AMBERCON FAQ
What is this Amber thing anyway?
What do I need to get started with Amber DRPG?
What is 'Ambercon'?
How many Ambercons are there, and where are they held?
What is this Amber thing anyway?
(copied from the ACNW webpage)
"Amber DRPG" is based on a series of books by the late Roger Zelazny. If you're not familiar with Zelazny he was a literary genius who led the "new wave" of science fiction in the '60s and '70s.
This game system is unique in a number of different ways. Firstly, and most bizarrely, it is a "diceless" system, so leave them at home. They won't help.
The diceless aspect works, largely because of the genre involved. Almost all characters will be both immortal and physically superior to normal people. Because of this level of skill and ability, most tasks undertaken will be obviously doomed to success or failure from the start. Either the character knows how to hotwire cars, or they don't. Either they can beat up three random muggers on the streets, or they can't. The GM can usually assess the likelihood of success quite easily. All that remains is to roleplay the encounter through.
Random events occur when the GM decides to have them, otherwise they don't. No dice required. A writer sitting at home producing books or film screenplays doesn't roll dice to decide on the outcome, so why do we do it in role-playing? Don't you trust your GM?
I won't bother explaining the genre in detail, other than to say that events take place in an effectively infinite number of different universes, with varying levels of technology or magic available. Players are strongly advised to read the books, starting with Nine Princes in Amber. It's not essential to read the books before playing the game, but it will help no end. There are 10 books in total, in two series of five. They are quite short, and easy to read.
Because of the wooly nature of the system, complicated character sheets and vast skill lists are totally unwarranted. There are four stats, and as many skills as the player wishes. The simplest approach is to write down a general character background, and infer the skills from that as play progresses. Characters are as powerful as the players want them to be, on the assumption that a player given enough free rope will eventually learn how to hang themselves with it without too much direct intervention.
There are other novel differences to this system, but the ones given above are the main ones.
Rest assured that the system does work, and works very well.
What do I need to get started with Amber
DRPG?
(copied mainly from the ACNW webpage)
There are two rule books available, costing about $20 each. The first is called Amber DRPG and is the main rulebook. The second is called Shadow Knight and contains additional, supplementary rules.
You should also possess the books which started it all, although I suppose this isn't absolutely essential. They come in two series of five books each.
The Corwin Chronicles:
The Merlin Chronicles:
There are also a few short stories, which hint at new material. Since Zelazny died in 1995, we're never going to know how these ideas would have turned out. The following is a (hopefully) complete list, together with where they have been published.
There are no commercially available Amber modules, so your GM will have to write their own. This requires a GM with a very good knowledge of the books, or they're in danger of offending players who expect the tone and content of the game to follow the books fairly well.
There may well be more supplements in the pipeline, including perhaps some alternative approaches to the Magic system. Don't hold your breath though.
The Amber Diceless Role-Playing game can be played in many different formats. At Ambercon you might find fully-costumed Live Action games, standard "table-top" games, or anything in-between.
Ambercon is a convention at which the Amber Diceless Roleplaying Game is played by the convention's members. Most Ambercons schedule their events and players into the events before the convention. For that reason, most Ambercons have to be registered for ahead of time. For registration deadlines please see the convention information listed below. Ambercons are open to anyone who would like to go, usually on a first come first served basis. The size of an Ambercon is generally limited only by the number of game masters the con has running games, although other factors can limit an Ambercon's size (restrictions on space, for example).
How many Ambercons are there, and where are they held?
Over the next year there are expected to be six conventions dedicated to Amber gaming. The biggest of those thus far is Ambercon (sometimes known as Ambercon US).
For more information on these conventions, check out www.ambercons.com
You can also find Amber games at Gen Con, held every August in Indianapolis, Indiana; Blue Water Con, held each summer in Port Huron, Michigan; U•Con, held on a non-home football game weekend in late October or November in Ann Arbor, Michigan; and Gamicon Mu, held in Cedar Rapids each February.
The questions below stem from comments and suggestions submitted to the Ambercon organizers from the Ambercon 2002 convention. It is our hope that responses below will help conference attendees understand a little of why the organizers set up the Con in the fashion they do.
Can the Con reserve floors to keep gamers and mundanes as separate as possible? Less hassle that way.
Unfortunately, the hotel has stated that it's 'too difficult' for them to do this. As it has been explained to us, hotel bookings don't really go through the local hotel, but rather through a national booking service run by the hotel chain...which makes us a pretty small fish in terms of numbers.
Could we find a nicer hotel? I'd be willing to pay more for a nicer location. This location just felt a little too artificial and uncomfortable.
And on the other end of the spectrum, we get a good number of complaints that the hotel is too expensive, and responses from previous attendees who can't attend because of limited financial means. In general, the convention organizers want to keep the hotel costs as small as possible, so that more people can attend.
Can we find a better/cheaper hotel?
The short answer is, "Not in southeast Michigan." For the past four years, the convention organizers have allotted time each year to finding a better hotel. We have never yet found one that even comes close to offering us what Embassy Suites in Livonia does. The following are our list of criteria:
The simple truth is that with only 110 attendees on average, we don't have the numbers to demand good deals from the larger hotels.
If you know of a hotel that offers something comparable, however, we'd love to hear from you. If you'd like to volunteer to look into other options, your assistance will be appreciated.
I can't believe how much more expensive the Con rate was than the Internet rate in 2002. I saved about $150.00 by booking through NWA.com. What can be done to get us the cheaper rate?
Pretty much nothing. Although Liz warned the Hotel staff in 2002 that Con attendees are very internet savvy and will comb the web to find better rates, they were surprised by the number of people who took advantage of this. Consequently, the hotel lost money on us that year. It is likely that they will limit use of this kind of discount in the future. If the Hotel can't make a fair amount of money off of the Con, there's no reason for them to house the Con, after all.
I would like a hotel that's near other places to go to easily for non-gamers.
That's kinda tricky. SE Michigan just isn't terribly touristy. The only way of improving this would be to move the location to Detroit proper, and that would probably double our hotel costs.
If people apply for Con suites, and don't have roommates, send another questionnaire to them. "Do you smoke? Do you GM a late night game in the room? Do you snore?" Then make the room assignments.
The Con will no longer offer Con suites. We were losing money on it, which translated into subsidizing room fees for attendees. The Con just couldn't afford that.
The schedule we used for Ambercon 2002 and 2003 is what we're going to stick with for a while, with a modification to the Sunday slot to handle the fact that there no longer is a banquet. We've tried a lot of different options and discussed as many alternatives as we could think up. The schedule needs to accomodate the following:
The current schedule seems to have worked for most of our needs.
Can I have an option 'place in available game' as a slot choice?
We'd really rather not do that precisely, but we have come up with an alternative that should help with people who don't get in any of their games for a slot. In Ambercon 2003 we implemented a feature that enabled attendees to sign up for individual games after receiving their initial list. Registrants were able to go the Ambercon web site and see which games were full, and then sign up for games for those slots where they didn't get into their choices. You can also let us know in the "Notes" field on the game selection form if you don't care which of your choices for a slot (or slots) that you get into.
I think 'automating' player scheduling is not helpful. Human judgment is more sympathetic and evens things out.
It's a hard call, really. On one hand, manual scheduling prevents a lot of mishaps and increases your chances of getting into some game or other, if not the one you most wanted. On the other hand, it takes an incredible amount of time and energy, and introduces a level of subjectivity that isn't always desirable.
The current Con organizers have chosen to move in the direction of automated scheduling because it takes far less time and ensures that all attendees are treated equally/fairly.
I like ACNW's 'gaming suites' where the con gives a discount if you volunteer your room. That way they could plan game locations in advance. Why don't you folks do this?
The Ambercon hotel setup is very different from ACNW. If we were to offer that kind of discount, pretty much everyone would get the discount because just about all of the rooms are suites. Also, the hotel doesn't assign room numbers until check-in.
Before games are scheduled for slots, why don't you publish game descriptions for GMs and ask for preferences so that GMs don't wind up having no chance to get into new games that happen opposite games they run.
Although this would make it easier for GMs to get into the games they want, this would also make balancing out the slots a complete nightmare.
Example: If a particularly popular GM/game is running in slot four, then most GMs will want to avoid running in slot four, so they can play in the game or so that they can get good players. This, in turn, leads to fewer games in slot four...so everyone pretty much signs up for one game. This helps no one.
Give GMs more choice as to who plays in their games.
Unfortunately, this opens the door to unfair treatment to players. We all pay the same amount to attend the Con, and we all deserve equal access to games. If a Con attendee has serious issues with another attendee, you can bring this to the attention of the Con organizers, and we will do what we can. However, personal issues aren't really our problem to solve; that's something for you and the other person to work out between yourselves.
It seemed like many games had too few players -- should these be cancelled earlier, so player could get reassigned before the Con?
We prefer to avoid cancelling games before the Con, if at all possible. Cancelling means re-shuffling players, and it puts the GM in a position of having no game to run that slot and no opportunity to sign up for another game. In 2002 we created an option whereby the GM could choose to either cancel the game at scheduling (if there weren't enough players) or run it anyway and hope for people to sign up at the Con. Also, it is our hope that our new feature described in question #1 above will alleviate some of the problems we had in 2002.
Slots run much too late on Sunday -- out-of-town people can't attend either Sunday slot.
There's really not much we can do about this. Hotel checkout is noon. Participation in Sunday slots pretty much requires staying Sunday night and leaving the next day. We've gone over all manner of possible schedules, and scheduling to eliminate this problem only creates other problems.
We desperately need the Con to be one week later. The GAMA Convention is a conflict and it's keeping quality players away.
We're taking steps to ensure that this doesn't happen any more.