The Tony Jones Amber Page
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For those who don't know, Amber is the diceless role-playing system based in and around the universe of Roger Zelazny's ten Amber novels.
Although I don't think it is the pinnacle of role-playing perfection which it is sometimes touted as, I do like it as a game, and have some links to other Amber-related sites, and am also a member of The Golden Circle WebRing.
This page is divided up into the following sections:
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Click on the section headings to return to the top of the page.
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By my brother.
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Roleplaying Game Books and Comics
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My most recent face to face Amber game:
This link goes to details of a mini-campaign I ran for our work roleplaying group, now having had its fourth outing:
Other games I have run:
I have created a gazetteer of places from the first series of Amber books, illustrated with various quotes from the books; this is mainly for my own use, but I think it is something others might find useful too. The quotes are at least partly to help illustrate what a lot of games I've played in, at least, often seem to miss - the often downright strange and impressive images Zelazny creates of a lot of the places in the Amber books. The places are arranged below in order of increasing distance from Amber :
- Some Alternate Ambers from myself and others
- Nine Princes in Moscow - a Russian-themed Amber-like setting.
- Argentium by Iain Walker - Amber is destroyed, Oberon rules in Chaos, and the Elders and their Children live at Corwins Pattern.
- Blood of Amber by David Moore - Amber, but the powers of the Family arise from their being vampires...
Swearing loyalty to Amber is no trivial task. For that reason it has its own rules and etiquette. This page describes one way in which it might be done.
My take on the Amberites, elders and otherwise, plus other inhabitants of the Amber universe and a few characters of my own invention. Most of these versions of the characters are from the same version of Amber as that described in the timeline, below.
- The Elder Amberites, and Others
- Benedict, Bleys, Brand, Caine, Corwin, Deirdre, Dworkin, Eric, Finndo, Fiona, Florimel, Gerard, Julian, Llewella, Moire, Oberon, Osric, Random, Sandrine, Vialle.
- Younger Amberites
- Some Non-Royal Inhabitants of Amber, and Others
- The Noble Houses of Amber
This is a list of (admittedly game-specific) significant events from the first hundred years or so of King Random's rule.
- The Powers. A partial powers system. For all powers which are divided into sections which can be individually learnt, the parts at the same level of indentation can be learned in any order, but parts more indented must be learned after the lesser-indented part immediately above them.
- Creature and Item Creation
- Personal Shadow Creation
- Languages
- Ghosts may exist in some versions of Amber. Here are some ideas on how they might work in-game.
Obviously Amber has a currency, and given its close trading ties to shadows across the Golden Circle it is quite likely that it will have long ago replaced any local currencies which may have once existed.
The main unit of currency in Amber is the Crown, a gold coin. This subdivides into the Half-Crown (obviously equal to half a Crown), the Shilling, of which there are twenty to the Crown, and the Penny, of which there are five to the Shilling (or a hundred to the Crown). Coins of five, ten, twenty and one hundred Crowns also exist.
One can subsist in Amber at the very poorest level on about two Shillings a day.
Very dull, but potentially useful for naming shadows of Amber and things of that nature, I wrote a computer program that generated every possible rearrangement of the characters in the word 'Amber'.
This software is all for the PC only. It was written in the Ada 95 language and runs under Windows XP (though it should also run under Windows NT and other older versions of Windows).
- The Random Overall Ranking Scheme Generator - A program for when your players have figured out how your Overall Ranking Schemes work, and how to minimax with them. It generates a list of ranks at random places within a specified range of values. The link goes to a 133K zip file containing the program's source code, executable and a 'readme' file.
- The Amber Rearranger - The program used to generate all possible rearrangements of the characters in the word 'Amber'. The link goes to a 2K zip file containing the program's source code, and a 'readme' file. The executable of the program is not included because its results are already shown here.
The following links go to pages on various Amber characters I have played and am playing in both face to face and play-by-Email games.
- Absalom, son of Julian, played at AmberCon UK 1996.
- Arkady, son of Benedict, from the alternative Amber of the Silver Unicorn game.
- Ashira Seshadri, daughter of Llewella, from The Eye of the Storm PBEM.
- Belsalem, of shadow Lorraine, child of Corwin and Lorraine, from the Revolve game run by Bob Corrigan.
- Benvolio Sawall, son of Martin and successor character to Ernst.
- Cimarron Brandsson, not too surprisingly a son of Brand, played at AmberCon UK 1999.
- Queen Circaea Acacia Justicia of Shadow Ensilarum, daughter of Brand, from the Amber Under Siege PBEM.
- Elaine d'Aurillac, daughter of Deirdre, played at various AmberCon UKs.
- Ernst von Shrackenberg, child of Flora and predecessor to Benvolio.
- Malyarin Tansern, son of Corwin.
- The two versions of Rakhmon, son of Eric, played in the 'Webs of Time' and 'Arcady' PBEM Amber games run by Bob Corrigan.
- The diaries of Samantha Sand Carter, from the playtest of Pete Marshall's ACUK 2002 game 'Post Hoc Ergo Propter Hoc'. This was a game which started in a world based on The Proteus Operation by James P. Hogan where the PCs were versions of various fictional characters such as (obviously) Samantha Carter from 'Stargate SG1'.
- Two pictures of Shkai'ra, my character from the Ways game of Simone Cooper.
- Solon, son of Flora, played at AmberCon UK 1996.
- Tyrrel, son of Benedict.
- Korasca (Walker), son of Corwin, played at AmberCon UK 1998.
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Various links to Amber pages around the world:
- Amber FTP Archive
- The Amber Geography FAQ - lots of useful information here.
- Amber Under Seige - an enjoyable Amber PBEM I am currently playing in.
- The AmberCon UK Page
- The 'A Delicate Balance' Amber Page - loads of devious and demented stuff here.
- Equinox (Amber PBEM) Page
- The Eye of the Storm - an Amber PBEM I was involved in, now, alas, no longer running.
- Jason and Mer's Amber Game
- MaBarry's Amber Links - loads of links, grouped by topic.
- Nine Ladies Dancing - "A collection of references and observations about the under-appreciated women of Amber," as the site describes itself. It also has a mailing list.
- The RPG Gateway Amber Page.
- Joe's Segmented Power System - more partial powers, also definitely worth a look.
- The Sable PBeM - a game set in a very variant Amber, where the player characters are, in general not members of the royal family.
- Shards - an Amber game which focuses on those who live between the poles of reality rather than at them.
- Sol and Jeff's Partial Power List - Amber partial powers, very different from mine but definitely worth a look.
- The Trump Gallery - a collection of Trumps of characters from the Amber books, by various artists, indexed by character.
- Wendi Strang-Frost's "Outrageous Fortune" - loads of good stuff, and lots of quality Trumps. Or her GMs page.
Please send any comments to me at tony {dot} website {at} clockworksky {dot} net.
Also, be aware that this site is constantly under construction, so it is entirely possible that things will be changed or added to without warning or notification (though it will be very rarely that anything is actually removed).
Please note the following disclaimer.
Back to My Roleplaying Page.
Back to My Home Page.
The title of this page came to me out of the way in which games of Amber can take many, many different forms, but all of them still remain, at heart, Amber.
The banner title itself was created using The Banner Generator web site.
