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This policy is specifically for Feature Characters and prop owners.
We're all adults with lives. From time to time, we go offline for an extended periods of time, or significantly cut back the...
Advancement, in the form of RPG points, is awarded automatically on a time-based basis.
Our RPG system is balanced with the idea that characters are immediately awesome — that most people's...
The Alhambra Creation Myth
Every player is allowed four "main characters". Feature characters do not count against this limit. If one of your main characters is killed or otherwise taken out of play on a long-term basis, you...
I caught my first glimpse of that sea. Beneath the deep blue, almost night-time sky, with that golden sun hanging up there in it, the sea was so rich-thick as paint, textured like a piece of...
Amber City Large Map
Printable Map of Amber City
Amber was the greatest city which had ever existed or ever would exist. Amber had always been and always would be, and every other city,...
Printable Map 1
Printable Map 2
Amber's economy, overall, is a classic maritime trading economy. Amber's own land mass is fairly limited, and most of its arable land is devoted to either subsistence agriculture or cash crops. It...
Amber's legal system is feudal and aristocratic in nature. The essence of law is that a man (which is to say, the king) is rightful owner of all lands and property beneath him. He delegates this...
On paper, all legal matters are handled in a feudal fashion. Issues are taken to your liege lord, who rules, and you live with it. The problem is that that is simply not practical when you have the...
The Amber military is under the command of the king, with individual commands usually delegated to a prince or Duke whose men make up the bulk of the command. Historically, overall command reverts...
The royal palace of Amber is not just where the royal family lives. The palace is fundamentally the center of government and upper-crust social life in Amber. The first floor of the palace is...
This is a draft.
Oberon ran a relatively stable kingdom — indeed, sufficiently so that he could periodically take long journeys into shadow, leaving sufficient instructions that matters could be...
This is a draft.
Amber's Melting Pot
Amber society is exceedingly cosmopolitan, as befits the crossroads of all worlds, the place of which all places are but shadow. Amber only has one major...
Although Amber City seems Rennaisance-ish, and the countryside medieval-ish, the details of "what technology level does Amber appear to exist at" are much fuzzier, encompassing the spectrum from...
This page is for announcements that are too long for the in-game bulletin boards, and for archived announcements.
Why Polling?
Background Poll Results
Conflict Poll Results
Older...
Setting » Arden
For those who live in Amber, Arden is the borderland. It is the forest which surrounds Amber, far enough away to be spoken of but rarely seen. Traders come and go from there, but...
Thanks to everyone for participating in our recent polls. We'll be asking more questions to refine our thinking, but here's the current state of our thoughts.
If you're wondering why we're doing...
Setting » Golden Circle » Begma
Begma may be the most progressive of the Amber's allies. It is a constitutional democracy that benefits from many wonders of engineering an technology which are...
"Kidbits" — children or grandchildren of the "Elder Amberites", descendants of Oberon — are characters who have the Blood of Oberon.
Not all descendants of Oberon are considered to have the...
We have some building policies for ensuring a consistent look and feel to the game, and ensuring that global code works properly across the whole game. This is a combination of a building tutorial...
How to Buy a Lore
Lores are bought with Focus, rather than being bought with RPG points. Every lore level costs a certain amount of Focus to learn. This is equal to the lore's cost multiplier...
Challenges are essentially player vs. environment conflicts — occasions when another player isn't opposing your action directly, but where you still need to know whether you manage to overcome an...
This page details some highlights of changes to the wiki. Not all wiki changes will be noted here (see recent changes for that), but this is a fast way of seeing particularly notable changes.
May...
Those who have used the Pattern to travel deep into shadow know that eventually, as one travels far out from Amber, the shadows grow wild and strange, and eventually, reality practically...
There are two ways you can approach character generation. One, you can start with a vague idea and flesh it out in play, or two, you can do a detailed concept from the start. We support both...
Character generation involves the following steps:
1. Come up with a character concept. Please feel free to ask a staff member for help.
2. Begin character generation by writing your background.
3....
During character generation, you'll set up your character's sheet in our RPG system. Feel free to ask the staff for assistance in doing so — indeed, we expect to work closely with players...
There are two chat systems on this game:
The comsys
The organization system ("orgs")
The Comsys
There are five chat channels that are open to all players on the game.
The first of these is the...
Setting » Golden Circle » Cibola
Cibola is a relatively recent addition to the Golden Circle, and it's role is still a bit tenuous. Originally discovered as a source of spices and gold, Amber...
Helix makes code changes very frequently. While the most significant of these are announced to the in-game bulletin board, this wiki page keeps a running tally of changes on a day to day basis.
The...
These are the 2007 notes. For the current ones, see the Code Updates page.
Because I'm doing a ton of softcode on a daily basis, I figured I'd use this to keep a running tally of what I've been...
We make extensive use of color on this game.
If you aren't seeing any colors, type:
@set me=ANSI
Type look to test; if you don't see any colors, you are probably not using a MUSH client or...
Thanks for bearing with us as we went through our survey of player preferences. The information you provided was extremely useful.
Why we did this set of polls
The polling we've been doing on...
One of the core mantras of our game is Conflict mandates choice, which leads to change, which creates story.
In other words: Conflict is good. Embrace conflict. Conflict is what gives characters...
In general terms, players are always in control of what happens to their characters, but players must accept reasonable IC consequences for the IC actions of their characters. Players are also...
The cornerstone of our conflict system is the concept of a formal consequence. At its simplest, a consequence is something which has changed as a result of the conflict. Common sorts of...
This wiki is maintained by r2a-staff at yahoogroups.com
When two characters come into opposition, and need some guidance as to how to resolve the matter, they can use a stat comparison, or contest, to do so. Contests are always an option, never a...
This MUSH is intended to be lightly GM'd. In other words, the game's focus is on player-generated stories, but there are GMs so that it is possible to have some background secrets, a consistent...
This is a draft.
Part of this game's intended core is adventure! — particularly adventure of the pulp-fantasy variety that was part of Zelazny's inspiration for Amber and the tradition of the...
We currently plan to open for general roleplay on Monday, September 10th.
We started character generation for the Prologue in the first week of August, and people are currently doing backstory...
These are somewhat free-form notes about some of the design decisions that the staff has made in the course of constructing the game. We'll be scribbling here from time to time. At the moment,...
The RPG system maintains a set of counters known as Doom Counters. A doom counter represents the state of something — for instance, how well one of the Great Houses of Amber is performing its...
There are two types of so-called "Feature Characters" on our MUSH. The first are book features — characters who appear in the novels. The second are staff-created partially pre-generated...
Let us consider two characters, Scylla and Pierre. We're going to ignore gifts for the moment and just concentrate on stats, which break down as follows:
Versus
The Value of Knowing Your...
Focus represents what your character is putting time and effort into, right now. Focus points are automatically given to you on a time-based basis. You can normally keep a maximum of 10 Focus in...
Setting » Golden Circle » Ghenesh
Ghenesh, the infinite plain, is nominally a regency of Amber, though the reality is that the regency was never firmly established. The political issues...
Gifts are those areas in which a character excels which are not well-reflected by stats, such as specific skills, abilities, and powers. Gifts are also used to reflect other assets, such as items...
There's a lot of terminology in MUSHing and in Amber that can get thrown around without realizing that not everyone is equally up on the slang. To attempt to prevent confusion, we've gathered up a...
The Road to Amber does not have a set storyline. We do have a cosmology and history which will be gradually revealed over time, but the unrevealed portions of this may change in the background as...
The nations of the Golden Circle are the shadows that are in Amber's immediate vicinity. Very nearly as ancient as Amber herself, these are places that are very nearly as shadow-stable as Amber...
Amber is a genre about secrets, but MUSHes are medium for in-character conversation. The value of secrets need to be preserved, yet a secret that is too tightly held means that it might not have...
If you are allowed to edit pages in this Site, simply click on edit button at the bottom of the page. This will open an editor with a toolbar pallette with options.
To create a link to a new page,...
We have a "common-sense" policy about OOC vs. IC knowledge and actions.
We believe that most players are mature, fair, and can be trusted, and our policies are slanted to err on the side of...
If this is your first site
Then there are some things you need to know:
You can configure all security and other settings online, using the Site Manager. When you invite other people to help build...
Setting » Golden Circle » Jade
Thousands of years ago, the sages of Penglai found a way to open gates from one world to another. This new world was much like their own, but different in small...
If you want to be able to post to our forums, you will need to have a (free) WikiDot account. If you don't have one, click create below, in order to get one.
You don't need to apply for membership...
There is no real distinction between civil and criminal law in Amber. Crimes against persons and crimes against property are offenses against that person and the property's owner. The city is...
Setting » Keywords
As we get more and more concepts coming in, we get ideas that very much overlap with existing ideas, sometimes to good ends, sometimes not so much. For a quick and easy overview...
Almost all of the Feature Characters who are children of Oberon can potentially have played children. This policy articulates our policy for grandchildren (and great-grandchildren) of Oberon, and...
Setting » Amber Law
There are a few bits on the game, Lawyer and Bureaucrat notably, which allow a player to make statements about amber law and policy without checking with staff or the like....
Setting » Golden Circle » Kitezh
The land of Kitezh is a harsh one. The fjords and lowlands offer rich fishing and farming, but the winters are long and almost never leave the highlands. The...
The language of Amber is called Thari. It is spoken in Amber itself, and it is used as a trade language throughout the Golden Circle.
A shadow generally has one or more native languages. The Golden...
Although the King (or Regent, in his stead) has absolute authority in Amber, no one else does.
All titled, landed Lords of Amber — the heads of the Houses — have legal authority on their own...
This wiki is not licensed under Creative Commons (unlike wikidot's default).
Wiki content is property of the game's staff unless stated otherwise.
Roger Zelazny's Amber novels, various trademarks...
We use LiveJournal for archiving roleplay logs and character diaries. LiveJournal accounts are free, and it's easy to join.
The roadtoamber LiveJournal community is our main community; you are...
Lores fundamentally represents what a character has invested effort into learning about and/or being close to — what, in short, he's interested in. Having the Lore for Amber City, for instance,...
Setting » Golden Circle » Lyonesse
Lyonesse is doomed, but it is not a doom her people will take lightly.
Just over a century ago, Lyonesse was one of the great powers of the Golden Circle. Her...
Setting » Golden Circle » Minos
The Sea Kings of Minos
Minos is a seafaring nation to the south of Amber. They have a reputation of being the home of brave captains, cunning traders and fierce...
Setting » Golden Circle » Montevalno
Montevalno is the very apex of civilization. There is no element of life in Montevalno which is not a reflection of art. Even the humblest of food or domain...
We are based on the Mudcore 1.4 starter database, but it has been extensively modified. (Helix wrote Mudcore, so in the end, it's all "our" code anyway.)
For those of you who are familiar with...
If you've never MUSHed before, or it's been a long time since you have, have no fear. This guide will take you through the basics of the commands that you'll want to know.
Obtaining a...
Once you've finished character generation, it's time to set up your character for play.
Setting a Description
Your description (what people see when they look at you) is given by the Desc...
While you can connect to the MUSH via telnet, you don't really want to. You'll want to use a client, which provides useful features such as word-wrap, scrollback, logging, and highlighting.
Some...
Every MUSH has its own style and etiquette for roleplay. While we recognize that every player will have his own approach to roleplay, this wiki entry is intended to describe a number of things that...
Most of the public building on this MUSH is on a grand scale, which means that areas definitely sprawl, which might make it difficult for some people to remember how to get between particular...
If you're interested in introducing new elements to the setting, here are some things to think about.
How much of a departure from Amber's core themes is this new element? A single, one-off PC...
The game is currently open to the public. If you are interested in a character object, log in as a guest and use the following command:
+request name = email address
In order to obtain a...
The Nobles of Amber
The nobles of Amber are long-lived and powerful in their own right; many have magics in their own bloodlines, and they are as real as anything or anyone in the universe.
Age and...
Other Maps and Diagrams
Conceptually, a packet is equivalent to, in real-world analogy, a folder with a bunch of sealed envelopes in it. Each envelope is a section of that packet, and each envelope is sealed. Each section...
Zelazny's Take on things
From the introduction to The Black Road War
This seems a good place to talk about the characters in the Amber series and their evolving relationships, since a number of...
There have been many Amber-themed MUSHes in the past. This is an attempt to provide a short little history of the hobby. (If anyone can provide more detail about any of these games, it would be...
Setting » Golden Circle » Pathi
Pathi, City of Brass
Pathi is a city of sorcerers, far to the south, rarely referenced by name, for it is bad luck. They are a member of the golden circle, but...
Please talk to the staff if you have significant unresolvable difficulties with another player, or if you discover cheating or a privacy violation.
Our policies on courtesy, cheating, and privacy...
We welcome player-run plots, and we've got a variety of tools that are intended to assist and reward player GMs.
First off, you're welcome to run a story within a prop that you control (such as a...
Wikidot lets you create a wiki for free. We encourage player-authored, MUSH-related information, to be put on Wikidot.
To get a roadtoamber.com address for a wikidot wiki:
Create your wiki, by...
General Policies
Conduct (player code of conduct: behavior, cheating, privacy)
Alts (policy on multiple characters)
Building Policy
Public Rooms
Feature Characters
Absences (for Features and...
We are trying to accomplish four key things in our pre-opening phase.
1. Lay the foundations of our setting around what characters people want to play.
2. Run a Prologue to playtest our RPG...
How Pre-Requisites Work
When you look at a lore or gift, you'll see a line called "Prerequisites". That will, if there are pre-reqs, be followed by one or more additional lines. Each line...
Be polite and don't barge into people's private rooms uninvited.
Spying in-character is fine, and a part of the genre. If you want to spy on someone IC, you should talk to the player you're spying...
Our Prologue is a month-long playtest before the "live" opening of the game. Please note:
The Prologue is not the live game.
The Prologue is not intended to be the live game. It's intended to be a...
A prop, in MUSH vernacular, is any element of the setting that's not a player character. Examples of props include:
Places, such as Amber City, Arden, and Begma.
Organizations, such as the Amber...
Some rooms have the _PUBLIC flag set on them, indicating that these rooms are "public" — that if you're in the area, it should be ICly fairly easy to know that people are there, and that it's...
When people of Amber and the Golden Circle think of Rebma, they think of the ghost city where water can be breathed like air and where Amber City is reflected. They do not think much of what lies...
Resources are the mundane, yet important, things that characters have control over and can draw upon in order to accomplish their goals. Resources include various forms of portable and non-portable...
We're pre-announcing an upcoming change in the token system that won't take effect until after the forthcoming Black Road scenes (which Zak expects will take place in the latter part of this week...
We use Zelazny's essay from The Black Road War as our reference for parentage.
A Note on Titles
While each child of Oberon carries the title of prince, they also have an array of other, 'junk'...
This document is in need of update and expansion.
We've got a fair amount of RPG system information available on the wiki. This is a very short guide to getting you started on the essence of what...
While the RPG system mechanics of this game are the original creation of our staff, a number of roleplaying games inspired the systems that we use on this game, and we want to publicly credit the...
The blunt truth is that if you're playing with a group of people that you all mutually trust, you don't need an RPG system. You can probably just make things up as you go along, and everyone can...
Character Generation (has multiple subtopics)
Stats
Gifts
Lores
Advancement
Focus
Training
Tokens (has multiple subtopics)
Gossip
Resources
Conflicts (has multiple...
Just a place to hold things til they have permanent homes
Core image:
Iconized:
sidebar:
The Broad Setting
Story
Timeline
What It Means to be "Amber-Centric"
GM Storylines
Black Road
Shadow-Walking
Amber
Amber
Amber City
Amber Palace
Amber Society
Amber Economy
Amber...
Setting » Shadow Earth
This is not an Earth-centric game. Flora has left the horrible little place behind, and were it not for some fondness and familiarity on Corwin's part, it would have already...
Minos
Shadow travel is a fairly commonplace ability for player characters on this game. There are a wide variety of abilities that grant shadow travel, especially shadow travel that is, practically...
Getting Started
Welcome
New Players
Tutorials
Our MUSH
Setting
Policies
RPG System
Guides
Design Notes
Code Updates
Announcements
Staff and GMs
The Wiki
Recent changes
Change...
"Some comments Martin had made to his host seemed to indicate that he was going to a place I knew of further off in Shadow — the block city of Heerat. We journeyed there and found this to be...
Members:
Moderators
Admins
This page gives the details of some specific laws in Amber.
Dueling
Dueling is legal, but very tightly controlled. There are extensive and detailed rules and laws detailing the precise...
Our MUSH has two tiers of administrators: the "staff" and the "GMs". The +staff command will show you both connected staff and GMs. In many commands, such as WHO, staff and GM names are highlighted...
A character’s stats are not about what he does, but how he does it. In most situations, there are multiple possible approaches. If you need to break into someone’s house, you might climb nimbly...
Something Is Rotten In the State of Amber…
Chaos has attacked and been repelled by the guns of Avalon, but Amber's rule, claimed by Corwin, remains in contention. Dara has walked the Pattern and...
The Storybuilding system is intended to be used for conflicts whose scope extends beyond what can be settled through the consequences of Contests or the resource-level stakes of the...
Trust, Transparency or Walk Away
So, I love it that people are running scenes. If they weren't, then the whole game would be something of a pointless exercise, so I really can't overstate my...
Setting » Golden Circle » Sukho
Sukho is the collective name for a vast archipelago, the full extent of which is unknown. There are precious few things which truthfully be said of all the...
Setting»Golden Circle»Tanus
Tanus was old when she first met Amber, and the question of her age is a great question.
To those in Amber and other foreign lands, Tanus is the great city at the...
Our Goals
Battle scenes are pretty boring. Simple as that. Posing large numbers of troops, emitting cavalry maneuvers and whatnot is simply something that does not translate well into text. There...
The Battle of Garnath is going to be the sole thing on this MUSH that ever has a (somewhat) pre-determined ending. We're basically playing out the end of The Guns of Avalon, and we know what's...
Here are some things that are commonly known about the Black Road:
It runs from somewhere in shadow, to near the foot of the mountain of Kolvir in Amber.
When the Road goes through a shadow, it...
Gossip is IC information and opinions that spread through a group of NPCs. Anyone who has contacts with those NPCs (represented by Lores) has access to the gossip, as well as the ability to...
This information is known in-character by those with the basic Pattern initiation "Pattern Walker" (PAT-WA) gift, and is provided here for everyone's OOC reference.
Those who have walked the...
The Road to Amber is a roleplaying MUSH based on the Amber novels by Roger Zelazny.
(It is free, entirely non-commercial, and open to any interested players.)
The game is located at roadtoamber.com...
The token flagpole is a is a place where people can make story and conflict elements public, and thus invite other people to participate in them. Information posted to the flagpole is public OOC,...
The drawer contained a packet of playing cards. And the packet bore… a white unicorn on a green field, rampant, facing to the dexter. I opened the packet and extracted the cards. They were on...
Events Prior to Corwin's Chronicles
The timeline for these events are given as "approximate number of years before Corwin wakes up in Greenwood".
3000 Beginning of surviving recorded history.
2500...
There are several types of tokens:
Basic tokens (including Effort tokens)
Non-mundane tokens
Ability-granting tokens
Bonus-granting tokens
There are also two systems that create bonus-granting...
A "token" represents, in the RPG system, anything which isn't readily codified by some other means. A token typically describes something significant that you are doing, or that you have, but it...
Every token is held by a particular player. There are a couple of things that can be done with tokens:
They can be read, signed, and amended by other players.
They can be declared (deliberately...
community
Join WikiDot
Discussion Forums
Logs on LiveJournal
Character LJs
player wikis
The Crown
Amber Military
Rebma
Alhambra
Begma
Jade
Kitezh
Montevalno
Pathi
Weirmonken
House...
Training is used in exactly one way — to learn a new lore. Implicitly, because certain lores are pre-requisites for buying stats above 10, and obtaining certain gifts, lore training is...
For New Players and Old-Timers Who've Forgotten
MUSH Basics
Glossary of MUSH terms
MUSH Clients (includes how to deal with broadband timeouts)
For Everyone Getting Started, Even the Very...
Normally, only one person can directly invest in a token, and cannot invest more points than they have Focus at the time. A venture is a special form of collaborative effort that results in the...
"War" is our generic term for any significant multi-player or long-term conflict. It can be a literal war between two armies, or a conflict such as two noble houses attempting to compete for trade...
Setting » Golden Circle » Weirmonken
Arden is all forests, and within its bounds can be found many worlds. One of them is a dark place, whose skies are marked by clouds and lighting, visible in...
According to Wikipedia, the world largest wiki site:
A Wiki ([ˈwiː.kiː] <wee-kee> or [ˈwɪ.kiː] <wick-ey>) is a type of website that allows users to add, remove, or otherwise edit...
Our game is Amber-centric, which means that our setting is centered upon Amber, and the way that stories ultimately relate to Amber. This does not mean that other places are not important, but...
Since some people have asked, we're going to provide a quick explanation of why we're doing these in-game polls.
In a nutshell: We are interested in how our playerbase feels about the game, and...