New and Creative Ways of Making Amber PCs suffer

[RPGPundit]

In a previous game I ran, a female noble PC fled her home city rather than be forced into an arranged marriage with a noble from another rival house, who would undoubtedly be twice her size and three times her age.  She left the city in a merchant wagon.  Right at the same time she was about to leave, another nobleman NPC showed up and bought the whole wagon for his own purposes.  He was obnoxious, full of his own self importance, hot-headed, and a master swordsman.  In other words, exactly like the PC.  Obviously, they hated each other from day one.

Later on they received word that their city had descended into total disorder and civil war.  Both houses had accused the other of disposing with one of their heirs and shipping their own heir to somewhere else to hide the fact.  It was a complete mess and thousands had already died.

At this point it came out that the man the PC was supposed to marry was none other than her coutnerpart and chief rival.  The look on the player's face was a mix of shock, disgust, outrage, and shame that I will never forget.  

This was not in an Amber game, but it could work just as well.  Random arranges the marriage with another nation in the interest of the Crown, especially for a character that truly values her own freedom, and you can get some massive trouble caused.

Brilliant. And yes, I've done the arranged marriage thing, a couple of times. Most recently in my current campaign, where Aunt Fiona took advantage of Diana's dad's (Bleys') absence to arrange a marriage between Diana and a lord of Chaos.  

Diana was not very keen on the idea, but it all fell apart later anyways, when Fiona's allegiances in chaos shifted from Jesby to Sawall and when Diana herself disappeared for a rather lengthy spell of time.

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[RPGPundit]

I have played Amber and love it.  It's the Holy Grail of Roleplaying Games as far as most of my group is concerned.  I may be running an Amber game after we finish with our current experiment, if the players are up to the challenge.

If I didn't say it before, Welcome to theRPGsite!

RPGPundit

[scottishstorm]

Some nice advice here.

In a long-ago Amber game I ran, one of the PCs needed to find Corwin for some reason, and went about things kinda haphazardly.  Her search led her to a walled city supposedly containing Corwin as its leader or head general (it was, in actually, a shadow of Corwin and the npc was ultimately of little use to the character in question).

The Corwin-seeking character was met at the city gates by a friendly-but-adamant lieutenant, explaining that the city was currently barred to visitors.  The lieutenant assured this character that a message could be passed to Lord Corwin and the character was welcome to make camp outside the city walls and wait if she so-wished.  ---  Long story short, the player-character ended up killing this lieutenant and entered the city without waiting.  While the character was within the city, seeking "Corwin", I had her run into a lost little gil, looking for her daddy... that same lieutenant just recently murdered by the player-character.

[RPGPundit]

Some nice advice here.

In a long-ago Amber game I ran, one of the PCs needed to find Corwin for some reason, and went about things kinda haphazardly.  Her search led her to a walled city supposedly containing Corwin as its leader or head general (it was, in actually, a shadow of Corwin and the npc was ultimately of little use to the character in question).

The Corwin-seeking character was met at the city gates by a friendly-but-adamant lieutenant, explaining that the city was currently barred to visitors.  The lieutenant assured this character that a message could be passed to Lord Corwin and the character was welcome to make camp outside the city walls and wait if she so-wished.  ---  Long story short, the player-character ended up killing this lieutenant and entered the city without waiting.  While the character was within the city, seeking "Corwin", I had her run into a lost little gil, looking for her daddy... that same lieutenant just recently murdered by the player-character.

Heh. Very clever. It only works of course if the player in question has a strong sense of culpability.

Curiously, your setup situation (a city with a ruler who was a shadow of an Amberite the PC was looking for) is something that happened just now in my campaign, only the shadow was of Caine (the city was a pirate city). The dude that encountered him was the real Caine's son, after Caine had been killed, convinced that Caine was still alive.

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[scottishstorm]

Well, I got a very satisfying "You, bastard!" from the player in question.

Caine...  possibly my least favourite elder.  I may owe this dislike of Caine by how easily he was supposedly killed in the second series of novels.  It left me with a bad taste in my mouth.

[RPGPundit]

Well, hence the fact that Caine is the most-frequent "not really dead" dead-Amberite around. His death was just too fast and convenient.

RPGPundit

[scottishstorm]

Well, hence the fact that Caine is the most-frequent "not really dead" dead-Amberite around. His death was just too fast and convenient.

RPGPundit

Well, that's the thing, isn't it.

Either a) Luke killed Caine far too easily, fast and conveniently, or b) Caine yet again faked his death.  In respect to 'b', once is kinda cool, but it gets old.  But 'a' just doesn't seen right. . .

IMO, the idea -and ideal- of Caine is damaged by a claim to fame of "playing dead."  There's something lackluster about it and a little pathetic.

[RPGPundit]

Well, on the other hand, if he has a good cause for it, as he did the first time, I'd say it makes Caine all the more awesome, because when he dies the second time, naturally everyone initially suspects that he might actually be alive; only to have him show up and save the day yet again, just at the point that everyone was finally convinced that he was dead for real that time.

Its like the ultimate psych-out.

RPGPundit

[Gothic_Pepsi]

ive tried caines trick before on a player i was playing, and still currently am it was right at the start of the caimpaign, noone trusted me enough to let me know their plans, so i found a shadow version of myself, made myself look completley different and shot myself out of a window in castle amber infront of an elder. i did it all in private so everyone thought that character was dead and thought i re-rolled, when really i was just learning their plans etc. i then went and screwed them all up and had a huge laugh.