Trollbabe to Amber conversion

[Doyce]

Currently at 20 x 20 foot room, referencing a post I made on my own game blog.  Didn't expect it to garner much comment, but that shows what I know.

Should folks be interested, I can bring the original post over here (modified somewhat, as some of what I'd originally written I'm beginning to think is a misunderstanding of scale).

[Ron Edwards]

Hi Doyce,

Wow! What a great set of references, and no, let's not re-post - let's make everyone go there and learn more about that excellent site.

So, any Adept-forum-specific inquiries or observations, to discuss here?

Best,
Ron

[Doyce]

Actually, I'd like your input on the way I proposed dealing with the Elders within the Amber setting.  I think I'm misreading some of the mechanics of Scale just a bit.

(To explain, in Amber, there is an older generation of members of the royal family... not unlike the elder vampires in a white wolf game, I suppose.)

What I'd said about scale is that one could simply apply a Scale rating to any/all of the Elders -- by default, when dealing with an Elder as a starting PC, you are operating at a smaller Scale (personal) than the Elder (anywhere from City on up) and suffer penalties accordingly (I should have been more clear about that in my initial post, but what I'd essentially envisioned was using the kind of Scale penalties that are given for using Magic against a larger Scale, but applying it to any skill check vs. a given Elder).

First, I'm not sure if Scale penalties of that type are meant to be used for non-magic stuff -- now that I've actually looked, the only examples I see of cross-scale penalties are magical.

Second, looking at it now, I'm not convinced that's a way that Scale can/should be used -- it might be more appropriate to say "-2 to any Fighting rolls against Corwin, -1 to any Magic rolls against Corwin, no Social penalties".  Finer control of the NPCs that, unfortunately, also requires more between-session tweaking.

The nice thing about using character progression is that as the PC's own Scale rises, they move closer to playing at the Scale of the Elders.

(This is one of those lovely topics that only really works when you've got a group of people familiar with both the setting (Amber) and the game (Trollbabe) -- working through this idea, I can't seem to hit that happy combination.

Maybe if I post my Hellboy/Trollbabe idea instead... :)

[james_west]

For the record, I see no problems at all with this conversion; it seems singularly apt, especially the issue of scale. While to my memory you've misread the rules for scale, I think your misreading works better for Amber than the real rules do. It also occurs to me that in Amber you might want to let players do a bit more of the scene framing than is written for Trollbabe (since in Amber, deciding what's in the scene is essentially one of the character's powers.)

- James

[Rob MacDougall]

Thanks for the pointer to the 20x20' Room, guys, and Doyce, thanks for the Amber/Trollbabe suggestion. I'm always very happy to see Trollbabe get props; I think it's terrific.

I don't know enough about Amber to comment a lot on that discussion, but let me say I think the Trollbabe/Hellboy suggestion is brilliant too. Some people see the genius of the Trollbabe system, yet are mystified by the requirement that everyone must play a big troll woman with horns and 80s hair. Hellboy and his buddies at the BPRD may be more accessible for gamers who didn't grow up on the Trollbabe source material, yet they actually fit many of the very characteristics that make trollbabes such story-generating wonders: they're caught between two worlds (human and not), they're potentially powerful but often outsiders, they're nearly unique, and every NPC wants to pull them into their plans.

Plus you could call it Trollboy or Hellbabe, which are both great names.

One potential sticking point with a Trollboy conversion is that (I think) Trollbabe scenarios work best when there's some moral ambiguity, thus giving the players lots of options about who is in the right and what is to be done. But the villains in Hellboy are pretty damn villainous. There's not often much question about who to side with. On the other hand, maybe that's a feature rather than a bug. Some shades of grey might really add to those beautiful Mike Mignola blacks.

I've played Trollbabe, but never a long multi-session campaign. I really want to. I was pushing my group recently to try a Tomoe Gozen / Kurosawa inspired game of female samurai using the Trollbabe rules. In the end we've decided to play an Asian wuxia version of Charnel Gods instead. Which rocks too. But I'm hoping to get a chance to come back to Samurai Babe.

Rob

(PS I know we're not supposed to use these threads for this, but if there are any gamers in the Boston, MA area who'd be interested in playing Sorcerer & Sword / Charnel Gods, we could use one more player. PM me!)

[Bob McNamee]

In the Trollbabe: Demigods game we played over IRC with the indie-netgamers the issue of Scale was used in a straightforward manner, but 'high powered'.

TB: Demigods...were greek-style demigods...in a world of human and godly influences.

The players were running at the "Person or few Persons scale".
But, the stakes of the adventure were "Does Poseidon co-opt the position of Deathgod from Hades?"

In the end the Players actions prevented him from doing so...