) Can a player (who has pattern imprint) travel from London, to Mars or Tatooine by using pattern power? How much time will it... (err, I couldn't find the verb) Can s/he go to Japan from Spain faster than a plane? Can a player use pattern to go between places in an exact shadow, like this world we live? (Shadow Earth, I mean)


Yes, you can use pattern to do any of what you said there. How much time it takes depends on the GM somewhat, but basically the more different the place you are going to is from the place where you start, the longer it takes.
And yes, you can use pattern to travel in one shadow, and if you did so you would go faster that way than if you travelled with normal transportation.

Quote
3) Let's say that Corwin shifts shadow and finds a place where he meets with Borwin and Dorwin, who look exactly like Corwin? Can Dorwin and Borwin be stronger than Corwin in all attributes? Can they shift shadow? Can they walk pattern?


Corwin is a pattern initiate, and has the real blood of amber.
Borwin and Dorwin can look exactly like Corwin, but they are not of the blood of amber, nor are they pattern initiates.
They could not walk the pattern, because they do not have that blood; if they tried they'd be destroyed.
They might be able to shift shadow in other, more inferior ways.

It is probable that they would be much weaker than Corwin in all attributes, but it is theoretically possible that they could be stronger than him too, that would just be very very strange and would probably have a reason behind it.

Quote
4) What about time travel? Can Corwin go to Back to the Future shadow and steal DeLorean to go back in time? Or blue police box in Doctor Who. Or a spell which lets you travel in time.


In my game, anything in shadow which theoretically (through technology or magic) seems to take you "back in time", actually takes you to another shadow that is identical to this shadow but is in an earlier moment.
Other GMs might do it differently.
There is also a possibility of true Powers, like Tir Na Nog, being able to send one back in time in some way or another, for real.

Quote
5) Trump cards allows a player to reach other persons or objects. How big? How much? How many?


How big, or many, would depend on your psyche and endurance. As well as physical realities of space/weight/mass etc, obviously. If you're trying to pull through something really heavy, Strength might also be a factor.

Quote
6) Can a player get pattern power in late game, without walking the pattern? Or with walking the pattern? (I know, we can "buy" powers but how does this work? Must player walk the pattern after spending points to get the pattern power work?)


Yes, in my game at least, the player MUST walk the pattern to gain the Pattern power. Until he does, he can't gain that power, and if he can't currently walk the pattern, then its impossible for him to gain the power by just spending points.

Quote
7) Is killing an Amberite easy or have I misunderstood some rules? Can I trump-trap anyone to an owen which is 192740912874 celcius hot? Does psyche can block trump-trap? Or sorcery?


In theory, it could be pretty easy to kill an Amberite. The real issue with that is the question of the intricate web of social connections that the Amberites have with each other; killing someone else, especially an amberite, should always have social consequences in the game; the most likely one of which should be that the person's allies, friends and family will all now be trying to kill you.
Plus, if you kill someone, they'll never, ever be useful to you again. Amberites put a big value on this statement.

Quote

8) By the way, why shifting shadow blocks sorcery? I mean, if Corwin walks to a shadow which is the same with previous, except a coin on the ground will this shifting cancels spell?


Not necessarily, at least in my game. If a shadow is similar enough to the one the lynchpin was made for, then the spell might still work, or it might work with reduced or unusual effects. Basically, if there's a clump of shadows that are really really similar to each other, the same spell-word might work there; but if you go somewhere very different, the laws of reality are different, so the spell fails.

Quote

9) I couldn't understand how Corwin gets Grayswandir. Grayswandir was in Castle Amber. Corwin walks through shadow to get Grayswandir. But the sword was in Amber, the place where shifting shadow is impossible (or really hard) Did he get a copy of Grayswandir? Or did he get Grayswandir?


Greyswandir is an item Corwin put points into; that is to say, he has a part of himself in that sword. This means that he can essentially "summon" it, find it out in shadow, because its a part of him and ultimately wants to energetically return to him.

Quote

I think this is a bit 'more' than a few questions. But there is no Amber player that I know here. Actually, I don't think that anyone plays Amber in my country. So I can't play ADRPG (but I'm working on it to play with my friends). So I haven't seen any Amber game.


What country do you live in ?

I wish you luck with starting your own Amber game, and welcome to theRPGsite!

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Yahuda

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A few questions
« Reply #3 on: January 03, 2010, 03:07:05 PM »
Thanks a lot for the answers. I live in Turkey. There are a lot frp players but they usually play D&D, WoD, Warhammer, etc. I'm thinking about running a test game in two months.

I'm sorry for the third question, because I think I couldn't ask the question properly. I mean, is it possible to exist a character with all powers and 10000 points of strength, endurance, psyche, warfare in a distant shadow? Is it possible that a player's shadow defeating the player? Are there big dragon armies which can conquer Amber? Are there people who can shift shadow but doesn't have Amber or Chaos blood? As a player, if I say "I want to go to a shadow where the population is full of people who are stronger than any Amberite in any ways, who will obey only me (because of their holy book, legend, etc.)" what would you say as a GM? Is it impossible or is it only hard? If I walk through slow time shadows, it will be quick enough, I think.

4) If we think time travel as shifting shadow, does it mean DeLorean can shift shadow?

Thank you, again, for the answers. You helped me a lot. : )
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Yahuda

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A few questions
« Reply #4 on: January 03, 2010, 03:57:28 PM »
By the way, I must ask something that I forgot before. In Amber none of Amberites trust each other. And they usually are alone. So I think GM often talks to players secretly. Won't this be boring for other players? Won't this extend the game time? What method do you use?
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jibbajibba

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A few questions
« Reply #5 on: January 03, 2010, 05:39:09 PM »
Quote from: Yahuda;352883
Thanks a lot for the answers. I live in Turkey. There are a lot frp players but they usually play D&D, WoD, Warhammer, etc. I'm thinking about running a test game in two months.

I'm sorry for the third question, because I think I couldn't ask the question properly. I mean, is it possible to exist a character with all powers and 10000 points of strength, endurance, psyche, warfare in a distant shadow? Is it possible that a player's shadow defeating the player? Are there big dragon armies which can conquer Amber? Are there people who can shift shadow but doesn't have Amber or Chaos blood? As a player, if I say "I want to go to a shadow where the population is full of people who are stronger than any Amberite in any ways, who will obey only me (because of their holy book, legend, etc.)" what would you say as a GM? Is it impossible or is it only hard? If I walk through slow time shadows, it will be quick enough, I think.

4) If we think time travel as shifting shadow, does it mean DeLorean can shift shadow?

Thank you, again, for the answers. You helped me a lot. : )

There will be things that are much tougher than Amberites but they will be limited to a shadow or range of shadows. I generally say that the more 'points' a thing costs (ie the tougher it is) the more limited the shadows it can work in. Now the game uses a points system that doubles for each rank. so a thing with human strength might be 1 point, Chaos rank is 2, amber 4. To get as good as corwin at Strength might be 8 points to be as good as Gerard, the epitome of Strength might be as many as 32 points. to get something with 10,000 points of strength would probably come in at 256 points or something daft like that that would be for each stat so .... maybe a 1024 point creature to max out all the stats. Now this would 1024 days to shadow walk to on top of all that as I said the chances are that this creature would only have these stats in a very very narrow range of shadows.
Generally no Amberite would bother to find such a creature not just because of the effort involved but also because few Amberites actually go looking for things that they can't control and that might kill them. Adding these facts together the existance or not of such a creature becomes moot.
You could find an army of such obediant creature ready to serve but ... more points and there would have to be a bloody good reason why they would serve you once they meet you and find out their Holy Book made you seem a lot tougher than you are in real life.

As for Shifting shadow as Pundit and Croaker pointed out you may well find a creature with some sort of inferior shadow walking power but The Pattern seems to be the key to moving between shadows (although in the books the ability to move through shadows with Logrus is ill-defined and perhaps not internally consistant) and only the decendants of Dworkin can walk the Pattern.

I can see that an army of dragons might be raised. I had an army of angels attack amber this one time. The limits are really those already outlined. Which are that the tougher something is the more it costs and the narrower the range of shadows it will work in so a dragon that maintained it's powers in Amber would be extra hard to find and the route to get it to Amber would be a long and complex one. Also Amber has plenty of defense that could beat dragons.

4) Time travel is interesting. I think you could find a shadow were time travel worked and there were DeLoreans or Police boxes or Temporal rifts controled by a series of portals or whatever, but time travel would be within that shadow and I think that the flow of time beyond the shadow would be relative to the time traveller not the shadow although it would be fun to play with time lines. I have allowed new powers to be developed that can influece time in my games allowing players to subtly manipulate it can get complex though so a risky endeavour and not for the novice.
Because of this answer I would say a Delorean can not shift shadow but I think you could build a delorean that could shift shadow if you wanted to :)
« Last Edit: January 03, 2010, 05:44:00 PM by jibbajibba »
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A few questions
« Reply #6 on: January 04, 2010, 03:13:46 PM »
Quote from: Yahuda;352883
Thanks a lot for the answers. I live in Turkey. There are a lot frp players but they usually play D&D, WoD, Warhammer, etc. I'm thinking about running a test game in two months.



Wow, Turkey! Between the coffee and the meerschaum pipes I'm envious. Though really, I have good turkish coffee and own a couple of very lovely turkish meerschaum pipes right here...

Quote
I'm sorry for the third question, because I think I couldn't ask the question properly. I mean, is it possible to exist a character with all powers and 10000 points of strength, endurance, psyche, warfare in a distant shadow? Is it possible that a player's shadow defeating the player? Are there big dragon armies which can conquer Amber? Are there people who can shift shadow but doesn't have Amber or Chaos blood? As a player, if I say "I want to go to a shadow where the population is full of people who are stronger than any Amberite in any ways, who will obey only me (because of their holy book, legend, etc.)" what would you say as a GM? Is it impossible or is it only hard? If I walk through slow time shadows, it will be quick enough, I think.

4) If we think time travel as shifting shadow, does it mean DeLorean can shift shadow?

Thank you, again, for the answers. You helped me a lot. : )


Ok, to answer these questions; there is a difference in amber between what is Real, and what is Shadow. Think of it like you would platonic philosophy; that out there, somewhere (in our case, in Amber) there exists THE One True Chair; that Chair is real. Every other chair is a shadow of that perfect chair, a poor copy, a reflection, and more like an after-image.
Now, you can have relatively powerful shadows, but one thing they can't have just-so is any REAL power. Someone with real power might give them real power, but they won't have it just by accident.
So you could go out into shadow and find a shadow where IN THAT SHADOW there was a hero who was 1st ranked in all attributes, and had cheap in-shadow equivalents of the pattern or logrus, that worked only in that weird shadow.  He might be a pretty dangerous person; but he would not be real. And if you do have reality, if you are a Pattern initiate or a Logrus master, you can alter the rules of the world, or take the guy out of that world, or do any number of other things that would cut him off from his power.

There are big dragon armies out in shadow, without a doubt. They might be very tough; and if an amberite or chaosian or even a shadow-person with a good Warfare were to lead them, they might be able to attack amber. But they'd have to get to Amber first. Travelling from one shadow (one universe) to another requires something of REALITY. If they are just shadows and have nothing real to them, they could never reach amber to conquer it.
Now, if you have someone with Pattern, the dragon army could be lead by him toward Amber. That person would have to have a very high level of Warfare, though, to organize that many dragons all travelling through shadow at the same time; or else many of them would get lost in the tricky parts of shadow, die of starvation, start to fight each other, etc.
Also, there would be many shadows where the "rules" of nature in that shadow would say "Dragons can't exist here"; so many of the dragons would fall ill or die, unless the person took a very careful and cautious route around these places.

You can see how leading an army to Amber is harder than it looks.

Anyone who doesn't have amber or Chaos blood can only shift shadow by indirect means or by borrowing something of Real power. What I mean is that they can follow the path of someone who is shifting shadow with pattern. Or they might be able to find and follow a shadow trail, a permanent path between two or three or a few dozen shadows at most that were formed there by constant travel by an Amberite, long ago. They might be able to get an item that has real power in it (points), that lets them follow or or make shadow paths. They might get initiated into the Broken Pattern. Or they may be able to use trumps. All of these things will, at most, give them very limited capacity to travel between shadows, either limited in range or in numbers.

And yes, a time machine would really be a machine that could somehow shift shadow, but only to shadows that were identical to the original shadow only set in different times.

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jibbajibba

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A few questions
« Reply #7 on: January 04, 2010, 04:41:37 PM »
Quote from: RPGPundit;353050

And yes, a time machine would really be a machine that could somehow shift shadow, but only to shadows that were identical to the original shadow only set in different times.



Agree with the rest but not sure about this one I think the timeline is an element of a shadow and I can see shadows where travellign the timeline is possible within that shadow.

Yahuda, you will find out that there are as many opinions on Corner Case rules in amber as there are GMs :)
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Yahuda

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« Reply #8 on: January 04, 2010, 07:43:02 PM »
Quote from: jibbajibba;353059

Yahuda, you will find out that there are as many opinions on Corner Case rules in amber as there are GMs :)


That really doesn't matter, because I have learnt a lot. And I'll learn a lot. : )  The reason behind these questions is I want to be able to answer my players if they ask questions like these.

Quote from: RPGPundit;353050
Ok, to answer these questions; there is a difference in amber between what is Real, and what is Shadow. Think of it like you would platonic philosophy; that out there, somewhere (in our case, in Amber) there exists THE One True Chair; that Chair is real. Every other chair is a shadow of that perfect chair, a poor copy, a reflection, and more like an after-image.
Now, you can have relatively powerful shadows, but one thing they can't have just-so is any REAL power. Someone with real power might give them real power, but they won't have it just by accident.


Thanks, this part helped me understand. I thought that everything I can imagine exist in shadow. But I understand now that imaginations of mine must be adequate to this "reality" law. So, shadows don't contain all the imaginations. They contain adequate ones. (Am I right? )

Quote from: jibbajibba;353059
Agree with the rest but not sure about this one I think the timeline is an element of a shadow and I can see shadows where travellign the timeline is possible within that shadow.

What about shadows that their time works backwards? Like "One Shadow Hour = -2 Amber Hours"

Turkey is a nice country, not great but nice. : )
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A few questions
« Reply #9 on: January 04, 2010, 10:46:13 PM »
Quote from: Yahuda;352892
By the way, I must ask something that I forgot before. In Amber none of Amberites trust each other. And they usually are alone. So I think GM often talks to players secretly. Won't this be boring for other players? Won't this extend the game time? What method do you use?


Well, this sometimes can be a problem. There are two things to keep in mind: first, Amber is not like many other games, there's lots of times when the other players may have nothing to do who are not in a "scene" at that time. So it should be considered allowable for those other players to read/do something else quietly, as long as it doesn't disrupt the play going on.

Second, there are many shorter things that can be resolved by sending notes, instead of taking the GM aside. Remember to encourage players to send notes for private things, and only do private meetings if it can't be resolved with a note.

Finally, if you do notice that one player is taking you aside for something that isn't actually private, that is to say, that it doesn't really matter if the other players hear what's going on, you should ask that player about it, and if they don't really have a good reason why they think it should be private, you should probably make them do it in public. But be careful with this, err on the side of caution, if the Player has a reason that is important to him to keep things private, its better to keep things private.

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A few questions
« Reply #10 on: January 05, 2010, 08:47:54 AM »
Pundit's advice is sound. My players had a friendly, yet "in your face", way to try and keep those private interludes short: they'd just start yelling from the main room "you're hogging the GM" after 5 minutes. And indeed there should be a time limit on those interludes. Scenes where most players can at the very least listen should have priority on private operations.

It is, for me, the biggest problem with Amber DRPG played at a table. If a new version of the game was to see the light some day (keep on dreaming) there should be a chapter addressing it. What would be cool is a survey of GMs from Amber cons to gather what are their perspective on this. I know I wouldn't start a game with more than 4 or 5 players anymore. It just grinds to a halt so often, unless you're sticking the PCs in some shadow where they can't escape, but it can't last forever...

BillionSix

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« Reply #11 on: January 09, 2010, 10:22:35 PM »
Quote from: Yahuda;352764
How much time will it... (err, I couldn't find the verb)


Just if you are curious, we say, "How much time will it take?"

I hope you get a game going. I played Amber years ago, and wish I could play again. :)

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Malleus Aforethought

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« Reply #12 on: February 14, 2010, 12:18:10 AM »
Quote from: Yahuda;352764
Hello, I have a few questions about ADRPG. But before the questions I must say that I'm not good with English. So please answer me with basic English, like my sentences. : )


9) I couldn't understand how Corwin gets Grayswandir. Grayswandir was in Castle Amber. Corwin walks through shadow to get Grayswandir. But the sword was in Amber, the place where shifting shadow is impossible (or really hard) Did he get a copy of Grayswandir? Or did he get Grayswandir?

My answer to this is that Grayswandir is an intrinsic element which defines Corwin, much like Kolvir and Arden are intrinsic elements that define Amber. One cannot arrive at Amber traveling through Shadow without also including Kolvir and Arden. Much the same, Corwin is not complete without Grayswandir, and he can, by exerting his power over Shadow, bring the two parts that define himself together. Actually, anyone with Pattern imprint could conceivably do it, as apparently Random does on the drive to Amber in NPIA. "Did you think it lost forever?" he asks Corwin when he discovers a sword which must be Grayswandir in the back seat of Flora's car. Of course, it's much easier to add that item to Corwin's identity than to remove it through normal Shadow manipulation. Taking it away is much harder.

In game terms, yes, he spent points on it.
« Last Edit: February 14, 2010, 12:18:30 AM by Malleus Aforethought »
 

RPGPundit

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« Reply #13 on: February 16, 2010, 05:56:03 PM »
Wow, that's a pretty esoteric intepretation.

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« Reply #14 on: February 22, 2010, 10:21:03 AM »
But I like it. Moreso, IIRC, it echoes the ADRPG description of paid items as "parts of your personnal reality"