Players please note: this is not something I'd read if you worry about my opinions.
To start off with, Amber is something of an aberration for me. Generally, I suffer from an obsessive nature, and tend to 'use and use up' things that interest me in short order. Friends from my college days can attest to this, as I almost habitually started campaigns in some new game system, then discarded it when my interest waned (usually just as the players were getting really interested).
Which isn't to say I'm a bad GM, I don't think that I am. Generally, no one's ever told me I am: quite the opposite, in most cases. I work very hard on the stuff I'm doing, and I give it my all, but generally a genre or game just wears thin for me after a given length of time, and I move on.
Amber hasn't. Worn thin, that is.
From that I think I can, with a certain amount of authority, say that I enjoy the game. Since most of any Amber campaign comes from the GM, not the game system itself, any 'thinness' in an Amber game would have to come from within the GM, wouldn't it? And that would be an awful thing to find out about myself. :)
So, my interest in Amber, while it does ebb and swell to an extent, does not fade, perhaps because, as my interests change, so to does my game, and we continue apace.
Also, I've been lucky.
My first Amber game (if you want to read about game-related stuff, you'd better head to a different document... I tend to rattle on...), Keys to the Pattern, was blessed with some DAMN good players who pushed me to great things. Things were thin for awhile after I moved to Denver, but after awhile, I got to play my way through at least part of a Amber campaign I called The Brokedown Palace in a PBeM format. Unfortunately, I didn't love the format, and the feeling was mutual, so we called it quits after an abortive one-year relationship.
But I got a break, sort of... I worked very hard on getting something going with a Face-to-Face game here in Denver (having had said efforts fall flat when I'd first arrived in town), and got lucky in my results; which is to say: more, really great, players.
A-HA!!! Here's what I've been trying to get to... the point of this page.
What I put down here isn't really for the players eyes... they may eventually find out about it, because I can't really HIDE it, and wouldn't go to the effort even if I could, but if any of them are reading, they may not want to continue, since, while I don't intend to let anything slip before it actually happens in the game, I do intend to analyze the sessions from a GM's point of view, and they will see, like the disappointed Tai Chi student looking for a God and finding only a Teacher, someone who is failable, mutable, undecided, and who often manages to look fairly brilliant only by what an old friend used to call 'brute luck.'
I'm not Elegant, Chance just smiles on me.
No, not that Chance.
So, what you'll find here is a session by session personal journal of the stuff that happens in the Things in Heaven and Earth (TiHE -- pronounced, at least by me, as 'tee hee'). It's not going to be formatted much, though it should be readable... and it will be spell-checked and grammar-checked only when I happen to re-read it to see why the hell I did something 20 sessions ago... so prepare yourself for pain, if you're of a grammatical bent. I save such efforts for the more entertaining stuff.
Also, there will be profanity and frank language. *cringe* Whatever.
Session Zero. Bidding.
A word about the bidding method: at Randy/Quinn's suggestion, the lead-off bids were not only blind, but anonymous... I took all the bids, wrote them down, and then informed everyone what the TOP bid was, and who had it -- and players bid openly from there. This had a neat effect in that those players who didn't start out with the top bid and who didn't bid publicly remained anonymous... you knew they weren't on the top end of things, but you didn't really know where they stood. Also, everyone knew the characters who were right at the top of the food chain for each stat, which I think made a lot of sense.
The final ranks available in this generation, and the points they cost, can be found here.
Of course, I use partial powers (hell, I'm one the major proponents of that system), cuz I think the Amber rules are 'Basic' at BEST... and really only good if you plan on... well, screw it, I don't feel like talking about it right now. Maybe later.
Psyche bidding started out really low, and it took a lot of work to get people to bid up. Jackie, hereafter Breann, was trying to stay very conservative, so she could ass-kick on warfare... which I'd expected. I was hoping Randy/Quinn would bid high on Psyche, cuz I knew he planned on being a power-monkey, but he comes from a long line of Amber campaigns that use the 'stock' Amber powers system, which means: if you want power, your stats will all suck donkey. He didn't realize the error of his mistake until afterwards, and I think he was perhaps a little grumpy about it, because he spent a TON of points on powers, and people who spent like 20 points on Pattern could still get around the universe just fine.
Mark, I think, just wanted to be able to dominate people.
After many comments in which I described the horrors of being on the weak end of a trump call and having one's brain turned to pudding, the bidding picked up quite a bit... Since no one ELSE was bidding, Anax said 'fuck it', and bid up a bunch, figuring that with advanced shape-shift (a power I knew he was going for) and First in Psyche, he could pretty much change anyone he didn't like into a Lilac Bush and stroll off. :) This thinking ALSO made Mark bid more.
Strength bidding saw more activity -- it started out higher, but ended almost exactly the same as Psyche. Juli surprised me by making a guy character, and he was obviously going to be a BUTCH guy... didn't know anything about him until later. Scott/Ander/Karl was making a hockey player, and we already knew he wanted this stat high.
I don't know why it is, but for some reason, Endurance seems to be a hot item in my campaigns -- I'm glad in one sense, because it's cool be able to beat the living hell out of someone and have them keep coming, but it's annoying too, because it's hard to charge 'you continue to doggedly plod toward your goal' with a lot of drama. It's worth noting that the highest starting bid in endurance was a point higher than the final bids in Psyche and Strength.
A lovely three way bidding contest between Mark, Scott and Juli ensued, but Scott bowed out after one round. (He intended to 'improve' his guy later, since he'd been out in shadow with amnesia for several hundred years, and wanted to have grown up some). This left Mark and Juli heading into a Battle. The final totals looked like this:
By this time, several of the players were getting a little tapped out for points (hurrah the GM), but some players had already noted (with suspicion), Jackie, Rey, and Randy weren't. Although Randy didn't bid as the players expected, Jackie and Rey sure as hell did. :)
Points were flowing pretty freely in the bidding... Here's how it looked at the end:
Player Character Known Ranks Juli ((Lysander)) : Total: 92 First in Strength, second in Endurance Mark ((Valharic)) : Total: 80 Second in Psyche, first in Endurance Scott ((Ander)) : Total: 77 Second in Strength, third in Endurance Jackie ((Breann)) : Total: 76 First in Warfare Rey ((Theseus)) : Total: 71 Second in Warfare Mike ((Anax)) : Total: 50 First in Psyche Randy ((Quinn)) : Total: 17 ??? :) (Mucho suspicion flowed around Quinn's plans.)
Now over the next week or two, I got everyone's character fleshed out in my head and theirs... Juli was doing a surfer/extreme sports nut that I decided to make a son of Gérard. She'd been hoping for a dad like Julian, with a real stick up his butt, but I decided that everyone EXCEPT Sander's dad would think he was a slacker -- dad would sort of understand him.
Ander/Karl's idea was cool... a hockey player with amnesia and more hooks than the Old Man in the Sea. In his history, he gave me a conniving fiance, 200 lost years of debauchery, a light Oedipus complex, and put in lots of Elders that didn't like him much.
Breann was going to be a swashbuckling daughter of Deirdre; really young, like: 25 or something -- just getting out of diapers, from an Elder's point of view -- a real Zen master of warfare: sometimes she doesn't even know what she knows, she just does it. She snuck around behind Eric and walked the Tir pattern on her 25th birthday, so we started her out in Shadow. She missed the Big Fight Where Everyone Died that kicked off the campaign, cuz she was gallivanting off in Shadow on a lark, geez I'm a nice guy. She visited Uncle Benny too, who at this point was fighting in Lorraine, but still had both arms.
A fun thing we did with her is that Breann really doesn't think she's that good at warfare: she can kick her peer's butts, mostly, but she doesn't PRACTICE with her peers, she practices with Gerard, Caine, Julian, and Bleys... oh, and let's not forget mom... everyone she spars with can kick her butt. She doesn't have a complex about it or anything, she's just unusually humble.
Theseus is going to be this Puzzle-guy trump artist. Son of Eric. Angsty vibes I'm getting for him too... I started thinking of ghost dad wanting revenge and forcing angsty son to take care of it for him... I secretly dubbed Theseus 'Hamlet' and moved on.
Quinn I was worried about. He sank a butt-load of points into sorcery and put 75 points into pattern... he still thinks like a guy in a 'normal' powers system. Oh well. I figured if he wanted to be power-boy, I'd put him in situations where powers don't matter much, until he stops thinking with his... sorcery.
Anax wanted to be this... well, it doesn't really matter, cuz he quit after a few sessions, and Mark, who ALSO forced up some bidding wars, never even showed for A game... which sorta peeved me, but oh well... it opened things up later. Anyway, actor's dressed, ready for the beginning of the play...
The premise, at least the germ idea for the beginning of the campaign is that Corwin brought guns to bear on Amber the FIRST time he showed up to fight.
In the long run, what I started doing was putting in many elements of the original Amber books, but in different order and doing things to different people than who they 'originally' happened to, so that the POINT of the first 9 or 10 sessions was to establish 'The Amber books just didn't get the facts straight... here's how it REALLY happened...' which I thought was Cool. Generally, the players seemed to think so too... or didn't care :)
Anyway, Corwin shows up, big fight... who dies? Eric dies, Corwin dies, Caine is gone, Bleys is gone, Fiona's gone, Julian's in a coma (I AK-47'd his armor til it looked like a golf ball), and Gerard's missing his legs above the knee-caps. Benedict isn't around, Flora's hiding... Llewella's in Rebma, and so is Random... about the only Elder around is Deirdre.
Cool. Mission accomplished. Player's are now in a position to get responsibility, instead of being gophers for the Elders. Check off one Amber Campaign Hurdle.
Put Deirdre in charge, give Theseus a Hall of Mirror's vision where Eric says he was murdered, and implies it might have been Deirdre, and we're off to the races. Oh, and Breann, the best warfare chick around, gets sent out to the decimated navy for diplomatic missions, cuz she pisses off Deirdre. (mom)
All in all, a decent start. The problem I did have was Lysander. He made a character that no elder would really trust to hold a tray of drinks, so (to be IC) they kept ignoring him. Big problem: in REAL LIFE, this means the player is fucking BORED. Need to think of a remedy.
Quinn plays with big powerful things, and tries to get Deirdre to let him use the JoJ ALREADY, well, he wonders about it aloud already, anyway... he moved right quick.
Oh, Anax wasn't there, and he was supposed to do the log., so I got Breann to do it. I'm demanding in each session that SOMEONE keep a log., cuz I just think it's necessary.
Session Two: Karl/Ander Showcase :)
Ander and Anax got to show up this time, which was cool, as I was really looking forward to playing with Scott... he made up such a cool-ass character.
He didn't disappoint. Everyone was totally amused by his roleplay, and he did amnesia so well. I almost hated to deck him near the end and haul his ass down to the Pattern room to get his memory back, but there you go... he's still missing about 200 years, so all is not lost.
Generally, the whole game went a bit better, though we 'tangented' a lot, cuz we were getting to know each other... that sort of thing. Don't have everyone together at all by a long shot... Breann and Ander, who share a mom, haven't even been in the same building... and I don't see that they will for awhile.
Got to go through descing my first Pattern walk today: MAN I hate doing those things; either it kills you or it doesn't, it's a fucking PATH, how much variance in narrative can you get? I was aided by the fact I could fill in a lot of it with Ander's memories coming back (some of them, anyway).
Sander had to miss the session, cuz she/he was in Florida... no chance to get Sander going, but I have an idea to get him rolling the next session.
Session Three: Sander gets moving... Breann/Deirdre get pissed.
This session I don't remember too well. Brea got in a MAJOR to-do with Deirdre, and is thinking of just gallivanting out into shadow... going to have to smack that down a bit... since she thinks BENEDICT is going to let his BEST NEICE just walk out on Amber in a time of need.
Oh, Quinn's mom trumped him during a pattern walk... she stayed in contact while he attuned the Jewel (I think this is the session that happened in... can't remember) -- Quinn didn't notice, he perceived her presence as an after-image of himself, like the ones in 'Contact' when Jodi Foster is in the wormholes... works for me. Mom should be an Amberite, ain't she tricky? :) At least she's nice. Also knows enough to not tell Quinn. If he knew, he might try to get her to help him with stuff.
Theseus trumped Osric, so he's vegetable boy... good RP stuff with him and Ander. Quinn talked Anax into walking the pattern, resulting in an Amberite of unknown history and heritage with a pattern imprint, advanced shape-shifting, with Psyche like a 400 Horsepower generator... smooth move: I think I'll make Anax Brand's kid, just to make everyone's life hell... he's got bad stuff, what the hell.
Gerard sends Sander out to find Uncle Benedict. Benedict decides that he doesn't give a shit about Sander's rep, and relies on him a BUNCH, since Benedict is missing an arm (check one off the list of 'stuff sorta like the Amber books I want to have happen'). This will have repercussions in the future.... Lysander was by no means bored this game, but ... well, more later.
A good running joke has emerged... Breann taunts Theseus, somewhat OOCly, with 'Your dad's DEAD...' and Theseus replies: 'Yeah, well you're mom's ALIVE.' Breann pouts... good joke, worth a chuckle every time it happens.
A big group troops off to rescue Fiona from the Tower that Brand was caught in in the Books... a prisoner of Brand/Osric in this case... whee hoo. Meanwhile Breann and Lysander run into each other around Benedict, and Breann get's 'either stay with me, or get your ass back Home' -- she's unhappy, the news services are not surprised.
It is revealed in here, while there is buttload of energy focused on a trump, and you shove Greyswandir through it, the Pattern on the blade peels back like tinfoil, revealing a LOT of energy underneath, this is how I t-ported everyone to the Shadows of Floaty Rocks... I figured I'd bite the bullet and at least lay down the POSSIBILITY that Greyswandir's a spikard... I can always make it something other than that later.
Theseus gets all beat up and falls in lust with Fiona... might make something of that later: the parallel of Theseus/Fiona to Hamlet/Gertrude is just too cool.
Anax conveniently gets 'lost' at the end of the session... thus ending up wandering in a shadow run by his DAD. Anax's player just quit the game cuz it's 'too powerful' -- so now he's a butch NPC for the bad guys... he's following Daddy-O.
I ask you, is Amber too powerful? In Amber you can pound on Shadow Dwellers, in DnD, it's kobolds, big deal. There's still a whole circus-tent full of people who can rip your nuts off and feed them to passing chipmunks. Guess you just have to think big. Anax quit before he tangled with anyone tough, so his opinion is all out of context... his loss, moving on.
Regrettably, Ander is gone this session, so he's 'out in Shadow, sailing back to Amber...' It's too bad he's a busy Grad student, cuz his character is so darn INTERESTING.
Session Five: Brea and Sander in the spotlight.
Ander's gone, Quinn's gone, Anax quit... Theseus does the log. and, smart boy, decides to just let Sander and Brea have a good time -- he doesn't do much all session, so they get to play. I'm grateful, and I pound the hell out of Breann and Sander, I'm so darn happy.
Breann meets the Lintra-parallel for the campaign, a dark elf named Brigid -- I had images of a dark girl where Lintra was all ice and white-blue -- she became this evil elvish Winona Ryder... she pounds the crap out of Brea, and knocks out some teeth, thus establishing the ass-kick bragging rights for the next few sessions. Lysander get's pounded on some. I got Sander to catapult into the air and hang-glide during the battle, which I was hoping for.
Theseus' infatuation for Fiona deepens as he draws trumps and watches her heal: maybe she's got a spell on her that's causing it. I don't really know yet -- he's doing this all on his own.
Oh, Rey and Juli showed me Ninja Scroll, and I incorporated the shadow teleport from the show into a new power that the elves and other 'shadowy' people have... players are less than thrilled, but do find it cool. (By shadowy, I mean shadows, not Shadows.)
Two side notes: Quinn writes a diary for the session, and he's NOT EVEN THERE... I'm going to offer him the Game log. job permanently. Second, Quinn incorporated a Middle-Earth shadow into his history, with Galadriel for a mom, which is cool, cuz I had already decided to have Noldor and dark elves as sort of Shadow Gypsies. Hold-overs from an older, pre-pattern time. Works out well.
Hmm. Also, the kids have enough of an influence foothold now that I can let Julian wake up and stuff... they'll still have more than enough stuff to take care of... I think they'll be telling elder's what to do sometimes... I've established that MAYBE 3 amberites have the same level of Pattern skill as Quinn, so there ARE things that the kids can show the Elders... that will help.
Good session for Sander and Breann... bonding is good.
Session Six: The First of the Family Meetings
Ander began the session with some swashbuckling, boarding the huge zombie-crewed ship of 'the Baron' with a party of twelve Amber marines from the La Roue. Captain Anthony had objected to Ander, his commanding officer, leading a boarding party, so Ander had put Anthony in command and continued with his plan as an 'independent noble' -- which I LOVED.
Quinn checked to see if Fiona was really Fiona, thus succumbing to traditional paranoia. He sees she had new protective spells on her; he things she's awakened at some point and put them on her... which isn't exactly right.
Quinn asks Theseus about tapping Trump conversations. Theseus adds that the Greyswandir Trump is done and that neither he nor Gerard were anxious to use it. (Greyswandir went missing during the Fiona rescue.)
Quinn asked Deirdre about Osric and Finndo. Seems that with Osric and Finndo trumping people, folks have gotten curious. They decide to have a big family meeting on it. Whooee. :)
So, this is the first of the Big Gatherings... necessary evils, in my book. They help people get organized, and help with the exchange of information that's usually too late to help... but they are god-awful boring to play through, unless I get lucky and somehow introduce some dynamic into the occurrence. This one went passably well.
Ben's men continue the exchange of sports rules, and teach him the mushroom ball kick-game from First Knight.
People find out Ben's missing an arm, and Brea some teeth... all to the same little girl. Brigid becomes persona-to-fear for Amberites.
Oh, get to do some development with Morgenstern. Quinn and I have been working out the situation in Arden well enough that by this point in time, Quinn realizes that Morg is anything but a horse, and that MORG, not Julian, controls the hell hounds (Julian just controls Morgenstern, or has some agreement with him). Quinn realized that Morgenstern had been cooped up in the stables for a week and was probably starting to go nuts. He and Morgenstern went for a two hour ride, where Quinn finds out that Morgenstern can Shadow-move FAST.
--Quinn shows people Shadow flaws
--Brigid's forces are immune to the wrong/shock/drain sensations of Flawed zones -- do I
know why? Nope. Maybe it's part of that shadow-port power, hard to say.
Session Seven: Dreams and Portents and Stuff
Slowly, very slowly, we're figuring out how to play without totally tangenting. This is mostly my fault, but everyone contributes to a certain extent. Everyone gets along with everyone else, and we only see each other once a week, so when we all get together, a certain amount of digression is to be expected.
But we're bad about it still. We rarely go more than 30 minutes without and interruption; then, on a good day, there will suddenly be like 2 hours where nothing causes us to move off topic, and everyone just zones and we get this amazing game play. Usually when Ander's around. He's a great catalyst. Anyway, plot/campaign notes.
It's become my determination that there are certain intangibles that one can't just 'walk' to in Shadow. Mostly, this boils down to not being able to just find a 'fast-time shadow'. I bothered to explain the theory behind it to the players, but the short version is that I want shadows of wildly varying time-speeds to be both rare and valuable. So, you don't know that you're in a fast or slow shadow without comparing it to Amber standard or something.
After making this clear to people last session, or maybe two sessions ago, Quinn finally (I try to keep him so busy he can't just go down his list of things to do at leisure) got around to putting a grandfather clock with an additional day/month dial in the Amber Great Hall, in view of the default 'Amber' trump, so that you can trump Amber and check the clock against the shadow you're in... allowing people to find fast/slow shadows through a lot of work.
Victor, Ander's DNPC :), has become an interesting character in his own right. He's a police officer on Earth, and does tolerably well in the limited sword training and submission holds. Also, he got his BA at college in History, so he's really into the library and so forth. He's become a very handy research assistant when people are trying to find stuff out, and a voice of earthy reason in a somewhat crazy world.
I am having some OOC problems. Jackie, who plays Breann, has played in a few of my other campaigns, in which Kethos and Finndo were Bad Men. In this campaign, they aren't, though they are a tad ruthless in getting what they're after, and Breann is treating them like Satan's afterbirth. It's become a big effort of mine to get her to react more accurately to Kethos, vis-a-vis this campaign, but since him being nice has only made her suspicious, I'll have to settle for making her rely on him... more on that later.
In bringing Julian back to consciousness, I let Theseus get away with a certain amount of 'dreamscape painting' that I shouldn't have, probably. This is going to bite me in the ass later, I just know it. No one seems to react well to that sort of 'dream warrior' thing.
Introed the Royal Guard's Captain. Morgan (see also, Conner d'Avillez -- Conner makes a lousy amberite, and a really good NPC for Amber.)
Brand's got "Ninja Scroll-esque" threads attached psychically to all the things and people he has trumps for -- so he can bug a lot of trump calls.
I've continued to strengthen the relation between the Tir and dreams. While trying to trump Greyswandir, Theseus ends up in the Tir during the day time, can't trump out, and has to located Ander (who is dreaming about Eric's funeral during a daytime catnap) to get out of the dream/Tir world.
Established Brigid the chick who led the Moon rider's of Ghenesh. Establish also that she faced off solo against Benedict for 45 minutes and did just fine, thanks.
Who was Flora poisoned by? Hmmmmmm.
Gave 25 character points out after this session.
Session Eight: Sequence Experiment
I decided to try something vaguely artistic and presumptuous for this session. All of the characters started the session having a dream about some future event. My effort during this session was to let the players do whatever they wanted to do, but still end the session at the scene they started with. I worked, it was cool, but I don't think I'll ever do it again, at least not on that scale.
One thing about Ander, that makes him so entertaining, is that he's got all this stuff going on for him and those around him, all the time... and he's not doing it in a conniving player way, he just thinks that's what his character would be doing. Example: he stops everything else to make Deirdre give Anthony the Captaincy of the 'Le Roue'. He arranges to have Breann and himself take a weeks vacation in the middle of the game... all of it good ideas, and all of it excellent fodder for roleplay. If everyone did that, I'd never have to keep anyone busy... they'd do it themselves.
I introed a few new tricks for people with the "Shadowport" power... the thing where they fade out of vision and substance when they pass through shadows... makes them very hard to hit.
Revelations: Ander seems to have a daughter. Someone outside Amber is being smuggled guns that work in Amber by someone INside Amber. I got Breann to sort of trust Kethos. Breann ponders who could be smuggling guns out, and why. The list of people with access to the guns that Corwin used during the Amber Assault is DAMN short... and she's not even on it.
Side Note: This experiment in starting the session with the ending was cool, but more cool was that, a couple days later, the Season premiere of Millennium did the same thing. I felt sort of vindicated. :)
Session Nine: Bigger on the Inside
I... we... everyone did something really impressive this session. The game was totally without distraction: everyone played well, and the whole session was really entertaining. It may have been the best session I've ever run... and I have no idea how I did it.
There were lots of revelations floating around: Ander's daughter, and the fact that Ander has a young son, whose blood was used to damage the Primal Pattern, and who saw his DAD'S face as the one who gutted him through the trump contact (chalk up another not-quite-parallel to Zelazny's books). Benedict has been a fake all this time, and the real Benedict was imprisoned and Blinded (chalk up another not-quite-parallel to Zelazny's books), which Osric (and sometimes Anax) pretended to be him. Shocking, world-shaking stuff.
And I still don't know what did it.
The session was short. I knew we only had about 4 hours to play, so I was trying to be very focused and get to all the things I wanted to do. Everyone else seemed to pick up on that, and the game proceeded apace. All in all, some really good stuff... now I'm nervous that the expectation for NEXT session will fall flat.
Well, I wasn't wrong about this week: the whole thing was abysmal. We played through a family meeting, which is a formula for a yawn-fest even during a good session. Some folks wanted to go after Brand and see if they could 'finish him off' -- this led to a really long 'battle in the landscape of the mind' that went on for HOURS... it was SO BORING, and I just couldn't figure a way out of it.
When the session was over, even the people who'd wanted to go after Brand said they wished they hadn't suggested it.
The idea os playing Psyche battles as hand-to-hand combat in the mind, where Psyche stands in for Warfare is, I think, still a good one, but people have to be willing to play into it full bore, and I'm going to make sure the player is ready for that kind of interface before I play through it that way again.
I had some fun with Lora traveling with Breann, in that I had Lora ask all sorts of newsier questions about Amber, about herself, about Ander... about grandma. Who was the best fighter, who was the strongest. How did Gerard loose his legs... all the stuff.
Quinn wanted to search Obeying's rooms for clues on how to repair the Pattern, so I got to do some surrealistic stuff there. They found a picture of Fiona and Theseus together that looked really old. Theseus found a many-pocketed valise and searched through it. He found OLD papers and an explosive trap. Quinn was tossed of the balcony to fall down the LONG drop. He had enough time to use a defensive shield spell and shape it into a twenty foot diameter bubble, slowing his fall. I wasn't really happy with the way I handled him falling... no real suspense.
Breann continues to not work on getting trump of the Amber stables... instead she trumps into the Grand Hall on her Horse. Deirdre's not fond of the habit.
Fiona took Theseus to her workroom in one of the caverns near the Pattern room. She told him that they had been under the influence of a glamour, that their lust-crazed behavior was not natural. It had probably been placed on her while she was imprisoned. They had to get it off.
Theseus said 'okay', and was pretty sure that once the spell was gone, he'd be history in the Fiona paradigm. Fiona surprised him by inviting him on a date for the next night right after they removed the spell.
The best fun I had for this session playing the finger paint-happy Davin was cool. It was nice to establish a certain sense of family in this session with what Quinn has dubbed the "Anderites" -- something that loosely refers to Ander, his 'wife', kids, sister, and mother.
I got to introduce Michael the Angel (Chaosite) which Quinn and Kethos visited the shadows near Chaos, and I also got use my favorite Kethos line 'C'mon, Pattern-Boy, impress me...' (imagine Michael Wincott saying it).
The restaurant downtown is currently Bloody Jasmine's. Someone suggested waiting until the bar had a cool name, then buying it to make sure the name didn't change again.
Session Thirteen: Interruptions
The best fun I had for this session was constantly interrupting Fiona and Theseus just as they were about to kiss. I had Finndo show up early, and Meanwhile, Sander mad war with Baron Frosty (as yet without a 'real' name that the players are aware of).
There was a great scene at the end where Sander trumped through to Amber with the Baron during a hand to hand fight... they reduced the Grand Hall furniture to rubble... very cool.
Session Fourteen: Too, Too Solid Flesh
This was right after the Buffy the Vampire Halloween episode, so on a whim I had Theseus doze off while he was in the Tir, and kept him non-corporeal for the rest of the session... it worked out alright.
Breann decided to make breakfast for Benedict... the best impromptu thing she's done so far. The rest of the session was, however, pretty slow. Most of us hadn't seen each other in awhile, so we digressed a LOT. I feel like we're just killing time until the beginning of December when Ander can play again -- he's got some sort of end-of-the-graduate-semester thesis to do on his laser work.
Session Fifteen: End of an Era
I took the bull by the horns this session and changed the layout of the universe. Now there are 4 patterns, one for each element, and they are all spread out. It turns out that the Primal Pattern wasn't the master pattern, it was the anchor pattern that forced Tir (air) and Rebma (water) to stay near Amber and assume the Amber pattern's shape. The old fire pattern was destroyed, so I had Finndo's pattern get pulled into that 'slot'. I was influenced blatantly in this by my Taoist beliefs and my enjoyment of Chinese-style magic systems... as well as the novels of Elizabeth Wiley which, in my opinion, far outscope Zelazny's in character and plot.
So, the universe got all messed up, and got oriented in a elemental way, as a way of defining an end point for the end of the OTHER era... the era in which Rey and Juli were part of the game. They leave for Connecticut this week, so this was there last session, and they will be missed.
Also, we're going to be short of players. I refuse to let this campaign die out. Quinn continues to be the Alpha-motivator for the campaign, keeping to his long checklist of things he wasn't to explore and understand.
Ander's done with his thesis thing now... that's the good news. The bad news he's going to be gone again for about 3 more weeks for holiday activities... bummer.
We spent a long time getting Ander caught up on things. He seems pretty frustrated that no one's figured out what to do or even what exactly is going on in the Universe... so he set off to find some stuff out. Breann tried to rescue Bleys, and succeeded, but I don't need Bleys around right now, so I made him alcoholic since he thinks he killed Fiona. Might kill him later, who knows.
Ander's wandering shadow, looking for the location of the other Patterns... He has the Amber pattern take him to Finndo, and I establish Finndo's pattern as The Hardest Pattern to Walk ™. Quinn's working on Quinn stuff, and I'm focusing a lot on getting Breann to have some personal goals to work on... She wants to develop some sort of romantic relationship, but just seems FIXated on picking some Family member for this. There's enough incest going on already... it's been DONE, girlfriend, move on :)
Ander's going to be gone again for a couple weeks, so we're going to try to keep things going via email until he gets back... but we still need another player... I crave new blood. Nice thing is that the digressions drop down to manageable levels with just Quinn and Breann... or even all three of em.
Gave out 25 advancement points after this session. Total points for players up to 150 now, not counting contributions.
Session Seventeen: Clearing the Castle
Things got pretty tense in the Castle with Bleys back. I was pretty non-plussed by having Uncle B back in town, but I've sort of changed my tune. It's pretty fun to have an 'I don't care' drunk around to play. It's also good in that it's giving Breann some personal goals -- she wants to snap Bleys out of his 'drunk funk' and get him back to being an upright member of society. The real problem here is that she's trying to get him mad enough to change, and what it's basically doing is just getting him mad, which means he wants to hurt her, and there really isn't a venue in which he can't literally tear her to pieces -- she took off a big bite of something she pry isn't man enough to swallow, basically.
Session Eighteen: Meeting with Finndo
Breann, smart girl, realizes that Bleys is a little peeved, so when her and Mom have a fight, she decides to stay clear of Amber and hang out with Uncle Julian in Arden. The downside is that Julian and Arden are targets, and a special unit of dark elves attack the two of them with acid-laced arrows (Julian's armor is still in the shop, and probably won't ever be fixed).
Breann and Deirdre's relationship, or lack thereof, is getting to be a problem. I wouldn't mind if Brea went for two-dimensional relationships with her family. Two dimensional is better than the one dimension she's currently striving for. She's way too confrontational about… hell, everything: pretty much anything that anyone else wants her to do, she finds a way to not… do. I think eventually I may have to take a route with her that I did when she was going all rabid about Kethos -- force her into a situation where she has to treat the person in question as another human being, and then maybe we can get past the 'I hate this person, I don't have to listen to anything they say.'
Session Nineteen: Why Amberites Don't Do Acid
Most of this session was Breann on a big acid trip, which is something I came up with on the fly the acid-tipped arrows that is -- in the end, I sort of showed (I think) Brea that there are worse things that hanging out on a diplomatic mission with Mom -- you could get shot by an acid-tipped arrow, wander helpless through Shadow, and and up at Uncle Osric's front step.
The only real problem with that is that even in this situation, Brea isn't totally convinced that all that IS worse than hanging out with Mom.
At this point, I'm switching to a pen and paper journal for taking down my thoughts, since I can do it on the fly more easily -- after this everyone's just going to have to guess what I'm thinking :) Go back to the Synopsis.