Interest Check: Amber Dice-Full One Shot

This is very tentative, but I'm toying with the idea of running a campaign set in Zelazny's Amber series (or perhaps an alternate history of it) if there's an interest.

I get the sense (perhaps incorrectly) that most of the community finds the diceless rules a bit too limiting on the PbP format (leading it into being a bit more of a shared story territory than a game)--so, I'm thinking of trying to design an adventure in a more conventional dice-based system. (This something others have done before and no doubt much better than me, but I'm leaning towards building it on the free Godbound rules to essentially try to convert it into OSR D&D type gameplay with Pattern and Logrus powers being types of Theurgic Invocations). No previous familiarity with the Amber series/game or Godbound system would be required for players.

This would of course, probably require quite a bit of re-balancing of stats and re-writing gifts, etc. to make the characters feel sufficiently powerful versus the average joe they encounter, and I'll no doubt get that all horribly wrong--but I think it'd be fun to try and make a one shot campaign and see just how catastrophically poorly it works in practice -- heck maybe we'd go further from there if everyone had a good time.

But before I dive in, I wanted to see if that sounds like a setting anyone here would actually be interested in playing in or if it's a complete non-starter.

I've found Amber to be probably the best adapted game to PbP in the versions I've played. It rewards long posts and detail in writing. Definitely interested in any version of it. Hard as hell for GMs if your players split up and do their own thing which has always been a thing.

The only thing I find is that the overreliance on elder Amberites can be very frustrating. You start out with such a high power level in traditional Amber and here you are powerless and ordered around like cheap lackeys so that you feel like bit players in someone else's drama.

That's somewhat what I'm hoping to avoid with a conversion--the elders would essentially be 'higher level' NPCs, so too strong to challenge at the start and they might order you around a bit but something the party could conceivably challenge once they'd grown enough, while the OSR ruleset would lean towards still making individual battles against peers or shadow enemies more competitive reflecting that the PCs would be learning to master their powers but if balanced well would make them feel powerful against their common opponents.

(Of course, if it turns out there's a big demand for a diceless game we could give that a go instead, though.)

Pinging this based on the initial response to clarify that I'd also be willing to run the original Amber Diceless RPG if the community preferred that to a modified version.

If no interest in either, I'll just move on to the next idea :)

Campaign setting would involve young Amberites coming of age following the end of Courts of Chaos and the Patterfall war, but prior to the events of the Merlin saga (which will not be canon and with events/the universe developing differently).

I am finding the premise intersting, though I'm a complete stranger to both the systems and the setting. Unsure whether that makes for a suitable candidate at all.

As for the systems, I found the original system slightly intimidating but also intriguing. OTOH, Godbound seems like a more straightforward but less intriguing system. Finally, since alternative systems came up, I know that there's an Amber-with-serial-numbers-filed-off game/system called Lords of Gossamer and Shadow - might be worth checking out for those interested in the field.

Not at all--and that's entirely on me, since my original concept was to re-write the rules I wanted to see if there was an interest before I put in the effort and didn't dig too far into yet to the specifics and really sell what the game would be.

I think what I'll do (since it sounds like you and badbaron might have interest in a game using the original Diceless rules) is close out this thread and put one together a write up with details for a campaign using the actual Amber rules and with a bit of background, etc. Then if you're still interested after reading through that, and we can scrounge up a couple more players, we'll run with that.
I've played a little bit of LoGaS and it really does kind of play more or less the same if you're familiar with it--they changed the setting and the powers that make their 'multi-verse' work but it's structured pretty similarly and they kind of changed the window dressing more than the core rules.

I'd hope the diceless rules don't need to be too intimidating--since, being diceless, they generally boil down a bit to being a joint storytelling. When conflict occurs rather than rolling dice to determine the outcome, the GM just looks at the attributes/powers involved and decides what they think the logical outcome is. But it's the same typical call and response of GM: Here's the situation, what do you do? PC: I try this really cool thing! GM: Great! Here's what happens.

That, of course, makes it kind of dependent of the GM being unbiased and clear with how they're going to interpret the rules (since I personally at least think there's some gray areas in the core rulebook). But overall it isn't necessarily much different from other games except there's no dice rolling involved to let you hit a natural 20 or fumble on a 1, etc. so it actually kind of feels more fair overall if the GM does a good job and is fair. What I'd do personally to try and enforce that is give a bit of a write up on how I'm going to interpret the rules and who I'd expect to win when two forces come into conflict--then you all can just yell at me if I'm not holding to that and make sure everything's consistent. (It does have a lot less what I've seen referred to as 'crunch' where you use this skill to modify the roll of that skill which has this effect on that one, etc.)

Don't know if this is an issue, but part of what seems intimidating could be that the rules are written a bit to support a campaign either being built around or devolving into a 'throne war' where the PCs are directly pitted against each other? And that implies you need to sort of build characters from the start with the idea of countering the others in mind (which would certainly be scary if you're new a system and don't know how things work)--but I think that's somewhat influenced by the campaign type, and my inclination at the moment is to write up an adventure where the players have been asked to sort of work together to investigate some other mysteries.

Any downside of not knowing the Amber themselves novels is hopefully limited by the fact that the PCs are generally young Amberites just learning how their powers and things overall work. So, even if you personally knew all the secrets of the universe, you'd be expected to roleplay someone without access to all of that knowledge, etc.

But naturally not having as much of a grounding in how the powers work and why and the lore might make it feel a bit confusing at first--so I'll try to supply some links that give information regarding that (and also my campaign would be introducing some things that are sort of brand new to everyone hopefully).

Tl:dr version of all of that: @vicky_molokh @badbaron, I'm going to close out this thread and put up a new one with a full description for a DRPG campaign. I'll give you first dibs if we get enough players to launch.

Being myself a Corwin(perhaps The Corwin) I am looking forward to this with great interest.

I will try to come up with a new idea before it all happens.

My last 3 campaigns, I played a dragon, a technomancer, and a dead man walking. As the last two ended abruptly, I could put them one of them together if I do not thing of something new and strange, but more fun to have new ideas.

*uncertainty due to mixed/contradictory signals*

Hah! @vicky_molokh, let me try 'that doesn't make you at all unsuitable. Players unfamiliar with both the rules and setting are fully welcome ' ;)

Ah, cool, thanks.