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March 28, 2004
The Old Order Changeth: Amber
From the Phage Press website:
Erick Wujcik and Mark MacKinnon have signed a Letter of Intent to transfer all publishing operations for Amber Diceless from Phage Press to Guardians of Order.While the details of this deal have not been finalized, Guardians Of Order, including Mark MacKinnon and Jesse Scoble (the original founders of Ambercon North), will shortly be soliciting input and suggestions regarding the publishing of a new line of Amber role-playing products.
I understand that Guardians of Order has been eager for this deal for years now. The company founders, Mark MacKinnon and Jesse Scoble, were longtime Amber community members before founding GOO. The license should be in good hands.
As someone who never liked feeling that I had to "keep up" with a game by buying endless supplements, the lack of Amber product after the ADRPG and Shadow Knight never bothered me, personally. But there's been a strong desire among many Amber players for more material. Me, I'd like to see the game integrate the famous "Gulick Scale" into the core mechanics.
The announcement warns
Note that this is a "Letter of Intent" and that it will be weeks or months before the actual transfer takes place.
Comments
"The Gulick Scale"... We really do need a better name than that. Especially since nearly everyone will mispronounce it as given, which may be the source of my nickname but still bugs me a bit. (In case anyone cares, my branch of the family does pronounce the initial "G" as a "J".)
But I will probably take to Mark and Jessi about it before I let them completely off the hook. Which means I should probably look to writing it up in a concise fashion again.
Posted by: Ghoul at Mar 29, 2004 1:29:26 AM
How does it work? I googled for it and couldn't find it.
Posted by: Neel Krishnaswami at Mar 29, 2004 9:01:38 AM
I'm happy to hear about the move. I've got both of the Amber source books and although I've never actually had a chance to play the game, I always hungered for more material. While I understand that some are concerned about hijacking Zelazny's legacy with substandard content, I do think there's a market for shadows of his work -- optional rules, adventures, etc. -- that could expand on both the game and the universe. I'm also hopeful that this move will raise the profile of the game, and get a new crowd interested in Amber.
Posted by: Ken Newquist at Mar 29, 2004 12:01:51 PM
Announcing prior to approval from the estate seems like a premature move.
Posted by: unseelie at Mar 29, 2004 2:43:33 PM
I have the impression that they just need to get the paperwork out of the way. Erik Wujcik would never have done the deal without having spoken to the Zelazny estate first about it.
Posted by: Tymen at Mar 29, 2004 4:49:57 PM
Here's the original AML (amber mailing list) email (or perhaps a later reposting of much the same text), which is NOT a perfect statement of the method... This is a time/effort scaling system, and the reason for it is because if success is certain (diceless gaming's base assumption without adequate resistance), then the only issue is time. There is a system much like this in the Nobilis Live Action supplement, I'll note.
The original post was in reply to a long and involved AML discussion of how Pattern works, how long it takes to make things happen, etc.
Most tricks in the books seem to take longer than some GMs make them take.
It took Random around 6 minutes to do something as "simple" as make a gas
station appear around 3 miles along the road. Merlin spends quite a bit of
time making a Trump Sketch.
If I wanted a mechanic (and this message is as formally as I've ever stated
this concept, which shows that I really don't *need* one), I'd use a scale
like this...
Time passes in:
Instant
Seconds
Minutes
Hours
Weeks
Years
Centuries
Each complicating factor (resistance, complex action, etc.) moves you up one
or more units, each simplifying factor (Advanced Pattern, the Jewel, local
familiarity) moves you back. The likelihood of the event being like you want
it without influence can help establish the starting point.
Making a flower appear behind the next rock takes Seconds. Make a gas
station appear is more difficult but still within reasonable likelyhood, so
it takes Minutes. This makes any gross-scale manipulation impossible within
"combat time", but quite possible in mass combat (Amber vs. chaos).
The average Hellride takes Hours. Thus, an unusually difficult (resisted,
unusually long distance, etc.) Hellride would take Weeks. After all,
Corwin, King of Endurance, stopped to sleep a good half-dozen times during
his run from Amber to Chaos... it could easily have been 2 or more weeks of
Hellriding. Meanwhile, Fiona uses an Advanced Pattern trick to make the
trip from Earth to the Primal Pattern take only Minutes.
Manipulating a Shadow's basic traits starts at Years. Thus, Oberon's
personal domination of Amber and its environs took him a LONG time to
achieve (proximity to Pattern gives *considerable* resistance, but he did
have the Jewel's help, so call it Centuries.)
Posted by: Ghoul at Mar 29, 2004 8:43:27 PM
