A Shadow world campaign

[Jarrod Stanek]

My wife and I are about to begin a new Amber campaign. We will take turns GMing, with the GM's character being run as an NPC while they GM and as a PC when they are the player. So, we are thinking of doing something a little different and I was wondering if anybody else had ever done this and had any advice to offer.

We are going to run a "Shadow Person" campaign that takes place in a single Shadow (more or less), during the Black Road War. The characters are both from the same Shadow world and possibly both belong to the same organization/secret society. The world will probably be something similar to 7th Sea, where it's pseudo-historical Europe of the 17th century but with magic and monsters thrown in. The Shadow world gets invaded by the Black Road, similar to what happens to Avalon in Corwin's novels and the focus of the campaign is going to be fighting the forces of Chaos and protecting the Shadow world.

So, I'm just wondering if anybody has ever run a game similar to this and has any advice to offer. Specifically, here's a list of things we are brainstorming.

1. So we don't have to greatly restrict the characters to Human and Chaos level attributes, we are going to implement the "Icon rule," which is simply that this world produces are large number of iconic hero and villain types who are just better than the average Joe. They have access to Amber+ attributes and more powers. I'm kind of taking the idea from Planet Fiction, from Lords of Gossamer & Shadow.

2. We're going to ignore all of the rules presented in Shadow Knight (constructs; demon creation; and 8 & 16 point qualities for artifacts and creatures). They don't feel appropriate for non-Amber/Chaos level characters, plus they're kind of a pain and we don't want to deal with them.

3. Personal Shadows are also off limits because the focus should be on protecting the Shadow world they live on. On the other hand, might it be nice for a spellcaster to have a "mini-realm" safe haven to memorize spells in? Maybe something like Verse Arcanum from Lords of Gossamer & Shadow, where the Personal Shadow rules only applied to the character's own wizard tower? That could potentially lead to multiple "mini-realms" in this single Shadow world, and I'm not sure we want to go there.

4. New powers. Hoo boy, this could be a slippery slope. Obviously Pattern and Logrus are not available, so it might be nice to include some new, minor powers to have more options for characters. Broken Pattern could of course be an option. "Borrowing" from Lords of Olympus and Lords of Gossamer & Shadow, we could include any of the following powers.
•   Aetheric Projection (astral projection)
•   Blessings & Curses (usually part of Pattern but since it's not available...)
•   Elementalism (spells based on the 4 classic elements)
•   Empathy (mental powers)
•   Glamour (illusion magic)
•   Immortality (non-aging; this might be nice for characters that want to have more than 30ish years of experience)
•   Invocation (magic based on True Names)
•   Scrying (magical observation)

5. Sorcery.  We've never been completely happy with the Sorcery rules and I had an idea. Why aren't new spells purchased like Power Words are? For 15 points, you can create and learn an infinite number of spells. This has always seemed unbalanced to me. Yes, sorcery isn't a match for Pattern but well-designed spells can really throw a monkey wrench into your story. I was thinking that for the initial 15 points, you get all of the basic spells from the book, but each new spell you want to learn costs an additional 2 point.

Any thoughts or advice in general, or specifically about any of the above points would be greatly appreciated.

[finarvyn]

5. Sorcery.  We've never been completely happy with the Sorcery rules and I had an idea. Why aren't new spells purchased like Power Words are? For 15 points, you can create and learn an infinite number of spells. This has always seemed unbalanced to me. Yes, sorcery isn't a match for Pattern but well-designed spells can really throw a monkey wrench into your story. I was thinking that for the initial 15 points, you get all of the basic spells from the book, but each new spell you want to learn costs an additional 2 point.

This is a really neat idea, and I'm surprised that it hadn't occurred to me to have characters buy individual spells at a standard cost in order to build a list.

When I ran my Dresden Diceless campaign I broke spells into chunks (I think I got this idea from MERP and their spell lists) such as Veil and Shield and Firebolt and Scrying. Characters could buy these spell chunks sort of like mini-powers so, for example, putting 2 points into Veil provided some hiding from scrying but putting 6 points into Veil provided a lot more. Firebolt dealt more damage at higher points, and Shield blocked more damage at higher points. So my number of "spells" is small, but that seemed to mirror what I read in the books.

Going back to your spell list cost idea, one way to do this could be to use a D&D spell list as a guide. Perhaps cantrips could cost 1 point, level 1 spells 2 points, and so on until level 9 spells were 10 points. That way a wizard would have a lot of choice as to which spells were around to pick from, but I suspect the total cost of these spells would be big in a hurry.

[Headless]

I really like the way magic works in MERP, the spell lists feel organic to me.

A different way to go would be to leave sorcery the same but not allow racked spells.  And if the caster has less than Amber psyche and endurance they would only be able to cast one or two spells a week.  It might bot be what you are looking for but it is the smallest change to the rules as written.

[RTrimmer]

A different approach: http://ralf.org/~colomon/amber/bog.html

[Jarrod Stanek]

Sorry, I haven't responded to your suggestions. Work takes it out of me and I don't feel like doing squat at night. Lol. Thanks to everyone for your feedback and ideas.

We decided to switch the Shadow world from a swashbuckling type world to a steampunk Victorian type world. My wife reads lots of steampunk books, so that will be an easier setting for her to run when she GM's (which she's never done before).

1. We're building our characters on 75 points, with no restrictions on Attributes or powers. That's a result of looking at characters like Jasra, who seem decently powerful, even though she's a shadow person. Sticking with the "iconic characters" idea, and saying that some people in this Shadow are just larger than life, more powerful, and fit into archetypal roles ("the Great Detective," etc.)

2. No Personal Shadows of any kind.

3. Decided to go for it with the new powers I listed before. Dropped Immortality to 5 Points (it costs 10 in Lords of Olympus) and dropped Power Words to 5 Points. That's how much Cantrips are in Lords of Gossamer & Shadow, and it just seemed like a more correct cost. I usually skip Power Words because I find them too expensive, but with the price reduction, I felt they were finally worth getting.

4. Decided to leave Sorcery as is. We just didn't have the time or inclination to do the extra work involved to make changes. Especially since that would mean every NPC with Sorcery would potentially take longer, since you'd have to figure out what spells they knew beyond the basic 15 and do extra math. So in the end, laziness won out.

My wife's character is Kalani, the daughter of a trickster god from Eastern Europa. She's mischievous and was raised by monks, unaware of her heritage. As an adult, she joined the Van Helsing Institute, which is a group of monster hunters that operate all over Bretonnia. A recent assignment brought her to Arcadia (London). She's Immortal, has Shape Shifting, Glamour, and a couple of artifacts.

My character is Date Sinclair, a Broken Pattern Initiate who has settled in this world and "gone native." He's a scoundrel and an occult detective. He's equal parts Han Solo and Harry Dresden. Besides Broken Pattern, he has Conjuration, Sorcery, and a handful of Conjured Artifacts.

These two should get along quite well and get into all kinds of trouble I will update after we start. Our first game is actually tomorrow and I'm up first as the GM.