Do Trumps have a Range?

[RPGPundit]

In my campaigns, they usually do. I found, early on, that if Trumps allow one to travel from one end of reality to the other (say, from Amber to Chaos or vice versa) then it makes things a little TOO convenient for PCs and detrimental to the game.

So usually, while my trumps do allow for connection over vast "distances" of shadow, I've intentionally set it up that they don't quite reach one end of shadow from the other; their range is such that if you want to call someone in the Black Zone or chaos you have to at least be farther "in" than the Golden Circle, and vice-versa.  This means characters can't trust that someone will trump them out from Amber all the way back to chaos or such, and makes the "distance" of those two empires more noticeable.

Has anyone else done that?

RPGPundit

[Otha]

I go even further than that; a trump from Amber won't reach farther than Ygg unless the wielder has access to some kind of extra power source.  This can be Endurance, the JoJ, or some other source, but it has to be there.

Isn't there a passage in Courts of Chaos where Corwin mentions that Random uses the Jewel to power a trump connection back to Gerard in Amber?

[Arref]

I've applied Pscyhe as "handshaking" distance in Trump calls. Distance is ranked. If you have Trump skills, you can add those points to your distance rank.

So Trump Artists calling can reach further.
Two royals calling/receiving might "handshake" half or more of the distance from Chaos to Amber. Two royals could add to projection.

But if no one in Chaos is expecting the call, they aren't listening for it and there is "no handshake".

Basically agree with the idea that distance should be important. You should also get something for your Trump skills.

[Lee Short]

For convention games, I usually let Trumps have unlimited range.  For campaigns, I've typically had something going wrong with the powers which has shut down trump range (pretty drastically, in some cases).  

I like to make strategic positioning count for something, and trumps tend to make that difficult.  

The most extreme case was a game where the PCs were all raised in the realm built around Corwin's pattern.  His pattern went BOOM as the game started, and the PCs were blasted out into shadow.  None of them could reach their parents through trump for some time -- six months real time of twice-a-month meetings.

[finarvyn]

This is one of the problems with not having maps of the Amber universe. We have a tough time determining nearness of shadows and in general it could be that the concept of distance loses its meaning here.

For example, suppose we make a list of key variables: Tech level, climate, sky color, color of the dirt, just to name four off of the top of my head. Suppose shadows A and B are exactly the same for 3 of the 4, but are very different in the 4th area. How "far apart" are they? What it they were close in all four, with none being really different. How "far apart" are they now?

I tend to organize shadows according to similarity of conditions -- if you want to visit Earth of 1930 you might find it just beyond the shadow of Earth of 1940. King Arthur's Camelot might be found by going to the shadow of Earth of 500 AD and taking a right turn. That kind of thing.

In general I tend to ignore distance in Trump use. Sometimes I play with the rate of time flow, but otherwise I let their range be unlimited (although I sometimes have shadows which are Trump-proof...).

Just my two cents.

[Otha]

A shadow is as far from any other shadow as the one who finds it desires, though if you want weird stuff you're going to be far from Amber.  Aside from that it's up to the Amberite.

Shadowwalking and Hellriding aren't straight-line affairs.  You could spend three days making your way through shadow to find the shadow you want, only to find that it's right around the metaphorical corner from where you started.

[Malleus Arianorum]

I haven't played with distance problems personaly. Trumps bring players together and that's too big of a benefit for me to pass up. (But I wonder, if they couldn't rely on trumps to zip around would they stay together more?) :raise:

[RPGPundit]

I haven't played with distance problems personaly. Trumps bring players together and that's too big of a benefit for me to pass up. (But I wonder, if they couldn't rely on trumps to zip around would they stay together more?) :raise:

In my experience, yes. It also makes them more cautious. They're not going to just charge into the courts of Chaos if they know that they will not be able to get someone to whisk them away all the way back to Amber in a flash the second things get hairy.

RPGPundit

[finarvyn]

A shadow is as far from any other shadow as the one who finds it desires, though if you want weird stuff you're going to be far from Amber.  Aside from that it's up to the Amberite.

So in your campaign this is always left up to the player? That seems a bit odd in some ways to me. It's kind of like saying that I wish Florida was closer to Chicago, so it is. As a GM I like to have some sort of a general geography map in mind as a guide for the players. (I mentioned my similarity method a few posts back.) If the player wants to modify this slightly I'm okay with it, but I hate to totally put it in their hands.

Maybe I'm not thinking this through fully?

[RPGPundit]

I agree with fin, and it makes sense in the context of what we know from the novels.  If you want to change some things slightly, you have to travel less than to change the shadow completely.  So obviously shadows that are very slightly different from each other are closer, and the more distant they are from each other the more unlike each other they are.

With the spectrum going from amber-like realms with a lot of order on one end of the universe, to chaotic messes on the other.

RPGpundit

[finarvyn]

My thinking here in part is based on what we see in the books, and the best (most discriptive) appears to be Random and Corwin in NPiA. A few things seem to be happening:
1. Motion would seem to be necessary, so walking or driving or riding must occur. (Shadow walking is okay, shadow sitting gets you nowhere.) This would also tend to superimpose some sort of overall landscape to the universe. (Perhaps the Courts are in the "North" and Amber in the "South" and so on.)
2. Details appear to change gradually, so we don't have an arctic shadow next to an arid one. Random appears to find a detail to change, then do another, and another, and so on. If not one at a time, the changes at least would seem to flow simultaneously from one type of shadow to another.

So, my maps of the Amber universe always start with the Abyss/Courts and Amber at different ends of the paper. I then place Ygg in the middle and draw a line to represent the boundary between the two sides. I place a region around Amber for the Golden Circle and another around the Courts to represent the Black Zone. From there I drop in key shadows like islands in an ocean ... shadow Earth, Keep of the Four Worlds, and so on. I assume that similar shadows are near each other, and I further assume that distances on my paper have some meaning to help regulate travel times.

That's the best I could ever do, and I sure wish Roger had made something more defined.

[weilide]

Several interesting things.

From chapter fourteen of The Courts of Chaos: "Random's last act after defeating the storm was to join with me, drawing power from the Jewel, to reach Gerard through his Trump."

In chapter seven of Prince of Chaos Jurt tells Merlin (regarding jumping from the Courts to point fairly near Amber): "I can do anything the cards can do and I can take someone along with me. The only problem is that the Trumps themselves don't have that range. I'd have to take us there in a series of jumps."

At the end of chapter five of The Hand of Oberon Corwin, who is being chased by a shape-shifted and unbalanced Dworkin in the latter's cave next to the  Primal Pattern, grabs a trump of the Courts of Chaos and makes it there in one jump.

I can think of at least three interesting possibilities here. One, Dworkin has made a kind of "industrial strength" trump; two, the trump is normal but somehow amplified by proximity to the Primal Pattern; three, the Primal Pattern is actually somehow much nearer to the Courts than the rest of Amber is.

[Shoby187]

Several interesting things.

From chapter fourteen of The Courts of Chaos: "Random's last act after defeating the storm was to join with me, drawing power from the Jewel, to reach Gerard through his Trump."

In chapter seven of Prince of Chaos Jurt tells Merlin (regarding jumping from the Courts to point fairly near Amber): "I can do anything the cards can do and I can take someone along with me. The only problem is that the Trumps themselves don't have that range. I'd have to take us there in a series of jumps."

At the end of chapter five of The Hand of Oberon Corwin, who is being chased by a shape-shifted and unbalanced Dworkin in the latter's cave next to the  Primal Pattern, grabs a trump of the Courts of Chaos and makes it there in one jump.

I can think of at least three interesting possibilities here. One, Dworkin has made a kind of "industrial strength" trump; two, the trump is normal but somehow amplified by proximity to the Primal Pattern; three, the Primal Pattern is actually somehow much nearer to the Courts than the rest of Amber is.

Those are very good points, here is how I handled them:

First off. I've always mapped Shadow a little. Going off of a conversation between the ghost of Oberon and Merlin I've mapped Shadow in circles. I have 10 Circles of Shadow between Amber and Chaos. The Golden Circle is mostly in the first circle of shadow from Amber. Shadow Earth is about Circle 3, Circle 5 is the area where Chaos and Amber are evenly matched and where the Dancing Mountains are found. Circle 5 is generally the area of shadow most in conflict, usually in epic struggles, etc. Middle Earth, Earthdawn, Warhammer and 40K would all be found in Circle 5.

In general, any power power has a hard time going from one entire circle to another. Going two or three circles with Trumps isn't usually too hard, but they are made just for that purpose and are actually pretty powerful artifacts being made directly using energies from the Pattern or Logrus. Then again, Flora didn't seem to be able to reach anyone from Earth which would be 3 circles away.

As for the Trump for Chaos that Corwin got from Dworkin, I got with the idea that since the Primal Pattern was damaged at the time it was much easier for Trumps to work between Amber and Chaos since the normal shadow barriers were damaged along with the Pattern. It explains why Corwin could reach Merlin all the way in Chaos as well as why it was easy to get the armies to Chaos but then needed the jewel just to Trump Gerard later on but Corwin was able to reach Random from Chaos earlier in the books.

Also, remember that after Oberon was repairing the Pattern, trumps didn't work at all.

[Trevelyan]

Are Trumps limited in range? Absofrigginglutely - although the extent of the limitations appears to be as much driven by plot as by any consistant measure in the original books.

Whenever the question of Trump "ranges" is mentioned in the books, it seems to be a function either of the distance between the shadows (clearly, by the many references made, some shadows are objectively more remote than others even if we don't understand exactly how this is measured), or else the time differential between shadows. I seem to recall some coments to the effect that all manner of other factos might come into play, including the frequency and extent of shadow storms operation between the caller and sender, and even the state of mind or general personality of both parties.

All of this serves to provide the GM with jsutification for allowing or blocking Trump contact pretty much on a whim. As a general rule, distance is hard and altered time streams are hard (which works well in conjunction with the player tendancy to find fast time shadows to help with their plotting), but you can allow hard contacts or disallow easy contacts for different reasons.

One personal favourite is allowing a character to train in a form of meditation to align their mind with that of the target and boost Trump reception. Perhaps the Amberite shrines in the Courts of Chaos might have ties to this or a similar discipline...

Perhaps the Courts are in the "North" and Amber in the "South" and so on.)

It's almost certianly the other way around. Whenever Corwin mentions directions between Amber and the Courts, Amber is North and Chaos is south. In particular, the Black Road ran south out of Garneth, and when Corwin fled Amber following the restoration of the Pattern, he headed south and the stormfront always travelled from the north in every shadow that he entered. Interestingl, this lends weight to Erick's speculation that the mother of Fiona, Bleys and Brand (a "red headed wench from some far southern shadow") may have had some Chaos connections.

At the end of chapter five of The Hand of Oberon Corwin, who is being chased by a shape-shifted and unbalanced Dworkin in the latter's cave next to the  Primal Pattern, grabs a trump of the Courts of Chaos and makes it there in one jump.

I can think of at least three interesting possibilities here. One, Dworkin has made a kind of "industrial strength" trump; two, the trump is normal but somehow amplified by proximity to the Primal Pattern; three, the Primal Pattern is actually somehow much nearer to the Courts than the rest of Amber is.

I like the idea that the place of the primal pattern is somehow closer to Chaos than most people realise, perhaps as a function of shadow being smaller when Dworkin located the place to draw it. Some comments suggest that Corwin's pattern is far closer to Chaos than to Amber as well.

If you want another interesting possibility, how about considering the effects of the stain on the pattern and the black road on the Trump. Perhaps the damage to the pattern allowed for an easier journey to Chaos from the place of the primal pattern than would otherwise have been the case.

[Schattensturm]

To me, distance is relative in Shadow and nothing that should interfere with Trump, but there are other factors that would.

Why is distance relative?
I'd say, the only two facts we know about shadowdistance are:

• Amber and Chaos are the poles (with Corwin's pattern another pole, but let's just leave it out here)
• Ygg is somewhere in the middle, marking the threshold between Amberverse and Chaosverse.

Apart from that, distance can only be measured in time necessary to travel from A to B. There is no other "umbradetic reference", as I see it. Concludingly distance largely depends on the skills of the shadow traveler.
I.e. shadow pathes define travelling distance by their length, a pattern portal has an effective distance of 0. As Allan Dean Foster put it in one of his books: "What is the shortest distance between two points?" "A line." "No, it is nothing."

Apart from that, I still use factors interfering with Trump and some have already been outlined here: Time flow differential, Ygg in the way?, belongs to a different primal plane, familiarity.

• Time flow differential: As I read the books, I got the impression, that the synchronization between time differentials of different shadows is rather straining to Psyche.
• Ygg in the way: Ygg is the axis in my multiverse. It's tough trying to trump from one side to the other. There is no way to circumvent this bottle-neck with a trump connection but to travel beyond it before initiating the contact.
• Primal plane: I judge trump connections on whether they take place within the shadows of the same primal plane (easy), into shadow (easy), into the domain of a primal plane from without (a bit more difficult), from one primal plane into the other (fairly difficult, or difficult if both primal planes have very different natural laws, esp. time flow).

I don't say this is the ultimate answer, but my players seem to like it. One of them - a trump artist - even established a trump eavesdropping artifact close to Ygg, to tap into trump connections between Amberverse and Chaosverse.