After Sundown tweaks/house rules

[CatharzGodfoot]

Having Backgrounds effectively grant specializations would cause people to spend all or almost all their backgrounds on getting "useful" specializations. Having specializations generate backgrounds would give people a bunch of backgrounds in ninjitsu and archaeology.

-Username17

It sounds like 6 in one hand and half a dozen in the other, except the 6 come from two different subsystems. Power gamers will always optimize their backgrounds and take weird specializations to improve supernatural powers.

But I do see the increased impact of the ninjitsu issue. Having specializations grant backgrounds is a fine compromise.

[Lokathor]

It seems like Specializations should perhaps grant "virtual" Backgrounds. Like, "Any Specialization can be used as a 2 point Background any time a Background is called for". That way characters with Artisan (Paint) are guaranteed to be able to talk a little about paints, and Combat (Knives) characters can pick out a good knife, and so on.

But the idea of backgrounds themselves is to have them be open and often frivolous. People won't spend them on unusual side-story stuff to help flesh out a character's life if they could potentially get more bonuses by spending them in specific categories. Since that's the opposite of what we want, then they shouldn't give bonuses to other things, even if they can get bonuses from other things.

[DSMatticus]

It sounds like 6 in one hand and half a dozen in the other, except the 6 come from two different subsystems. Power gamers will always optimize their backgrounds and take weird specializations to improve supernatural powers.

People choose skills and specializations because they expect to use those skills and specializations to solve the problems their character will face. If someone takes a specialization in sniper rifles, it's not because they wanted the background; it's because they wanted to be better at solving the sorts of problems that can be solved with sniper rifles. People will take a specialization in sniper rifles, get a free background in sniper rifles, and then go buy "local drug crime" and "bowling" with their backgrounds.

People choose backgrounds because they expect to use them to get minor setting info and in order to define minor character traits. If you can spend backgrounds in order to be better at using your skills to solve the problems your character will face, then you are a sucker to spend them on shit like "local drug crime" and "bowling." Instead, you buy a specialization in sniper rifles (through a sniper background), a specialization in camouflage (through a hunter background), and a specialization in sight (through a birdwatcher/spotter/whatever background).

Note that the second character has to give up being a better sniper in order to pick up the ever-important and super-useful hobby of bowling, while the first is able to pick bowling without giving up any such bonus.

Note that adding more backgrounds to the first character will help him learn ballroom dancing, while adding more backgrounds to the second character will help him pick up a +2 specialization in lockpicking (through a burglar background).

Note that by adding specializations to the first character you can give him as many specializations as the second character without ever depriving him of his "local drug crime" or "bowling" picks.

[CatharzGodfoot]

If players are expected to take specializations like artisan (carpentry), why do you think that they won't go after +2 to artisan (tagging), medicine (identify street drugs), and rigging (spinning rims), or combat (bowling ball), athletics (bowling), and expression (victory dance)?

[DSMatticus]

Players are expected to take artisan (carpentry) because artisan is a technical skill and comes with a free specialization. Players don't spend their specializations on additional forms of artisan, and doing so would involve getting ripped off because being an expert carpenter as well as an expert painter is not nearly as valuable as being an expert carpenter as well as an expert liar or whatever.

Honestly, look over your list again and think of it in terms of opportunity costs. Instead of being a bowler with athletics (bowling), you could have been a jogger with athletics (running). Instead of combat (bowling ball), you could have had combat (anything not retarded). Instead of rigging (spinning rims), you could have had rigging (anything you would ever be able to use, like something to do with ropes). Instead of expression (victory dance), you could have had expression (oratory). Whereas if backgrounds don't give bonuses/specializations, then the opportunity cost for bowling is just some minor setting info or a different but almost equally useless hobby.

It doesn't work. It absolutely 100% does not work. Your idea increases the opportunity cost of "bowling" from "ball room dancing" (another mostly useless bit of background fluff) to "+2 to tests to run the hell away from danger" (a bonus that will make an actual difference in challenges your character faces), and suddenly everyone who takes bowling or ball room dancing is being punished for their sins. Craft (basketweaving) and bluff do not belong on the same skill list being bought with the same points. This is no different.

[CatharzGodfoot]

Backgrounds already come with big opportunity costs. Consider background (hellmouths) Vs background (bowling). One lets you find and investigate portals. One lets you chat with bowlers. If the bowling background also helps you bash heads in, the opportunity cost is less.

[Whipstitch]

Bowling balls and pins are shitty improvised weapons even if you tack on a couple dice. It's a stupid pet trick at best and if you define it as providing bonuses broader than that you're begging for arguments over whether people can get bonuses to Concealing Goods and shooting fools for being a Gun Runner on top of also knowing corrupt border officials and where the team can get a rocket launcher for their troll eviction project. You just end up in a situation where both the lame shit and the almost purely reference backgrounds get kicked in the jimmy even harder than they used to. Also consider that when in doubt people tend to default to the skills that can show up in opposed tests and can prevent you from getting stabbed in the face by cultists--If you give everyone the opportunity to goose their Perception and Athletics pool (which can help with dodging and dispelling), then you can bet a significant chunk of players will try to do that even if it means shoehorning bullshit into their concept. At some point the best way to get people to back off of those things is to simply stop providing opportunities to take them.

Mind you, there is no denying that some inequality is a virtually inevitable consequence of letting players create their own backgrounds--even if you created a master list of backgrounds for people to choose from there's still the simple fact that Backgrounds are something that easily fall prey to Favored Enemy syndrome. Hell Mouths is a nice background and all, but Conspiracy Theories may very well end up being better if you spend a lot of the campaign making friends with the local Laughter Factory cell. So, really, I have sympathy for what you're trying to do here, but trying to ameliorate the issue by making Backgrounds even more important to a wider variety of opposed tests is a really ass backwards way to go about it.

[CatharzGodfoot]

You don't want characters having to take backgrounds that benefit combat skills, and you don't want to allow characters to use off-the-wall justifications for applying backgrounds to combat skills. But you maintain that characters will default to using combat skills, and that bonuses to them from specializations are absolutely required.
Is your best-case situation that characters have various combat skill specializations with absolutely no justifications at all?

[DSMatticus]

you don't want to allow characters to use off-the-wall justifications for applying backgrounds to combat skills

Specializations are limited scope bonuses. If you get a specialization in sniper rifles, you are not getting +2 combat because you are good with sniper rifles. You are getting a +2 combat with sniper rifles because you are good with sniper rifles. You could, I suppose, stretch a bowling background into combat tests to beat people to death with a bowling ball (i.e., combat (bowling ball), on the basis that you are a very, very sore loser), but the problem is your combat bonus only applies while using a particularly shitty improvised weapon and you could have picked up a background that gave you a specialization in a real weapon and that would have been better for you.

For reference, this is not at all unique to combat skills. I suspect that the number of times an expression (victory dance) test has solved a problem in a game of After Sundown is exactly equal to zero. That is a thing that has never happened. But expression (oratory) tests probably happen fairly often. So a background in bad sportsmanship ends up worth considerably less than a background as a speech writer.

[Whipstitch]

Is your best-case situation that characters have various combat skill specializations with absolutely no justifications at all?

If that really bothers you then take's Frank's suggestion and treat specializations as being equivalent to some free Background ranks you can then explain things with. You won't hear me complaining too loudly if someone's Jeet Kune Do hobby lets them pick up a few hundo from answering Bruce Lee trivia questions on Cash Cab. But to get back to your question, I must admit that I don't blink when characters come to the table with abilities that their Backgrounds doesn't explicitly cover. For one thing, many specializations cover bog standard abilities that don't take much explanation or even training--having a knack with dogs shouldn't imply that you have Caesar Milan on speed dial and Shaq's sheer size and Chuck Yeager's 20/10 vision both sound like they could be potentially good for things other than basketball and piloting. And that's even before you factor in that we've got actual magic to explain why people are good at shit without even trying--I'm personally fine with an Android who was originally built to replace a specific ballerina or a Reborn store clerk being unable to tell you which past life it is he inherited his world-class marksman skills from. But more importantly, I'd note that the only real justification for going with a system as problematic as "Create your own!" is that it allows people to come up with crap that isn't obviously covered by core skills. It honestly hits me as a bit redundant to require characters with sky high Larceny skills to put down "Thief" as one of their backgrounds.

[CatharzGodfoot]

Is your best-case situation that characters have various combat skill specializations with absolutely no justifications at all?

If that really bothers you then take's Frank's suggestion and treat specializations as being equivalent to some free Background ranks you can then explain things with. You won't hear me complaining too loudly if someone's Jeet Kune Do hobby lets them pick up a few hundo from answering Bruce Lee trivia questions on Cash Cab. But to get back to your question, I must admit that I don't blink when characters come to the table with abilities that their Backgrounds doesn't explicitly cover. For one thing, many specializations cover bog standard abilities that don't take much explanation or even training--having a knack with dogs shouldn't imply that you have Caesar Milan on speed dial and Shaq's sheer size and Chuck Yeager's 20/10 vision both sound like they could be potentially good for things other than basketball and piloting. And that's even before you factor in that we've got actual magic to explain why people are good at shit without even trying--I'm personally fine with an Android who was originally built to replace a specific ballerina or a Reborn store clerk being unable to tell you which past life it is he inherited his world-class marksman skills from. But more importantly, I'd note that the only real justification for going with a system as problematic as "Create your own!" is that it allows people to come up with crap that isn't obviously covered by core skills. It honestly hits me as a bit redundant to require characters with sky high Larceny skills to put down "Thief" as one of their backgrounds.

Having Milan on speed dial is a resource. Shaq and Yeager both have great attributes.

Even having 'marksman' as an unremembered past life is probably better represented by a 'reincarnated sharpshooter' background. That way you can also inexplicably identify rifles and, bullets, reconstruct lines of fire, etc. An android ballerina might have an encyclopedic knowledge of ballets, without knowing any of the pedagogy or culture, with a 'programmed ballerina' background.

And while it may seem redundant for a character with a larceny specialization to have a 'master thief' background, it's actually very important to know whether they were a London pickpocket, a stage magician, or a locksmith.

[Whipstitch]

I disagree, if only because you're getting into territory where putting down Background skills gets reduced to mostly justifying the shit you already can can do with other numbers on your sheet instead of adding cool or even just goofy shit.

[CatharzGodfoot]

It seems like the consensus is roughly that specialization should come with some kind of background, rather than vice-versa. That accomplishes one goal (slightly increased verisimilitude), but without getting rid of a subsystem.

Therefore, specializations should come with two ranks in an associated background. If a character has 4 related specializations, they can provide up to 6 ranks in one background (with the 'overflow' added elsewhere).

[Lokathor]

I would just make the specialization BE the background, and always be fixed at 2 ranks. That way you don't get into weirdness with people trying to pick specializations that all pour into the same background and stuff.

It's also good as a player to simply have lots of backgrounds that are maybe similar and maybe different, since you need "similar backgrounds" with someone else to talk to them in some social situations. So having a lot of level 2 free backgrounds is a good deal because you can probably claim similarity more easily. It's only 2, but it beats not having a similarity at all.

[CatharzGodfoot]

I would just make the specialization BE the background, and always be fixed at 2 ranks. That way you don't get into weirdness with people trying to pick specializations that all pour into the same background and stuff.

It's also good as a player to simply have lots of backgrounds that are maybe similar and maybe different, since you need "similar backgrounds" with someone else to talk to them in some social situations. So having a lot of level 2 free backgrounds is a good deal because you can probably claim similarity more easily. It's only 2, but it beats not having a similarity at all.

Backgrounds are mechanically inferior to specializations. Characters will take specializations without regard to the similarity of the backgrounds they provide. And you've just created the situation where a master thief must have the equivalent of a 6 point master thief background, a 2 point ninjitsu training background, a 2 point London pickpocket background, a 2 point celebrity stalker background, and a 2 point Kentucky's knife throwing champion background.

It's far better to take the simpler, more open option of letting player choose what makes sense for the character.

[Omegonthesane]

I would just make the specialization BE the background, and always be fixed at 2 ranks. That way you don't get into weirdness with people trying to pick specializations that all pour into the same background and stuff.

It's also good as a player to simply have lots of backgrounds that are maybe similar and maybe different, since you need "similar backgrounds" with someone else to talk to them in some social situations. So having a lot of level 2 free backgrounds is a good deal because you can probably claim similarity more easily. It's only 2, but it beats not having a similarity at all.

Backgrounds are mechanically inferior to specializations. Characters will take specializations without regard to the similarity of the backgrounds they provide. And you've just created the situation where a master thief must have the equivalent of a 6 point master thief background, a 2 point ninjitsu training background, a 2 point London pickpocket background, a 2 point celebrity stalker background, and a 2 point Kentucky's knife throwing champion background.

It's far better to take the simpler, more open option of letting player choose what makes sense for the character.

Having now statted an AS character I'd have to disagree, I found myself taking backgrounds that would originally have been nonsensical to justify the skill set I wanted. Getting them for free with the skill would have saved a lot of time.

[RadiantPhoenix]

Wait, are you sure you're even saying different things?

It seems like the consensus is roughly that specialization should come with some kind of background, rather than vice-versa. That accomplishes one goal (slightly increased verisimilitude), but without getting rid of a subsystem.

My interpretation: "When you buy a specialization, you get a free background"

[Lokathor]

Backgrounds are mechanically inferior to specializations.

Yes, giving out the weaker thing as a bonus instead of the better thing as a bonus seems like the way to go for sure on this one.

Yes, if you want to have Larceny 6 and then be "a Master Thief" I'm going to say that you should probably pick up a Master Thief background, like literally write down "Occult: Master Thief 6" on your sheet right now if that's what you want. Otherwise your Larceny 6 isn't going to be backed up by professional knowledge and stuff, it'll be a lot of dumb luck if you just have it on its own and no related background.

And yes, if you have "Larceny (Pickpocket), Stealth (Shadowing), and Combat (Knives)" as your specializations, then you might have 1 rank in each, you might have an Agility of 1, you might totally suck or totally rock at those skills, but you'll be able to have a conversation about it even if you can't execute on it. You'll be able to go to the knife club and ID knives and talk about the coolest knife to buy. But without more than just a specialization, you also won't actually know too much about knives. If you want to be an absolute knife expert, you have to browse a lot of knife wikis and read a lot of books and go to a lot of trade shows, and you do that by spending actual background points. Otherwise you're just a guy who practiced in his yard or at a dojo how to stab people and throw knives and that's all you know.

So yeah, you might end up with overlap if your specializations and backgrounds cover the same areas, but I'm personally okay with that being a property of the system because those overlaps represent different things. The specialization giving 2 effective background dice doesn't make the specialization NOT give two dice on normal uses of the skill, so adding this rule would be a straight up bonus to everyone's ability to do more things.

[virgil]

If someone wanted more vehicles in their After Sundown, what would one need to consider? I'm talking flying saucers, flying carpets, drill tanks, and other stuff you'd imagine crafted for use in the other worlds.

[Username17]

If someone wanted more vehicles in their After Sundown, what would one need to consider? I'm talking flying saucers, flying carpets, drill tanks, and other stuff you'd imagine crafted for use in the other worlds.

Hrrm.

If you wanted to go full Raygun Gothic and do future horror, yeah you'd need spaceships and stuff. Basically, vehicles exist in three basic types:

• Vehicles that are basically locations. So your submarines, space freighters, and rail cars. They are a vehicle, and they are moving around, but basically it's the setting. The action could be taking place in an apartment building or an abandoned factory, but it happens to be taking place in something that is moving. The difference between these kinds of vehicles and a haunted house is that it's slightly less contrived that you don't open the door and walk out.
• Vehicles that are basically equipment. So your skateboards, jet packs, and magic carpets. They are a vehicle, but your character is still there and interacting with the world directly. These are easy for the game to handle.
• Vehicles that replace your character. So your cars, lifter suits, jet fighters, and so on. This is where the thing that is interacting with the action isn't you, it's the vehicle. When you're seat belted in, you pretty much aren't moving and rarely "do" things except through the vehicle you're piloting.

-Username17

[virgil]

Yeah, the equipment one sounds easy to implement; though I can imagine some people being hesitant to allow the movement rules to be simple.

The character replacement seems like it would be difficult to handle properly. Inter-vehicle actions seems a bit worrisome; be it jet fighters blasting rail cars (character vs location) or even submarine combat (location vs location).

[Chamomile]

While a fighter can probably line up a shot on a train car about as easy as it can on any other location it wants to blow up, I see a bigger problem when it's a stationary attacker trying to hit the location-vehicle while it passes, like say if the party's got an immobilized tank and they only have one shot to hit the engine of the ghost train before it passes by. I haven't even gotten to the "pull random numbers out of the air to estimate complexity" stage and already this feels like it's probably more granularity than After Sundown needs.

[Grek]

People in a fighter jet trying to shoot a speeding train would be resolved as a chase scene, with one of the stunts being Agility + Operations to aim the missles. Likewise for tank vs. train, except there it's probably stealth so you can ambush the train with the tank.

[Lokathor]

I would not call for that to be Agility + Operations, myself. Assuming a modern jet fighter: The actual act of causing a missile to lock a target is handled by software deep inside of the plane. The pilot keeps a target [roughly] in position relative to the jet and the software does all the locking on from there, then you shoot and the software handles it all. I'd call it an Agility + Drive (Jet) roll.

In terms of stationary attacks against non-stationary things, that's as simple as invoking the "if the target is running, the threshold is +2" rule.

On another matter: Theoretically a Kaiju whale is not too different from a sumbarine, and you'd handle combat against it with a giant strength score and ten boxes of condition monitor. The scaling damage system is supposed to be able to allow us to scale up our attack and toughness as high as we want and get somewhat sane results. However, thinking about what it would mean in AS and what we would expect based on other RPGs, the real problem here isn't that the numbers wouldn't ever work if you just scaled them up, it's that we expect to be able to damage one part of a vehicle and not another. If you set half a boat on fire, the rest of the boat will be fine for a while even if the whole boat eventually does burn down. But the part of the boat that's on fire will be totally on fire. Right now AS doesn't have a system that handles that because the creatures it deals with aren't really big enough for such systems to be applicable. On top of the fact that usually creatures don't lose individual operational subsystems like vehicles do.

[Whipstitch]

I would not call for that to be Agility + Operations, myself. Assuming a modern jet fighter: The actual act of causing a missile to lock a target is handled by software deep inside of the plane. The pilot keeps a target [roughly] in position relative to the jet and the software does all the locking on from there, then you shoot and the software handles it all. I'd call it an Agility + Drive (Jet) roll.

That reasoning is exactly what makes it sound like an Operations roll though--In AS, you Drive when the vehicle is "simple" enough that normal tasks can be handled by your moment to moment attention and fairly physical inputs. E.g, cars have cruise control, but you can safely ignore that feature without being a demigod. Meanwhile, you Operate (which, might I add, is the one that has an outright "Pilot" specialization listed) when a machine is sufficiently complex that things like the computer assist or directing a crew is necessary to get full functionality out of it. E.g, good luck even keeping a B-2 bomber in flight without computer assist, much less performing to mission parameters.

Also, on the occasions that Frank provided a Driving pool, it was Intuition based. Personally, I think that makes sense given that driving has at least as much to do with your ability to multitask while still accounting for new hazards as it has to do with raw speed and coordination.