Disclaimer: I herein give honest assessments of the games I played in, but this does not mean I did not enjoy said games. I enjoyed all my games quite a bit, and I will try to point out all the good parts as well as all the parts that I felt needed improvement. End disclaimer.
Game descriptions contain spoilers, of course. Don't read them if you think you'll want to play in 'em one day. For instance, I think More Than You Think You Are will be running again.
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dirkcjelli and I arrived about 45 minutes early. There was some awkwardness, but one does well to remember that in a con full of gamers, the old hands are just as socially-challenged as you are. ;) The Amber crowd is older than the people we've been playing with in Worcester. This is to be expected, since our gaming scene is centered around WPI, but it does give a different dynamic to the groups. I don't dislike it, though Brian and I (especially I) have quite a bit of fitting in left to do.
The con is quite small, less than 30 people, but is at a bit of an awkward middle point--too many people for three games a slot, but too few for four. More of you WPI folk should register next year. *coughLucascough* It's in Marlborough. You don't even have to stay in the hotel.
Hey, Jesper! There was a guy from Sweden there. His name is Olof. You know him? *ducks*
What kind of had me a bit weirded out the whole weekend was the ridiculous feeling of deja vu I had. I could have sworn I had seen most of the con attendees somewhere else before. They can't all have been at WorldCon. I guess there are only so many gamer phenotypes out there.
Anyway, on to the games, which are the meat of the reportable part of the con.
From the Ashes
Kris, for whom I don't have an LJ name, if he even has one, was the GM. I'm unconvinced of the necessity of dice for Amber, but, on the GNS scale, I'm a hardcore Narrativist. As such things go, however, AmberKind is quite innocuous, and I would definitely use it to ease newcomers from the world of D&D into Amber. I am especially fond of the Shadow Pool mechanic, which hearkens to team karma in Shadowrun, allowing the players to augment rolls by pulling dice from a separate pool to add to theirs for a single roll. It represents the control of the PCs over Shadow--but don't pull too hard, or Shadow will start to rebel, a la Paradox in Mage, when the Shadow Pool starts to get low.
We were playing pregen third generation characters dispatched by Uncle King Random to check out a relatively new Golden Circle Shadow, and make sure Amber got her trade rights. By an amusing coincidence, Chelsea, my pregen daughter of Julian, was almost exactly the same character as the one I created for Paul's later game--which was no real problem, since I had the characterization for that role cold. Kris let us spend a little too much time drinking in Bloody Bill's. You shouldn't tell me I have a drinking partner as part of my backstory, because I am perfectly happy playing progressively more drunk for an entire six hours. (Drunk Chelsea on democracy: "Look at him! Would you let him vote? He hasn't got a chin!")
Eventually, we got on the boat and made it to Shadow Phoenix, where I proceeded to not be that helpful in solving the plot, but that's fine by me, since my dear cousins fixed it by murder and maleficent counsel. I think Kris intended for us to be conflicted over the sexism and slavery in Phoenix, but I tend to play Amberites as rather uncaring about the fates of Shadowlings, so Chelsea was primarily concerned with pushing however many people down the stairs as was necessary to make the problem go away. We didn't conquer the Shadow and put one of us on the throne because no one wanted to do it. I suppose solving the succession crisis by killing one of the heirs works, and, quite frankly, that entire family is as twisted as ours, so we really ought to go back in about ten years and put Alexander's bastard son by the King's sister on the throne. *nods decisively*
The game ended with a whimper, since the fire alarm went off and we scattered.
More Than You Think You Are (Amber/Nobilis)
The mightyprincejvstin GMed this crossover. I think it was an alpha run. I'm more clinical about this game than I am about the others because I'm interested in the mechanics of that particular crossover. Amber crosses over seamlessly with just about every other setting in existence, but Nobilis is one of the few (actually the only one I can think of) that is actually more powerful than Amber, and the GM must decide whose metaphysics are the "real" ones. Consequently, blending the two is an area of interest.
The Imperator, in the guise of dear old Auntie Flora, chose to Ennoble Amberites because they were already baseline more powerful than the average citizen of the World Ash, which is a good conceit, I think. Our PCs were gradually Ennobled, all unknowing, over the first 2/3s of the game. This part went well. We had to defeat Mimics whom the Excrucians had sent to replace us, and then, of course, we needed to figure out just what was going on. Eventually we tracked down the Imperator to the Chancel (which was still in the process of being established--bodies everywhere!) and she explained and finished with the Sharding. (Paul, I think maybe you should have indulged in a bit of railroading here.)
After this is when I think the game needs work. Amber-level threats don't mean anything to Nobles, and the last third of the game was basically the PCs running roughshod over the Elders because they finally could. I think the threat needs to scale appropriately, possibly with a full-fledged Excrucian on-scene in Amber for the party to defeat and save the day.
Paul kept mystery about the whole thing, which would work well for a group with no or only a passing familiarity with Nobilis, but I found it to be a bit frustrating, since I didn't know which Amber Attributes Paul had mapped to which Nobilis ones, and I had no idea what I could do. I didn't know how powerful I was in my Estate, or what my other Attributes were, how big my MPs were, or if I had any Gifts.
Still, it was a good alpha run, and with a bit of polishing, will be a good introduction to Nobilis for Amber players. Oh, and Paul? The Imperator should maybe have mentioned the Code Fidelitatis. You can't guarantee a Power of Knowledge in every run. ;)
Tales of the Regency: A Piece of the Action
Too much plot, Paul!
This was another trip to a new Golden Circle Shadow to get Amber in on the ground floor, and I reprised Chelsea, except her name was Alexandra, she had more points, and the two characters were created entirely independently. I was also surrounded by redheads, all of them children of Bleys. Just as well they had me along to stick pointy things in soft things.
Of necessity from the character distribution, the plot was heavily metaphysical. Uncle Delwin was being held prisoner by, um, someone? I missed that part. I think she was from Chaos. In between negotiations, which I helped greatly with my Warfare--the denizens of the Shadow place a lot of value on martial prowess--the redheads conspired to rescue Delwin with the help of Aunt Sand. I helped, too. Boy, was Gerard surprised. In the meantime, we also found a missing cousin, name of Rinaldo, and pried him out from under his mother's thumb, consequently sparing Merlin a whole lot of trouble down the line. See what good kids we are?
Paul borrowed the setting from De Camp's Krishna, and I would have liked to get in the Indiana Jones-style temple crawl he had planned, but the plot didn't fit in the time allotted. Some of this was because the game got sidetracked often by a lot of crosstalk which left me glazed over much of the time, since I had no idea about the games everyone else was talking about.
I like Alexandra. I think I'm promoting her to NPChood sometime in the unspecified future.
Monsters!
Meera GMed this one. I tend to enjoy low-powered games (like the cancelled Dogs in the Circle *cries bitter tears*), and I was looking forward to this. We were 35-point members of Caine's City Watch, charged with unravelling a set of mysterious murders, strange astrological coincidences, ill-advised decisions by certain nobles, and shipping irregularities, which were, of course, all connected. Meera did the ditziest Flora I have ever seen (there was a plot reason), and had us all in stitches for much of the session.
I particularly enjoyed playing off Jack's Admiral Styrn, a retired naval officer (the Guard doesn't much like the Navy, y'see) and giving him no help at all in his investigation of recent unorthodox shipping procedures. The zombies in the shipping crate never made it ashore, anyway, so it wasn't my problem. In the end, we killed the zombies and the weird flappy Frankenstein gargoyle monster, established a new tradition at the University involving bonfires, and just generally saved the day. I was feeling so mellow I even let the rest of them destroy evidence because they swore up and down it was evil.
The Puppies of Tijiuana (Amber/kill puppies for satan)
There isn't much to say about this one. It was an Amber-themed kill puppies for satan game, GMed with increasingly resigned disbelief bymcurry, and went about as one would expect. It turns out that when you remove the Amberites' inherent dignity and nobility by turning them into kpfs characters, for the most part they just end up annoying each other, rather than actually attempting to kill any puppies or advance the plot in any way. Brand solved the plot all by himself while the rest of us were settling scores, kpfs-style (for the uninitiated, this means "ineffectually.") I had a blast, and laughed 'til I cried all afternoon, even though I, as Corwin, didn't manage to kill a single small animal. I did drill a hole between my room and Dierdre's, though, and almost finished writing "COCKMOBILE" on the hood of Julian's car in shaving cream. (He found me when I had only gotten as far as "COCKMO.") Imagine the others, except for Brand and Dierdre, indulging in similar antics, and you have the course of the game.
Um, that's it.
Yay,mcurry and Jenn, who are, I think, the entirety of the Con Committee. mcurry made me feel right at home when he banned me from the con just like everyone else.
Game descriptions contain spoilers, of course. Don't read them if you think you'll want to play in 'em one day. For instance, I think More Than You Think You Are will be running again.
Award-Winning Author
dirkcjelli and I arrived about 45 minutes early. There was some awkwardness, but one does well to remember that in a con full of gamers, the old hands are just as socially-challenged as you are. ;) The Amber crowd is older than the people we've been playing with in Worcester. This is to be expected, since our gaming scene is centered around WPI, but it does give a different dynamic to the groups. I don't dislike it, though Brian and I (especially I) have quite a bit of fitting in left to do.The con is quite small, less than 30 people, but is at a bit of an awkward middle point--too many people for three games a slot, but too few for four. More of you WPI folk should register next year. *coughLucascough* It's in Marlborough. You don't even have to stay in the hotel.
Hey, Jesper! There was a guy from Sweden there. His name is Olof. You know him? *ducks*
What kind of had me a bit weirded out the whole weekend was the ridiculous feeling of deja vu I had. I could have sworn I had seen most of the con attendees somewhere else before. They can't all have been at WorldCon. I guess there are only so many gamer phenotypes out there.
Anyway, on to the games, which are the meat of the reportable part of the con.
From the Ashes
Kris, for whom I don't have an LJ name, if he even has one, was the GM. I'm unconvinced of the necessity of dice for Amber, but, on the GNS scale, I'm a hardcore Narrativist. As such things go, however, AmberKind is quite innocuous, and I would definitely use it to ease newcomers from the world of D&D into Amber. I am especially fond of the Shadow Pool mechanic, which hearkens to team karma in Shadowrun, allowing the players to augment rolls by pulling dice from a separate pool to add to theirs for a single roll. It represents the control of the PCs over Shadow--but don't pull too hard, or Shadow will start to rebel, a la Paradox in Mage, when the Shadow Pool starts to get low.
We were playing pregen third generation characters dispatched by Uncle King Random to check out a relatively new Golden Circle Shadow, and make sure Amber got her trade rights. By an amusing coincidence, Chelsea, my pregen daughter of Julian, was almost exactly the same character as the one I created for Paul's later game--which was no real problem, since I had the characterization for that role cold. Kris let us spend a little too much time drinking in Bloody Bill's. You shouldn't tell me I have a drinking partner as part of my backstory, because I am perfectly happy playing progressively more drunk for an entire six hours. (Drunk Chelsea on democracy: "Look at him! Would you let him vote? He hasn't got a chin!")
Eventually, we got on the boat and made it to Shadow Phoenix, where I proceeded to not be that helpful in solving the plot, but that's fine by me, since my dear cousins fixed it by murder and maleficent counsel. I think Kris intended for us to be conflicted over the sexism and slavery in Phoenix, but I tend to play Amberites as rather uncaring about the fates of Shadowlings, so Chelsea was primarily concerned with pushing however many people down the stairs as was necessary to make the problem go away. We didn't conquer the Shadow and put one of us on the throne because no one wanted to do it. I suppose solving the succession crisis by killing one of the heirs works, and, quite frankly, that entire family is as twisted as ours, so we really ought to go back in about ten years and put Alexander's bastard son by the King's sister on the throne. *nods decisively*
The game ended with a whimper, since the fire alarm went off and we scattered.
More Than You Think You Are (Amber/Nobilis)
The mighty
princejvstin GMed this crossover. I think it was an alpha run. I'm more clinical about this game than I am about the others because I'm interested in the mechanics of that particular crossover. Amber crosses over seamlessly with just about every other setting in existence, but Nobilis is one of the few (actually the only one I can think of) that is actually more powerful than Amber, and the GM must decide whose metaphysics are the "real" ones. Consequently, blending the two is an area of interest.The Imperator, in the guise of dear old Auntie Flora, chose to Ennoble Amberites because they were already baseline more powerful than the average citizen of the World Ash, which is a good conceit, I think. Our PCs were gradually Ennobled, all unknowing, over the first 2/3s of the game. This part went well. We had to defeat Mimics whom the Excrucians had sent to replace us, and then, of course, we needed to figure out just what was going on. Eventually we tracked down the Imperator to the Chancel (which was still in the process of being established--bodies everywhere!) and she explained and finished with the Sharding. (Paul, I think maybe you should have indulged in a bit of railroading here.)
After this is when I think the game needs work. Amber-level threats don't mean anything to Nobles, and the last third of the game was basically the PCs running roughshod over the Elders because they finally could. I think the threat needs to scale appropriately, possibly with a full-fledged Excrucian on-scene in Amber for the party to defeat and save the day.
Paul kept mystery about the whole thing, which would work well for a group with no or only a passing familiarity with Nobilis, but I found it to be a bit frustrating, since I didn't know which Amber Attributes Paul had mapped to which Nobilis ones, and I had no idea what I could do. I didn't know how powerful I was in my Estate, or what my other Attributes were, how big my MPs were, or if I had any Gifts.
Still, it was a good alpha run, and with a bit of polishing, will be a good introduction to Nobilis for Amber players. Oh, and Paul? The Imperator should maybe have mentioned the Code Fidelitatis. You can't guarantee a Power of Knowledge in every run. ;)
Tales of the Regency: A Piece of the Action
Too much plot, Paul!
This was another trip to a new Golden Circle Shadow to get Amber in on the ground floor, and I reprised Chelsea, except her name was Alexandra, she had more points, and the two characters were created entirely independently. I was also surrounded by redheads, all of them children of Bleys. Just as well they had me along to stick pointy things in soft things.
Of necessity from the character distribution, the plot was heavily metaphysical. Uncle Delwin was being held prisoner by, um, someone? I missed that part. I think she was from Chaos. In between negotiations, which I helped greatly with my Warfare--the denizens of the Shadow place a lot of value on martial prowess--the redheads conspired to rescue Delwin with the help of Aunt Sand. I helped, too. Boy, was Gerard surprised. In the meantime, we also found a missing cousin, name of Rinaldo, and pried him out from under his mother's thumb, consequently sparing Merlin a whole lot of trouble down the line. See what good kids we are?
Paul borrowed the setting from De Camp's Krishna, and I would have liked to get in the Indiana Jones-style temple crawl he had planned, but the plot didn't fit in the time allotted. Some of this was because the game got sidetracked often by a lot of crosstalk which left me glazed over much of the time, since I had no idea about the games everyone else was talking about.
I like Alexandra. I think I'm promoting her to NPChood sometime in the unspecified future.
Monsters!
Meera GMed this one. I tend to enjoy low-powered games (like the cancelled Dogs in the Circle *cries bitter tears*), and I was looking forward to this. We were 35-point members of Caine's City Watch, charged with unravelling a set of mysterious murders, strange astrological coincidences, ill-advised decisions by certain nobles, and shipping irregularities, which were, of course, all connected. Meera did the ditziest Flora I have ever seen (there was a plot reason), and had us all in stitches for much of the session.
I particularly enjoyed playing off Jack's Admiral Styrn, a retired naval officer (the Guard doesn't much like the Navy, y'see) and giving him no help at all in his investigation of recent unorthodox shipping procedures. The zombies in the shipping crate never made it ashore, anyway, so it wasn't my problem. In the end, we killed the zombies and the weird flappy Frankenstein gargoyle monster, established a new tradition at the University involving bonfires, and just generally saved the day. I was feeling so mellow I even let the rest of them destroy evidence because they swore up and down it was evil.
The Puppies of Tijiuana (Amber/kill puppies for satan)
There isn't much to say about this one. It was an Amber-themed kill puppies for satan game, GMed with increasingly resigned disbelief by
mcurry, and went about as one would expect. It turns out that when you remove the Amberites' inherent dignity and nobility by turning them into kpfs characters, for the most part they just end up annoying each other, rather than actually attempting to kill any puppies or advance the plot in any way. Brand solved the plot all by himself while the rest of us were settling scores, kpfs-style (for the uninitiated, this means "ineffectually.") I had a blast, and laughed 'til I cried all afternoon, even though I, as Corwin, didn't manage to kill a single small animal. I did drill a hole between my room and Dierdre's, though, and almost finished writing "COCKMOBILE" on the hood of Julian's car in shaving cream. (He found me when I had only gotten as far as "COCKMO.") Imagine the others, except for Brand and Dierdre, indulging in similar antics, and you have the course of the game.Um, that's it.
Yay,
mcurry and Jenn, who are, I think, the entirety of the Con Committee. mcurry made me feel right at home when he banned me from the con just like everyone else.7 comments | Comment