Claimh Solais

Ambercon 2004- In review

I'm back from Ambercon and I had a great time. Every year, I seem to enjoy Ambercon more than the last and this was no exception. All of the games were fun and it was great seeing everyone.

As for the games:

Slot 1: The Shattered Mirror The Shattered Mirror was an Amber scenario I ran for the elders. Set directly after the Corwin series, the family returns home to Amber and starts preparations for Random's coronation when things immediately start going wrong. The characters slowly start going insane. The plan for the game was to not tell the players "you are now have an Obsessive Compulsive Disorder" but to describe the world to them in a way that someone would with the different types of mental disorders would perceive it. For example, instead of telling Fiona that she has become a Schizophrenic, I described voices that began speaking to her whenever she opened a trump contact and eventually when she was not. Eventually the family would find that the existence of a new Pattern (Corwin's) had thrown the universe out of balance and only the destruction of Corwin's Pattern or the creation of a new Logrus could balance the universe. In the end Vialle ended up creating a pattern. The game wentwell and everyone seemed to have fun. The revelations of insanities did not go as subtly or as balanced as I wanted. I wanted all the PCs to get to play out dealing with this (with the exception of pattern-less Vialle), but there was not enough time to build up enough insanities for everyone.

Slot 2: Matrix Diceless The GM created an excellent character creation system for this diceless game based on the Matrix movies. Set 100 years after the trilogy ended, we played "Inquisitors," humans who police the Matrix. It was a very fun game, althugh it was a little lighter on action than you would expect a game based on the Matrix movies to be. It was more of a Matrix detective story, which was neat.

Slot 3: The Crystal Ship A mystical ship sailing through shadow takes the PCs out of the universe and a trip through a dream-like landscape to prepare them for the next world. This game if the one that I went in to with very little plot and based it off the characters I received and whatever popped into my mind. I knew I wanted a "trippy" game with a ride through shadow, but that changed in the game to a trip through a dream-like landscape where PCs dealt with personal issues in tehir subconcious o exorcise their ghosts before going to a world far away from Amber and Chaos. The players had a lot of fun, it seemed, but I felt that I could have done a lot beter with this. I ended up falling back on a few cliches and also ended up being forced to basically "club" the PCs into the plot because I did not have a clear enough beginning to hook the players on the plot without "clubbing" them. ("Clubbing" is my new term for when a GM forces PCs into a plot by knocking them unconcious, kidnapping or some other way dragging the character where you need them to be for the plot to continue. A despicable thing to do...but every GM ends up doing it at some point. The Gamecat says: "Best avoided.")

Slot 4: The Longest Fall This was the game that I was most worried was going to fall flat on its face but the game proved to have wings and took off. Between the excellent players and a terrific co-GM, everyone had fun. This was my second year ranning the LARP and I've still never played in one. This years plot revolved around a party in Hell and certain poor souls who were close to Lucifer when some imp tries to get rid of the prince of hell so his master, Beezelbub, could rule in hell instead. The party guests joined Lucifer where he was teleported....a place outside of God's creation and only by creating a world where it is possible for the natives to travel outside their own dimension could any of the characters return to their home dimension. In this new world, all PCs became "godlings" with power over creation and they could work together or resist eachother in an attempt to create the world they desired. My co-GM, Matthew, played Lucifer with the PCs as they all stood around in their heavens and overlooked creation, while I spoke with players about what things they were doing to the world below. A race of intelligent otters who worshipped Mephistophiles ended up fighting a war with an atheist lizarman race with wings while the intelligent apes hid in caves and bred with angels.

Slot 5: Unto the Third Generation I joined DJ Quinn's campaign this year and played Anoki, a character of mine that I've not been able to play much yet and was a perfect fit into his game. Unfortunately, I ended up spending very little time where the other PCs were, in Amber so didn't get to roleplay with a lot of people. Hoowever, I could see why a lot of friends like DJ's GMing and it was one of the few games I've been in where I've really been entertained watching others doing the roleplaying. It was an interesting group with a lot of good roleplayers.

Slot 6: Morpheus Defiant The continuing series of games based around an Amber where the Amberites were defeated years ago and kept prisoner by Chaos in a Matrix, had an explosive episode. The PCs discovered shadows returning to "The Desert of the Real," witnessed the death of King Julian and the beginning of Queen Keely's reign, discovered and witnessed the destruction of Dworkin's "first draft,"and a chase through the Matrix that led to first sighting of the Serpent. This game crossed over with Patrick Franklin's "Lords of Chaos." The game went very well. At the end of it, I was so wired that, even though the game did not end until about 2:00 in the morning, I ended up lying in bed thinking about it until 4 in the morning. I can't wait to see what happens next year in the game world.

Slot 7: Pools of Red, Flashes of Amber This game was a last minute addition to the game book and becuase it came in so late, noone signed up. I cancelled the game and hung out with Ray L. and Ben B.. Ben ended up telling us about one of his other hobbies, and we ended up going out to try it. The hobby was geocaching where you go out and look for things that other people hid places. It's a weird form of hide and seek that uses a GPS tracker and was a pretty neat way to spend a few hours. We even ran into a couple of other Geocachers at one of the hidden locations.

Slot 8: Confessions This was the soap opera game. PCs were "shadows" of the true Amber family and had gathered at a party where Owen Barimen, the family patriarch, was announcing his engagement to his next wife (what number was this one?). All the PCs were played overdramatically in the style of day-time soaps and came with their own secrets. I played Benedict Barimen, the eldest son and the man most likely to take over father's company, Oberon Industries, if only I weren't being blackmailed by my dastardly, evil brother. It was a blast and a terrific way to end the con on a light note. Their were fights, assassination attempts, brainwashings, incestual relationships and deaths. Everything a good soap opera needs.

Posted by Nuadha at March 29, 2004 9:03 PM