The Amber-Gunpowder Arms Race

[RPGPundit]

So Corwin's little trick in "the Guns of Avalon" is brilliant. Its not so brilliant when every pc tries to imitate it.

The problem is it all seems very bloody reasonable: if Corwin did it, shouldn't anyone else be able to? Spend enough time (and in shadow you have all the time you need), and you should be able to find a Nuclear Bomb that would work in Amber.

How do you as a GM deal with that?

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[TonyLB]

Personally, I say "Well, yeah ... if Corwin was telling the truth about what happened then you should be able to do the same thing."  Then, when they try, it doesn't work.

I have not, as of yet, encountered any players who were shocked at the concept that Corwin might not be 100% trustworthy.  I keep hoping that I will, as I think they'd be a lot of fun.

[James McMurray]

That's not what he's saying. What he's saying is that assuming that Amber has an underlying physics enough to let something explode, it should be possible to experiment and find it and use it yourself. That the amber novels give the players the idea just means that its no longer novel when it crops up.

And for the record, I do not believe for an instant that it really was jeweler's rouge he used to concoct his Amber gunpowder. I believe that he had something, because the Guns of Avalon isn't something you just make up abnd have it stay believable much past the listener's first trip to Amber. But whatever it was, I doubt he'd give the power of it away so easily.

In a game I'd let them try, and try, and try. Meanwhile other players would be running their games. Eventually they'd discover gunpowder, but who knows what the other players would have been up to by then, and they probably would have gotten bored long ago. They could use time tricks in Shadows to alleviate this somewhat, but considering that they have to test every substance in a Shadow to be sure that Shadow doesn't have something, it wouldn't alleviate it much. I'm not sure how, but I'd possibly base the time it takes on their Psyche.

Meanwhile, I'd be trying to quickly come up with a Power for it. Maybe called Pattern Science, and have it useful for doing scientific stuff in Amber and the nearby shadows. They could purchase the Power as usual whenever Advancement Points are awarded, and they can choose to take Bad Stuff as usual. The Bad Stuff in this instance would very likely be some sort of spy unless that isn't feasible. It would both allow them to get it, and provide for the opportunity for someone else to get it, thus being a true Arms Race rather than just "yippee! I've got guns!"

When someone does get Gunpowder, I'd treat it as being a hefty bonus to the War whenever they're in a position to use it.

[TonyLB]

That's not what he's saying. What he's saying is that assuming that Amber has an underlying physics enough to let something explode, it should be possible to experiment and find it and use it yourself. That the amber novels give the players the idea just means that its no longer novel when it crops up.

Sorry ... I wasn't clear.  What I'm saying is that, in many of my games, Amber's physics do not allow explosions.  What Corwin did was Not Natural for that place, and no amount of experimentation trying to find a natural compound to do the same thing will be fruitful.

With that clarification, I hope the idea is clear.

I like the idea of a Pattern Science power, though.  That'd be funky, and would also be a nice way for me to charge points (and provide value) to all those folks who want to come from high-tech shadows and use insane materials technology to give themselves cross-shadow advantage.

[RPGPundit]

Well um, remember that Corwin is not just talking to some random dude, or to you in the audience; he's talking to his son. He might give away the secret of the guns of avalon to Merlin in order to give Merlin an edge should the situation ever be required and Corwin isn't around.

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[TonyLB]

Well um, remember that Corwin is not just talking to some random dude, or to you in the audience; he's talking to his son. He might give away the secret of the guns of avalon to Merlin in order to give Merlin an edge should the situation ever be required and Corwin isn't around.

>nod, nod<  He might.  There's plenty of justification if one wants to argue that Corwin was playing it straight.  As you've said, by that time he was at a place in his life, and talking to a person, who he would want to be straight with.

There's also plenty of justification if one wants to argue that Corwin was lying through his teeth ... after all, he was talking to his son, and probably wanted to put the nicest possible spin on events.  "Oh ... how'd I take over Amber?  (Must not talk about pact with cthulhu, must not talk about pact with cthulhu)  Well ... uh ... yeah, I just happened to find some gunpowder.  Just one of those things.  Lucky me!  Remember son, good things come to those who act from their conscience."

The Zelazny books permit of many different interpretations.  It's part of their charm.

[Lee Short]

I'm so with Tony on this one.  

One of my peeves about convention games is how utterly fucking easy it is to get gunpowder.  I know that con games have to work on a compressed timescale, but in canon gunpowder is supposed to be rare.  At convention games, the rule is that at least one PC will get gunpowder in the 2-month scale of the game and the exception is that no one gets gunpowder.  Bah.  If it were that easy, then how come Corwin was the only one of the elders to do it?

[Arref]

I'm so with Tony on this one.  

One of my peeves about convention games is how utterly fucking easy it is to get gunpowder.  I know that con games have to work on a compressed timescale, but in canon gunpowder is supposed to be rare.  At convention games, the rule is that at least one PC will get gunpowder in the 2-month scale of the game and the exception is that no one gets gunpowder.  Bah.  If it were that easy, then how come Corwin was the only one of the elders to do it?

Hmm. I've enjoyed the exception in my convention games (both playing and gming.) Is there something in the con game blurbs that warns of this gunpowder event?

So Corwin's little trick in "the Guns of Avalon" is brilliant. Its not so brilliant when every pc tries to imitate it.

The problem is it all seems very bloody reasonable: if Corwin did it, shouldn't anyone else be able to? Spend enough time (and in shadow you have all the time you need), and you should be able to find a Nuclear Bomb that would work in Amber.

How do you as a GM deal with that?

That's a darn good question I haven't seen on other forums. Kudos.

There are several options one might like to choose from:

You could say that Corwin is telling it straight, but that the working gunpowder is a part of Corwin's legend since he is the one to discover it. As the 'father of gunpowder' it is only Corwin (or his line) that can point you at the stuff. This is taking the principle of Creation as Zelazny tosses it around and applying it to the meta-universe.

You could say that Gunpowder must be bought as part of your PC's powers. This respects the design of the Amber Diceless game: Real Threats cost real points. No player should complain when a Horde bought with points tears through an army 'found' in shadow. Likewise for gunpowder used to threaten amberites. Likewise for someone who wants a nuclear bomb. (Good luck with costing that last one.)

IMC, I often use a threshold I might refer to as "infinite shadow versus limited perceptions." The principle isn't so different from 'needle in a haystack.' If PCs want to find something in shadow so specialized that it negates a premise of Amber that lasted over two millennium, they are relying on sweat and good stuff more than precise personal perceptions. Or, to describe this another way: the PCs do not know any of the Real variables that Corwin was thinking and feeling when he found that place with that substance in that time----though you guess it had something to do with the original Avalon. Based on that data, you are sifting infinite shadow for a fluke causal event. Yes, you will find it. Yes, it might take a thousand years.

And I would explain that to the Players.

[James McMurray]

Well um, remember that Corwin is not just talking to some random dude, or to you in the audience; he's talking to his son. He might give away the secret of the guns of avalon to Merlin in order to give Merlin an edge should the situation ever be required and Corwin isn't around.

That's a possibility, and if I wanted a player to have gunpowder I'd use that as a means of making it easy. They could somehow get the information out of Merlin, spend the points, and not have to worry about the time spent experimenting and engaging in serious Shadow Forging.

I don't want them to have it though, so I come from the opposite angle: Corwin was talking to an Amberite, with whom you must always be cagey. In addition, he was talking to a member of the Courts of Chaos. Even if he didn't mind Merlin having such powerful knowledge, he'd wouldn't want the Courts to have it. His son, despite and because of his ancestry, is too dangerous to allow with that sort of knowledge. Or in other words, hard work and lost time are the only routes to gunpowder (or worse) in my Amber.

[Trevelyan]

Personally I've rearely seen players decide to go the gunpowerder route and it wouln't be too much of a problem to stop them.

First of all, they need a reason to want to use gupowerder in Amber. Outside fo some sort of throne war scenario that doesn't really happen very often.

Secondly they'd have to deal with the fact that some of Corwin's guns are still around and controlled by the crown. While this might give the PCs an incentive to find their own guns in order to even the odds a little, I find that it more often causes them to think a little higher.

Which brings us to my third point. In a game where the characters can just as easily start with a flight of dragons(or worse!) under their command, anyone who thinks that gunpowder is going to make them invincible is in for a very rude awakening.

Plus I've always assumed that Corwin's guns were effective more because they were unexpected than because they were unbeatable. Now that the potential for firearms is recognised by the Amberites it'll be a lot harder for the same trick to work again. Pcs need to be more inventive -  bombs, being a logical extension of the gunpowder tree, are not that inventive.

[Lee Short]

Hmm. I've enjoyed the exception in my convention games (both playing and gming.) Is there something in the con game blurbs that warns of this gunpowder event?

Actually, I should have been more specific.  I was really only thinking of the LARPish throne war-ish games.  

Most other games, you don't have the scope of action and/or in-character motivation.  

But it does seem that most of the time you'd want to get gunpowder, it's easy to do.  

You could say that Gunpowder must be bought as part of your PC's powers. This respects the design of the Amber Diceless game: Real Threats cost real points. No player should complain when a Horde bought with points tears through an army 'found' in shadow. Likewise for gunpowder used to threaten amberites. Likewise for someone who wants a nuclear bomb. (Good luck with costing that last one.)

This is a great idea.  Really, why should gunpowder cost any less than, say, a Deadly Damage weapon?

[Lee Short]

Well um, remember that Corwin is not just talking to some random dude, or to you in the audience; he's talking to his son.

RPGPundit

Even this is not clear, and there are multiple interpretations.  

Ostensibly, Corwin was talking to his son...but that doesn't mean his son was the real audience.  After all, the book got out somehow in many or most Amberverses.

[Sweeney]

This is neat -- I had a gut reaction, of "Well, obviously this is how it worked," but I have no illusions that there's one right answer. In fact this one doesn't fit the books well at all. I guess the thread just sparked an idea I liked so much that it was a gut feeling.

So, my thought was that this stuff came from Avalon, which no longer exists. How does a Shadow no longer exist, if there's infinite Shadows that are exactly the same except for, like, an atom that's in a different place?

Well, it was his Shadow of desire, but it had been destroyed. He's able to find a "New Avalon" that's close enough that he can still produce gunpowder, but the other things about it are not so good. So, maybe this is just my head being twisted from re-reading Nobilis recently, but I got this weird idea in my head of Corwin thinking:

 "I've been ruler of a land, and seen it destroyed. I can call back to that memory, use it to walk to a place like that, and do it again, only to Amber." Because, hey, if you can walk in Shadow to any place you can think of, sometimes the shit going on in your head matters quite a lot.

Like, I had this image in my head that that jeweler's rouge was something he only had because he was polishing up a piece of jewelry for someone he cared for, someone lost when the Shadow was destroyed. He throws it in the fireplace, *poof* it explodes where things can't explode.

Yeah, it doesn't really fit the canon. But I really like the idea that what you have to do to bend the rules in Amber is to bend yourself, badly. Just find your Shadow of Desire, the place you feel most at home in all the universe. Your home, in your heart. Then make sure it gets torn the fuck down. Congratulations, twist yourself, hurt yourself, suffer, and it turns out that an Amberite with a hole in their heart can bend the physics in Amber a bit.

Is it worth it? I dunno. I just like the idea that the Achilles' Heel of Amber is the Amberites themselves, not just in terms of "We might plot stuff that could destroy Amber", but "If we break ourselves enough, Amber itself might crack." Kind of a nasty little family legacy from Dworkin.

Hm. Now that I think about it, he gets his gunpowder-armed troops to Amber right about when the Black Road shows up, doesn't he?

[Otha]

"If we break ourselves enough, Amber itself might crack."

Oh, man, that is SWEET.

[finarvyn]

One way to deal with it would be the "Macgyver" solution.

When the old TV series "Macgyver" was written the people in charge got scientists to create actual tricks that Mac could do with simple things found around the house, except that when they showed him making an explosive (or whatever) they always left out one key ingrediant so that stupid kids at home wouldn't watch a show and them blow themselves up.

Using this philosophy, assume that Corwin has discovered something like a key State Secret and that that when he writes his story he's still wanting to keep things a secret. Assume that he's left something out.

After all, if Benedict couldn't find a way to make gunpowder work in Amber (and he's thousands of years old) we can assume that Corwin probably lucked into it and that the PCs aren't likely to have such success.