A CompleC- neT. -..e-playing system! complete +ventures, includi “Thron War,” “‘Battleground or Shadow Lmth ____ “Into the Abyss!’ Attribute Aucti - system when players bid E each other, creating a unique fh --y of immortals! Enter a univerpn X*%ie Pattern lets yob “walk” to any w *Ild you can imagine, where Logrut Samplendrils filecan reach across infinite din nsions, and where Shape Shifting IC 3 characters sprout wings! mature, demanding, and time-consumi that puts characte levelopment above all el Over 100 pages of tipb on role-playing style an with dozens of crys.t;al-clear exarnp !

$22.95 U.S. duct w==-L--- 018..---- BN# 1-1 I Printed in U.S.

Sample file I

kStephen Hickman

Michael Kucharski

1 Amber Titles by Roger Zelazny THANKS TO: When a game simmers for over six years, The Amber Series there are a lot of people responsible for seeing to print. I'm grateful to all of the following folks. , best of friends, I owe him of The Guns Avalon most of all. Thanks to the early Amber players. That The Hand of Oberon The Courts of Chaos day, way back in the Fall of 1985, when the first auction for Amber characters was held, these guys The Merlin Series were there; Don Anderson (AURELIA), Dan Clemens (DAMIEN), Paul Deckert (ADRIAN), Chuck Knakal (HERDAN), Michael Kucharski Blood of Amber (MORGAN), Kevin Lowry (AARON), Alan Moen Sign of Chaos (SAUREN), Julius Rosenstein Knight of Shadows (GWYNTBRAWD), Peter Schermerhorn (SOLEM), Eric Snider (HARLAN), John Speck (GODFREY), Tim Treloar (DEREK), Don The Final Short Stories Woodward (CAROLAN) and Jim Webster The Salesman's Tale (JEREMI). Plus Joshua Darlington, Bruce Roberts, The Shroudling & the Guise1 Michael Robinson, Joe Samuels, and Gary Sibley. Coming to a Cord They made the game come alive. Blue Horse, Dancing Mountains Thanks to the first Amber Game Masters, Hall of Mirrors Randy McCall and Don Woodward. Thanks to the New Jersey Cabal; Carol Role-Playing Titles by Erick Wyjcik Dodd, Felicia Baker, Jim Kenny and Ron Miller. Also, thanks to the early Trump artists; Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles & Other Todd Bake, Michael Kucharski, Jim Webster, and Strangeness@ Don Woodward; and to the expert chroniclers of the After the Bomb@ Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles Adventures@ Amber experience; Don Anderson, Dan Clemens, Road Hogsm Carol Dodd, Brian Garwood, and Cathy Klessig. Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles Guide to the To Daniel F. Iyama-Kurtycz, M.D., for Universe@ those handy, grisly details. Mutants Down Underm And a tip of the black leather cap also goes Transdimensional Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles@ to Kirby McCauley, Bill Fawcett, Ken Rolston, Mutants of the Yucatan- SampleMartin file Wixted, Eric Goldberg, Greg Costikyan, Revised RECON@ and Darwin Bromley. And , Lisa Pondsmith, Michael MacDonald and Derek Ninjas & Superspies- Quintanar. Mystic Chinam First, last, and always, thanks to Roger Zelazny. He created Amber. Then he found Palladium Book& is a registered trademark of Kevin Siembieda, and is not affiliated with Phage PressTM. something in my sketchy outline to believe in. His Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles@ is a registered trademark of vote of faith put the game in your hand. Mirage- Studios

Get Roger Zelazny's Amber novels from your local new or used bookstore, or from www.amazon.com (where you can also order this book and its supplements), or Forget about finding Amberzine at your collected as The Chronicles of Amber local store. We're only allowed to print 1,000 from the Science Fiction Book Club, copies of each issue, so we sell them only by www.sfbc.com. mail. For a sample issue send $10 to Phage If you prefer audio book form, on tapes Press, P.O. Box 310519,, MI 48231- featuring the voice of Roger Zelazny, call 0519, USA. For more information e-mail Sunset Productions at 1-800-829-5723. [email protected].

2 Diceless Role-Playing.. System Designed & Written by Erick Wujcik

based on The ChroniclesSample offile Amber by Roger Zelazny Cover Painting by Stephen Hickman Trump Portraits & Interior Illustrations by Michael Kucharski

Editing Help from Don Anderson, Karen Clayton, Kathryn Kozora, Chuck Knakal, KevinLowry,AlanMoen, & Rlichele Spainhour Phage Press

3 Dedicated to Kate, my one true love

Thinking of writing to Phage Press? Please do! We love getting mail. Especially mail with large checks in them, but any kind of mail will do. If you write to us we will put you on our mailing list so that you may receive notice of our upcoming books, information about Amberzine, the magazine devoted to Amber Role-Playing, and about the yearly (since 1989!) Ambercon role-playing conventions (see www.ambercons.con). Plus details on T-shirts and other neat things. We are very, very, very good at responding to our mail. We pride ourselves upon it. We are, however, weak in two very human ways. First, we are sometimes slow. Sometimes we are slow because a piece of mail loses itself in a stack of the wrong stuff. Sometimes e-mail goes to the wrong folder. We are also slow when we receive letters filled with intelligent, perceptive and insightful questions. Then we have to actually think about how we might respond. Large numbers of intelligent, perceptive and insightful questions in a single letter cause us great consternation, and send us into such flurries of concentration as takes us near forever to actually respond. If there were but one intelligent, perceptive and etc. question in a single letter then we might have a somewhat quicker burst of insight. Another weakness we have is that we are customers of rather large organizations, the Post Office, and the internet. Both institutions are known for amazing timeliness and accuracy. Most of our mail is delivered promptly, accurately, and with great pleasantness. However, we daily return to our Postmistress items destined for other parties. Sometimes an item appears in the wrong zip code area, or the zip is right but the person is one unknown to us. We also recieve the occasional letter intended for Nigeria. Upon these occasions we wonder if somewhere, some lonesome piece of mail intended for us, has found itself elsewhere (in Nigeria?). And so, if you have not heard from us in some unreasonable length of time, please try again. Thank you.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Wujcik, Erick. Sample file Amber Diceless Role-Playing : diceless role-playing system / designed & written by Erick Wujcik ; based on the Cronicles of Amber by Roger Zelazny ; cover painting by Stephen Hickman ; trump portraits & interior illustrations by Michael Kucharski ; editing help from Don Anderson ... [et al.]. Includes index. ISBN 1-88049400-0 : $22.59 1. Amber (Game) I. Zelazny, Roger. Chronicles of Amber. 11. Title GV1469.62.A42W85 1992 793.93-dc20 92.4529 CP Fourth Printing - September, 1999

Copyright@ 1991,1999 by Erick Wujcik All rights reserved under the Universal Copyright Convention. No part of this book may be reproduced in part or whole, in any form or by any means, without permission from the publisher, except for personal copies of the character sheets & worksheets, or brief quotes for use in reviews.

Phage Pressm P.O. Box 310519 Detroit Michigan 48231-0519 USA e-mail: [email protected] or [email protected]

Phage Press Product Number 0100 ISBN# 1-880494-00-0

4 Table of Contents - Page 5 Table of Contents

Introduction ...... 7 PLAYER SECTION Playing A Princess (or Prince) of Amber ...... 10 Creating Player Characters ...... 12 The AttributeAuction ...... 13 Psyche ...... 14 Strength ...... 17 Endurance ...... 18 Warfare ...... 20 Auction Record Worksheet ...... 23 Character Allies ...... 25 Good St&. Bad Stuff & Zero StufF ...... 25 Player Contributions ...... 28 Sample Characters ...... 28 Character Freebies ...... 33 Glossary of Amber Terms & Concepts ...... 36 Player Character Powers ...... 40 PatternImprint ...... 40 Advanced Pattern Imprint ...... 43 Logrus Mastery ...... 46 Advanced Logrus Mastery ...... 49 Trump Artistry ...... 50 Advanced Trump Artistry ...... 50 Shapeshifting ...... 51 Advanced Shape Shifting ...... 56 Power Words ...... 58 Twenty Power Words ...... 59 Sorcery ...... 60 Lynchpins & Spell-Casting ...... 61 Basic Magic Spells ...... Sample file 61 Building Custom Spells ...... 64 Conjuration ...... 65 Constructing Personal Artifacts & Creatures ...... 66 Constructing Personal Shadows ...... 73 A Player's Guide to Role-Playing ...... 76 A GAME MASTER'S GUIDE TO THE RULES OF DICELESS COMBAT The Short Course on Combat ...... 80 Using Attributes to Resolve Combat ...... 80 Combat as Story Telling ...... 81 Judging Combat ...... 84 Sword Battles & Warfare ...... 89 Sword Moves & Choices ...... 90 Strengthcombat ...... 92 Switching Between Warfare & Strength ...... 93 PsycheBattles ...... 94 Time and Combat ...... 95 Other Factors in Combat ...... 9'7 Inflicting Injury ...... 97