Newish Books I bought

[Mr_Pleasington]

I think Amber might have been the first Diceless Engine.  Basically there are four attributes:  Wafare, Strength, Psyche, and Endurance.  Character creation is the most fun, most interesting, and the most similar to the source material system I have ever participated in.  There is an auction for attributes.  If you're ranked first in an attribute no one can ever be better than you in that attribute...which is just like in the books.  All character advancement is done in secret so everyone only has a general idea of what everyone is good at (again, just like in the books).  The more secrets you keep, the less vulnerable you are.

There are no skills since an Amberite could just travel to any world where time moves more quickly and master any skill they want while mere hours pass in Amber itself.

There are abilities like Sorcery, Shapeshifting, Trump, Pattern, Logrus, etc. and you can spend your remaining points on special weapons or your own worlds.  Great stuff this.

The actualy system itself is really simple...it's completely the GM's call.  He'll compare the stats and the situation and let the players know what happened.  You need to have a GM you can trust for this game.  

There's really no game better for a group that can't get together much since it's likely you'll split up.  My friend's seven year campaign started out as tabletop but now exists almost solely as PBEM and IRC.  They do meet about once a year though.

Man, I love Amber!

[The Holy Saint, Grand High Poobah, Master of Monkeys, Ehlers]

I suppose I should think about getting around to reading the actual source books eventually. I don't know how excited I am about it. Should I try to be convinced?

[Fellfrosch]

I'd love to get my hands on the WFRPG again. I played through the "Shadows over Bogenhafen" adventure in high school and had some great fun with my little halfling wizard. That game had the coolest character advancement system I've ever run across, I think, but I can only remember vague impressions of it.

[The Holy Saint, Grand High Poobah, Master of Monkeys, Ehlers]

The guys at Critical Miss like it a lot too, having played a Loooong campaign and I having whined at the designer in person. CM is cool.

I promised them I'd write a review sometime a few months ago and post it on TWG. I should probably get to that.

[Mr_Pleasington]

The advancement system is cool on paper, but it doesn't make sense a lot in roleplaying terms a lot of the time.  Sometimes a character would take a new profession and never perform any of its duties while still getting the benefits.  Like being a Mercenary Captain and not leading any mercenaries (unless you include the party).  It's tough to get adventurers to actually play careers unless there is a lot of downtime.  That's the only drawback.

[The Holy Saint, Grand High Poobah, Master of Monkeys, Ehlers]

That just takes some judicious gming. I'm looking forward to reading it. Like I said, CM is really excited about it, and I really want ot learn it. But first I need to finish reading Palladium (I ended up learning 3 other systems before finishing Palladium, so I have a lot to do)

[Slant]

Dang!  Now that you made Amber sound so appealing I will have to haunt game stores to find a copy.  Actually I know where I can get an old (but unused) copy for only a few bucks, so I might just pick it up.  I am not a big fan of all of the Amber books, but I enjoy the concept well enough to actually pick up the game, especially since the system sounds so cool.  I will probably end up pirating the system for another game at some point.

Fell, I just saw a new minature of a halflking mage complete with funky coat, pince nez glasses, and a bunny familiar (or maybe it was a fox; I just took a quick peek at it).  It might fit your character to a T.

[The Holy Saint, Grand High Poobah, Master of Monkeys, Ehlers]

"Unused"? that might be hard. But search around on google and ebay, you might find something

[Mr_Pleasington]

Actually you can still get one new because it's not completely OOP.  Phage Press still produces a number of copies a year.  I saw a new copy of both books not but sixth months ago.  So there's a chance at least.

[Entsuropi]

I will pass on the amber game i think... if i really want to play it i can just take the spanner to Nobilis and change that. It's diceless, but has a very different system.

4 stats.
Aspect - everything physical and mental that a human can, or could, do.
Domain - the idea the PC has contol over. The PC is elemental, lord, guardian and master of this idea. IT can be anything, from love, hate, blood, cats, the english language... anything.
Realm - the amount of control over the PC's homebase the character has (since the characters are always at war in a nobilis game, this is more important than you would think)
Spirit - The PC's ability to defend againsts miracle, and other stuff like flower rites and binding humans.

Each of these ratings can be bought up from level 0 up to level 5. You also get a pool of miracle points - think like willpower from white wolf game. Each attribute has its own pool.

In game, there are 9 levels of miracles for each attribute. If your rating in that attribute is equal to or greater, you do it automatically. If your rating is lower, you have to increase it with your miracle points. these only regain at the start of a story.
Example. Say you have aspect level 4. Somebody shoots a uzi at you. Checking the table, you see that parrying an uzi's spray of bullets is level 6 aspect (impossible for normal human). You need to spend 2 miracle points to do so.

There are also gifts, like flight, immortality, turn to stone (like medusa), shapechange. There are guidelines for making your own gifts, using the rules for domain. Interestingly, the flaws do not give character creation points. Instead they give you miracle points in a pool of your choosing. The flaws are divided into two sections : general ones that apply all the time (blindness) and those that only cause a problem at specific times (cannot enter a house without permission). The general ones give miracle points at the start of each story, the specific ones only when they become a problem.

From what i have seen on the Nobilis mailing list, there seems to be a migration of amber players to Nobilis.

Im currently thinking of using Nobilis for the matrix...

[Mad Dr Jeffe]

I think you'll like WFRP Eric, especially since characters can only be so good on their career path,
It's tough to get anyone above an 80 in WS (weapons skill) for instance.  Plus giving the characters careers as opposed to classes is a cool in depth background thing that works well.

Combats fun and fast, but frighteningly deadly especially at lower levers where you only hit your opponent about 30 percent of the time characters with more than a handful of wounds are rare and likliest to survive. The only thing not well developed is Magic, but I hear there is a second book for that so that might change.

[Mr_Pleasington]

I must say that I love the combat in WFRP. It's quick, deadly and detailed.  Those critical hit tables are just nasty!  They strike a good balance between the abstractness of D&D and the overly complex detail of a Rolemaster.

[The Holy Saint, Grand High Poobah, Master of Monkeys, Ehlers]

Ok! ok! I'm convinced guys! I just feel like I need to finish Palladium because I started that first.

[Entsuropi]

Today i picked up WHFRP. I figured that, since hogshead have gone tits up, i need to get a copy while i still can. If i like it and get the money in time, i can buy Realms of Sorcery and the campaign pack and the location (middenheim) book - my FLGS have all of them in stock. I have not read it yet, since i was reading Baron Munchausen, also by HH. I did a review of Baron so i wont bother commenting on it here.

[The Holy Saint, Grand High Poobah, Master of Monkeys, Ehlers]

WFRPG is still pretty easy to find on the used searches on Amazon.