Measuring distance in shadow

[Otha]

In Corwin's Chronicles there's no mention of any quantifiable way to measure distance in shadow.

Ghostwheel mentions, at one point, how many 'veils' between Amber and certain shadow storms.

Personally, I prefer to think that shadow is by nature unquantifiable.  How far it is from one shadow to another depends on your point of view as much as anything.  Finding your way from Texorami to Earth is a bit like those puzzles where you have to transform a word from one to another by swapping out one letter at a time, with each swap producing a word along the way.  Some people will be able to find shorter routes than others.

That means that you define distance by similarity.  How many changes do you have to make before you reach your destination?  By definition, any forest you find will be "close" to Arden.  Any shadow where cars work will be "close" to Earth.  

What are your thoughts?

[Arref]

I agree with your notion.

[Nihilistic Mind]

By definition, any forest you find will be "close" to Arden.  Any shadow where cars work will be "close" to Earth.  

What are your thoughts?

The fact that you mention this scares me on a Player Character level...

But funnily enough, Corwin and Random's vehicle worked in Arden... Until they finally got too close to Amber.

Distance based on physical differences is quite fair and it's close to the way Corwin describes shadow-traveling, and the way he actually applies it in the novels. (I just realized that the Corwin chronicles might be a more enjoyable read partially because there are a lot more shadow traveling descriptions than in the Merlin chronicles...)

I think that even time is not quantifiable in our human understanding of it. Time flows differently from Shadow to Shadow... Is that something you would take into consideration as well, when it comes to metaphysical proximity? Is time just one step from earth to a similar earth where cars function but where time flows much faster/slower? Or is time something a bit more complex to "change" during shadow travels?

[Otha]

Well, how one changes "intangibles" is probably another topic for discussion.

Corwin never seeks out a fast-time shadow, but he definitely assumes that Brand will find one.

Right now I'm mostly thinking of physical elements, things you can see.

[jibbajibba]

The changing item by item method is a perfectly fine way to go about it. Remembering a few tricks outlined in the rule book that make sense and draw from the novels. Like riding into a storm and coming out having changed a large number of objects.
You could be more pedantic if you wanted to be.

Just before ADRPG came out a friend and I were finalising an Amber RPG ourselves. Since the source material was pinched I pinched another idea as well. I don't know if any of you remebr old school traveller but in Scouts rule book they extended the base 16 Traveller character template A997B2 (etc) into planets for designing solar systems.
We took this and assigned shadows a template based on - climate, flora, fauna, people, technology, magic, Physical Laws, Shadow/Logrus affinity. So you ended up with an 8 digit base 16 number this gives you 4.3 billion variants not quite infinite but hey its a roleplaying game. when you moved between shadows you could shift a number of digits a number of slots depending on your pattrn skill. You could move faster shifting more elements than you could manage with skill alone and you ran a risk (dice based I have to admit) of hitting a snag. So a player with 3 in pattern could shift a shadow by 3 digits etc etc. Logrus worked by determining how far away you could stretch a tendril to grab an object.

Later we constructed an Amber CCG in which we collapsed this concept to a single digit and had shadow cards with numbers ranging 0 (primal pattern) to 9 Courts of Chaos. Characters under your control could move to shadows that were adjacent with some caveats (advanced pattern to go to shadow 0 and to jump 2 hops in a turn).

I have tried to use the former in games and it worked pretty well but has its limits. Mainly that about 90% of the shadows that are useable are within 10 digits of each other.

[RPGPundit]

My feeling was always that distance was quanifiable, but in ranges of infinity, so in ways that regular humans couldn't possibly understand.

So that said, to get to Arden you have to go through forest, yes; but some forests are MUCH closer to Arden than others.

Some shadows are much closer to Amber than others, and other shadows are closer to Chaos.

RPGPundit

[Trevelyan]

But funnily enough, Corwin and Random's vehicle worked in Arden... Until they finally got too close to Amber.

The 'car' that Corwin and Rondom used to travel through Arden had gone through so many changes along the way that it almost certainly would not have worked on earth.

I take the same general approach as the OP, that shadows are divided along lines of difference, but each deliberate change (e.g. getting the right sky) to move through shadow can also invoke unintentional changes (perhaps altring the vegetation or builings in ways not ideal). A stronger Psyche makes unintentional changes smaller and less time consuming.

[Nihilistic Mind]

That means that you define distance by similarity.  How many changes do you have to make before you reach your destination?  By definition, any forest you find will be "close" to Arden.  Any shadow where cars work will be "close" to Earth.  

What are your thoughts?

If a forest is physically close to Arden, you would still need to change elements within it. Bushes, dirt patches, fauna etc... could be different, but in this logic you'd still make the changes faster and 'reach your destination' sooner than if you'd started out in a desert...

Your point of view makes sense if you consider that the visual element of a place is directly linked to its essence, its substance.
I'm having trouble imagining what it entails:
a forest where trees change color constantly and the sky is a bit crazier than usual and in all other regards is identical to Arden (let's say it's on the chaos side of Yggdrasil) would take me to Arden faster than if I started in a desert in a shadow that is part of the Golden Circle, simply because it involves a couple of changes (changing colors and sky).
This might just mean that there isn't a Shadow that is close to Amber physically or that Amber is physically distant from a Shade on the Chaos side of Ygg... They're different, therefore they're harder to connect to?

Distances in shadow are not easily quantifiable, I'll give you that, but would the visual similarity of a landscape with another be all that one needs to reach their destination, or at least make for a short trip?

I'm looking at chapter seven of 'Guns of Avalon' and there's an interesting passage there (p.212 of "the Great Book of Amber"):

...
Ganelon: "Where are we now?"
Corwin: "Still heading northeast," I said, "around twenty miles out of the city and maybe a dozen or so from Benedict's place. We have moved through Shadow also."
"What am I to do now?"
"Just keep following the road. We need the distance."
...

That's the only instance that I remember where Corwin mentions distance in such a specific manner. Furthermore, he says at some point (forget where at the moment) that steady movement is more important than speed, which implies that a steady stream of changes is more important than an actual physical distance.

The passage above may imply a combination of both, shadow changes and physical distance.

I personally think that there's more to it than physical similarities but I'm not sure how to define it at the moment.

[Trevelyan]

The passage quoted above takes place when Corwin and Ganalon have just left Benedict's Avalon in something of a hurry, and the need for distance refers to the fact that Corwin fears that Benedict might try to follow them.

If we take the reasonable assumption that trailing someone through Shadow will result in entering that Shadow at the same point as one's quarry then Corwin's need for distance becomes nothing more than a desire to get away from the 'entry point' of his pursuer and has nothing to do with moving through Shadow.

Supplimentary to this is the fact that the conversation takes place as Corwin hands over the reins to Ganalon, who is (as far as Corwin knows) incapable of moving through Shadow anyway. Physical distance is therefore all that Ganalon is capable of producing.

[Otha]

If you consider that shadow may be one (or more) extra dimensions in which one can travel, then moving in space may be as good as moving in shadow for throwing off a pursuer.

[Ickywicky]

I love Amber as well. My dad reads it as a person who loved epic and light fantasy as a way to get away from a 70 hour job week. The first time I read it I was thoroughly impressed and just zoomed through the entire series. I was most amazed by the opening, the grand combat, the sense of fighting, the overwhelming mystery of the Pattern, and the epic nature.
A few years later I reread it and was again amazed. I had thoroughly ignored the other characters in the book and became interested more in them than I was in the main character.
Then a few years later, while reading all of Zelazny's books, I jumped into Amber once more. I was in the middle of one of the books when I realized, "Wow... Corwyn is lying."
What you have in Amber isn't always the truth of the matters... you have impressions, deceits, faked deaths, unknown histories, constant mystery characters, and so on. Why would the narration of the main character be a truthful enactment of what really went on? It's more one person's journal of what he feels, and this changes. Like at the end of the book, Corwyn realizes suddenly that his brother isn't that bad of a guy. Or that he doesn't really hate his father...or that he doesn't want to be king really.
For example, reading the first few books one feels like there's a battle between Corwyn vs. Eric. It takes a long time, but finally Corwyn discovers that Brand had actually had him shot, that Brand was making a bid for the throne, with the help of others.

My dad, whom I happened to mention this whole rant to mid-writing, says, "I heard in an interview with him about his writing the series. Zelazny was writing book number five when they were bringing out book number two...and he was in terrible need of money at the time. The reason for the inaccuracies? Editing pressures. Avon was not a great company. Also, the entire thing is retype set, so even more errors leaked in." of course, thats' from the technical side... from the character/plot side; "Heck. There are mentioned sixteen actual princes, but only nine are supposed to be alive, but then, two more than the nine appear and then step back into the shadows."

I'm thinking if I pick it up again and read it, I'll have yet another opinion on the whole series. That is what makes it awesome; that at different readings we discover new things in it, not because of changes in the text, but changes in ourselves.

[gabriel_ss4u]

that is, Otha... unless the pursuer has some means of detecting you in 'this' shadow and not the next...

That means that you define distance by similarity. How many changes do you have to make before you reach your destination? By definition, any forest you find will be "close" to Arden. Any shadow where cars work will be "close" to Earth.

What are your thoughts?

this is linear thinking, I like it, and it's a good argument. But Advanced Pattern blows it out of the water.
If you think of the WhiteWolf Mage type idea of correspondence, then it may factor in that it is not the actual distance the Shadow is from Amber, it is the actual ability of the initiate to think non-linearly to arrive @ said destination. (such as going into a tunnel and coming out an untold Shadow-distance away from entrance point),
But a great topic, worthy of further discussion no doubt.

[charis]

Isn't the amount of time it takes to pass through shadow a bit variant on how strong your Psyche is? Since a lot of Pattern manipulation is based on Psyche?

[Ivanhoe]

Isn't the amount of time it takes to pass through shadow a bit variant on how strong your Psyche is? Since a lot of Pattern manipulation is based on Psyche?

Ok, I'll get bashed for getting into maths, but well...
That would mean that one could define a constant distance between two shadows in a hours.psychee unit. If someone with 2 times more psychee takes half the time to do a travel, then we have a notion of distance.

Of course, I find it a bit ridiculous that someone with 2 in psychee would go at twice the speed of someone with 1 and 1/10th of someone with 20. So it means that the constant factor is not time_to_travel x psychee but instead time_to_travel x f(psychee) where f() is a function with positive growth.

I posit that
f(-25) = 0 (humans don't walk into shadow)
f(0) = 1 (basic amberites define the unit)

If f() is linear that means you would go at twice the speed of a normal amberite with a psychee of 25, thrice at a psy of 50, etc...

Of course I would never say that to my players unless they do some scientific experiments. In that case they would discover with shock that distances between shadows change :eek: according to the substance of the shadows, the frequency at which princes use this path and Dworkin's mood

[gabriel_ss4u]

I wouldn't see it that way at all. (the math)

What if certain shadows are harder to manipulate than others... for whatever reason?
then that starts throwing variables into your math, as well as mode of travel.
Also Endurance will have a play after a while...
and the person's perceptions as well as their shadow-shifting cleverness.