LogFAQs > #896861843

shadowsword87 posted...

It's basically just knowing what tools to use, and this case it's anydice.com because it's so damn good. Even then, the math is really straightforward (take the number of the die, divide by two, and add a half, that's the statistically average roll).

Yeah, but I mean in the sense that your brain thought to consider the average rolls in the first place, whereas I was just looking more at the surface level max potential damage as a difference, because my brain doesn't go deep into the math (hence the love of freeform).



shadowsword87 posted...

I have heard about someone using various GMs to act as a largescale political entity to react to the PCs running around. That way it's not just one brain with different hats on, it's unique brains reacting and also having fun.

I once ran an Amber game with a friend of mine, where we split up all of the major NPCs and locations in advance, and then each came up with multiple plots and storylines happening behind the scenes, with the idea that the players would stumble their way into whatever story hooks they managed to find, and would point the narrative in whatever direction they wound up taking without there being ONE TRUE PATH they had to follow.

The interesting dynamic there was that my NPCs and plots were effectively running antagonistically to hers, so, say, for instance, one of my NPCs planned to conquer a city while one of hers wanted to burn it down. Eventually, their preparations would come into conflict, and they would wind up directly opposed, with one winning and one losing. All of this happened "behind the scenes" so the players wouldn't see/know any of it, but they WOULD see the consequences of the interactions (ie, if they visited that city, it would either be burned down or conquered - and if they investigated, they'd find evidence that both of the NPCs were involved somehow).

The upshot of which being that it becomes extremely hard for players to know exactly WHICH plot any given clue they find or event they participate in is actually tied to - which is 110% thematically appropriate for an Amber game.

You realize someone is spying on you - are they an ally, an enemy, or a neutral who is trying to ascertain your own position on the board? Someone else is killed - were they killed by one of your enemies, one of your allies, or someone you've never even met before, with goals you know nothing about, concerning places you've never even heard of? And worse, what if you're investigating Plot A, when someone from Plot B shows up and hides a crucial piece of evidence on you, which in turn leads someone from Plot C to start looking for you, because they need it. And then Plot D kicks in and sends assassins after you because of something your grandfather did 50 years ago. And you haven't even NOTICED Plot E, Plot F, or Plot G yet - but they're still running even if you never, ever discover them.

It gets even worse when you're in a game that spans an infinite multiverse and have the people you meet are trying to conquer all of reality in one way or another, and everyone holds grudges and plays out vendettas over thousands of years.

It was pretty fun, both to organize and run, as well as play in.

One other advantage of that sort of dual-GM set-up was that we could both also be PCs in the game as well as GMs - when I wanted to play my character she GMed, and when she wanted to play I GMed. And I could still surprise her because she didn't necessarily know all of my plots or NPC motivations in advance, and vice-versa for her surprising me.


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