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Amberway is a mix of the Amber Diceless Roleplaying Game (ADRPG) and Everway. ADRPG was designed to give roleplayers the experience of Roger Zelazny's Amber books. Everway was considered extremely innovative for both its use of visual materials and developing the karma/drama/fortune methods of adjudication. Both systems are diceless, though Everway uses card draws for randomization. Both systems are also out of print, but you can buy them (and should!) through used game dealers.
Explanations of the rules of House of Cards rely on the reader having a basic understanding of both ADRPG, or at least the Corwin Chronicles, and Everway rules.
These are the original steps we took to create characters for House of Cards:
For new characters, created later in the game, we generally use a procedure more like this:
Questions and answers may happen if a group of several characters joins House of Cards at once. Single characters will not do a Q & A session. At this late date we no longer allow contributions other than quizzes or art; most ongoing contributions have been bought off with experience.
Every so often, usually two to three years, the GMs award one point of experience to all characters currently in play, which the player can use to improve powers or elements, purchase items (including a Trump Deck), or buy off previously-purchased contributions. For increases in powers or elements, or acquisition of items, we ask that players justify their choice in play; for instance, a character who wants to learn how to make Trumps must study with an existing Trump artist.
We discuss experience privately with each player when we award experience.
Several concepts for general adjudication are included in this list: