{"id":120,"date":"2011-10-12T21:19:01","date_gmt":"2011-10-13T02:19:01","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.emeraldsilver.com\/gaming\/?p=120"},"modified":"2011-10-12T21:19:01","modified_gmt":"2011-10-13T02:19:01","slug":"digging-into-some-amber-extras","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.emeraldsilver.com\/gaming\/2011\/10\/12\/digging-into-some-amber-extras\/","title":{"rendered":"Digging into some Amber extras"},"content":{"rendered":"<blockquote><p>Thus Amber was born of chaos, transformed in shadow, and kissed to wakefulness by the typewriter&#8217;s keys after all the work was done.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: right;\">-Roger Zelazny, &#8220;The Road to Amber&#8221; (<em>The Collected Works of Roger Zelazny,<\/em> Volume 6)<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p style=\"text-align: left;\">So I picked up <em>The Collected Works of Roger Zelazny<\/em> as the books came out &#8211; all 6 volumes.\u00a0 There&#8217;s some interesting bits in the back of Volume 6 that one of the gentlemen on the amber_diceless_rpg Yahoo!Group drew my attention to&#8230;<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: right;\"><!--more--><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: right;\">\n<p style=\"text-align: left;\">&#8220;The Great Amber Questionnaire&#8221;, originally published in fan magazine <em>Hellride<\/em>, issue 3 &#8211; shortly after <em>The Courts of Chaos<\/em> was completed.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: left;\">There&#8217;s some good and some bad and some meh in here.\u00a0 It&#8217;s answers to some things, but at the same time&#8230; some of those answers are so far off what everyone tends to use that they might make a good AU game, but not so much a canon game.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: left;\">The things that appeal to me\/aren&#8217;t uncommon in fandom:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Secondary characters like Lord Rein can use the Trumps.<\/li>\n<li>There were at least 2 brothers and sisters before Osric and Finndo &#8211; but Zelazny left it open for more than that.<\/li>\n<li>The redheads as natural magicians the way some people have perfect pitch.<\/li>\n<li>The idea that Fiona and Brand were equal in ability until Brand dealt with Chaos &#8211; but Bleys was lazy and didn&#8217;t apply himself the way the other two did.<\/li>\n<li>Shadow Ambers with Shadow Patterns, and Shadow Amberites &#8211; all imperfect and limited to only a few adjacent Shadows.<\/li>\n<li>Bringing in tech &#8211; a car can come within a few km of Kolvir, but its performance is badly affected.\u00a0 Nuclear submarines, not so much &#8211; the electrics would fail.\u00a0 The distance one comes into Amber&#8217;s world from Amber herself is a factor as well; Zelazny mentions that Flora&#8217;s car would have failed much sooner if they&#8217;d come in sooner.\u00a0 And he notes that things carry their own physical laws from their home Shadow into Amber&#8230; briefly.\u00a0 And of course, no shifting directly into Amber.<\/li>\n<li>The Blood of Amber does not affect secondary Patterns &#8211; just the Primal.<\/li>\n<li>Corwin&#8217;s second primal Pattern split off &#8220;a new order of existence&#8221;, as 2 primal Patterns cannot exist in the same universe.<\/li>\n<li>Small probabilities can be manipulated in Shadow, but it&#8217;s much more tiring than just moving through it.\u00a0 And key, there&#8217;s this: &#8220;If two persons were trying it for conflicting ends, it would be ore of a conflict of ingenuity than one of will, and more direct means would generally be employed.&#8221;<\/li>\n<li>Amberites generally select Shadows where they know at least one language, or a variation of it.\u00a0 It&#8217;s not clear that it&#8217;s conscious from the comments, though.<\/li>\n<li>Oberon intentionally dampened magic on Kolvir (heh.\u00a0 &#8220;to close that avenue for assassination attempts.&#8221;), but it&#8217;s not 100% effective, and small effects can be produced.\u00a0 Magic works very well within the world of Amber, though, and its adjacent Shadows.<\/li>\n<li>The body in the glass serpent is &#8220;some unfortunate person who got too close.&#8221;<\/li>\n<li>Corwin&#8217;s original Avalon was destroyed, and only its imperfect image can be found.<\/li>\n<li>Sending things through Shadow and summoning them &#8211; and Corwin&#8217;s blood bird &#8211; are all similar feats that pull their own rules with them as they pass through Shadow.<\/li>\n<li>The corpses rising into the sky was a property of the shadow of Brand&#8217;s tower.<\/li>\n<li>Natives of the Courts burn to heal lesser wounds quickly.<\/li>\n<li>The creatures that followed Random had a limited ability to move through Shadow.<\/li>\n<li>Brand&#8217;s tower was selected because the Shadow blocked most of his magic &#8211; and by the way, he was bespelled before being transported there, and his food an water were drugged&#8230; in addition to the chains.<\/li>\n<li>Dworkin was partly mad due to the Pattern damage.<\/li>\n<li>Defending one&#8217;s Shadow is based on &#8220;a circle on a polar graph about the point to be defended.&#8221;\u00a0 Trumping through is possible, if someone within cooperates, but otherwise it has to be assaulted the old-fashioned magical or physical way.<\/li>\n<li>The number of people that can be passed through a Trump call is limited only by the mental fatigue of the folks holding the call open.<\/li>\n<li>The Jewel is not reflected in Rebma.\u00a0 I put it here for lack of interest in adding a fourth category &#8211; I could happily use it either way, as &#8216;Rebman Jewel and thus theoretically Tir Jewel&#8217; or as &#8216;just Ambe&#8217;s Jewel.&#8217;<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Things that don&#8217;t appeal so much for a canon game:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Julian&#8217;s colors as white and red, Fiona&#8217;s as green and brown.\u00a0 Brown and Fiona?\u00a0 Hmm.\u00a0 And Knights Templar colors for Julian?\u00a0 Ehhh&#8230; er&#8230;<\/li>\n<li>Tech level includes steam-powered devices, and electricity &#8220;just as we use it&#8221; is not possible, but electricity itself may be possible.<\/li>\n<li>The people of Rebma belong to a sea race that settled the (architecturally) mirrored city.<\/li>\n<li>Llewella&#8217;s mother is Moire&#8217;s younger sister Fraye.\u00a0 (Which seems odd &#8211; &#8220;your sister&#8217;s sister&#8221;, Random says to Deirdre&#8230;)<\/li>\n<li>Julian could switch out for a Shadow of himself during the pursuit of Corwin.\u00a0 I&#8230; kind of got the impression that it took more effort than this.<\/li>\n<li>Random doesn&#8217;t know whether or not he was responsible for the pulling the rock that killed the glass snake in from a neighboring Shadow or whether he moved himself and the snake to a place where it was likely to happen.\u00a0 I don&#8217;t know; I think Random is cleverer than this&#8230;<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Things that stood unanswered or unclear:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Are the minor lords represented in the Minor Arcana?<\/li>\n<li>He says &#8220;The Jewel is the matrix&#8221;, without really explaining what he means.\u00a0 The question asks about the 3D aspects of the Jewel&#8217;s Pattern vs. the 2D Patterns, and he does say that each 2D version is slightly different &#8220;though effective.&#8221;\u00a0 I&#8217;m just not sure what he means by saying it&#8217;s the matrix&#8230;<\/li>\n<li>The swords and Julian&#8217;s armor &#8211; &#8220;I will have to reserve the answers to all these questions concerning the magical weapons, against the possibility of another book in which they might figure.&#8221;<\/li>\n<li>Moire and Llewella are green, but Martin and Vialle are not &#8211; question asked, and answered by referring back to the Rebmans being a separate sea race.\u00a0 Curious.<\/li>\n<li>What kinds of ships make up the merchant and military fleets of Amber, and what is the nature of their armaments &#8211; skipped for the same reason as the weapons and armor.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Thus Amber was born of chaos, transformed in shadow, and kissed to wakefulness by the typewriter&#8217;s keys after all the work was done. -Roger Zelazny, &#8220;The Road to Amber&#8221; (The Collected Works of Roger Zelazny, Volume 6) So I picked up The Collected Works of Roger Zelazny as the books came out &#8211; all 6 [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[6],"class_list":["post-120","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-theory","tag-amber"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.emeraldsilver.com\/gaming\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/120","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.emeraldsilver.com\/gaming\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.emeraldsilver.com\/gaming\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.emeraldsilver.com\/gaming\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.emeraldsilver.com\/gaming\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=120"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/blog.emeraldsilver.com\/gaming\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/120\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":123,"href":"https:\/\/blog.emeraldsilver.com\/gaming\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/120\/revisions\/123"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.emeraldsilver.com\/gaming\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=120"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.emeraldsilver.com\/gaming\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=120"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.emeraldsilver.com\/gaming\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=120"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}