Introducing Karlsen

I know the game is full right now, but since I am lurking and adding comments I think I should at least introduce myself.

My rl name is Andy, and I live in Singapore, (hence the sometimes odd times I am on the forum). I teach English as a second language at a private school here. I have lived here for nine years now and love it. I am 39 and my wife and I have two kids, Bruce who is 2 and Niki is 9.

I have lots of experience with table top games like Heroclix and Battletech, as they are more common over here.

I got into a D&D (3rd ed I believe) for a bit here and then took over as GM for a Star Wars RPG campaign, (I am told that Star Wars is like D&D 3.5). I loved it when we forgot the rules and just role played. My group wasn’t very combat oriented so I just had them do surveillance and information gathering missions. Lots of role playing, enough combat to keep people on their toes. I also played red box AD&D, Top Secret and Paranoia when I was a teenager.

I got an idea for a deck building game using Amber as the basis, (not sure if I can ever publish it but we can all dream right?). So I started re-reading the series, (my 3rd time though). I pulled out my old copy of Shadow Knight and reread it. I got online and I saw the call for players on the RPG site. I asked for a copy of the core rule book for Christmas (how could I play without the rule book?). I got it and started reading. When I checked the site though, all the player slots were filled. Oh well maybe something will open up later.

Welcome Karlsen, at least to the OOC threads.

A friend and I actually toyed with the idea of an Amber deckbuilding game when I was into Magic. Unfortunately the thing that made Magic popular was the thing that killed off a lot of good deck games (Anachronism or BattleTech for example), the money-driven aspect and its expense. I find it parallel to GW's Warhammer games - the model that you have to own your own game pieces to play. When I was playing Magic we used to have "all common" tournaments to counteract this effect...

Anyway, as an ameteur game designer (or at least assistant, critic and playtester)I would be happy to correspond about the deckbuilding game. We could do it here in these forums (with David's permission) or some other medium.

Dave "Winnow" van Dyche

Towards the end of my Magic period (we call them "the dark times"), we would just get five people together to chip in on a box, then split them by color and play monochrome five-way games. A box was enough cards that you'd get pretty much all (sometimes several) of the commons, and enough uncommons and rares to keep things interesting, but you'd have enough cards in general to make a usable deck. Everyone paid the same amount, and took the luck of the draw.

I actually prefer the closed-deck games. The original Illuminati card game vs. INWO, for example. They're more friendly for casual gamers, I find.

I still play Magic occaisionally. Its a good game but very expensive to keep up.

Gavin

I envision a hybrid, where there is a pool of cards, say 120 (that divides nicely by 2, 3, 4, 5, and 6), deal them all out, then discard half and keep half to make your deck...with the discards going into a draw pile for replenishment, something like that.

Therefore no collectability, just a standard game with expansions perhaps.

Just don't but the Betancourt expansion

Fergus wrote:Just don't but the Betancourt expansion

What? Shriek English, Limey.

Fergus wrote:I still play Magic occaisionally. Its a good game but very expensive to keep up.

Gavin

I kept a single deck, when I got rid of my suitcase collection. I'm pretty sure half the cards are disallowed at this point, and they're all thrashed up so probably no resale value anyway.

But it's around here, somewhere.

If you have anything in there called "Mox" or "Black Lotus" or "Ancestral Recall" or "Time Twister" or "Time Walk" then chances are that they will be worth quite alot.

Gavin

Nope, those all got sold when I ditched the suitcase of cards.

Played very little M:TG back in my younger days. Was really into Rage, based on Werewolf: The Apocalypse. I still have my buttload of cards, my prize "Wyrm" deck (playing the bad guys), and stuff.

For Gavin, that's a metric buttload.

The only other player with a deck like mine moved, and we agreed to never play each other since it would end up being 5 or 6 hours and no one really winning. Some guys back then played with us though, 3 on 2. We'd win. good vs evil, and all those metaphors.

Now to go dig through my cards and feel nostalgic.

I have about 30 files filled with Magic cards. There are no butts big enough to load them all in. Suitcases no longer are big enough ..... in fact I think I need a bigger house and to put them all on my house insurance.

Gavin

Let me know when you have it all insured. That much M:tG would be worth a trip to the UK to liberate.

I still have about two rubbermaid bins full...sold all the good stuff off finally about two years ago.

Now here's a story that will make all you closet businessmen/investors scream in sympathetic pain...I once had in my hands 10 boxes of Unlimited boosters, one box of Unlimited starters, three beta starters and three boxes of Arabians...in 1993...of course with no idea of what the prices would do.

Right now that's something like $50K or $60K worth of cards, cost me about $1500 at the time...

We opened them and played with them of course.

I could never get the hang of playing in the protective sleaves. It always borked up the shuffling, something fierce.

I don't even want to think about what my lotus or moxes would be worth these days. They were well and truly thrashed when I got rid of them, and they still brought me some decent prices. I mean, like $80 each...

Also... you actually paid $1500 for that stuff you opened? In 1993 dollars, that's still quite impressive. I think for me, that would be something like two months of income at the time.

It was a collective buy with several guys, we were all in the Air Force, in Japan, collecting pretting good COLA (cost of living allowance)...I was a 1st Lt with my wife the same, no kids...I think my part was about half of it. I think my monthly pay was something like $2300...

I was in college. I had an allowence.

(Though I was an Air Force brat at the time. We were stationed in places like Kansas and Arizona. I was always jealous of the kids who got to go to Germany and Japan. Stupid Dad had to go into SAC instead of the cool groups that travelled abroad.)

Or places like the winsome vacation spot Omaha...or more properly,. Bellevue, NE, where Offutt AFB, home of SAC now STRATCOM, is downwind of the slaughterhouse and rendering plant...

Wow miss a day and look what pops up! LOL

Thanks for the warm welcome. Actually I collected a few card games that promptly went under, Overpower (Marvel and DC), the Decipher Star Wars game and the Young Jedi (picked out of the discount bin, not too bad but very restrictive in deck building). The only one I have played much was G.I. Joe which is an awesome quick game. Every time I pull it out everybody gathers round. Takes 5 min to teach a new person to play and games last about 10 min. Great game to kill time waiting for the last people to arrive for a game. Still play that one even though the game is defunct.

Actually my game is based on the Ascenson or Dominon kind of game. You buy a box that comes with all the cards. Expansions would come later. Much less outlay that way, I never liked the money aspect of those games either (though I do still play and collect Heroclix). Got a set of cards printed out and put into sleeves (with old Young Jedi cards backing them). It runs fairly well, but has a few kinks to smooth out. It focuses on Corwin/Eric/Bleys/Brand conflicts. Each player starts with one of the characters and then builds a deck to support the character by buying cards from 2 lines of upturned cards. A third line represents plot actions to earn power. More later if everyone is still interested. Otherwise I will just PM Dave.

Winnow wrote:Or places like the winsome vacation spot Omaha...or more properly,. Bellevue, NE, where Offutt AFB, home of SAC now STRATCOM, is downwind of the slaughterhouse and rendering plant...

The smell reminds them what happens if they screw up too bad.

Karlsen wrote:More later if everyone is still interested. Otherwise I will just PM Dave.

What they hey? Just throw up a new thread dedicated to your rules. That way, those who care can check the tread, those who don't... don't.

Er... unless you plan on marketing the thing later. But since Zelazny is dead, and his estate is kind of picky about licensing stuff these days, I don't expect you could. Unless you strip out the Amber specific references, and just make a Dominion clone. Which might still sell, so... you know... maybe you don't want to post everything up on the Interwebs where the whole world can infringe on your intellectual property.

If you're seriously looking for playtest advice and whatnot, Forumotion probaly does (and I know forumer.com definitely does) allow you to make login-only forums, where stuff wouldn't be accessible except to random strangers on the Internet who first asked your permission... thus putting them above the run-of-the-mill random stranger you normally encounter on the Internet.

Or maybe David would be so kind as to make you a sub-forum that's login restricted (like each of us has a character sub-forum).

Thanks. That was one of the hopes of mine and fueled my recent renewed interest in Amber. I was really hoping to make something that could be independently marketable (IE you don't have to know about the series to play the game). People who got interested could then go read the series. I was going to pitch it as a win/win for the estate. They get a cut of the profits, and renued interest in the books might create enough demand for a reprint. Once I get a workable game then it becomes time to do the searching for a contact to see what interest the estate would have in it.

Shoot if they made it I might be willing to forget I invented the dang thing just to get the ball rolling on Amber stuff. LOL

The estate is more than picky, it's anal. Developing the game would be fun, but the chance of it getting published under "Amber" is low. The estate killed off Wujcik's hopes for expansion after Roger died because they were asking for a lot of money.

Yeah the more I dig into the problem the more I see the same consensus of they wanted 'a lot' of money. Well that was quite a few years ago, and they were doing the series that will not be named so things were a bit different. At least I will get a workable game together and then go calling. Maybe hard times will have softened them a bit. If they prove unreasonable then it isn't that hard to change the characters and plot names. We can always think of them as Amber characters in our heads (or use a bit of white out!).

On a side note, I was trying to describe Amberites to my friends who had never read the series (going to correct that soon!). The best I could come up with while on the spot was Captain America as the base template for Amberite atributes of strength, endurance and warfare (they are all comic book fans). Now that think about it that would probably be more Chaos level but what do you all think? How would you describe Amberite powers/power level to someone that hasn't read the series? I am trying to get my friends into this to maybe get a game going here.