A Small Amber Manifesto
At a late night bull session at ACUS this year, John Lees asked (paraphrasing heavily) what we could do to give Shadow more weight in 'con games. (I believe his specific example was Corwin stopping to help Lance at the beginning of Guns of Avalon, whereas most PCs in a 'con game would just walk on to the next shadow.)
One thing led to another, and soon Arref and I were talking about about how to make 'con games more sticky. For the uninitiated, the idea is that PCs bouncing off each other and tangling their legends together is much of what makes for a rich game; Arref calls this Stickiness.
Back in 2002 we had bashed around a notion for a shared Ambercon universe to promote Stickiness, but the effort collapsed under its own weight. (I know I for one had extreme distractions in the rest of my life at the time.) I propose revising a much simpler version of the concept and seeing how it works. (Simpler if for no other reason than that I don't have the free time in my life to support a complex version!)
1. Vanilla Amber universe: I'd suggest post-Patternfall, pre-Merlin series. We'll let the players provide the cool for the universe.
2. A focus on "small" games. We want games that focus on character and non-Amber places, not more "ZOMG the mutliverse is going to end!" games, because we've all run and played in the latter over-and-over again.
3. KISS. Look for simple answers to keeping the game world shared.
4. Set up a player-driven wiki to help capture details of the universe to help GMs coordinate.
5. Accept that there will be continuity errors between games and GMs. Maybe we can award no-prizes for explaining them.
6. Trump politeness rule: Denizens of the Amber universe have busy, exciting lives. As such, people recognize that when someone doesn't answer your trump call, you shouldn't keep bothering them with repeated calls. (ie if a player is not available, presumption is her PC is off doing something cool, and the PCs who are available should forget about her for this session.)
What do people think? I'd certainly be game for trying this, both as a GM and as a player.
One thing led to another, and soon Arref and I were talking about about how to make 'con games more sticky. For the uninitiated, the idea is that PCs bouncing off each other and tangling their legends together is much of what makes for a rich game; Arref calls this Stickiness.
Back in 2002 we had bashed around a notion for a shared Ambercon universe to promote Stickiness, but the effort collapsed under its own weight. (I know I for one had extreme distractions in the rest of my life at the time.) I propose revising a much simpler version of the concept and seeing how it works. (Simpler if for no other reason than that I don't have the free time in my life to support a complex version!)
1. Vanilla Amber universe: I'd suggest post-Patternfall, pre-Merlin series. We'll let the players provide the cool for the universe.
2. A focus on "small" games. We want games that focus on character and non-Amber places, not more "ZOMG the mutliverse is going to end!" games, because we've all run and played in the latter over-and-over again.
3. KISS. Look for simple answers to keeping the game world shared.
4. Set up a player-driven wiki to help capture details of the universe to help GMs coordinate.
5. Accept that there will be continuity errors between games and GMs. Maybe we can award no-prizes for explaining them.
6. Trump politeness rule: Denizens of the Amber universe have busy, exciting lives. As such, people recognize that when someone doesn't answer your trump call, you shouldn't keep bothering them with repeated calls. (ie if a player is not available, presumption is her PC is off doing something cool, and the PCs who are available should forget about her for this session.)
What do people think? I'd certainly be game for trying this, both as a GM and as a player.