After Sundown Rules and Settings Questions

Blasted · Post by **Blasted** » Tue Jul 21, 2015 1:49 am

AS has the protagonists at a similar power level to the antagonists. For the most part they're closer to the supernaturals they're fighting than they are the average joe on the street.
This is explicitly different from most horror movies, in that those protagonists are generally helpless. The genealogy of AS is from V:TM; monsters fighting monsters. I'm really struggling to think of movies I'd consider horror that flow into that genre.

Whipstitch · Post by **Whipstitch** » Tue Jul 21, 2015 2:36 am

Looking at After Sundown with film as the primary reference point hits me as a bit of a mistake anyway. Films tend to be rather self-contained and focused either by design or by necessity whereas After Sundown is a fantasy horror kitchen sink. Virtually by default you end up with a world that has more in common with episodic stuff like Buffy, Dresden Files and Hellboy or other comic books, since they're the formats that can handle building a world big enough for everyone to be interacting in.

Captain_Karzak · Post by **Captain_Karzak** » Sat Jul 25, 2015 9:05 am

A few more questions arose from last week's session:

(1) How does surprise work?!? I tried a text search for the term and came up with nothing relevant. I'm not sure the rules address this, which is weird considering the genre.

If I have to make up rules, I don't want to do D&D surprise rounds, because so far combat has been awesome, but very much rocket tag. Surprise rounds would greatly exacerbate the rocket tag effect, so I did the Shadowrun thing where the ambushers get +6 dice on their initiative roll during the first round of combat but everyone still gets to act. Does that sound like an okay solution?

(2) How does Diving for Cover work? Say your character is being shot at and reactively expend a simple action to roll (Agi + Ath or Agi + Stealth) and get more hits than your opponents initiative result. Does the attack automatically miss because you gained cover, or does this just raise the thershold to hit you by 1 or 2 (depending on whether you gained light or heavy cover)? Can you always find suitable cover to execute this maneuver?

I really hope it's not the "attack automatically misses" interpretation that turns out to be correct. IMO ranged combat is already hard mode even without diving for cover exacerbating the situation.

(3) Does telepathy ignore language barriers? Can two people with no common language communicate perfectly if one of the characters employs this power?

(4) How are languages learned in-game? I was thinking that if a player announces that their character is studying a language, I would allow them to trade one of the minor arcana that they will draw at the end of a session for the "learn a language" card once a suitable amount of in-game time has passed (so it might be at the end of the current session or at end of several sessions depending on how much in-game time has passed).

(5) Flames of panic causes targets to be "panicked and stampede about irrationally." I assume this means their movement is kinda random and the character basically does not act during their turn (other than stampeding about) - panicked or feared are not actually defined as temporary conditions oddly enough. Can a panicked character activate reactive powers like Shifting Sands or Endless Persistence?

Orion · Post by **Orion** » Sat Jul 25, 2015 10:36 am

(1) How does surprise work?!?

The big advantages of a surprise attack are these:

(a)if your target doesn't know you're there, you may be able to take a large number of Aim actions before you shoot.(Aim is a combat action, but it's implied that you can use it out of combat because the time required for high aim stacks is outside normal combat scale)

(b)if you're target doesn't expect an attack, they can't use reactive defenses like dodging or diving for cover

(c) if your target doesn't expect an attack, they can't use agility/combat to defend against melee attacks

It's not 100% clear how actions are timed. There's no provision for a surprise round where everybody on one side get multiple actions (or even one action) and the other side gets none. There's also no explanation of when you ought to start tracking rounds and whether combat actions can ever be taken outside of combat.

Personally, I would say that a lone undetected assailant is "not in combat" when they make their first attack. They get one attack roll (not one round of attacks), and then everybody rolls initiative. I am not sure that I would let a group of ambushers get one attack each. This seems logical, but also very punitive. For now, I'll stick with one free attack, total. An advantage of doing things my way is that by the time you roll initiative no one is surprised, so you shouldn't have to do anything special there.

You could instead assert that the first shot happens during the first combat round, not before it. If you do it that way, everybody rolls initiative normally and everybody gets to act. The surprised victim might actually "win" initiative, but since they're not aware of any enemies, they will probably delay their action until one is revealed.

(2) How does Diving for Cover work?

"With especial urgency, a character can attempt to get behind something solid before they get hit with bullets or shrapnel. The character makes an Agility + Athletics or Agility + Stealth check, and if they get more hits than the initiative count of their attackers, they get behind cover before the attacks are resolved."

It does exactly what it says it does and no more. If you dive for cover, then you are in cover when your enemy attacks, which will generally cost them 1 or 2 hits, depending on their weapon.

(3) Does telepathy ignore language barriers? Can two people with no common language communicate perfectly if one of the characters employs this power?

Unknown, but I would say yes.

(4) How are languages learned in-game?

I'm genuinely baffled by this question. There are cards that let you learn languages. You know this, because you referred to them in your question. There are cards for skills and powers too. The answer to all questions about learning skill, powers, and languages, is to get a card that allows you to learn them. I mean, if you feel that learning languages is too difficult or that the tarot XP system makes it too hard in general to get the upgrades you want, then sure, your house rule seems totally reasonable. But RAW it pretty clear.

(5)Can a panicked character activate reactive powers like Shifting Sands or Endless Persistence?

Yes.

Flames of panic causes targets to be "panicked and stampede about irrationally." I assume this means their movement is kinda random and the character basically does not act during their turn (other than stampeding about) - panicked or feared are not actually defined as temporary conditions oddly enough.

"stampeding about" is kind of ambiguous. It sounds as though you're reading it to mean "movement only" but I would allow it to include "melee attacks against things or people obstructing your escape.

OgreBattle · Post by **OgreBattle** » Sat Jul 25, 2015 11:45 am

How long does combat usually last (turns wise) in AS between roughly equal parties? Does it vary by what Potency they're at?

Captain_Karzak · Post by **Captain_Karzak** » Sat Jul 25, 2015 3:07 pm

OgreBattle wrote:How long does combat usually last (turns wise) in AS between roughly equal parties? Does it vary by what Potency they're at?

One or two turns in my experience. Potency is not an input that matters, the character builds and EDGE are everything. Squishy characters (low strength characters lacking Shifting Sands) tend to go down in a single attack from supernatural (or even highly competent mundane) opposition.

Edge is fucking huge. Last battle we had, rerolling misses via edge swung the damage dealt results from 7 net hits (you are now smithereens) to 0-1 net (undamaged - petty wounds) hits multiple times. Similarly rerolling misses on attacks lead to targets being one-shotted who would otherwise have shrugged off nearly all the damage. Since nearly everyone supernatural has 3 edge, and you make two attacks per turn, it generally runs out during the first turn, and definitely runs out by the second.

Kaelik · Post by **Kaelik** » Sat Jul 25, 2015 3:40 pm

Captain_Karzak wrote:
OgreBattle wrote:How long does combat usually last (turns wise) in AS between roughly equal parties? Does it vary by what Potency they're at?
One or two turns in my experience. Potency is not an input that matters, the character builds and EDGE are everything. Squishy characters (low strength characters lacking Shifting Sands) tend to go down in a single attack from supernatural (or even highly competent mundane) opposition.

Edge is fucking huge. Last battle we had, rerolling misses via edge swung the damage dealt results from 7 net hits (you are now smithereens) to 0-1 net (undamaged - petty wounds) hits multiple times. Similarly rerolling misses on attacks lead to targets being one-shotted who would otherwise have shrugged off nearly all the damage. Since nearly everyone supernatural has 3 edge, and you make two attacks per turn, it generally runs out during the first turn, and definitely runs out by the second.

Yeah, my experience is limited to in media res levels of potency and their conflicts with each other and comparable opposition, but it sure feels like mostly people go down in one shot. For the most part, you have to play the game of trying not to be targeted by the enemies instant death attack.

Blasted · Post by **Blasted** » Sun Jul 26, 2015 7:42 am

I've played a couple of origin games where the chars start out as 'normal humans'. I've found that normal on normal battles can last a little while. 3-4 turns if they are using cover, etc. effectively.

Captain_Karzak · Post by **Captain_Karzak** » Wed Jul 29, 2015 7:31 am

I have questions about how Dismissal (Advanced Magnetism) works.

After Sundown wrote:By spending three power points, the character’s dismissive demeanor takes hold until the end of the scene. The character makes a Charisma + Tactics or Willpower + Intimidation check, and anyone who wishes to summon the nerve to act against them must generate an equal number of hits on a Willpower + Intimidation or Willpower + Survival test. Failure to do so results in a round lost to dithering. The character’s orders are also extremely likely to be obeyed (especially if they involve moving away from the issuer), and the hits are added as a bonus dicepool on any Intimidation or Tactics tests to command or demand.

(1) Does an attacking character have to make an opposed roll every time they attack they attack the Dismissal's caster?

(2) If an attacking character fails their opposed roll, do they have to make another roll next round if they try to attack the Dismissing character again? (Basically they failed to "summon up the nerve to act against" the caster and they have to try again next round).

(3) If the attacking character has multiple "initiative passes per combat turn" due to Celerity powers, do they dither during every initiative pass if they fail to overcome the caster's Dismissal?

(4) Since hits on Dismissal add to any Intimidation or Tactics test to "command or demand", does that include uses of Authority powers, many of which are Intimidation or Tactics based rolls to make people do stuff? Is the roll to activate Dismissal itself considered a test "to command or demand"?

Judging__Eagle · Post by **Judging__Eagle** » Wed Jul 29, 2015 6:37 pm

OgreBattle wrote:How long does combat usually last (turns wise) in AS between roughly equal parties? Does it vary by what Potency they're at?

Mundane creatures, and Spawn monsters, tend to go down in one hit; which leads to satisfyingly short combats.

PCs with a combat specialization in build have a good chance of dropping even tougher creatures like Trolls in one hit.

Personally, the fact that dropping a creature doesn't equate that creatures inability to act, nor does it equate their death is good at making the combat encounters realistically short, eliminating the critical existence failures of the HP system (which works better for naval vessels, its original use),

Whipstitch · Post by **Whipstitch** » Thu Jul 30, 2015 3:45 am

Yeah, AS has a rocket tag dynamic going where it's easy for a supernatural to have at least one murder combo but it's very hard to be built in such a way that you can plausibly defend against any and every combo. Defensive shticks like big piles of soak and Shifting Sands are best understood as GTFO powers that let you dominate particular match-ups rather than being things which make you legit invincible.

OgreBattle · Post by **OgreBattle** » Fri Aug 14, 2015 3:18 am

Whipstitch wrote:Yeah, AS has a rocket tag dynamic going where it's easy for a supernatural to have at least one murder combo but it's very hard to be built in such a way that you can plausibly defend against any and every combo. Defensive shticks like big piles of soak and Shifting Sands are best understood as GTFO powers that let you dominate particular match-ups rather than being things which make you legit invincible.

What are some of the murder combos and counters in AS? Is it something less obvious than just looking through the list of powers and going "Yeah my war form can tear a dude in half; I can snipe him from the roof"

Whipstitch · Post by **Whipstitch** » Fri Aug 14, 2015 7:45 am

It's pretty obvious stuff, for the most part. I said combo because the physically oriented splats set the bar pretty high just by existing and other characters who wish to take them on will want to take multiple physical disciplines so they can compete on even terms or else would like to select powers that let them avoid certain opposed tests or at least let them tamper with the result. For example, Lycanthropes and Animates are hell on wheels in terms of combat stats but Icarids are also pretty dang mean because they can use their Veil powers and Curse of Failure to sucker punch you and make you reroll shit on the soak roll. Meanwhile, the sorcerous powers that manage to pretty threatening stand alone tricks like Fire Starter (high damage code, ranged attack) or Lightning Bolt (lower damage code but even harder to avoid) also have the unfortunate distinction of having definite hard counters in Flesh of Marble and Walk of Flame. They're nice powers if you want to be dangerous despite dump statting your physicals but if you go that route you may want to consider taking something like Banishment or Dismissal too so that you can try to duck fights where you'd have a bad match up.

OgreBattle · Post by **OgreBattle** » Mon Sep 14, 2015 6:47 am

I'm not sure how the stealth rules work

Hide and Seek: People cower under stairs and hide in closets from approaching slashers in horror movies all the time, and sometimes this even works. When you grab yourself a hiding place, you are putting yourself in a position where anyone who looks hard enough for you will find you. There are only so many places for a person to be hiding in the basement, so if the man in the hockey mask or the reanimated Nazis spend long enough searching that basement, they will find any person hiding there, and it will go poorly for someone. The gamble with hiding is that in fact, ax wielding psychopaths are busy people and they have shit to do. So if they search the basement for some amount of time without finding anyone, they'll give up and try the garage. The way this works is that the seeker announces how long they are going to look in an area and makes an Intuition + Perception test. The hider makes an Intuition + Stealth test to determine how long the base time to find them would be, and that time is divided by the hits on the Seeker's Perception test to determine how long it would actually take them to find the hiding character. If they actually spend enough time looking, the hiding place is uncovered, and if they don't, they don't.

The 'base time' table is stuff like "search closet= 1 round, search house= 20 minutes". How does the hider's stealth+intuition roll affect this? I'm also not sure when "I search the house" is used vs "I search a specific room". An example given is the monster doesn't find the hider in the basement so he goes to the garage... would the outcome have been different if the monster said "I search the house" instead?

How does AS handle the following situations:

* Vampire sneaking into governor's mansion: The guards are on patrol as usual but not aware the vampire is coming.

* Predator stalking armed commandos in the jungle (who are unaware of its presence), trying to split them up and ambush them 1 at a time.

* Sniper duel in the woods: both are trying to spot the other guy first while avoiding detection.

I'm thinking that the 'chase' rules could be used for the vampire example. The guards patrolling the house count as 'chasing' the vampire to represent the vampire avoiding their routes.

Omegonthesane · Post by **Omegonthesane** » Mon Sep 14, 2015 11:57 am

OgreBattle wrote:The 'base time' table is stuff like "search closet= 1 round, search house= 20 minutes". How does the hider's stealth+intuition roll affect this? I'm also not sure when "I search the house" is used vs "I search a specific room". An example given is the monster doesn't find the hider in the basement so he goes to the garage... would the outcome have been different if the monster said "I search the house" instead?

Level of abstraction, level of focus - if searching each room individually the hunter might give the janitor's closet short shrift and the basement extra attention. If the hunter knows - or thinks they know - you're in the garage, they search the garage; if they only know you're in the house, they search the whole house, which takes them longer.

* Vampire sneaking into governor's mansion: The guards are on patrol as usual but not aware the vampire is coming.

If I had to crowbar this into hiding, each guard is searching "my patrol route". Not sure that's the fastest or sanest way to do so but it sounds like a thing you could do.

Now I think about it the absence of a "sneaking" system is odd. If it had to be based on Hiding, you'd probably have to "hide" in the area you are sneaking through for the time it takes you to cross it. With possibly the option to move faster for a net penalty to the Stealth roll, as the fact you make more noise more than offsets the fact there's a smaller time window to find you in.

* Predator stalking armed commandos in the jungle (who are unaware of its presence), trying to split them up and ambush them 1 at a time.

I got no idea, there's not really a mechanic that can force the party to split to simulate a horror movie.

* Sniper duel in the woods: both are trying to spot the other guy first while avoiding detection.

Both snipers are hiding in "the woods" and searching "the woods".

Judging__Eagle · Post by **Judging__Eagle** » Tue Sep 15, 2015 2:39 am

OgreBattle wrote:
Whipstitch wrote:Yeah, AS has a rocket tag dynamic going where it's easy for a supernatural to have at least one murder combo but it's very hard to be built in such a way that you can plausibly defend against any and every combo. Defensive shticks like big piles of soak and Shifting Sands are best understood as GTFO powers that let you dominate particular match-ups rather than being things which make you legit invincible.
What are some of the murder combos and counters in AS? Is it something less obvious than just looking through the list of powers and going "Yeah my war form can tear a dude in half; I can snipe him from the roof"

Pretty much any character can get Large Size at character creation; and War Form isn't too hard to swing either.

In one of the test games I was running, nearly every player's character (e.g. Frankenstein, Cthulhii (Nosferatu), Deep One, Bunyip (Get of Fenris)) had Large Size, because the players wanted to be huge or strong. Only Dr. Needleteeth; the Troglodyte baseline test & magical heal support NPC, and a Fetched (i.e. Fallen) Crusader (who the player had been using for a year at that point) were the only "normal" sized characters in that group.

Being big is also a good way to soak damage; but it's not going to give blanket immunity to all effects (like Sorceries that are resisted with Will).

OgreBattle · Post by **OgreBattle** » Thu Oct 01, 2015 5:41 am

Are there stats for vehicles anywhere? Would a car being torn into by a t-rex have similar defensive stats as a triceratops being torn into by a t-rex?

I don't think there's rules for armor piercing either. You have bullets and kevlar, but I haven't seen any stats for 'AP rounds'. This ties into the above question as I figure a metal vehicle and a fleshy beast would have different kinds of 'armor'.

Whipstitch · Post by **Whipstitch** » Thu Oct 01, 2015 4:35 pm

I don't really think there's much benefit to fussing with armor penetration in a proportional damage system and the rules already make allowances for bumping damage codes up a point if you're willing to lug around contraband ammo.

virgil · Post by **virgil** » Sun Jan 10, 2016 4:58 am

Was there ever a satisfactory answer/clarification for how the Hide & Seek rules work in After Sundown?

RadiantPhoenix · Post by **RadiantPhoenix** » Sun Jan 17, 2016 2:59 am

Chases: how do you resolve chases with multiple fleeing characters?

Example: the PCs (a Vampire, a Werewolf, a Witch, and Steve) are running away from a throng of enraged Akuma.

How do you resolve this?

Username17 · Post by **Username17** » Tue Jan 19, 2016 5:07 pm

RadiantPhoenix wrote:Chases: how do you resolve chases with multiple fleeing characters?

Example: the PCs (a Vampire, a Werewolf, a Witch, and Steve) are running away from a throng of enraged Akuma.

How do you resolve this?

The fleeing group would act as a single unit until one of their number did a stunt that the others could not or declined to keep up with. If the PCs split up, then the Akuma have to decide who they are chasing.

Optimal tactics for the running party is to have the less athletic members peel off with stunts while the most athletic character hangs back to get nearly caught and then tries to do something really crazy to escape. So in our example, the Witch, Vampire, and Steve would each go their separate ways, letting the Akuma take the easy way out and continue pursuing the Werewolf. Then the Werewolf goes Warform and takes the chase up the side of a wall or something.

A thing I've been wargaming is to allow characters to perform stunts that help their whole team - knocking over garbage cans behind them and the like. Seems fair (if pretty good) at about a -1 threshold.

-Username17

DrPraetor · Post by **DrPraetor** » Tue Jan 19, 2016 9:17 pm

Are you going to port the mission rules you were working up for Assymetric Threat into After Sundown?

In the sense that combat is a subsystem that you break into "whenever the combat music starts playing", and chases "whenever the getaway music starts playing", I've always felt there should be a system that triggers "whenever the caper music starts playing".

How broad would the scope be? The Sting has to be multiple encounters (it involves leg work, a bringing the band together sequence, etc.) but the Big Heist and the Climax of the Big Con are both crucial story elements that have flummoxed game designers lo these twenty years. Shadowrun was supposed to be heavily-focused on this type of story, but the only social skill was Etiquette, which was like AD&D diplomacy - you would it move some gangbangers / corporate guards / mafia goons one step friendlier on the interaction chart by fitting in / being one of the gang, and that was it. If you then wanted to convince them to do something with you, or con them out of their motorcycles or whatever, the other social skills were Negotiation, which covers fast talk but not persuasion as such, Leadership which only works on people who are already following you and even then it's questionable what it does, and Interrogation.

So in Shadowrun, it was always MTP and mind caulk for you to break into an office building and steal some files; and if you wanted the rest of the party to kick open the door at the climax pretending to be a police raid, it was almost-all hand-waiving.

After Sundown has at least some systems for these, but if you were going to do a new edition, explicit systems with generalizable and recognizable examples would make a much stronger game and foundation for future games.