Constructs...

[jibbajibba]

I don't know if I'd quite say that pattern would be critical in such a game, but definitely some sort of shadow walking power would be (logrus or advanced shapeshifting come to mind).

In the end though, I think the players imagination is the determining factor in how useful any power or ability is.

One of my issues with pattern is that compared to other powers it is limited in its flexibility. With logrus I can travel shadow get stuff, attack , hang spells...
with pattern I do have mould shadow and manipulate probability, outstanding in shadow, but I can't do these things in Amber

[Klaus]

One of my issues with pattern is that compared to other powers it is limited in its flexibility. With logrus I can travel shadow get stuff, attack , hang spells...
with pattern I do have mould shadow and manipulate probability, outstanding in shadow, but I can't do these things in Amber

In Amber you do still have Pattern Defense, vital for stopping the 1st ranked in Psyche from simply trumping everyone and eating their brains. Having Pattern also prevents people from dealing with you by simply stranding you in shadow, which would be a safe and easy way to eliminate competition.

[jibbajibba]

In Amber you do still have Pattern Defense, vital for stopping the 1st ranked in Psyche from simply trumping everyone and eating their brains. Having Pattern also prevents people from dealing with you by simply stranding you in shadow, which would be a safe and easy way to eliminate competition.

Fair point, interesting though as from the novels I only really recall the defense being used to destroy the black road, although its been years since I read the Merlin chronicles. To block trump they just well block trump. Even Martin manages this against Brand.

[Klaus]

Fair point, interesting though as from the novels I only really recall the defense being used to destroy the black road, although its been years since I read the Merlin chronicles.

Looking at the book, it just says that Pattern Defense "strengthens your mind" which we interpreted as providing a defensive boost in psychic combat.

To block trump they just well block trump. Even Martin manages this against Brand.

That only matters if you know who's trumping you. You could abandon all efforts to coordinate your forces and allies and avoid all Trump contacts, but that puts you at a disadvantage.

[jibbajibba]

That only matters if you know who's trumping you. You could abandon all efforts to coordinate your forces and allies and avoid all Trump contacts, but that puts you at a disadvantage.

Well Unless you are making calls. But again point taken

Anyone here experience the players that do the 2 short broken attempts then the real attempt to make an 'authenticated' trump call? I didn't like Erick's solution of have someone else trump at exactly the same moment as it stretches my credulity.

[Klaus]

Well Unless you are making calls. But again point taken
 

Well your allies are in the exact same position. If you let them take all the risk, with no defense, they just get their brains eaten, and you're doomed again.

Anyone here experience the players that do the 2 short broken attempts then the real attempt to make an 'authenticated' trump call? I didn't like Erick's solution of have someone else trump at exactly the same moment as it stretches my credulity.

My idea was that Trump masters could be detecting when the cards were active, so they'd quickly realize that the PCs were using codes to ID themselves. Then, the Trump master would use those same codes. It's just like cracking radio codes in real life.

[jibbajibba]

Well your allies are in the exact same position. If you let them take all the risk, with no defense, they just get their brains eaten, and you're doomed again.
.

Of course they are expendible

My idea was that Trump masters could be detecting when the cards were active, so they'd quickly realize that the PCs were using codes to ID themselves. Then, the Trump master would use those same codes. It's just like cracking radio codes in real life.

Hmm but they would have to find out right. You would need a construct or an exalted Trump master to be aware of all uses of a trump without concentrating on it. So yes a Trump Master waiting to zap a guys brain could sit there tracking trump contacts and then intercept a pattern (you would need to have pissed someone off big time for them to go to this effort ).
Of course zapping a guys brain takes a long time and surely you have some defense.. Power Word to close the trump connection, a psychically nuetral item with confer quality ( a real cheap way to protect the Psychically weak that has no equivalent in the protect from warfare or strength world), a spell to boost psyche or whatever

Just goes to show that a cunning player can escape just about everything with some preparation. What a well balanced game

[Klaus]

Of course they are expendible
Hmm but they would have to find out right. You would need a construct or an exalted Trump master to be aware of all uses of a trump without concentrating on it. So yes a Trump Master waiting to zap a guys brain could sit there tracking trump contacts and then intercept a pattern (you would need to have pissed someone off big time for them to go to this effort ).

Yeah, cracking encryption of any kind takes effort. I generally assume that the enemy is going to have far more power to play with than the PCs, so this kind of thing is viable.

Of course zapping a guys brain takes a long time and surely you have some defense.. Power Word to close the trump connection,

Only works if you have a psyche advantage (in which case you don't need it) or a True Name, so smart villains will disguise themselves before Trumping you.
 

a psychically nuetral item with confer quality ( a real cheap way to protect the Psychically weak that has no equivalent in the protect from warfare or strength world),

Psychic Neutral prevents people from detecting you; if you make psychic contact by taking a Trump it's useless. You would have to remove a Psychic Barrier to take a Trump too, and in my campaign Psychic Barrier and Invulnerable to Conventional Weapons are not invulnerable defenses, just strong boosts.

Just goes to show that a cunning player can escape just about everything with some preparation. What a well balanced game

Cleverness will almost always triumph; the trick is making sure the NPCs are sufficiently clever.

[jibbajibba]

Psychic Neutral prevents people from detecting you; if you make psychic contact by taking a Trump it's useless. You would have to remove a Psychic Barrier to take a Trump too, and in my campaign Psychic Barrier and Invulnerable to Conventional Weapons are not invulnerable defenses, just strong boosts.

I would allow an item that had Psychically neutral and confer quality and intelligence to enable and disable that power at will so it woudl break a trump contact. In a face to face battle of wills it might not be so effective but in a trump battle I alwys say that extra block is enought to close the connection.

Now here is a thought. Could the same item block out another PCs psyche where they were unwilling. I think maybe ... so an item with that power could enable itself to interrupt an attack. Quite nice. I can see the benefit of distributing little gifts to the wizardly types all set to trigger for an event like an assasination or a Royal Ball.

[Trevelyan]

Anyone here experience the players that do the 2 short broken attempts then the real attempt to make an 'authenticated' trump call? I didn't like Erick's solution of have someone else trump at exactly the same moment as it stretches my credulity.

It hasn't come up that often in my games, but largely because the whole "evil NPCs will regularly try to fry your brain" is a feature of Erick's Amber more than Roger's Amber. The only time a protagonist is worried about Trump contact is when Corwin is actively trying to keep his whereabouts hidden from everyone so refuses all calls, and there is no suggestion that Amberites regularly make calls in order to nuke the brains of their enemies (again, that happens once when Eric tries to fry Corwin). If nothing else, the evidence suggests that doing meaningful damage to someone via trump is exceedingly difficult. I generally assume that even nasty trump calls are more likely to result in one character calling another to gloat (as in Corwin calling Eric following their dual ni the library) than they are in a deliberate attempt at causing harm. As a result, most PCs and NPCs have no reason not to take calls.

That said, if I was playing a game or Amber according to Erick Wujcik then a few ways to deal with the coded dial in issue suggest themselves.

First of all, we know that shadows often run at different temporal rates, and at the high end this is considered as a possible reason why contact might not be possible between two shadows with different time flows. It seems likely that the short pause between calls made from a slower time shadow might be missed entirely by a recipient in a faster time shadow. Conversely, a caller in a faster time shadow might leave only a brief pause which seems like a pause of several minutes or more to a recipient in a slower time shadow, making the whole code difficult to gauge.

Secondly, we know that Caine mastered the art of scanning the trumps and listening in on calls. If he learned how to do it through trial and error then it seems likely that Fiona et al, and any number of trump artists in Chaos know the same trick. They might even know ways to block the eaves droping, but the chances are that many people could pick up on the initial call if they wanted to. Any sorcerer or trump artist in close proximity to the caller or receiver might pick up on the energy patterns for later use, even if this secret were discovered by a neutral party and later traded to a rival for some other consideration.

[jibbajibba]

It hasn't come up that often in my games, but largely because the whole "evil NPCs will regularly try to fry your brain" is a feature of Erick's Amber more than Roger's Amber. The only time a protagonist is worried about Trump contact is when Corwin is actively trying to keep his whereabouts hidden from everyone so refuses all calls, and there is no suggestion that Amberites regularly make calls in order to nuke the brains of their enemies (again, that happens once when Eric tries to fry Corwin). If nothing else, the evidence suggests that doing meaningful damage to someone via trump is exceedingly difficult. I generally assume that even nasty trump calls are more likely to result in one character calling another to gloat (as in Corwin calling Eric following their dual ni the library) than they are in a deliberate attempt at causing harm. As a result, most PCs and NPCs have no reason not to take calls.

That said, if I was playing a game or Amber according to Erick Wujcik then a few ways to deal with the coded dial in issue suggest themselves.

First of all, we know that shadows often run at different temporal rates, and at the high end this is considered as a possible reason why contact might not be possible between two shadows with different time flows. It seems likely that the short pause between calls made from a slower time shadow might be missed entirely by a recipient in a faster time shadow. Conversely, a caller in a faster time shadow might leave only a brief pause which seems like a pause of several minutes or more to a recipient in a slower time shadow, making the whole code difficult to gauge.

Secondly, we know that Caine mastered the art of scanning the trumps and listening in on calls. If he learned how to do it through trial and error then it seems likely that Fiona et al, and any number of trump artists in Chaos know the same trick. They might even know ways to block the eaves droping, but the chances are that many people could pick up on the initial call if they wanted to. Any sorcerer or trump artist in close proximity to the caller or receiver might pick up on the energy patterns for later use, even if this secret were discovered by a neutral party and later traded to a rival for some other consideration.

I generally agree to a more open use of trump. After all whilst Corwin and Eric are locked in a battle of wills via Trump there are no mor einstances of it in the books, although we assume Brand had some sort of lock on Martin when he stabbed him it wasn't enough to totally break him though. I actually suspect that in a battle of wills both sides need to be willing participants.
The relativetimeflows I have considered. I am less keen on the trump trick option except perhaps at exalted levels as I think you would have to be actively monitoring to pick it up (the whole Caine eavesdropping thing is a main reason for my advocation of partial powers).

[Drascus]

Well Unless you are making calls. But again point taken

Anyone here experience the players that do the 2 short broken attempts then the real attempt to make an 'authenticated' trump call? I didn't like Erick's solution of have someone else trump at exactly the same moment as it stretches my credulity.

I had characters who had a freaking algorithm for how many aborted contacts you'd make, how long those contacts would be, etc, so that you had to memorize what the last combination was, feed it into the algorithm, and then see if what you just received was the right code.

It worked for a good, long while, until Fiona got extremely interested in all this coded-trumping she was sensing, and broke the algorithm and trumped one of the characters with the correct code.

Good times.  It could just have easily been Caine, or Brand, or someone else who broke the code but Fiona was at odds with the characters in question and they were rather afraid of her so she was the perfect choice for that one.

Also, most of the party refused to use the algorithm, it was only 2 characters / players who didn't think it was nonsense, the one who came up with it and one other person he was able to convince.

[Trevelyan]

I had characters who had a freaking algorithm for how many aborted contacts you'd make, how long those contacts would be, etc, so that you had to memorize what the last combination was, feed it into the algorithm, and then see if what you just received was the right code.

It worked for a good, long while, until Fiona got extremely interested in all this coded-trumping she was sensing, and broke the algorithm and trumped one of the characters with the correct code.

I think that, as a general rule, the more effort someone in Amber goes to develop some sort of code or elaborate protection for something, the more likely it is that someone else (or several someone elses) will both notice their efforts and decide that anything that takes so much work to conceal must be a secret worth uncovering.

[Drascus]

I think that, as a general rule, the more effort someone in Amber goes to develop some sort of code or elaborate protection for something, the more likely it is that someone else (or several someone elses) will both notice their efforts and decide that anything that takes so much work to conceal must be a secret worth uncovering.

Oh, exactly.  And it didn't protect them from Trump spying.  It was silly, and I made a point to tell them so in-game as soon as it was halfway reasonable to do so.

[Trevelyan]

Oh, exactly.  And it didn't protect them from Trump spying.  It was silly, and I made a point to tell them so in-game as soon as it was halfway reasonable to do so.

Oh, I wouldn't have been in a rush to tell them. In fact, the more they assumed that their communications were secure, the more I'd be tempted to let them continue, all the while having the rest of the family pass the knowledge around and laughing about them behind their backs.

Also, I had completely overlooked the trump spying aspect - with that much activity it would be even easier for a spy to notice that they were making a call in the first place.