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My Enemies Have Sweet Voices

MEHSV is an Amber DRPG game with many house rules and modifications. Most of these mods involve two aims: 1) bring the game as published closer to canon (Zelazny's ten books and the six (seven?) short stories he himself wrote), and 2) balance the game system, particularly character creation and stats, whilst adding more flexibility for the players to customize the characters.

The intent and style of this game is collaborative storytelling. Power gamers, minimaxers, hack-and-slashers, griefers, and anyone whose goal is to crush the other players or their characters, please look elsewhere and save us all the headache.

That doesn't mean your characters have to be particularly collaborative or cooperative. This is Amber, after all. But, players should be.

And, everything in and out of play should serve the story, and improve it, not degrade it.

Game time setting is after the Corwin chronicles, but before the Merlin chronicles. Everything in the Merlin chronicles is canonical for reference, but the specific events of the Merlin chronicles may or may not have happened/be happening.

General differences or clarifications from the DRPG:

- Player contributions are welcome, but will not grant points.

- Elders are more in line with canon, less like literal gods as portrayed in the game. They will still be damn-near unbeatable for PCs, but not for the reasons given in the DRPG (vast and unreachable superiority). Rather, they will be superior in cleverness, savvy, and have a vast array of tools and expertise available, as well as many allies. Also, as elders tend to be critical to the story itself, the GM will be unlikely to allow them to be permanently destroyed. However, that doesn't mean a well executed plot can't beat them temporarily or on a smaller scale.

- There is no tech available higher than the real Earth of today (EOT). No starships, lightsabers, etc. No travel to other planets. Everything between Amber and Chaos is a version of Earth, in the loosest sense. Our Earth is not what Zelazny calls Shadow Earth. It's just another shadow.

- What Zelazny calls "Shadow Earth" (SE) is an especially real shadow, due to several Amberites, notably Corwin and Flora, spending centuries there. Its culture, time and technology are therefore little-changing and are roughly consistent with Earth of the 1980s.

- Metaphysically, EOT lies midway between Amber and Chaos, the two centers of Substance. SE lies Amberward of EOT. The shadowverse can be conceived as a globe, with Amber at the north pole and Chaos at the south. From either pole, all directions lead out into shadow. Midway between the two, upon the conceptual equator, lies the greatest variety of shadows, of which EOT is merely one. A balance of order and chaos provides the greatest diversity of possibilities. The closer to the poles you get, the less variety there is in shadow, the more they tend to conform to either of the centers of Substance.

- The idea that "all things are possible in Shadow" is mostly true, but is actualy hyperbole. In other words, some things are not possible in Shadow, mostly things that don't at least conform to a theoretical Earth surface. For example, mountains flying above a desolate plain is fine. Open vacuum with asteroids and no planetary surface is not. Paradoxes are also by definition impossible. Everything will conform to the spirit of  canon examples, and the GM's ruling is final--though I will happily engage in private discussions where you can make your case.

- Unless supportable from canon examples, shortcuts will seldom work, if ever. For example, the DRPG idea that an Amberite can traverse shadow searching for "whatever is causing my problem" will almost never work. Searching by whatever method (shadow walking, Trump scrying, Logrus tendrils, any other) needs a target that can be visualized in some manner. A Pattern teleport might work, but only because the Pattern has will and intelligence of its own, and will send you where and how IT interprets your desire.


The original MEHSV ran in the 90s and early 2000s with around a dozen great players and thousands of posts. RL and burnout intervened and if I remember correctly, it ended in 2006 or so. It was hosted on online-roleplaying dot com, a now defunct forum. Unfortunately, that means all of my well-developed house rules, my partial powers system, and so on, is no longer available. That means I have to redevelop it from scratch.

All that is by way of saying, this is a work in progress. As GM I will likely know or remember the modification when it comes up, and then I'll write it in, but until then, players will have to remain flexible and understanding.