My kids like Amber. I am reading it again and giving them little synopses. Sort of a tradition (teen age boys).
So I was pitching the idea of Amber Diceless. (!) The response... "no dice? Hmmmm?"
Anyway, it pushed me to search, so I uncovered FATE, GURPS, and many other diced versions out there from varied hackers. Then I happened upon the game Never Tell Me the Odds. It's a free (well, PWYW) book at DriveThru.
Quite interesting is the mechanic. You set up your characters such that six traits are arranged in slots, with two as High Values, two at Medium Values, and two at Low Values. This has the inklings of a ranking system, so it could be doable.
Next, should a character be trying a risk of some sort, the mechanic works like this: roll a die (well, any die works, just as long as you have an equal number of even and odd, so a d7 is out, I'm looking at you DCC).
Okay, here's where it is interesting. You look at the risk level and decide how to approach the situation. You might, perhaps, be facing a medium risk, so you could deploy (in a narratively appropriate way) a medium value, matching the risk. You might rely on a high value, and then you'd be "going over." Or, you could decide to deal with the situation with a low value, and this would be "going under."
The results pattern is attractive for what I'd like to do with Amber... I'd tweak it some, but it's like this:
Go Over: roll even = Succeed, roll odd = Succeed + Endanger
Match: roll even = Succeed, roll odd = Fail + Endanger
Go Under: roll even = Succeed + Endanger, roll odd = Fail + Lose
So, what is your result? It's scaled with the mixing:
Succeed: you overcome obstacle, etc.
Fail: you still face the obstacle, etc.
Endanger: you must lose "life or factor" (so, in this game each of your values has "2 hit points" basically, and you must check one of these when endangered; it's like losing a bunch of Endurance in AD, etc.)
Lose: death, removal from scene, destroyed, far out of reach etc.
I am thinking it could prove interesting, say, by using the six slots idea, maybe adding possessions and relationships to the STR, END, PSY, WAR traits, or something like it.
Then, perhaps thinking of risk levels as related to how far apart rankings are, so that someone who ranks like the "medium value" who is up against an obstacle/foe within some sort of range, well, that could be a way to decide when to roll like this games does it. (Though, really far apart in the schema, and, no roll, especially when it's obvious how to proceed).
I have to chew on it more. I like that it is "scaling" in a general way, so that it could avoid the hard-numbers in the FATE ladder (though there are fine tweaks for that, yes).
Any thoughts.