Most Complete After Sundown 2E?

[Orion]

Hey folks,

A friend of mine is asking about playing After Sundown, so I went back and re-read the past 5 years or so of After Sundown discussion threads. And it looks like there was more consensus than I remembered there being about where we wanted to go with it and what a second edition would have in it. Has anyone out there done any significant amount of primary writing for an After Sundown with no elder powers or devotions and 7-ish powers in each discipline, Celerity revised to not use IPs, new shapechange options, etc.? Where could I find the most complete publicly accessible manuscripts?

[Kaelik]

I did a fair amount of writing and was going to ask lokathor or someone to set up a gitbook of it but while I rewrote most of the system I petered out in rewriting all the powers individually.

I could upload something somewhere though not sure how useful it would be.

I did rewrite celerity and there are no devotions.

I have expert powers though and I rewrote monsters and skills a bit.

[Orion]

I would definitely be interested in seeing what you have.

[Kaelik]

https://justpaste.me/TYRN

EDIT: Found a pastebin that keeps some of the formatting at least though not really the size changes of fonts.

[pragma]

Seconded.

I remember a discussion suggesting coming up with a standard, compact form for powers that was similar to Shadowrun's spell notation. I'd love to see that make it's way into AS2E (or 1E); I think it would make referencing them much easier during play. Something like:

Abyss of the Body
Roll: Strength + Survival OR Charisma + Medicine
Resist: Strength (+ Edge)
Cost: 1 power point
Timing: 1 action
Target: 1 character in physical contact
Effect: ...

[pragma]

Reviewing your notes, I have been very thoroughly beaten to the punch. Great!

[Kaelik]

Reviewing your notes, I have been very thoroughly beaten to the punch. Great!

I stole the formatting from Lokathor who did it before me.

[Username17]

Actually finishing that project would require a co-author I think. Under no circumstances would that co-author be Kaelik, because he has too thoroughly burnt his bridges with me. I'm never going to forgive him for his antics, I'm never going to work with him productively on anything.

Anyway, there's definitely bits I've written. But without a co-author I don't think it's going to come together.

The Unbelievable History of the Kin

In the Modern Nights, there are Vampires and Lycanthropes, Witches and Leviathans, Animates and Paragons, and these creatures are collectively called the Kin. In ages past, neither these distinctions nor these similarities were agreed upon by the creatures of the night. The creatures of the ancient past may well have been of types that are not recognized tonight, and if one goes back far enough in the past, it seems logical that the presently existing types would not all exist. Many historical figures can be identified as being some form of what would now be called Kin, without more precise taxonomy being possible. Heracles was strong enough to uproot a tree with his bare hands, but historians don't know if he was a Vampire or a Paragon or some other kind of Kin that has since gone extinct. Heracles himself would not have been able to tell you because he lived at a time when the social networks of the Kin were not developed enough for him to understand the categories.

As near as can be determined, the Kin on Earth have held a roughly steady population ratio of 1:10,000 with humanity for at least the last five thousand years. And for most of that time the Vow of Silence did not exist. And so when introduced to the existence of the Kin it is not infrequent for the new initiate to ask how the Kin could have escaped notice in the annals of history. And the simple answer is that they did not.

The historical record is actually filled to the brim with supernatural events and people and monsters that display supernatural powers. It is presently fashionable to consider tales of magic to be metaphors or fiction, or simply the result of bad record keeping. But the truth is both more fantastic and more banal: most of ancient history is reasonably accurate depictions of events as they transpired. Gilgamesh is listed as having ruled for two hundred and fifty years not because of a record keeping error or because “Gilgamesh” was a title passed from father to son or any such modernist mundane explanation – but simply that Gilgamesh was one of the Kin and lived long enough to rule for over two centuries. That Achilles was a warrior whose skin was impervious to the bronze spear was not literary license or dramatic hyperbole, but a straightforward account of his magical powers.

The early history of the Kin is not particularly hidden, it is simply unbelievable to modern eyes.

Only within the last few centuries has human mobility approached that of the Kin, and so it is that societal changes of the Kin followed quite similar paths in Africa, Asia, and Europe. It is thus that when we speak of historical periods that we do not much distinguish between Congo and Japan, as social forces spread between the two quite rapidly for the Kin as contrasted with the human populations and word of major events in one would spread to the Kin in the other within a few decades even during the Bronze Age. North and South America were quite separate until the end of the fifteenth century, and Kin communicated across the Pacific or the Arctic Circle so infrequently that information was often centuries out of date before human kingdoms invaded the “New World.”

The Kin divide history into ages that are approximate in their start and end dates. The Age of Darkness doesn't necessarily end at exactly 1400 CE and it doesn't end in the same year in every part of the world (or even necessarily every part of an area we'd call a country in the modern nights).

Historians of the Kin face many of the same challenges as human archaeologists with regards to the earlier ages – namely that most of the surviving records are second (or third) hand, often written hundreds or even thousands of years later, copied from original texts or even just verbal descriptions. The war between Marduk and Tiamat probably took place in about 2700 BCE, during what is now called the Age of Gods, but the earliest surviving texts are from tablets made almost 800 years later. This becomes much less pronounced in later eras – the Kin have access to a copy of The Classic of Mountains and Seas (a text that has a mostly complete roll call of supernatural creatures living in China around 386 BCE) from just 170 years later. However even this work is a copy of a copy and it is entirely possible that passages have been edited in or out to advance some ancient agenda.

The Age of Gods: 2200 BCE and Before...

Human history in this period abounds with tales of gods and monster slayers and three hundred year monarchies. It is popular among archaeologists to consider these reports fanciful or enlarged upon retelling across the centuries and millennia that have past. Historians of the Kin believe most of these stories are broadly and bluntly correct. That Kin of the period simply strode across the land as gods and monsters, openly flaunting their power.

The population of the entire world peaked at 25 million humans and there were probably never more than three thousand Kin alive on Earth at one time. Bronze weaponry was invented around 3300 BCE in a world with just ten million humans in it, but it wasn't for over a thousand years that humans became numerous and organized enough to seriously threaten any of the Kin. Supernatural creatures from this period seemed to come and go as the pleased, often ignoring fledgling human societies entirely, or ruling over human slaves with sorcery and might.

This period is the murkiest and it's not known how far back it goes. Human civilization was hardly worth the name before the invention of writing and tens of thousands of years have no records at all. It is not known if any of the Kin from the Age of Gods still persist. There are some antediluvian monsters that are plausible candidates, most asleep or imprisoned, but four thousand years is a long time and it's not clear if any of the remaining ancient terrors are quite that old. It is also not clear when the first Kin came to be. Many cultures have stories that imply there were Kin even before normal humans existed, while others imply that there were humans for thousands of years before the first Kin appeared. There probably weren't more than five hundred Kin in the whole world in 5000 BCE, and there just isn't enough evidence to say how much farther back in time one has to go to find a year where the Kin count was literally zero.

Creatures suspected of beings from the Age of Gods tend to be massive, alien, inhuman things. Whether they were ever humans or began their existences as dragons or demons is a matter of debate. There are some ancient creatures that have been asleep for a very long time, to the point that their very identity – let alone what they might do should they awaken – is a matter of conjecture for those living in the Modern Nights.

The Age of Heroes 2200 BCE to 800 BCE

As humanity produced armies and laws, civilization became something that the Kin could no longer ignore. Members of the Kin became champions of armies and sorcerer kings. Many of them were essentially unbeatable on the field of battle by mortals, but they still fell because other kingdoms had their own supernatural champions. Goliath was three meters tall, but he was met on the field of battle by David. Achilles had skin that shattered bronze weapons, but he was met on the field of battle by Paris. Mighty Bhishma slayed ten thousand mortal men in a single day, but he was met on the field of battle by Arjuna. Similar stories played out across Eurasia and Africa, with mighty champions leading and combating the Bantu expansion in the Congo Delta or facing off against the Eight Immortals during China's Spring and Autumn.

The Middle East, North Africa, the Mediterranean, and South Asia all had a “bronze age” that segued into an “iron age.” Northern Europe, East Asia, and Sub-Saharan Africa all developed the use of iron without first having a period of bronze age civilizations. The period just before the advent of the iron age is a period of little reliable record keeping lasting two to three human generations called the “bronze age collapse.” During this period, kingdoms fell like dominoes, and the names on the maps were practically unrecognizable once it had finished. This period is called the Elf War by the Kin, as that is a period when creatures from Maya, a nightmare world filled with cthonic monsters and Faeries invaded the Earth. Many of them were highly resistant to mortal weapons that were not made of iron, which were extremely rare in the early 12th century BCE. By the end of the Elf War, iron weapons were in use on three continents.

After taking significant casualties in the Trojan War and then the Elf War, the population of Kin recovered quickly, and within a century the numbers were greater than ever (somewhere between five and ten thousand), and while most of the Kin in the world at this time were relatively young, they attempted to fill the roles of the magical beings from a few centuries' prior. They led armies, became kings, and fought each other for dominance. The results were steadily less impressive. Soldiers in the tens of thousands armed with iron swords were often able to overcome magical heroes without magical aid. Many god kings and sorcerer lords met ghastly ends within a few decades of taking power. While there were over ten thousand Kin in the world by the end of the Age of Heroes, few remained that were willing to fight for thrones. The Age of Heroes ended not with a bang, but with a mutter and a shuffling of feet.

The Age of Humans 800 BCE to 500 CE

While there were a few places (such as Japan and Ireland) that continued to openly have Kin as rulers for several hundred more years, for the most part the creatures of magic retreated to the shadows and the wilderness by about 800 BCE, leaving human societies to fight their own battles and make their own laws. Those who didn't had a tendency to die by the sword.

The Classic of Mountains and Seas describes most of the Kin of China living in secluded hermitages on steep mountains or in sheltered valleys. Similar strategies were employed in other continents. Witches of this period are more likely to stay in deep forests or sequester themselves in temples than to make plays for dominance of the battlefield or rulership of a nation.

One technique that was widely employed by those who did wish to pursue political power was to mentor and sponsor humans to be used as pawns. In Modern Nights, these humans are called Renfields, but at the time there was no consistent nomenclature for it. While the practice became common, most Kin of the period appear to have believed they were the only ones to have figured this out. Kin communicated with each other rarely during this period, and those that engaged with human society tended to be gurus, teachers, or prophets – using their powers to convince humans to act on their behalf rather than acting directly.

Some of these Renfields achieved impressive things, such as Alexander and Arthur. But the Kin regard these humans as having been largely interchangeable and the real powers to have been Merlin and Aristotle.

Populations rose fairly steadily, and by the end of the Age of Humans, there were approximately 200 million humans in the world, and roughly twenty thousand Kin. In both cases about double the numbers that had existed 1300 years earlier.

The Age of Darkness 500 CE to 1400 CE

The 6th century CE saw the sun snatched from sky and ash fall like rain. The dead walked the Earth, and people perished by the tens of millions. Mighty cities such as Rome and Teotihuacan were virtually destroyed – falling from a population of about a million each to a few tens of thousands in less than a century. Both great metropolises were eventually abandoned (although Rome was subsequently resettled).

The main drivers of the Age of Darkness were intrusions from two worlds: Mictlan and the Dark Reflection. Outbreaks of Zombies and invasions by Demons happened again and again. A shadow fell across the sun that made night last for several days. Historical records from this period are spotty. During this period, what society and traditions the Kin had between them were almost completely destroyed. Almost all supernatural organizations that claim descendance from before the Age of Darkness are actually recreations made afterward, either based on the testimony of survivors or entirely made up.

Despite the literally unprecedented death tolls of mortals and Kin, Earth was mostly successfully defended. Not every city and kingdom survived, and at various points entire civilizations were reduced to rubble and waste. Plagues and rampaging hordes of walking dead and blood-mad Goblins washed across the lands and left empty building and piles of fly gnawed corpses on every continent. But humanity recovered again and again. By 1400 CE, the population of the Earth had reached four hundred million. There were about forty thousand Kin, but there had been so many cullings that less than three thousand of those Kin had been there when the sun vanished for the first time.

The Age of Silence 1400 CE to 2000 CE

What finally turned the tide against rampaging creatures from hell dimensions was gunpowder. By the 1400s, humans were bringing cannons to battle, and the forces of darkness were scattered again and again. The second major turning point was the invention of the printing press. Methods of closing hellgates could be quickly disseminated to the other side of the planet in less than a lifetime. Successful methods could be printed in Baghdad and shipped to Timbuktu or Nanking for deployment. The disorganized forces of darkness were put on the back foot.

These same technologies proved extremely effective against the Kin as well. When the Ottomans used cannons against the walls of Constantinople, the local sorcerers were completely ineffective at stopping the invasion. Public opinion had turned hard against the supernatural, witch hunters and inquisitors did their best to find and destroy those tainted with magic. These purges made no attempt to distinguish between Earthly Kin and creatures from the nightmare realms. Similarly, no effort was made to distinguish Renfields from Kin. Efforts at slaughtering the supernatural and the supernatural adjacent were powerful, but often misdirected – a tremendous number of people that had nothing to do with Vampires or Witches were killed by religious zealots in the 15th and 16th centuries.

It was precisely the lack of specificity of humanity's revenge that the Kin latched onto, retreating into the shadows and pretending outwardly to not exist. The Vow of Silence was created, whereby the Kin hid their true nature and destroyed evidence of their presence. In the Age of Silence there were no Kin reigning as god kings or even acting as court sorcerers for mortal monarchs – the risks were simply too great. The Kin formed Syndicates, far reach organizations designed to protect the Kin and amass political power in secret. Kin who wished to own property would either hide their ownership through a Renfield or create the fiction of a succession of owners through creative disguises.

The Age of Silence was not even a century old when ships began regular traffic across the Atlantic and the New World and the Old World became simply The World. Held back by poor metallurgy and a lack of gunpowder, the peoples of the Americas were still very much living in the Age of Darkness. While massive cities existed, they were often under siege by creatures from the Dreamlands, the Gloom, or the Dark Reflection. When the Spanish set foot in what is now Mexico, some Mayan cities had been recently abandoned to invasion by plant monsters and the walking dead. The Europeans were brutal in their conquests, and few of the indigenous kingdoms and empires kept much territory for long. Importantly, the Kin indigenous to America were quickly and almost entirely subsumed into the Syndicates of Africa, Europe, and Asia. Those who refused or attempted to live openly as magical creatures were hunted to virtual extinction.

The overall population of the Earth has risen faster than ever before, for both humans and Kin. At the beginning of the Age of Silence there were just four hundred million humans and forty thousand Kin. Now there are over seven billion humans and seven hundred thousand Kin. Coupled with the fact that the first two centuries of the Age of Silence had some pretty significant die offs in the early bloody purges and the beginnings of what European humans call the age of exploration, the vast majority of the Kin that exist tonight were not present in any previous age. Less than one percent of the Kin that exist tonight also existed at any point in the Age of Darkness. As such, the nocturnal culture of the Syndicates is pretty much the entirety of the culture of the Kin as it presently stands.

Social Structures of the Kin

The Kin

Every supernatural creature is different. They have their own names and their own weaknesses and their own powers. Even two Vampires of the same age and the same bloodline will likely have at least some differences in what they can do. But there is also a sense in which supernatural creatures are the same, and the collective term for those that “matter” is Kin. A certain number of people and creatures are Luminaries – those who are in some sense protected and empowered by fate. If a human Luminary becomes a supernatural creature their powers manifest and they become one of the Kin. If a non-Luminary becomes supernatural, it is nowhere near as impressive, and becomes a Spawn.

The Kin are Vampires, Lycanthropes, Witches, Paragons, Leviathans, and Animates. Each type is further subdivided into classes. A Nanuuk transforms into a bear and a Werewolf transforms into a monstrous wolf, but both are Lycanthropes and both are Kin. There are also Luminaries that are attached to other worlds, and opinion is divided as to whether they are Kin or not. The Elves of the Dreamlands and the Asura of the Dark Reflection are individually very similar in power and subtlety to the Kin, and in some Realms they are treated as equals and in other Realms they are treated as invaders. Similarly, there are straight monsters such as Dragons and Trolls in the nightmare worlds that are not lesser than Kin, but not socially equivalent to the Kin by dint of being monstrous in countenance.


Renfields

The Kin have significant magical abilities. Some of them have the ability to control minds or create powerful feelings of addiction or fear, but even those that do not are able to impress or terrify mortals by demonstrating their power. Mortals who become the thralls of one of the Kin are called “Renfields” in reference to Count Dracula's minion. Some Renfields are tormented to the point of gibbering lunacy, and others are allowed to live mostly normal lives. Some Renfields are used as house slaves or even as food, while others are used as soldiers, spies, or political pawns. There are Renfields who work as government officials and business leaders. There are Renfields that are butlers and secretaries. There are Renfields that are members of law enforcement or criminal gangs. And there are Renfields that are trapped in a house and abused. Some serve because of outlandish promises of immortality and magical investiture in the future, others have mystical chains on their minds, and others are simply terrorized into submission. In Manos: the Hands of Fate, both The Master's groundskeepers and his wives would be considered Renfields.

The existence of Renfields is the cornerstone of every Syndicate's ability to act as a conspiracy of power and wealth. People can be made into Renfields when they are already entrusted with power by society, and also a Renfield can be motivated and assisted to acquire power by their supernatural patron. Most importantly, Renfields can interact with society and potential hunters yet provably be mundane humans. Renfields can buy and sell property and speak directly to monster hunters without giving the game away.

Most Kin consider the actions of a Renfield to reflect on their master. Most Syndicates punish Kin for any crimes committed by their Renfields. Some Renfields are kept on a longer or shorter leash (which may be literal or figurative), but allowing or encouraging freedom of action by a Renfield is risky because other Kin do not accept the excuse that a Renfield's actions were unprompted or freely chosen.

Spawn

Supernatural creatures that are not Luminaries are called Spawn. Some Kin, including all Vampires, have the ability to transform a normal Human into a supernatural creature; and it is from this fact that the name comes from. Spawn is often a shorthand for Vampire Spawn or Zombie Spawn, as the various forms of undead make up the lion's share of Spawn. Most Spawn are mentally unhinged. Zombies tend towards virtually mindlessness, and even those humans who pursue magic on their own tend to be hounded by anxiety, depression, rage, and fear. Delusions are pretty common among even those Spawn that retain enough of a mind to hold a conversation.

In the society of the Kin, Spawn have a very similar status to Renfields. Many Spawn have a sponsor or master among the Kin, and that Kin is considered responsible for what mischief the Spawn get up to. Unlike Renfields, some Spawn are not associated with any Kin in particular. Every Vampire Spawn is made by a Vampire Kin, but sometimes a Leviathan Spawn is simply born. Sometimes a human becomes a Cultist by teaching themselves magic learned from a dusty tome. Crucially, Zombie uprisings simply happen sometimes.

Harkers

There are some mortal humans that are treated as equals by one or more of the Kin. It may be that they have especially useful knowledge or skill. It may be because they have especially useful political or business connections. It may be that they have great wealth or celebrity. It may be that they are actual family members of one of the Kin. It may be because they are Luminaries and it is expected that they will become Kin themselves some night. And it may be that they are just physically attractive or fun to be around. Whatever the reason, such a human is called a Harker.

Harkers are often business partners or team members or significant others of Kin, and they are treated with some fairness and allowed in on the secrets of the Kin so long as they play by the rules. Harassing or eating a Harker recognized by another Kin is considered an attack on that Kin.

Lairs

The Kin have a positively medieval idea of what a Kin is allowed to do in the place they actually live (or exist, in the case of Kin that aren't alive in the traditional sense). The place where a Kin sleeps (or rests, for those Kin that do not sleep) is called their Lair. Precisely as if they were a dragon or a super villain. Entering another Kin's Lair without permission is a serious affront, and the Kin whose Lair was so violated would generally be considered in the right if they responded with lethal force.

What can be considered a Lair varies regionally and by what the Kin in question can get away with. Many Lairs are secret, their locations not advertised or posted. One thing that has happened in the last century and a half is Kin claiming public buildings such as opera houses, cathedrals, or office buildings. When such claims are acknowledged by the local Kin they apply only in that shadowy world – human society wouldn't normally be informed about the “ownership” at all. Mortals would then be allowed to come and go, while other Kin would be expected to ask for invitations before entering.

Some Kin take up residence in an area or building and attempt to slaughter or scare off all humans in the area like a territorial animal. This sort of behavior is highly frowned upon by all of the Syndicates, and it is not unusual for hunting parties to be sent against Kin who cause too much commotion in this manner.

Realms

The basic unit of supernatural political civilization is the Realm. Historically a Realm would often closely overlay a mortal kingdom or nation state, but more frequently in the Modern Nights a Realm tends to be the metropolitan area of a city. By tradition, an area can be declared a Realm if it has at least half a million humans and at least fifty Kin – an arbitrary cutoff based on the demographics of Wallachia in 1495. In 1776, the entirety of the new United States had only four realms, most of which were predominantly rural, but in the Modern Nights there are over one hundred American cities that could qualify as Realms were the local Kin to so incorporate.

The population of Kin and humans has grown extremely quickly, and the number of places that could be Realms that are not yet has similarly exploded. For example: Stanislaus County, California could be declared as the Realm of Modesto were the local Kin to be inclined to acknowledge a local ruler or governing council. Even in the year 2000, the region would not have qualified and tonight Modesto is still somewhat tentatively under the jurisdiction of the Silicon Valley Initiative (itself a Realm distinct from San Francisco only since 1972).

Each Realm has its own charter, and there is a fair amount of regional autonomy. Some give a lot of power to the ruler (or rulers), while others have virtually powerless rulers or even no rulers at all. Punishments for breaking rules tend to escalate quickly from warnings to banishment, torture, and execution. Laws of the Kin are slow to adopt changes in human norms of government and jurisprudence was extremely harsh by modern standards even just a few centuries ago.

The largest Realm in terms of population is Tokyo, which has upwards of five thousand Kin in it over an area of just 14 thousand square kilometers. The largest Realm by land area is called “The North” and it extends from Alaska to Nunavut in Canada and is over 5.2 million square kilometers (more than half the size of the entire United States), but has less than two hundred Kin living in it. The borders between Realms are often contested, and sometimes they are contested with violence. In particular, every Realm is expected to clean up their own messes, and if there are Zombie uprisings or Kin commit atrocities that might bring down the wrath of human society, the local Kin are expected to police that. If they cannot, nearby Realms may send in troubleshooters of their own and extract concessions of some kind.

Syndicates

Most Realms in the world are aligned with one of four shadowy international conspiracies known as the Syndicates. They provide resources and expertise to Reams that require them and in return receive taxes and support from affiliated Realms on a yearly basis. The assistance and the governance of the Syndicates is generally quite indirect. There are troubleshooters who work directly for Syndicates and travel from Realm to Realm, but most Realms are allowed and encouraged to set their own rules and operating procedures.

Each Syndicate was formed in a different time and place, their governing principles highly influenced by human organization of the time. The Makhzen were founded in bronze age Mesopotamia and are structured as an empire of city states. The Covenant was founded in the dark ages of Europe and is structured like a church advising kingdoms. The League was founded in the age of sail in Southeast Asia and is structured as an affiliation of pirate crews. The Cauchemar were founded during the rise of revolutionary nation states and are structured as a coalition of political movements. In any case, much of this posturing is often only window dressing as the number of Kin in any Realm is quite small compared to the number of humans in any town, and the eccentricities of the powerful locals usually looms larger than the traditions of the global Syndicates.

[Foxwarrior]

It's open source baybeeeeee!

[OgreBattle]

The bronze age collapse and iron age rise being related to a fey invasion is coool.

can Kin be something created through the flow of worldly energies, or a mortal being gathering energy to digivolve?

For example the Classics of Mountains and Seas describes how a Charizard is the final form of a wingless Charmeleon, which is a more advanced form of a hornless Charmander, which pokevolves from a regular snake that gathered enough exp.

So maybe south America's dragons are feathered but Europe's aren't because of the land itself creating dragons.

[Username17]

It's open source baybeeeeee!

It absolutely is. If some other group of authors wants to get together and write a revision without me, that's totally fine. There are a number of people who have torched any possibility of having my friendship or cooperation who might still be on speaking terms with other people who aren't me. If those people want to join up and write without my further input that's OK. It's creative commons, I don't own this intellectual property and wouldn't stop people from building on it if I could.

can Kin be something created through the flow of worldly energies, or a mortal being gathering energy to digivolve?

After Sundown attempts to thread the needle between "vampire apocalypse" and our desire for Dracula to have progeny by having arbitrary special people who have the potential to become kin. It isn't egalitarian, but it's intended to replicate the horror trope where the monsters just really care about some random chick or dude for no immediately explicable reason. Like Michael in Lost Boys or Helen in The Mummy.

These arbitrarily special people are "Luminaries" and they may become a Kin under various circumstances. And sitting in a power node collecting infernal power or whatever is a way to do that. But also if they get mauled by a werewolf they become a werewolf rather than dying.

-Username17

[Whipstitch]

I'd offer to contribute to this but all I bring to the table is bad grammar, zero math skills and a big pile of pet character concepts I'd inevitably end up showering favoritism upon. So, qualified for D&D, but not this.

[OgreBattle]

open source is Coool, I like the Maya Mictlan Gloom trinity of other-worlds and been pondering how they could have other themes or have spooky origins.

From what I recall of After Sundown 1e...
Mictlan is things that were destroyed in fire, spawns demons and demons are... remnants of human emotion? Humans only?

Gloom is dead humans in general.

Maya is 'freaky nature' but the origin is non-human and unknown? I was thinking it could be an 'afterlife of extinction', maybe specifically the things wiped out by mass extinction events so you have cambrian tentacle monsters and dinosaurs, maybe reptites and pre humans

Maya being the specific dream world works fine, though all three could be tied to dreams... so it's a matter of picking one for design distinction.

Maybe the moon can be the source of something, Devilman had a neat backstory/metaphor of the moon being parted from the earth tying into demon war.


Now on cool lore imagery... this is Marduk wielding lighting to slay a composite beast yeah?


So in real world historic studies is there a common origin for all lightning god imagery?

[Grek]

The most common request I got when running After Sundown was to make Icarids and Androids more Mad Science flavored. To that end, here's the Technomancy discipline rewritten according to Kaelik's new version:


Technomancy

Technomancy is the modern term for a very old discipline designed to disguise magical practices and objects of power as the product of human invention. Every stride forward in human understanding has forced a reshuffling in the objects employed and the explanations offered, shifting from enchanted combs to holy talismans to attuned crystals to bioelectricity, but the core essence of the art remains the same. In the end, the only real difference between a truth serum and an elixir of honesty are the preconceptions of the audience to be fooled. There are no mechanical restrictions on what items can be used for Technomancy, only political ones. Princes tend to look askance at supernaturals who openly claim to practice alchemy or hypnotism, even if they do end up being viewed as frauds.

Basic Powers
Technobabble [Innate, Language, Touch]
Dice: As normal for the argument in question.

Always On: While the character is holding an object, they are never penalized by their audience's Background(s) or their own lack of a suitable Background while making arguments regarding the object in question. Although they still need to make the appropriate test for their chosen Appeal or Contention, gardeners in the audience will not immediately protest if the character holds up a handful of Pod organs and and identifies them as the fruiting bodies of a rare ornamental fern cultivar. Audience members may be skeptical or otherwise difficult to convince, but they will not immediately assume the character is a fraud. This ability extends even to written arguments, so long as the argument is written while the object in question is within arm's reach while writing.

Wrath of the Gremlins [Spell, Covert, Touch]
Dice: Intuition + Sabotage or Logic + Rigging
Net Hits: Increases damage
Duration: Until Repaired.

Complex Action: The character renders a device inoperable and potentially dangerous to use. The next time anyone attempts to use the device, it breaks down and becomes unusable until repaired. If the character expends a power point while activating this ability, it fails catastrophically and inflicts lethal damage equal to the number of hits achieved of a damage type chosen by the character when the tampering is performed. Wrath of the Gremlins does not appear magical to observers, but requires obvious physical tampering with the device altered.

Panopticon [Enchantment]
Dice: Logic + Operations check or an Intuition + Perception
Net Hits: Additional images.
Duration: Twilight.

1 hour: The character can peer into media which features a particular person and view other media which also contains that person. A photograph will twist to show other photographs of the subject, while a video feed will snap over to the most recent security feed they were caught by. Each net hit gives an additional image, with later images showing clearer or meaningful scenes.

---

Advanced Powers

Man Machine [Innate, Covert]
Dice: Willpower + Medicine or Logic + Electronics
Duration: Instant.

1 hour: The character can have objects implanted or grafted onto their body without harm or risk of rejection. Seamlessly replacing a limb with a matching limb of the correct size is a Professional task and has a threshold of 2. Implanting other objects, such as body armour, weapons or electronics is an Extreme task and has a threshold of 4. Normally, this surgery results in a lifelike appearance with no external sign of alteration. Even implanted devices and weapons are only visible while in use. These thresholds can be decreased by one if the surgeon is willing to settle for grotesque scarring and obvious mismatches, or by two if potentially Vow of Silence breaking protrusions are acceptable. Performing surgery on oneself is incredibly painful (see the rules for the Agony condition) and difficult due to a lack of leverage. Increase the threshold for all such attempts by one. Once implanted, replacement body parts have full functionality and implanted objects may be used as if worn or equipped normally. Attached limbs and implanted objects count as part of the body for magical purposes and do not change heal rates. This ability provides no special insight into augmenting others, only for operating on oneself.

State of the Art [Enchantment, Touch, Covert]
Dice: As target power.
Duration: Permanent.

1 hour, 7pp: The character imbues an existing object with seven power points and the ability to use one of that character's Spells or Enchantments of at least one tier lower than the character's highest tier power in Technomancy. The enchantment can be recharged according to the creator's power schedule (bathing it in blood, exposing it to moonlight, performing rituals around it, etc.) or by any other method which would allow the transfer of power points. Artifacts are subject to the supernatural weaknesses of their creator rather than of their user. A vampire can freely use a witch-made artifact even while their own powers are suppressed by sunlight. Such raw magical power is naturally corrupting and inflicts the Master Passion(s) of the creator and a cumulative -1 on all Resistance and Frenzy checks per artifact possessed until such the artifact(s) are abandoned, with abandoning an artifact (willingly or otherwise) provoking a Frenzy check. Extras who acquire artifacts become Witch Spawn after their first Frenzy. This power counts as having 3 net hits for the purposes of dispelling. Artifacts themselves are covert, but the use of an artifact is only as covert as the power it contains.

Unnatural Operation [Innate]

Always On: The character no longer requires Touch for Technomancy powers which would otherwise require it. Instead, they may be used on any otherwise suitable target that the character can see.

---

Expert Powers

Rise of the Machines [Spell]
Dice: Willpower + Artisan or Logic + Medicine
Net Hits: Decreases time.
Duration: Instant.

The character creates new life in the laboratory. This process is Hard (Threshold 3) and has an expected time of one week (net hits reduce the timeframe normally). First, a suitable body must be constructed out of flesh, stone, metal or some other suitable material. This requires either a montage or access to a rating 2 Resource. If the resulting Animate is intended to have the Man Machine power, the required surgeries may be performed at this time on the body. Next, a mind must be acquired. An existing mind can be transplanted (allowing the Animate to inherit the motivations, passions, memories, backgrounds, skills, and Luminary/extra status of the original) or duplicated (which copies the motivations, passions and memories but nothing else). Alternatively a new mind can be created in possession of taboos and ideologies defined by the creator, but with no memories, skills or driving passions. Duplicates and new creations are as likely to be Luminaries as any other newborn individual and have their status determined by the MC. If the creator has access to Authority or the like, it may be used at this point in the creation process. Once the mind is inserted, the new Animate is essentially complete and may be awakened for the first time by performing the creation's recharge ritual on its behalf.

[Username17]

My own Technomancy for AS2 is:

Technomancy
Know Device
Panopticon
Wrath of the Gremlins
- Advanced
Craftsman Without Tools
Physical Message
Redline
Rise of the Machines

Which is the standard structure because elder powers are scooped off into a different chapter as players only really access them through Mighty Rituals of Vast Power anyway. But yes, After Sundown definitely needs technomancy so that you can do Lawnmower Man stuff.

-Username17

[Orion]

We want to guide players through character creation by offering them some roles/archetypes to aim for, right? I'm not fully satisfied with my list yet, but for a conversation starter, how do we feel about offering up Slayer, Warden (Muscle?), Scout (Detective?), Analyst (Researcher? Scholar?), Fixer, and Negotiator?

Slayers
When the coterie is threatened by powerful Kin or magical beasts, they can count on their slayer to dispatch the threat with overwhelming force. All slayers rely on the basic physical powers, but super-human strength and speed alone won't guarantee the upper hand against their Kin. Most slayers will have a physical “trump card” like War Form or Giant Size, but some wield deadly sorcery or put their trust in heavy weaponry. When a slayer cuts loose, the results are often loud, bloody, and unmistakably magical. A slayer who is capable of fighting with restraint can double as a warden. One who can avoid detection until they strike can double as a scout. Some slayers double as negotiators, relying on their fearsome reputation to influence their Kin. Werewolves, Golems, and Icarids often act as slayers.


Wardens
When the coterie is threatened by human or human-like opposition, a warden steps up to defend their team. Some wardens use powers like Dismissal, Enchanted Slumber, or Rising Mists to avoid or escape combat. Others throw down with covert physical powers, martial arts, and the occasional handgun. Regardless of method, a warden strives to shut down opposition without attracting too much attention. Most wardens maintain mortal cover identities, and a warden's cover may well enable them to act as a fixer or an analyst. Those who focus more on erasing evidence of their presence tend to double as scouts. Bagheeras, Frankensteins, and Strigoi often act as wardens.


Scouts
When the coterie wants to find out where someone or something is, or what's going on in a secure place, they turn to their scout. Scouting can be as simple as loading up on Veil and Discernment powers and then popping round to have a look, but it can also involve long-distance scrying magic, or social engineering and shoe-leather detective work. Familiarity with dowsing techniques is also helpful, and a good scout will also want enough mobility or toughness to survive an inopportune detection. Developing some analyst abilities can help a scout make sense of what they find, but some scouts prefer to build up a fixer-like spy network or to moonlight as slayers. Nezumi, Nosferatu, and Mi-Go often operate as scouts.

[Username17]

One of the things I definitely want to work with at least one other person on is the roles. Syndicates and Realms having troubleshooter teams allows and encourages the roles to be explicit and in-character. But there's a problem that the rolls in the source material are significantly different from the rolls you'd want for a role playing game.

The most fundamental issue is one of main roles and supporting roles. In direct source material like Angel and Hellboy, the "main fighter" is usually also the main character. With other characters consigned to supporting roles. In an RPG, each of the player characters are in main roles automatically.

So consider Angel (Season 5, because it's the best season):

• Angel - Leader
• Spike - Basically the same as Angel
• Gunn - Combat Lawyer
• Fred - Gadgeteer / Demon Goddess
• Lorne - Oracle Bard
• Wesley - Combat Librarian
• Harmony - Vampire Secretary

You got characters who have downtime support roles (gadgeteer, lawyer, librarian, secretary) and these characters are also secondary combatants. But the characters who aren't Angel & Spike are not protagonists. They are support characters. For fuck's sake, Harmony and Lorne are primarily comic relief characters.

Now let's go to Hellboy (we will use the first GDT movie because it is the best):

• Hellboy (Main Character)
• Trevor (Stay at home scientist)
• Liz (Pyromancer love interest)
• Abe (CSI fishman)
• Johnny (normal human assistant)
• Tom (bureaucrat)

The characters that aren't Liz, Abe, or Hellboy are normal humans and do not belong in a room where they might potentially encounter a demon or clockwork Nazi. Liz and Abe are supporting characters. The movie is called Hellboy and Hellboy is the protagonist.

But the goal here is to support 3 to 5 coequal protagonists. And to a first approximation I think that implies that there be an assumed role for a character with physical stats primary, an assumed role for a character with mental stats primary, and an assumed role for a character with social stats primary. Very roughly: Warrior, Researcher, Face. But like with Shadowrun's Street Sam, Magician, Decker roles: there should be a few extra roles that are acknowledged as major so that the teams are expandable and adjustable.

-Username17

[angelfromanotherpin]

As far as roles go, I think you could get a lot of mileage out of crime/spy terms, just because of how much PC activity is covert ops/crimes. Point is an excellent protagonist role; it's the person you send in before you have a handle on the situation, so they need to be flexible and survivable. Cleaner is a great support role. Not just because Winston Wolf is cool, but because having a dedicated NPC whose job it is to cover up your crimes adds a lot of verisimilitude to not being arrested. And so on.

[OgreBattle]

How long does combat tend to take in AS1e, and will it change much in 2e?

Will the Asymmetric Threat "create a challenge" be a replacement?

[virgil]

For a short time, I was contemplating various actions/abilities that would be called upon in a Scooby-Do Mystery ensemble structure. For reasons unknown, I assigned tools to them. In theory, whatever role you created would have a utility belt consisting of several items from the list. Overlap is perfectly fine, in theory, but that depends on any particular action/tool's prominence in the game. D&D's structure makes the importance of combat such that everyone needs to contribute, so everyone's got the combat tools, with little overlap of the noncombat; while in Shadowrun, it's expected everyone has some Stealth in their toolkit in a way that D&D doesn't.

• Psychic Paper Keep mundane authorities off your back
  8-Ball Track/predict supernatural
  Teddy Bears Fight/withstand supernatural
  Band-Aid Recover mundane damage
  Whiskey Flask Recover supernatural damage (sanity?)
  Jelly Babies Pump information from mundanes
  Bus Coins Physically get you from Point A to Point B
  Brass Knuckles Fight mundanes
  Junior Woodchuck Guidebook Identify the supernatural
  Newspaper Plot hook/adventure starter
  Library Card Introvert's jelly babies

[Grek]

As far as AS1 goes, there's basically three 'combat' roles you care about: Huge Physical Guy, Non-Physical Attacker and Muggle Wrangler. Someone who can fight a room full of guys with guns, someone who can bypass the absurd soak pools on a Kaiju/Troll/Lycanthrope, and someone who can do something about the party getting jumped on a public street with lots of mortal witnesses.

You also have basically four information gathering roles: Someone who sneaks in and looks around, someone who waves their exposition powers at the problem, someone who naturally knows a lot of useful information and someone who talks to people about the problem. A Scout, a Seer, an Expert and a Face.

From the magical end of things, there's actually something of an asymmetry: While you definitely want a Limbo specialist and a Mictlan specialist, you don't really need an Astral sorcerer to deal with stuff from the Dreamlands - you need a big strong guy to kill things and someone who can deprogram Pod victims. But you want an mind unfucker in general, since all sorts of stuff has access to mind fucking.

[Username17]

I agree that "combat" against big nasty monsters expects and rewards a different tool set from "combat" performed in any area where normies could plausibly be nearby. Bringing down a warform Lycanthrope is a non-trivial task and benefits severely from the kinds of powers and weaponry that you don't want plucky reporters to see you use. On the other hand, the powers needed to take out small groups of gang thugs or militia groups don't have to be particularly flashy and if you intend to leave them alive or they have families who will ask questions it's better if they are not. Thus it's pretty reasonable to consider combat as being two roles: which you could call "hunter" and "enforcer" if you were so inclined.

-Username17

[OgreBattle]

So when you 'break the silence' with flashy moves in public streamed on facebook... what's the penalty?

Do the Marduk fellows come kill you, syndicate lords come kill you, can the information be scrubbed?

[Omegonthesane]

As I understand it, traditionally. your local Syndicate lords try to kill you and also do what they can to quietly scrub the information. The Society of Marduk just comes to kill you regardless, because they're self righteous pricks, but they maybe have an easier time finding you if you happen to have broken the silence.

A lot of "public" streams don't see more than a thousand viewers, many of whom might not believe the footage isn't staged. Indeed now I'm imagining the Storm Lords bargaining with full size Syndicates to allow the release of "CG" films starring actual no-holds-barred werewolves etc. so that when people see mobile footage of the real thing they dismiss it as "that special effect from that one film".

[OgreBattle]

Are there places and artifacts of spiritual power in After Sundown 2e?

Like leylines, stonehenge, an old cathedral, spirit houses in Asia. Perhaps these are shallows or lead to deeps, or lead to a contained part of the other worlds that have been crafted by kin for centuries