In the course of writing about the Jacob's Ladder books I spent a few minutes poking around the internet for a brief summary of what makes Amber Diceless so great. I didn't find anything, partly because I got sidetracked into this in-depth review/response.
Reading that reminded me of two things.
One, that Amber (and Lords of Gossamer and Shadow, built on the same mechanics) has been the source of three memorable and excellent campaigns that I've run.
Two, that I really, really dislike a lot of the actual mechanics, to the extent that the only Amber game I've played in, I walked out after about three sessions because the GM was following the designer's advice and being an utter dick to my character.
The linked review goes into detail about all my complaints: the attribute auction, one of the fundamental aspects of the game, is kind of a mess; the secondary powers as written fit extremely poorly into the handwavey resolution system; the item creation rules are just plain terrible, as are the character advancement rules, etc etc etc.
So why do I like it so much?
Partly because the setting's so rich that it makes up for a lot of the shortcomings in the mechanics. Partly because it plays to my particular style: here's a bunch of weird stuff, figure it out. And partly because I took to heart some of the advice in the GM section of the book: throw out any parts of this that aren't working for you. Even as a baby GM, I could see the sense in that.
Rules are there to give some structure to the storytelling. Dice are there to give the players something to do with their hands. Conflict is there to make things interesting: not to beat up the players, but to point them in directions that keep their attention.
Dammit. Now I want to run a game again.
Reading that reminded me of two things.
One, that Amber (and Lords of Gossamer and Shadow, built on the same mechanics) has been the source of three memorable and excellent campaigns that I've run.
Two, that I really, really dislike a lot of the actual mechanics, to the extent that the only Amber game I've played in, I walked out after about three sessions because the GM was following the designer's advice and being an utter dick to my character.
The linked review goes into detail about all my complaints: the attribute auction, one of the fundamental aspects of the game, is kind of a mess; the secondary powers as written fit extremely poorly into the handwavey resolution system; the item creation rules are just plain terrible, as are the character advancement rules, etc etc etc.
So why do I like it so much?
Partly because the setting's so rich that it makes up for a lot of the shortcomings in the mechanics. Partly because it plays to my particular style: here's a bunch of weird stuff, figure it out. And partly because I took to heart some of the advice in the GM section of the book: throw out any parts of this that aren't working for you. Even as a baby GM, I could see the sense in that.
Rules are there to give some structure to the storytelling. Dice are there to give the players something to do with their hands. Conflict is there to make things interesting: not to beat up the players, but to point them in directions that keep their attention.
Dammit. Now I want to run a game again.