:: Zelazny :: [polish] :: sparks that fly from the ironsmith's hammer ::
::. Friday, June 21 .::
Game Weekly Idea Sharing HegemonyNothing like starting with a complex one, but WISHes do usually come in three's, don't they?
Game WISH 1: successful NPCs Describe three NPCs (not major villains) that you really liked and what they added to the game. The NPCs can be from any game you've been in as a player or GM, and any system or genre.
Orcus - don't cringe...this NPC character convinced me that being a GM could be a life-altering experience. For those of you who don't know the reference, Orcus was a ram-headed bloated-satyr demon 'Prince of the Dead' offered as an NPC in one of the original supplements to the original Dungeons&Dragons tiny white-box set.
Yes, back when Mr. Lincoln was President.
Anyhow, no one could imagine Orcus on the page and compare it to Orcus as played by my old friend and GM mentor, Bill. Think panache, bluster, and Shakespearean pomposity with a veneer of oily charm. This Orcus was no villain at all, he was a larger-than-life entrepreneur in a demonic realm of "sharks" and twisted lords. More importantly, though Orcus would never admit it, he always had a twinkle in his eye for his own posturing and wiley plans. He had the body language of angry jello. He chuckled at his own jokes, did a terrible "wide-eyed innocent" look, and made a point of offering up "opportunities" to fight evil to our loose group of heroes.
Orcus was hated and feared by everyone who didn't know him. My character fell in love with the guy. You cannot believe how embarrassing that was, for my character, and for me.
Droppa Ma Pantz - retired by King Random (whose appreciation of slapstick is not terribly deep), Droppa is an old, old man in my Eternal City. He worked for King Oberon for centuries, perfecting the ability to get the old tyrant to forget about serious issues for a few minutes at a time. Now he's a bit of a recluse, largely forgotten by most of the court's nobles and the city's inhabitants. Droppa was a peculiarity of Oberon's, one of those quirks never explained (like Dworkin or Harla).
Among other things, Droppa was Princess Fiona's first lover.
That's not Droppa's claim to fame, it is merely a footnote on a rich life that saw many secrets and revolved around King Oberon, one of the most significant figures the universe may ever see. I guess I like Droppa for several reasons. As a storyteller, I'm intrigued by his ability to make Oberon laugh, and to keep the King's secrets. As a GM, I marvel at the richness of Amber, where every character might have a story that is strewn with little gems. As the player of Droppa, I am one of the few links to the Great Man himself. The past still lives through Droppa. He embodies some of the mystery and potential of the castle staff and the "familiars" of the Family.
And he's quite closed-mouthed about it all. He's still a professional. He still makes people laugh.
Tatasha, High Mother of the Weir - Eternal City again. Just after Eric crowned himself in the PatternFall War, he learned that Tatasha was pregnant with his child. Eric sent her away before the boy was born, to keep her safe and out of the dark business of saving Amber from the forces arrayed against it. He was thinking about his dynasty.
Tatasha is a fun NPC for a number of reasons. The secrecy which Eric maintained kept her out of the Eternal City story (in fact, the son, Evander, grew up to become a threat to Random much later). Yet, Tatasha is proof that opposites attract. She is nothing like Eric. She is fiercely the Weir of which all others are but shadows. She is bloodthirsty, honest, friendly, and opinionated in ways that rub in Amber. She is earthy and quite bold about her approach to everyone. She likes people. Tatasha is an NPC that everyone has an opinion about because she forces you to think about her even if she isn't around.
Most folks are somewhat shocked by her, but end up liking her. She just doesn't fit in Court Society, and there is much amused speculation as to what Eric would have eventually done with her. Tatasha doesn't say, but she liked the guy.
I think the added value to the game from all three of my NPC examples is the way these characters changed my view of other characters in the games, including my thinking about my own Character. You just never know which NPC will 'click' that way.
My thanks to Ginger for hosting Game WISH central. (tough one: there were hundreds of names spinning in my head, these just slammed out first)
Epoch pares ideas down so you can really see them in your head. There is something wonderful about clean prose presented like this:
Random Reminiscences: When you look at game mechanics from the perspective of their ability not to rate the power of characters, but to differentiate their competence in a way that allows the players the most options possible, a lot of game design suddenly falls into place.
Knave's Tale coincidentally has player's perspective on sex and gaming. And Beyond the Mists picked up the meme as well. Can't call it a coincidence now, three times is enemy action. :)
Gaming Erotica --inspired by a comment from Meera on Ginger's blog-- (note the blanking text trick here is so you have to make a choice to highlight said text)
I've seldom run a game that didn't have sex in it. From the earliest D&D games, to my more recent Amber, the Eternal City game, there have always been people, there has always been gender, children, romance and sex.
In my last Argent Rose game at Ambercon North, there was a notable comic moment when the fire-breathing goat begged for a kiss from Clara Bow! It quite cracked the players up.
Characters in my games have had chances for courting, dating, no-strings-attached sex, and long deep relationships that do not always run smooth. What has this to do with gaming and Amber?
You're kidding, right?
Those princes and princesses of Amber are hot. I mean, really, they are the charismatic legends of which all others are but shadows. One of the reasons I immediately loved the cast pages of House of Cards is that Ginger roved all of time and space in her selections of cast. She didn't pick faces that are just popular now, she grabbed legendary faces, quirky and interesting faces. The cast isn't about box office, it's about personality and magnetism that makes your mouth water. That's completely appropriate to the source material.
In the Empire of the Gleaming Banner game at Ambercon US, the Villain of the piece actually delayed his attack on the Imperial Palace at one point because Jubilation suggested a dinner date for the evening. Make no mistake, it was about sex appeal, and Jubilee knew it. He attacked at dawn. No, the palace, you naughty reader.
And aren't the Characters aware of all this? Damn straight! You think the princesses don't check out their relations? You think the princes aren't aware that their sisters and aunts are the most desirable women in the universe? Not a chance.
Immortality also gives different perspectives to age and eros.
The canon examples are Merlin, Rinaldo, and Coral, of course. Coral is their aunt, and Merlin is likely two or three times as old as Coral. None of this stops Merlin from boffing Coral, or Rinaldo from marrying Coral. Oberon is dead at this time and can't make his wishes known.
No, I'm not going to guess about Deirdre and Corwin and Eric. I will say that some of the best fiction on the net that I've seen was from Meera, and it dealt with Bleys, Fiona, and Brand in a deep and physical relationship that really worked.
And marriage. Relationships of two, mated for eternity, how would they work for the Family? No one in the canon seems moved to try this but Oberon. I think there are several good reasons for this.
1. Oberon made a deliberate decision to increase the strength of his realm.
2. His children did not feel moved to do so (or as in my campaign, did not know enough about the special conditions of reproduction to build their own dynasties.)
3. If you have your choice of all shadow for your bed, do you settle down to one person?
4. How long does it take before you realize that investing in one person might give you "returns on your investment" that all of shadow doesn't offer? And by then, are you too old, too worldy, too empowered to really find a "match" that can hold a candle to you?
5. Oberon said, "No sibling love."
6. Are you going to "settle" for the love of someone who is "less real" than you are? (Not judging here, just repeating the "family wisdom")
I think the above elements put the kids of Oberon in a heck of a fix as far as erotic play goes. It's not quite a lose-win-lose situation, but it might be depending on what sort of experiences the kids have knocking around shadow.
IMC, there was a backstory of a high-strength, high-passioned young Elder who accidentally broke their lover's neck during heated lovemaking. Snap, dead. No, I am not a diabolical bastard...but it's like the fact that the Pattern kills you if you do it wrong, somebody finds these things out the hard way. Well, maybe I am a bastard.
Still, IMC, the younger generation of cousins have even tried the "marriage game". And in the Eternal City, it is much more obvious that some Elders do/did have long term relationships that they kept hidden. Sometimes in plain sight.
Jonathon Delacour: At play on the bridge of dreams This is simply marvellous: by playing games we become aware of our deepest strengths and weaknesses, we embrace the disowned parts of our psyche, we allow ourselves to practice potentially risky strategies before integrating them into our "real-life" behaviour.
Personal experience says, "Yes!" I'm a better man than I was before gaming, and it would be hard to say gaming had nothing to do with that. I've felt consequences and tested roles that I would never have tried...
At ACNW 2001, I had a conversation in which someone relayed the following anecdote:
Two PC's were arguing. They were approximately two meters apart. One PC had first ranked Warfare. The other had low-ranked Warfare (I want to say "sixth," but I could be misremembering), and Sorcery. The PC's arrived upon a simultaneous desire to murder one another. The Warfare guy wanted to draw his sword and kill the Sorceror. The Sorceror wanted to fry the Warfare guy with a spell, which was hung but not specifically tailored to be no-lynchpins or whatever.
The Sorcery guy's action went off first and he won the fight.
Now, we were all bitching about that, and then someone said, "Well, I think it depends on how much Sorcery the person had. I mean, if he had as much Sorcery as the Warfare guy had Warfare, then he should've won."
That's where a lot of people's analysis ends, and I think that your article suggests a similar analysis. Let me scream, "No!"
No indeed. There are so many things to consider here, both ingenuity and mechanics. But let's make the example as tough as possible in order to see how the system handles it.
Adam is the best in Warfare; he has a 50, his Endurance and Strength are 15, his Psyche is 10 and he has some ability with Pattern 25. A con character of 115 pts.
Sparky is the Sorceror. He has Sorcery 15, Psyche 35, Strength and Endurance of 0, a Warfare of 5 (he wants to hit things with his spells), and good Pattern at 50. He has ten points in Items, including a rack for his spells. Another con character of 115 pts.
These two decide to kill each other, plain and simple. Let's say, very artificially, that they both reach this conclusion at exactly the same moment, and scream it out to the GM. As a GM, I'd ask a lot of questions of these two players before the shit actually hit the fan (a frozen moment of game info), but we can't do that in our example, so I'll just muddle through and answer questions from the audience later. OK?
In the above example: Who dies?
Easy answer: the Sorceror is toast.
Why?
Psyche opportunity comes before Warfare opportunity. So Sparky unlimbers his spell from his Psyche rack, pronouncing two words to kickoff the lynchpins (source::Adam). The words are Strength actions, having to do with the body, but the GM does not penalize Sparky with a slower second action, just notes Sparky's speed of Strength. Strength opportunity is still faster than Warfare opportunity so the words start before Adam draws steel.
And Adam cuts the bugger's throat, silencing the second word. The spell never fires. Sparky had first choice and even started his action first, but didn't have the raw speed to beat Adam.
But there are situations where Sparky might have beaten Adam. I'll leave those to your imagination. Rule of thumb: never challenge a Warfare guy in close quarters.
In detail:
A Warfare 50 is in conflict with a Psyche 35 + Strength 0 + some deadly spell of Sorcery 15. (Let us not consider right now whether there is such a thing as an "instant-death-to-immortal spell" for 15 points, it would be a hard sell in my campaign, just as a pistol shot rarely kills with a single wound.)
Nothing suggests that the Sorcery 15 is adding capability to the Psyche 35, for the Sorceror wants a killing physical strike, not some intangible mental benefit.
Initiative actions are simultaneous, with speed applied to every Attribute used in the conflict. Even given the Psyche opportunity starts first, the physical speed of Sparky is no where near the Warfare character. Even if Sparky had a Strength of 20, the GM does not add his Psyche 35 to that because he's used Psyche in the same moment to activate the spell. This is a Psyche action at speed 35 channeled by Strength.
There is no contest really.
Change it around, say that Sparky is across the room, or that Sparky is behind a chair, or that Sparky is wearing an item that "protects him from harm", and it still comes out the same. Note that "protection from harm" does not stop Adam fouling Sparky's mouthed words with a blade thrust.
If Adam's player knows what he's doing, Sparky is toast.
Sparky doesn't have a high enough Attribute to go toe-to-toe with Adam. He needs to find a way to get Adam by surprise, or when Adam has already commited to a move and Sparky has held his action for last.
When I read the rules, the above order and effect is what I imagine.
ps. Yes, I've been in con games where the GM announced 75% of the way through the game that "now that combat had started, each player will take turns in order of Warfare." This means that Strength guys never get an action, that Psyche guys might as well run away from a fight. I don't do it that way.
In my version, higher Attributes face off against each other. With faster ones having first chance, but not last word. If Sparky had Psyche 55, then he would have zapped Adam.
But then again, in my campaign, burnt and crisped Adam still would have gotten a reply to that attack because few spells can kill someone of Endurance 15 instantly. Endurance 15 is a good counter to Sorcery 15 (without entertaining a lot of environ and tactical questions).
Through a glass, darkly tosses out a challenge question: What about a Power that directly increases an Attribute or otherwise works to change normal Attribute use?
Yes. My "attributes as powers" system supports a two-way approach. In fact (spoiler alert), in the Empire of the Gleaming Banner, it is exactly how some of the powers work. The Gleaming influences abilities you already have, such as Strength, or Psyche. The Mockery (a secret power that is not even noted on my web pages) works to defeat the perceptive abilities of every Attribute-- playing false with information the GM is handing to the Characters.
So the logic holds.
It also helps with a quick answer to a question such as:
What about a spell that makes me faster than Benedict?
Look at the logic. Sorcery is 15 pts of power. So if you have 15 points of Warfare, and you add some ingenious spell of speed for another 15 pts of power, you now have (you don't really) 30 pts of Warfare. Is that enough? Most GMs can tell you very quickly if it is by comparison of points. But if the player turns around and says, "No wait, you misunderstand, I'm sure that somewhere in the infinite universe there is a spell that makes me move 10 times faster than a normal man. That's the spell I want. I can kick anybody's ass with that."
Sorry. The real answer is an infinite universe doesn't mean infinite solutions, or infinite imagination. Sorcery can only create affects that are worth about 15 pts in the real universe. So it's darn likely you will never find a spell that makes you 10 times faster than Benedict in a warfare contest. Or if it appears that you become 10 times faster than Ben, you can be sure that there is some price that you have to be willing to pay in the short or long term. The balance has to come from somewhere.
Back to you, Himmaggery.
(update: some refined phrases here and there)
Based on a comment from Jvstin, I'd make these additions to 'Common Chaos Shaping' and the Logrus:
Common Chaos Shaping
1. You have one extra form for every rank of endurance. Human Endurance would give you one extra form. Chaos Endurance would give you two extra forms. These forms are detailed to the GM at game start.
2. You change forms based on speed of your Strength, this means that Endurance and Psyche actions are faster than form changes, but Warfare is not.
3. You may leave one form "slot" as "un-fixed form" for every 4 effective ranks of Psyche. Amber Psyche would allow one "flex" slot. An "unfixed form" is a slower change, since you are not moving to a 'base form', you are improvising upon it. Note also the "unfixed form" means you can tweak some base form, which you choose. So, for example, a human form could be "unfixed form" and various small tweaks of the human form are then possible.
4. Logrus initiation requires at least Common Chaos Shaping or some equal or greater variant. Odds of passing the initiation with only Common Shaping are somewhat reduced (based on statistics).
5. GMs may wish to note that base forms are often defined at an early age, before Logrus initiation, but in some cases, learned base forms change or distort permanently due to Logrus Madness.
Interesting ideas from AML: how many methods can you use for conflict resolution in game? "Combat" in my games can involve every power; every attribute. As I've said elsewhere, the logic of points and ranks bows to some common "vision" of all these things as "powers".
IOW, in order to really open the imagination, I try to think of Attributes as powers...it provokes the question: What are the "range of potentials" of strength, warfare, etc.? The idea that only warfare is determinant of conflict is way too limiting.
Interesting cross-reference of no special import-- in Bête Noire, the letter game, I'm playing out a curse on my PC, Naturaelusus, of eternal immature youth... immortality gone wrong. There is an inherent sadness and joy in the legend of Peter Pan... I'm trying to capture both mood extremes in the Noire character.
But there is a scene where Robin Williams (as Peter) is struggling to regain his memory after growing up to become this corporate shark. Julia Roberts (as Tinkerbell) walks him through his entire surrender to adulthood and the loss of innocence and coming of heartbreak. Finally she says, "No wonder you couldn't find your happy thought-- there were so many sad ones."
It is my plan in Noire, to make something greater of this aspect...
Is Shaping worth 35 pts of game power? Perhaps not. In my campaign, I use a Broken Shaping(18 pts) that allows specific changes of form, but only to acquire specific abilities. In short, this form of shaping has limited numbers of changes, and then specific abilities associated with each change.
How is that different from what we see in the books? It isn't.
The Amber DRPG describes Shaping in a grand and dangerous manner that appears nowhere in the canon. No one shapes at combat speed, no one dismisses wounds quickly, no one does any shaping that affects the PLOT or gives them an advantage over someone else in the story. Not once.
The most amazing examples of shaping are more eye-candy than anything else. Characters become towers of ash, or liquid flame, or even squirming carpets of doom. But while these changes are disconcerting to characters in-story, they don't produce advantage.
As such, it might be fair to propose that there is a variant of Shaping called Common Chaos Shaping (18 pts):
Common Chaos Shaping
1. You have one extra form for every rank of endurance. Human Endurance would give you one extra form. Chaos Endurance would give you two extra forms. These forms are detailed to the GM at game start.
2. You change forms based on speed of Strength, this means that Endurance and Psyche are faster than form changes, but not Warfare.
3. You may leave one form "slot" as "un-fixed form" for every 4 ranks of Psyche. Amber Psyche would allow one "flex" slot.
GM is free to designate more powerful shapers per the normal 35 pt power in the Amber DRPG. Note: this does not make it so much easier for Logrus Masters to appear, depending on your campaign, but it does mean that Logrus Masters are not necessarily weak on Attributes. Fun, eh?
Lots of feedback to the question of content on the AML. Madeline is a consistant voice of sanity on the list, and there are others certainly. I wonder why it is that the harping comments, the bashing stuff bothers me so much? Check out Ginger, who has dropped off the List due to the quality.
Working on additions to the GM Vision Checklist 3.0.
Terms. How to define Terms that folks can use in common? Arrrgh!
Additions to Trump, Elders, and the entire 'Canon' line of reasoning. Thanks to Jim G for his comments.
