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Post by Lorelei on Aug 24, 2020 18:35:02 GMT
This is Nimue from RPoL *By Design*
I've decided to give this game a try. I have ideas for characters but none of them really scream "pick me". I thought I'd list the ideas and get a little player feedback before making the final decision;
1) Adonis "Don" Flaumel, son of Florimel - A veritable demi-god of uhm... attracting the opposite gender. A mane of curly blonde hair, grey eyes, and divine blood...
2) Vivian ? ? ?, daughter of Bleys - Determine to be the [near] best at everything, just like daddy... Red hair, green eyes and *charm*...
3) Lily ? ? ? , daughter of Eric - Adrenaline addict. Shipping heiress in a Shadow kingdom. Black hair, green eyes...
I've even thought of bringing back a character from a game that ended in the late 80's
4) Selene ? ? ?, daughter of Brand - Shapeshifter and crafter of blood-Trumps, from the Courts. In that game she had a bipolar half-brother taken to Amber so he could be watched after the war, a musical prodigy. She is intent on "rescuing" him, with or without his cooperation, and failing that to protect him. Vixen barely begins to describe her. I know the dynamics would be different, but I can't see reviving this one without there being a son of Brand in the game... so, if someone is interested let me know soon...
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Post by Katerina on Aug 24, 2020 20:18:03 GMT
Hi Nimue, Eidlos here from "By Design". Personally I think Selene could be a ton of fun, but you'd want a brother to play off against. Not having been in the game long I'm not sure whether she'd fit, so I'll let the long term players give an opinion on that.
For some reason I thought Lily was a shopping magnate until I re-read it!
Kat / Eidlos
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Post by Lorelei on Aug 24, 2020 20:58:30 GMT
hmmm.... shopping magnate having the plastic card with mold shadow... unlimited funds...
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Post by Admin on Aug 25, 2020 2:10:06 GMT
I read it as shopping magnate too!
If none of the character ideas really grab you then why not think for a goal for a character then build a character around that goal. The Vivian concept seems similar to what I'm proposing though it might be better to reduce her focus down to becoming better than a specific PC or NPC rather than against the field unless you are thinking of playing her with a major chip on her shoulder towards the rest of the family.
Or think only of what you'd like to do in the game. I've told people this before that in these forum style games we will be spending a lot of time typing up stuff so why not make a character with only the things you'd be interested in writing about. Like inventing spells and writing about them then take sorcery, if not then avoid it and so on. Maybe get a copy of the character sheet from the back of the book and start by crossing out all the powers and things you don't want to have to deal with in this game, then take a quick look through the posts already up to eliminate stuff that seems overused by the other PCs so you can create your own niche.
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Post by Lorelei on Aug 25, 2020 8:29:55 GMT
A snippet of lyrics from the great philosopher Meatloaf..
Some days it don't come easy, Some days it don't come hard, Some days it don't come at all, And these are the days that never end,
Some nights your breathing fire, Some nights your carved in ice, Some nights your like nothing I've ever seen before or will again,
Maybe I'm crazy, oh it's crazy and it's true, I know you can save me, No one can save me now but you,
As long as the planets are turning, As long as the stars are burning, As long as your dreams are coming true...
In most class-based games (as in 'not Amber') the characters I routinely make (8-9 times out of 10) are mold-breakers. I begin with something to work against (mages that operate like rogues, holy warriors that are definitely not paladins, etc...). That's much harder to do in Amber. In Amber, I usually start by selecting the parent, then flip the character's gender relative to the parent. After that, I work-out a rough idea of personality, as determined by parentage and upbringing, however convoluted. Usually this suggest a goal, but sometimes it doesn't. Then I look at the posted characters others have already made, if any, to see if there is something mine would want to support or oppose. Again, sometimes it helps and sometimes it doesn't. I guess you could say my typical modus operani is to give the character a spark of life and let it build up the fire and reveal itself... From a certain perspective, this is basically what you've suggested [build the scaffolding, then bring it to life with a spark], only in reverse. Your method would certainly be easier, but less satisfying for me because of the way I think. (Different strokes for different folks.)
I could make any of these character ideas work as is, but it would take a lot longer to fully flesh them out. That's why I've asked people to look and comment. Sometimes a character idea doesn't work (for me) in a given setting. For instance, I've played a post-Patternfall Ethan, eldest son of Corwin, raised in a Shadow of Avalon with children of his own (Genevieve [Deirdre-esque], Yvette [Flora-esque], and Heather [Just Strange]... the youngest being half-fey)... bring them together (Corwin and Ethan, that is) and you're asking for big, BIG fireworks... (an Ethan-quote from that game: 'Corwin has made his bed, let him burn in it...') In this game, Corwin has his Paris and a daughter already in place... Actually, on second thought this could work, as long as the focus is not on Corwin in Paris... What I was trying to get at is, talking about character ideas can bring up something new which makes the character more interesting, fills some of the gaps, etc... .
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Post by Katerina on Aug 25, 2020 9:26:31 GMT
I like to do things in Amber in general to stretch things out a bit. Often I'll come up with an idea and try and subvert things around a lot. I played Gwyddion in a now dead game the other year who was a half Fairy son of Flora. He was a right scheming little bugger but probably wasn't the right character in the game he ended up in which was more an investigation based game.
Eidlos was born out of an idea of having a haemaphrodite character. I made them a child of Fiona who was banned from using magic by her because a) it was interesting as to why that might be and b) it subverted the idea that the child always followed what the parent was like. Jewel came from my campaign. She started life as an NPC who was autistic but a superb Trump artist. I wanted her to be occaisionally useful to the players, not also difficult for the players to just get her to do what they wanted. She ended up getting massively expanded and I played her in Zincht's game. She had a little parasol which could open out as different Trumps each time and one of them being a Trump trap to her 'bad place' where she keeps all her dinosuars and sea monsters that she loves.
So I don't know. Ideas for me coalesse around a core concept. I admit the Zincht's idea for having a charcater based on the Liveship books sparked me into thinking about the Stephen Donaldson books 'The Mirror of her Dreams' which then sparked ideas for a character for this one. In the end the idea came very quickly to me, but I had no idea what I was going to do when I started the process.
I always wanted to try something a bit wierd like a Centuar character or something of that ilk, but I never quite came up with the right concept for it.
Okay I'm rambling now ...
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Post by Admin on Aug 25, 2020 14:39:52 GMT
Hey! A character's parents are chosen by the GM! Not that I really enforce that rule because I tend not to make a big deal out of parent/child relationships in the game unless there is some real drama built into it that would affect the whole campaign or other PCs.
I like the centaur idea. |Way, way back when I first started playing Amber online I was in a game GM'ed by Red on the Dead Games Society website, it was where I met Kevin and got invited to By Design, anyways the game began with all the family gathered in Amber due to Random's poisoning (Yeah, Xu, you are right Random does always seem to get the shaft in these games). My character mentioned how surprised he was by all the family looking human based on the kind of kinks his uncles indulged in while out in Shadow. He really expected to see more catpeople cousins. Except from Brand's side of the family, they would have been elephantpeople.
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Post by Katerina on Aug 25, 2020 15:33:35 GMT
I sometimes have a preferred parent and sometimes not, but even then there is some ambiguity as to the other parent. In this game for instance I have left it up to the GM but gave an idea on who I think it might be. I am prepared to be (pleasantly ... or maybe unpleasantly) surprised if it gets revealed.
Somehow I always pictured Julian as the one who'd have a Centaur offspring. Catpeople, well that leaves it entirely more open I guess!
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Post by Hammett on Aug 25, 2020 17:06:20 GMT
There are always the Mer-people from Rebma. I'm sure the elders visit Rebma once and awhile, so half-Amberite half-Rebma mer-person is an option.
One thing that the books don't cover and I wish they did, or that they would have released more books for the game, is point cost for "natural" abilities/powers some characters in the book seem to have. Most of the time it gets hand-waved away to a spell or shapeshifting, but that shouldn't be the case. For example, if you were part mer-person, how much would it cost to have the ability to Breathe Underwater (not just in Rebma, but anywhere)? Is that a 5 pt power? that seems high, maybe 2 points? Or having a Poison Bite like one of the characters in the books did? Or to See in the Dark (nighvision) or dozens of other abilities that a character might have if one of their parents is not just a regular "human" or through some other magical effect.
From the current books the only way to mimic this would be to build it as a shapeshifting ability with the Implant quality [Cat's Eyes (see in the dark) - Item shapeshifting (limited form): 1pt, Implant power: 15pts total cost: 16pts] which is way, way to expensive in relation to the cost of other powers for only gain one, relatively minor ability (in my opinion).
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Post by Admin on Aug 25, 2020 17:25:24 GMT
I don't recall anyone ever creating a character who was Rebman. Probably one of the reasons why the Rebma book was never published is that none of the players was ever interested in that aspect of the world. Too bad, because Jason must have worked his ass off in researching and writing that book.
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Post by Admin on Aug 25, 2020 17:30:01 GMT
"Wow, Julian your kid is a centaur, huh? His mother isn't by any chance Morganst-"
"No. She was from farther out in Shadow. A shapeshifter so I, uhh, didn't realize at the time. That skill skips a generation which is why I'm petitioning Random the new ruler to replace the castle's stairs with ramps.
"Ah hell, don't look at me like that - Bleys' kid is half octopus!"
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Post by Lorelei on Aug 25, 2020 19:08:34 GMT
For the benefit of anyone wanting to make a Rebman character, here is a copy of a post Nimue made in *By Design* just under two weeks ago... It's not a 'finished' book like "Amber" and "Shadow Knight", but it contains loads of useful information. . . . I went here ( www.pdfdrive.com/ ) looking for some other stuff, and on a half prompted lark I typed in my search ( just 'rebma') and found "as above, so below: the rebma sourcebook"... Talk about timing, I've only known about this site for roughly a month... This would have been a big help several years back... . . .
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Post by Admin on Aug 26, 2020 17:21:59 GMT
Nim: We seem to have wandered away from your character ideas. Have you decided on anything yet? Since we are playing in the post-Merlin books era there might be something of interest for you in the Shadow Knight book. Your Courts character could be adapted to be looking for her brother Rinaldo. Or maybe Dalt has a kid? Could Jasra have had another child of Brand's, one who has grown up in the Keep of the Four Worlds? Or maybe she seduced another of the Amberites? What if Coral had a kid before all the events in the Merlin books? Or Luke and Nayda have a kid?
Hammett: Some of your ideas are covered in the advanced shapeshifting power but I don't know about paying 65 points for them! I haven't heard of anyone coming up with another method to get those modifications.
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Post by Katerina on Aug 26, 2020 18:14:04 GMT
I guess that the only way to do 'natural' abilities is to do partial powers and split off those bits from the main ability to cost them fairly.
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Post by Lorelei on Aug 26, 2020 22:27:49 GMT
The talk drifted to mer-folk, and other strangeness. Since I have the Rebma book I've been doing some digging (sadly I only read as fast as I talk, and am from the U.S. South/Mid-west [the southern edge of the Ozark mountains...]).
I had "a quick and easy" idea come to me for another character; Lorelei, daughter of Moire and Corwin... Such ideas usually produce enjoyable characters; the hard ones can also, but it's like the difference between working clay vs granite to get it all written out and ready to play... I just need to finish reading to figure out how to build her. If I should decide not to use her in this game, I'll likely use a modified Selene... I'll let you know soon.
FYI- my brother just told me he got a text from the power company... due to the big storm down on the coast, we may be looking at outages here for the next couple of days (I don't see how, but...); crews are on stand-by...
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