This was my seventeenth AmberCon NorthWest (ACNW), and this one returned to being in-person at the Edgefield Hotel near Portland, after two years of being online-only.
GM John Kim
Thursday - 7pm to midnight
This was the ninth and final year of this game - my only continuing campaign game thus far. It is a re-imagining of Zelazny's Amber around a Chinese theme, where all civilizations and universes are merely reflections of the great Jade Empire, and the Pattern is housed deep in the Forbidden City within the capital. There are many relatives since the first emperor long ago, and those in whom the imperial blood runs true are superhuman - able not only to walk the Pattern, but to leap to the tops of buildings and engage in fantastical swordplay. It merges Amber with the Chinese wuxia genre. My players and their characters were:
Important NPCs included:
For this game, we nicely wrapped up the issues concerning the new half of the Pattern.
GMs Yi Mei Chng and Julian Morley
GM Karrin Jackson
This was an adaptation of V.C. Andrews' novel "Flowers in the Attic" to Amber, with the PCs as young adults shut up in Castle Amber under threat of death. The original novel is rather explicit with siblings engaging in incest when locked in together. This ties in with a hinted theme in the Amber novels, as the protagonist Corwin seemed to have a crush on his sister Deirdre. Thus the PCs are all young (but 18 and over) children of Corwin and Deirdre who were brought from Earth to Castle Amber.
For my PC, I took a young woman - Adela - who identifies closely with her mother Deirdre, with strong love/hate going on. Everyone made characters tied in with the story.
The game was a little disjointed. It had a path as we went through learning about Amber and escaping to shadow. I found the ending a little forced with NPC help, but the character interactions were all interesting. It was a weird concept, but I enjoyed a good group of players.
GM John Kim
Saturday - 9am to 4:30pm
This was a diceless game set in the 1980s, where the player characters were all top scientists who come to a small town to deal with strange events. This year was a mystery at the Jersey Shore, where a young teen was suddenly found to have known clear military secrets. The players and their characters were:
....
GMs Rose and James Hindman
This was an experimental time-travel game, where the only decoded parts of an oracle's last message were "Hitler" and "art school". The offer made was "Join us to rewrite your past while we repair our future".
I at first considered a controversial character - given the Hitler premise, I thought controversy was encouraged, but it was tamer than I expected. My replacement was a lower-class truck driver who wanted to save his brother who had been crippled in an accident.
I don't recall too many details about the plot, unfortunately, I did not keep good notes.
It was a welcome return to go back to the Edgefield for this convention.