On Lords of Gossamer & Shadow

In 2012-ish I funded a little game called Lords of Gossamer & Shadow. This was outside Kickstarter, although the publishers later Kickstarted it. Presumably they needed more money to complete the book.

Recently I rediscovered my copy of LoGaS¹ while looking for something else. Since then I’ve been a little obsessed.

Eric Wujcik’s Diceless Roleplaying System

To understand the appeal of LoGaS, we need to start with the Amber Diceless Role-Playing Game.

Erick Wujcik published ADRPG in 1991, based on the Chronicles of Amber by Roger Zelazny. The novels follow an extended family of superhumans with the ability to move between alternate realities, or “Shadows” as the Amberites call them. The reality containing Castle Amber is the only true reality; all others are shadows cast by Amber. Amberites exhibit superhuman physical and mental characteristics, as well as several types of magic.

ADRPG was not a commercial success. Critics praised its unique design and advice for the Game Master, but pegged it as a game for experienced Game Masters and “theater kid” groups. Like the Amber series itself, it eschews typical adventuring for intrigue among the players, which may not suit every group. A few critics yearned for cut-and-dried rules and “objective” randomizers. Nevertheless, it acquired a small following, and has a thriving fanbase even today.

Then ADRPG went out of print: a combination of the company going under, the creator dying, and Roger Zelazny not releasing the rights to the game. Others tried to fill in the gap, notably “The RPG Pundit”, with his game Lords of Olympus in 2012. It recreated the ADRPG system, but in my opinion lost some of the multiverse-hopping flavor of ADRPG by changing the setting to the Greek gods.

(I also tried my hand with some sketchy rules called “Princes of Elysium”, about which the less said the better.)

Lords of Gossamer & Shadow in 2013 was the official successor to ADRPG, at least for a while. Without the rights to Zelazny’s setting, Jason Durall had to create his own, and I think he did a pretty good job. Once ADRPG was re-released, however, support for LoGaS¹ waned; the last title for the line, Threats: Perils of the Gorgon, came out in 2018. The publisher, Rite Publishing, had lost its founder a few years before; the new management concentrated on D&D and Pathfinder supplements, the last of which came out in 2022.

Diceless Role-Playing Games?

By Diceless I mean no randomizer at all. No cards, no coins, no spinner. Just pen or pencil, paper, and people around a table (or on Discord these days). So how does that work?

ADRPG is based on “point buy”². Starting player characters have 100 points to spend on attributes, powers, Artifacts, Creatures, and Domains. Unlike something like GURPS there are no serious disadvantages to earn you more points, but if you’re off by a few points you can take Good Stuff or Bad Stuff, which effectively acts like luck and/or karma.

All characters have four primary attributes – Psyche, Strength, Warfare, and Endurance – ranked against each other. In any contest, on a level playing field, the character with the higher ranking wins. On a level playing field. The person at a disadvantage can tilt the contest in their favor by using their environment, one of their powers, something they have, something they know, or simple clever narration and logical argument. The Game Master decides whether a strategem is enough to turn the tables. Combats are played in rounds, with each round players narrating what they’re doing and the Game Master deciding and narrating the result.

Other games I’ve seen do something similar, but with dozens of skills comparable to Basic Roleplaying, Traveller, or GURPS. Active Exploits, for example, compares a character’s skill to a difficulty or another skill; the side with the higher score wins.

Lords of Gossamer & Shadow vs. Amber

In the setting of Lords of Gossamer & Shadow, the player characters are superhumans who discovered the Grand Stair, a jumble of landings, balconies, mezzanines, and yes stairs lined with (capital d) Doors into myriad worlds. (In my headcanon they become superhuman after finding the Grand Stair.) They discover these worlds are as malleable and flimsy as gossamer, floating in the vast emptiness they call Shadow.

These travelers between Doors call themselves “Gossamer Lords”. They adventure in these myriad worlds, hatch intrigues against each other, or even build empires. Their only competition are the powerful Gossamer Lords called Sovereigns and the mysterious enemy called Dwimmerlaik.

Honestly, I prefer Lords of Gossamer & Shadow, not only because Rite Publishing put out a ton of material for it from 2013 to 2018, but because it streamlined some things, reimagined others, and left more room for a GM’s and player’s imagination. (This may be unfair, because I don’t like games based directly on other media; I always worry that I’m not doing the original work justice.)

In particular:

• In ADRPG (like the books) Amber is the only “real” world; all others are mere shadows. In LoGaS, each world is as real as any other; only the Grand Stair that connects them all is different.

• Unlike Amberites, Gossamer Lords aren’t literally part of an extended family; they’re people who found the Grand Stair.

• In Amber there are two opposing forces, the Pattern and the chaotic Logrus, both of which allow characters who master them access to all worlds. In LoGaS there are the Eidolon and the Umbra, but traveling the many worlds requires only the Grand Stair.

• LoGaS not only duplicated most of the powers with different names (e.g. Amberites have Trump Artists while Gossamer Lords have Icon Wrights), it added Invocations (magic with true names). Supplements reintroduced or invented more, such as Shape Shifting, Empathy (think telepathy and psychic powers), Blessings & Curses, Enchantment (think building magic items), and Scrying.

  Some of the names are a little odd. Why “Enchantment” and not Conjuring? The latter more clearly suggests creating objects and creatures from nothing. Why “Empathy” and not “Telepathy”? All those with high Psyche have some psychic ability, but the power allows its possessor to read minds and sense danger.

• Above all, games of Amber focus on intrigues among players, while (according to members of the Amber Discord) LoGaS focuses more on exploration. That mode feels more comfortable to me, and I have a lot of ideas …

If I were going to run LoGaS, I’d probably add parts of my evolving multiverse, including the Astral Plane and the war between Law and Chaos. For more on my multiverse, read “The ‘Verse” and “The Primordial Age”, both written for a Shadowdark campaign I will one day run. (I hope.)

Conclusion

At any rate, I think Amber Diceless RPG and its descendants are more admired than played. I doubt that my existing group would be interested, and that I’m up to the task of being a Game Master without dice rolls to hide behind. Nevertheless, I like the worlds of ADRPG and LoGaS, and maybe I’ll carry elements forward into whatever campaign I do run.

Appendix A: Comparison between Amber and LoGaS

Concepts

Mechanics

Powers

Appendix B: Ludography

Bernstein, Brett M. Active Exploits Diceless, Precis Intermedia, 11 Feb 2004.

Durall, Jason, and Jason Rainville. Lords of Gossamer & Shadow. Rite Publishing, 21 Nov. 2013.

Kindred, Kit. The Long Walk. Rite Publishing, 6 Jun. 2017.

The Rpgpundit. Lords of Olympus. Precis Intermedia, 1 Sept. 2012.

Wujcik, Erick. Amber Diceless Role-Playing. Phage Press / Diceless By Design, 1 Jan. 1991.

Wujcik, Erick (ed). Shadow Knight. Phage Press / Diceless By Design, 1 Mar. 1995.