[revisited]
More than in any other systems' community that I have been involved in, you find less consistency in what you can or cannot do within the games.
I don't know how people who play under a half-dozen different GMs at conventions can do it, because I am regularly freezing up and thinking, "What is the underlying basis for their rulings?" in a game. Sure, a lot of them will say, "Canon," but to what extent? How do they explain inconsistencies, where do they ignore things (like the entire Merlin series), and what happens when I do this? Do I break the game?
Right now I perform a sort of system schizophrenia just between some of the different worldviews I'm entertaining. Magic is far more a part of everything and the Pattern is less a set of mechanics and knowledge of Shadow in G&G than in other games I have run. Amber games I plan to run face-to-face some time in the future are based on a very, very low-power, high-consequences style. G&G is effectively run without a point system, including without contributions. My next game will have initial contributions with which to build characters, and then will have additional contributions be worth points or "lore," trading on secrets, instead.
I have a level of consistency about how I will arrange things to happen. I tend to handle Shadow travel (including Amber-to-Rebma) the same way. I tend to have the same ideas regarding the usage and limitations of Trump.
I foster the same loving attention on Logrus users (assuming I have the Logrus available) in my campaigns and one-shots. [grin]
I encourage people to try new things as both of us then gain a better understanding of what happens when you do this in my game worlds.
The 'net helps in some ways. I know better than to run a high-Strength or high-Magic character in some folks' campaigns based on their interpretations as posted on the mailing lists. I also know from experimentation and investigation that there are some folks whose styles and mine complement each other so I would feel more comfortable...
You never know what to expect in a game, and I understand that, but I want to know that I can have my PC do what I want my character to do. If I have a high-Strength character, I want to be able to kick doors down, pull off the edge of a wooden bannister, and make my "bear hugs" legend. An Amber GM has a lot of control over the effects of attributes and statistics, and not all of them are very good at explaining the set of assumptions that go into their personal design.
The truth of the matter is...
I also hate parts of the Amber roleplaying community. I hate the arguments over canon, I hate the restrictions of convention, I hate the obstacles in the system, I hate the reputation amongst gamers as a whole, I hate the fact that no matter how brilliant the folks in the Amber community are, none of our contributions (and I've had a few good ones) will mean anything to the game line as a whole.
Don't get me wrong: some of the people are wonderful. I even like most of them.
I had to look up over seven different sources of information for my last commentary about Trump. It has little relation to my current game. It isn't enough to write a "book of Trump" nor is it seen outside a small segment of the Amber on-line community, none of which need to agree, anyway. [laugh]
It isn't always worth it.
I play in a fabulous PBeM. Fab-u-lous. It's worth it.
I'm going to ACNW again. (...and again.) Masochism? No, I'm introducing my little sister to Amber. It makes it new again.
I run a game that I enjoy writing. It's worth it.
Every once in a while I get someone telling me it's "worth it" for them. Or a friend says, "Come on up and run something 'cause I've got the Amber jones again," and I can do that.
But burnout happens. I let this blog wait over six months... and I'm adding some of the "best" of my old bits. After all, I can get inspired again, right?
Posted by Meera at June 2, 2003 08:33 PMStrong medicine. Yes, burnout happens --- for instance I am always impressed with an author who can juggle a passel of blogs.
I find myself to agree with many of your points --- and hope I would be able to say the same about D&D (which I spent twenty years 'perfecting' as a game.) Community is like a neighborhood, and you don't get to pick your neighbors any more than you get to pick your RPing standards at a convention.
It *is* weird.
But I resist the "h" word.
I'm just flattered that you think HOC is "fabulous". I'm glad we're all having fun, is all.
Posted by: Ginger at June 3, 2003 09:38 AMDoes any gaming community really have that much consistency? What do you mean by consistency? You seem to be railing against one of the stroger aspects of Amber which is its diverity, its ability to contain all other settings within its boundries.
Or maybe I'm just not grokking what you're getting at . . .
Posted by: Jason at June 8, 2003 06:08 AMWhile there is a learning curve in relation to any game and gaming group, I can just about send my 5th level dwarf fighter into (just about) any AD&D game and feel like I might have to juggle a few house rules, but I know where I fit and what I can do. My Toreador has a lot of the same ability in Vampire games. On the other hand, my husband's daughter of Bleys in "the halo business" wouldn't work in most Amber games. Neither would my metasexual empathic sondaughter of a Chaosian Duchess. My vision of Caine is very different from what I've seen as "the majority vision."
The setting is diverse, yes, but it's _so_ diverse as to be diffuse. Do you allow Pattern teleport? I don't. It's in the rulebook, though. How often do you kill people on the Pattern? I use the Odekirk method. [grinning] Can you see Logrus tendrils? Not in my campaign. These are just the first three questions of thousands that might come up... and may make the difference as to what I want to play, or how I play, or how I get into the group, or if I want to play.
Posted by: MT Fierce at June 8, 2003 12:15 PMAnd unfortunately, those questions listed as examples aren't even the broad brush strokes. I ran into this frustration enough to warrant an attempt at "common vision" checklists.
And that just doesn't but scratch the surface. Because of the flex in the rules, and because of the imaginative interpretations Zelazny encourages, you don't know the logic of how things work.
http://members.aol.com/arrefmak/GMVision4_2.htm
Posted by: Arref at June 10, 2003 01:21 PM