Wednesday, November 21, 2007

Addendum Re: Amber Noobs

Additional thoughts stemming from this earlier post...

I'll go so far as to say there is a mathematical equation to determine what percent of new players drop out of a given Amber campaign in less than 2 months. That math is:
(Number of New Players in THIS campaign) squared, times 5.
So with 1 new player, they likely fall in love the game. (only 5% chance to drop)
With 2 new players, odds are still good. (20% chance of dropping each)
But once you hit 3 or more newbies in the campaign simultaneously, somebodies going home unhappy.
In fact if you start a campaign with 4 people who've never played Amber before, it's almost guaranteed that one of them won't come back for the second session, and you'll be damn lucky if you manage to salvage any of them for the long run. You just can't give them the attention and structure they (and the game) need.

This equation, and the entirety of the previous post, is talking about mid- to long- term Amber Campaigns. Throne Wars are their own animal. For a Throne War, theres nothing wrong with the chaos and shallowness-of-setting that goes with having multiple players who are unfamiliar with the game. If your point is to wrap up the entire storyline in less than 6 hours, you'll have to gloss over a lot of the details anyway.

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