GMing amber

GM: Okay. What are you doing?
Kevin: I reach out with my Logrus filaments . . .
GM: Wait a minute. You don’t have Logrus brought up to mind.
Kevin: Oh, yeah. Okay, Roderick will concentrate on bringing the Logrus to mind.
GM: A few minutes later, you’ve got the Logrus up and vibrating in your mind’s eye. Now what are you doing?
Kevin: I reach out with my Logrus filaments.
GM: The thin lines flail outward from Roderick. Where are you directing them?
Kevin: I’ll picture the Crystal Ball, and reach the lines toward it.
GM: What are you picturing?
Kevin: A round, glass ball.
GM: No particular direction? Or are you just letting the Logrus find its own way?
Kevin: Whatever would get it quickly.
GM: That would be leaving it up to the Logrus. There’s a sense of contact, your filaments lash over a sphere’s cool, glassy surface.
Kevin: Great, I’ll yank it back here.
GM: Into your hands?
Kevin: Hmmm. No, right back to the cupboard
GM: No sweat, the crystal sphere appears, snugly fitting into the velvet depression.
Beth: I’ll look into it, seeing if there’s any impression of who stole it.
GM: Okay, Yvonne is looking to the crystal sphere.
Kevin: See, (to the rest of the group), wasn’t that a lot easier than chasing around through Shadow?
GM: Beth, you see that the ball isn’t really clear. It’s filled with little specks of shiny metal. It’s also got three holes drilled into the top part.
Beth: Holes? There aren’t supposed to be any holes in the Crystal Ball. What do they look like?
GM: Well, it’s clear enough so you can see the holes aren’t all that deep. One hole is bigger than the other two, and spaced further apart.
Beth: Yvonne will pick the stupid thing up by the holes. Roderick, you idiot, you just retrieved a bowling ball!
Kevin: What?!?
GM: It does seem to be a bowling ball. Just made out of a glassy material. Kind of pretty (pages 47-48 in Amber DRPG)

1) Who wouldn't want to punch this GM in the face?

2) On the one hand this example of play is really grounded in the fiction. It's overflowing with details and specificity.

3) The GM uses those details to both limit the success of Kevin's actions (if he described himself using the Logrus differently, he might have succeeded in finding the Crystal Ball) and to control information in a way that misleads the player.

4) Amber's text is filled with examples of play. All of them are filled with fiction-focused play, "what are you doing?"'s, and the controlling of information to mislead, worry, or cause doubt in the players.

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Tony Lower-Bausch shared this story about playing in a game at a con with Eric Wujcik when Tony was a kid:

​I played a TMNT session with him, and a game of a hybrid between Teenagers from Outer Space and Biker Nuns with Guns (or some such second game).

I remember that he asked for detail on a combat down to which foot I held forward, and what angle I struck at. I pointed out (reasonably, I thought) that I the player was a 13-year-old gamer, whereas my character had a lifetime of ninja training, so maybe the character knew better what to do in a given situation. He told me that I'd done the wrong thing, and had one of the serving girls at the mansion we were visiting hospitalize my character.

In the second session, he applied the Nuns system (which deals damage in round hundred) to TFOS's "each point of Bonk done means a minute of real time you have to sit out." I took damage, and he told me that I could return to play in six hours, if I waited, but that he had no sympathy for someone walking away and then expecting to return as if they'd been there the whole time.

So, y'know ... pretty much just like the advice in the book.