Reviving Dead Man's Hand

[Prak]

It'd also, presumably, take roughly five times as long to resolve pretty much any task.

[RadiantPhoenix]

It'd also, presumably, take roughly five times as long to resolve pretty much any task.

One nice thing about it is that you can resolve while walking. I think that's about all it's got going for it other than novelty.

[Prak]

only if you standardize hand size or some such, since you're still, apparently rolling "how many cards do I get?"

Ok, I will totally be putting more work into this, I've just been slacking...

[Username17]

Deadlands gets extra stupid points for having a Joker-based system of critical failure. Being more skilled gives you more cards, which makes you succeed more and fail less. But it also makes you more likely to draw a Joker and critically fail. It's like TN 10 with old White Wolf mechanics.

-Username17

[Stubbazubba]

Yes, it would be stupid to roll and then draw cards; just draw cards equal to your Skill level, possibly equal to your 'dicepool.' It would require a complete re-write, though. It'd still take longer than dicepools, since you have to figure out what kind of hand you drew. You'd have to reduce the # of times you typically 'roll.' I don't think this is going to be that big of a shift from AS, it's just a very novel idea.

[Username17]

Drawing cards is essentially the same as rolling d13s. It's different in that you literally are less likely to get the same result you already got, making the classic "gambler's fallacy" actually correct. Making poker hands out of dice pools is something that sounds neat, but in reality it's a major pain in the ass. Look at the trainwreck that is Framewerk or One Roll Engine. Finding matches and runs and crap is way too complicated and the odds way too obtuse for people to use it on the fly.

-Username17

[Artless]

Pardon my intrusion, but I wrote this up as an example of the way I think some good abilities would look in a setting like Dead Man's Hand. I won't pretend its hot shit, but I just thought I'd share it in case it looked useful or interesting in any way.

Wild Arms
The wild arms are a combination of Frontier magic and New World tech, as with scientific processes and ritual contracts the fickle, volatile spirits that dwell in objects and in fire are bottled, distilled and formed into charges. Wild charges will act as regular bullets for anyone except the crafter, as the spirits contained within are either fiercely loyal or enormously difficult to work with. With basic access an Arms wielder learns to speak with spirits in objects, and can interact with the spirits of significant or well-used items in a way they would with normal folk, though they’d probably draw many a stare if’n they did it in public. At Expert access, an Arms wielder can kerjigger basic ammunition for any firearm from pistols to cannon essentially for free and can repair most any item with basic materials and up to an hour’s worth of time depending on complexity and size of the object in question. Items so repaired are effectively good as new. At Master access, I haven't the faintest.

Basic

Pillar of Smoke - Made by capturing a good campfire’s spirits and letting them cure in a cartridge for a week, this wild charge will explode into a nigh-impenetrable black cloud when it hits a solid surface. Ash and debris fill the air, choking and blinding those caught in the spread.
The Lady - The spirit of a gamble, stolen from dice, cards or poker chips coats this bullet. When fired from a gun with no other cartridges in it, it will always hit its intended target. The Lady is incredibly jealous, and will abide no philanderin’, hear? Many Arms users carry a gun primed for a Lady, leaving all other chambers empty for, in some cases, years at a time. An Arms user with a Lady on his or her person is extraordinarily lucky when it comes to games of chance. Many gambling establishments ban their use entirely and will frisk patrons to ensure “fair” play.


Expert

Brimstone Bullet - A piece of volcanic glass housing a feisty spirit is shaped into a bullet and set into a cartridge, and when fired will spill out as flowing, molten rock when it hits a target. This lava rapidly cools and hardens, but not before severely burning anyone caught in it and setting most flammable shit on fire.
Empty Chamber - The arms user is able to rip the spirits housed in tools and objects right out of their material shell, causing the items in question to malfunction, break down or catastrophically explode. Spirits sequestered in such a way lose the character of their original form, but can be stored and used as fuel like oil.


Master

Stampede - With a bang as loud as a stick of dynamite, this charge causes all animal life for up to a mile to frenzy and riot, including sapient species.
Bolt Action - This wild charge causes a thunderstorm when fired, and until it rains itself out, any target hit by a bullet fired from the same gun will also be struck by lightning.

Also I doodled a Deep One because the race writeups were friggin marvelous. If you care.

[Korgan0]

That's actually really cool, and if we're going with an AS power system, even if we abandon the AS power schedules, it would be really easy to make that a discipline under a tech power source, as that seems like the best way to have a tech-based character.

What might be a useful distinction to make in-setting is between magitech that has spirits bound in it and magitech that works some other way- the first kind requires attuning yourself to the spirits in the shell or golem or whatever (i.e. having tech as a power source) and is somehow incompatible with being attuned to some other kind of spirit or something (i.e. having another power source) and the other simply doesn't. This means that tech characters can have their own little power niche and shamans can ride trains and shit.

The only problem with bringing the whole discipline setup over to DMH is that character archetypes seem a lot more centered on particular disciplines than in AS, or at least in my imagination. It seems entirely reasonable to have a character whose entire combat schtick is "uses caster shells" or "controls a golem" or "summons spirits." The problem with that is that if we go for a source/discipline setup with the same number of powers that, essentially results in a character's special abilities being limited to 6-9 powers at most, plus universal, mundane stuff That's not a lot; an In Media Res character in After Sundown starts with that, more or less, and then expands both vertically and horizontally.

The obvious solution is just to have a lot more powers per discipline, but that means a lot more work, bloat, and confusion if we're seriously thinking of having 3-4 disciplines per power source. I really don't know what the best option is.

Also, if anyone's looking for inspiration, I recommend Iron Council, by China Mieville. Really, any of Mieville's Bas-Lag works are great, but Iron Council is sorta-kinda a Western, at least in parts.

[JigokuBosatsu]

Also I doodled a Deep One because the race writeups were friggin marvelous. If you care.

That's an awesome doodle. I liked the power writeups too. Though some- especially the brimstone slug- made me realize that apparently I had written some Dead Man's Hand fluff before there was such a thing.

There were then a thousand ways that a man could die, just by the secret techniques the Tears had come up with. That had always been the way, though nobody every thought about it. You were just terrified every time you drove your stage down the street and splashed mud on the stranger's boots. You were inflicted with a creeping dread when you joined a friendly poker game with some muleskinner acquaintances at the saloon, and you could only really distract yourself by getting shitfaced. It was stressful in those wild times and it never could be explained away by poor hygiene or gold fever or superstition. The world worked differently back then- it was occult, truly. Hid things, like the Tears, who were larger than life but never even crested into the world's gaze long enough to be turned into tall tales.

They were just rumors.

Like the one you had heard about a party of prospectors shot all to hell and gone by what the Marshals said was a pack of Red Indians- but you heard there was only a single bullet found on the scene, scraped down to just a nub like it had zipped through half a dozen skulls before coming to rest. Or the blonde dandy of a doctor Charlie said he'd ridden out to a remote box canyon. The doctor had carried red hot pistols in a locked box, Charlie said. Actual red hot pistols sitting there in a bed of gravel, and the doctor had gotten all dressed up in blacksmith's gear and fired them off in the canyon. Six prospectors killed by some trick shooting? That you could write off, but a pair of pistols that erupted with streams of liquid fire too bright to hardly look at? Well...

Maybe the West was just too rough for you. You could have gone back to Boston, made good with Clary's father and gotten your job at the butcher's again. Instead, just as that perfect idea came through your thick mule-skinning skull, you had to get even smarter and get chatting with a real dude about how scared you were. That dude was real sharp in his black suit and slicked-down mustachio, and his mother-of-pearl buttons, and that dude was real interested in what you'd heard about.

The whisky had got your tongue moving, or was it the fear? The anticipation of telling the stage company where to take their Judas-kissing contract? You were positively giddy with it, and you told that dude all about the prospectors, and the blonde doctor, and the German with that strange scatter-gun, and more. Some of your skinner acquaintances tried to warn you, but the dude stared them down and just let you roll that noose up.

Finally you shut up. You'd said plenty. The dude seemed happy, though, and let you take the rest of the bottle. You bid him a hasty goodnight as you pushed your chair backwards and almost over.

It was normally right noisy this time of night, but out in the rutty street there was a strange hush. Not good. You shambled your way down to the livery to get your horse and leave this shitheap for good, before there was no more chance to go. But waiting for you at the door of the livery was the dude. He looked just as friendly leaning there against the doorframe, but even drunk as you were you could tell that was just a mask. That and the dull Colt Army that he gripped casually, not even bothering to aim it at you.

A boozy plea ricocheted its way around your mind and almost reached your lips before the dude spoke up.

"There's no love lost between me and my... rivals, Mr. Quinn. So while nothing would give me greater pleasure than seeing them brought low in the jaws of the public, it's not right for a loud-mouthed son-of-a-bitch such as yourself to be talking about The Tears." He pointed the Colt at you and pulled the trigger, and you winced, but there was no report.

At first you thought it was a misfire. Then there was a buzzing from the barrel like a nest of goddamned hornets, and staring at the bleak little hole at the end, you saw the bullet shake its way out and float slowly across the intervening space. That's when you ran.

"Take your time, Quinn, it'll get you eventually," the dude called after you. You turned for a moment, and that's when you ran into the Chinaman.

At least he looked like a Chinaman- or was dressed like one, with railroad togs and a big coolie hat. Underneath that hat was a white face covered in ashes and grime, and some piercing gray eyes that locked onto your own for a moment. In a way they were more frightening than the genial menace of the dude. This man was Hell.

He pushed past you and you kept running, but turned long enough to see him running towards the dude, now with some God-forsaken Chinese sword drawn. He took a wide slash well out of range of the dude, who ducked anyway, and well he should have. The awning post he stood next to was sliced clean in two as if it hadn't been there, and the overhang collapsed onto the dude. You didn't stay to watch anymore. You could hear a hornet.

It got you eventually.

[Username17]

The division of powers wants to make sense "in world". And that means that your power sources should divide things in a way that makes sense to people in-character. In this case, I would suggest that power sources should be roughly corresponding to "European", "Tribal", and "Chinese".

As to how to flavor that to feel appropriate, I would suggest going for a "gritty and dirty" feel to magic in general. It's the West, things are supposed to have dust on them. To that end, I would put the object of your magic method be to contain the drawbacks of magic, rather than to generate magic power in the first place. So you'd have "wild magic", and it does "bad things". Since we're talking Weird West, it probably starts zombie uprisings or red lightning storms. When people use more reasonable magic, there is some sort of system in place to absorb the magical backlash so that things don't get out of hand.

The people from the Old World have caster shells and mana engines. These are things that collect magic and put it into brass casings at some sort of sustainable level so that its harvesting doesn't cause wild storms. The people from the Pearl Empire use up pearls and drugs to get magic going. And the various tribal shamans have made spirit pacts or simply use magical techniques locked down enough by tradition that the backlashes happen in some sort of predictable (and at least to them, acceptable) manner.

-Username17

[Chamomile]

I really don't see Chinese as being more appropriate to an Old West setting than the Mexicans. I mean, unlike the Chinese they're right over there and turn up in source material way more often. The plot of every third western is that the protagonist or the villain is trying to outrun a posse and reach Mexico.

[CatharzGodfoot]

I really don't see Chinese as being more appropriate to an Old West setting than the Mexicans. I mean, unlike the Chinese they're right over there and turn up in source material way more often. The plot of every third western is that the protagonist or the villain is trying to outrun a posse and reach Mexico.

I'm pretty sure that both Ifrit and Maizinians are supposed to feature prominently.

[Prak]

All Mexican based magic would be, at it's route, either tribal or European.

Edit: Ok, so now that I'm home and not working from my cellphone, lets go through this sudden surge of interest after 10 days

@Artless:
I like the underlying idea of the discipline. I think some things can be worked on a bit, like there needs to be more types of caster shells, but it's pretty sound. I hate that retro 50s-western naturalistic voice, but that's a minor fluff thing, and that's just me. Awesome picture too.

@Korgan:
First, I'm actually in the middle of reading Perdido Street Station. How much does order matter with the Bas Lag stuff?
As far as powers go, well, I have some watching to do and some thinking on what the iconic powers should be. While basically this started as "Lets take all the powers and such of D&D and put it in a western" it's evolving, as things always do once you throw them up on the den. But even so I think that there are, basically, three "schools" of magic we want in this game: Evocation, Necromancy, Abjuration. We want people shooting off fireballs and lightning bolts from their guns, raising zombie hordes, and enchanting dusters. Everything else is flavour or bonus.

@Jigoku:
Good stuff Jess.

@Frank:
Ok, so we have industrialized European magic, that's all spell engines and caster shells, and it's dirty because there's grease and oils and dust all over it. Then we have ritualized Eastern magic, that's magic sealed in pearls and harnessed dragon magic and such, which is dirty because it's old. Finally we have shamanistic Tribal magic, that's mostly pacts with spirits, fetishes and such. That would work fine for me, I'm just a bit concerned with numbers, perhaps needlessly so, but there are maybe, at best, two or three Eastern races, Deep Ones, maybe Ifrits. We could add to it. Dragon people would be fairly iconic, since I'm pretty sure "Dragon Lady" was coined in period material, if not actually in the west itself. But then we have eight European races, and six or seven tribal races (including the African couple, but not the wendigos which are pretty much antagonists, not players). Then I created the Made to round things back out to 18 after moving the Wendies.

@Cham:
well, I addressed that above, that Mexican stuff is either European (anything from the Spaniards), or Tribal (anything from the natives of Central/Southern America).

[Korgan0]

Chronologically it goes Perdido Street Station, then a few months later comes The Scar, then thirty years later comes Iron Council, but there's very little overlap between the three: the lead character of The Scar is mentioned in Perdido Street Station, but that's it, and there's no overlap between Iron Council and the others.

[Prak]

Ok, maybe I'll skip ahead to Iron Council when I'm done with PSS. But... I'm only on page 158 so it'll be a while. Also DMH is currently third priority under writing a business plan and working on the D&D game I'm running. And it should be fourth, with looking for work in there somewhere.

[Username17]

For purposes of magic, every race is going to want not only their thin list of standard abilities, but also a couple of paragon abilities that they alone can master. Most obvious from the initial writeups with the Jotun "Wolf Form" power and the Tatanka "Time Stop" power, but you're ultimately going to want to put up ~3 paragon powers for each. It would seem reasonable for Ifrit to be able to learn to set things on fire with their mind or something.

So off the top of my head, you'd have:

Jotun

• Abilities: +2 Strength
• Large: Jotun are just physically bigger than other beings. They receive a +2 dicepool bonus to grapple or stand ground and can carry twice as much as another character of their Strength. Being big comes with drawbacks, as steeds smaller than a unicorn cannot carry them and they are 1 threshold easier to detect.
• Frozen Skin: Jotun can withstand any amount of cold. Jotun are not affected by exposure to cold weather or freezing damage. While it is "very cold" or colder, a Jotun has an additional point of armor.
• Sense of Smell: Jotun have an acute sense of smell, and they can track or identify individuals with it.
• Heat Softening: Jotun suffer the penalties for exposure in hot weather if they don't have protective clothing that other beings require in cold weather. This is in addition to the normal difficulties of heat.

Then you'd also have access to the Jotun Paragon powers:

• Form of the Direwolf
• Breath of Winter
• Black Rage

Tatanka

• Abilities: +2 Strength
• Large: Tatanka are just physically bigger than other beings. They receive a +2 dicepool bonus to grapple or stand ground and can carry twice as much as another character of their Strength. Being big comes with drawbacks, as steeds smaller than a unicorn cannot carry them and they are 1 threshold easier to detect.
• Slow and Steady: Despite their apparent slow speeds, Tatanka get to destinations earlier than expected. Tatanka receive a +2 bonus to dicepools for chases and overland navigation.
• Hump: Tatanka do not need to eat or drink for up to seven days at a time. They do not become fatigued by exertion (though they still need sleep).
• Deep Sleeper: The threshold to awaken a sleeping Tatanka is 1 higher.

Then you'd also have access to the Tatanka Paragon powers:

• Time Stop
• Spatial Distortion
• Touch of Decay

-Username17

[Prak]

Ok, since I cannot find jack or shit about skriatok other than what's mentioned in the original DMH thread, I have to ask. Are they made entirely of marble (and thus weigh somewhere in the vicinity of 600kg), or is it just their skin, and they weigh somewhere closer to "3'6" child with marble clothes," or roughly 50-75kg?

[Username17]

Ok, since I cannot find jack or shit about skriatok other than what's mentioned in the original DMH thread, I have to ask. Are they made entirely of marble (and thus weigh somewhere in the vicinity of 600kg), or is it just their skin, and they weigh somewhere closer to "3'6" child with marble clothes," or roughly 50-75kg?

The fact that they have a specific gravity of about 3 means that they weigh about 80-90kg.

A Slovak Škriatok looks like this:


-Username17

[Prak]

Ok, thanks. Some of these creatures you mentioned have very little information online that I can find. So are skriatok essentially based on the garden gnome like statues that are themselves based off of the slovak folk lore creatures that are essentially their version of gnomes and dwarves and such?

[zeruslord]

The Sidhe's vulnerability to iron has some interesting implications. I would expect iron to be used only when absolutely necessary, or to be plated in something else. Maybe typical weapons will be made of iron, because sidhe won't touch the business end unless you want to hurt them, but nails, hinges and the like are going to have to be sidhe-safe. It might not be a shooting offense, but at least a major faux pas.

Is the division of disciplines going to be AS style, where there's a pool of common powers that anybody can take, subject to the limits of their power source, and then a separate list of source-specific disciplines, or is each discipline going to belong to a specific power source? The first has the big advantage of needing less stuff written up, but the disadvantage of making things less distinct, or needing a mechanical difference in how powers are activated or charged. I think I'd favor it anyway, so that we don't need to write up subtly different versions of AS's Authority for a conman and a tribal chief.

[Prak]

Yeah, and I'm giving the Lutin the iron vulnerability as well, and treating it as a Delay 0, Agony causing toxin with a timer of "as long as it's in contact."
I'm a bit concerned that Lutin aren't getting enough in exchange for their disadvantages. Currently I'm giving them -2 str, +2 agi, small size, fly at 10m for 1rnd/str, +3 for jumping athletics tests, and "keen senses" currently described as "hear high pitched sounds and smell subtle scents" and needing further elaboration, possibly it'll basically just be supernatural senses. Small gives -2 grapple, stand ground, and half carrying capacity, +1 threshold to be detected, and they have the above mentioned Cold Iron vuln.

They could take less damage from falling for being so small, I suppose, which would actually make their limited flight a bit more useful.

I'm thinking that powers will, generally, be standardized, yes.

[Prak]

I've been pounding away at this since about ten am today, and think it's looking better. Balance between types may, and probably is, wildly off, but when you've got one race whose main thing is "Be mostly incorporeal under specific conditions which are easy to enact" and another whose thing is "be seriously 1.5' tall, and have antennae and vestigial wings and smell like flowers" that's to be expected. I've thought up some more paragon powers as well, and I really like some of them, like the sidhe ability to create glamours, the duszek ability to make other stuff incorporeal, and the Lutin ability to play merry havoc with people's luck.

So, without further ado, what I have my second pass:

Each description and racial stat block is followed by three Paragon Techniques (or placeholders for) which only members of the race can learn. If a paragon technique is denoted as “Sealable” it means that it can be placed in an item to be activated when the item is used. The person sealing the technique pays all power costs and makes all rolls for the power, while the user, usually the same person, makes any rolls necessary for using the item. An example would be a duszek sealing Ghost Touch into a bullet. The duszek pays the power point, and the bullet will make whatever it hits incorporeal for as long as it is in the target. Whoever fires the bullet would need to make the roll to hit the target.

Europeans
The Jotun
Jotun typically stand roughly 3m tall, imposing, hairy, strong figures who radiate appreciable cold. They can withstand any depth of cold, but must wear heavy clothing in the summer to ward off the heat, lest their bodies soften and wither.
These are the ubiquitous features of Jotun. More powerful, or older Jotun have been known to display more monstrous forms with multiple heads, claws, sharp teeth, and those who grow to great age eventually become huge dire wolves, and must exile themselves from their communities, lest their fellows hunt them.
Jotun drink heavily, and have immense appetites and the men are known for their long, scraggly beards. Where once they were feared as warriors across the Old World, the time of the Jotun has mostly passed. The advancement of the gun has largely outpaced the manifest size and strength of the mighty Jotun hirdmen. The Jotun are now largely a figure of fun in popular literature and the Jotun mostly colonize out of the way lands in the frozen north of the Mid West.
Inspiration: Norse, Danes, Cossacks

• Jotun Racial Traits
• Abilities: +2 Str
• Large: Jotun are physically bigger than most other folks. They receive a +2 dicepool bonus to grapple or stand ground and can carry twice as much as another character of their Strength. Being big comes with drawbacks, as steeds smaller than a unicorn cannot carry them and they are 1 threshold easier to detect.
• Frozen Body: Jotun can withstand any amount of cold. Jotun are not affected by exposure to cold weather or freezing damage. While it is "very cold" or colder, a Jotun has an additional point of armor.
• Scent: Jotun have an acute sense of smell, and are able to track and identify individuals by scent.
• Skin Softening: Jotun suffer the penalties for exposure in hot weather if they don't have protective clothing that other beings require in cold weather. This is in addition to the normal difficulties of heat.

Jotun who delve into their people's history are able to master the following abilities:

• Form of the Direwolf The Jotun is able to take the form of a large, shaggy wolf
• Breath of Winter (Sealable)The Jotun may exhale a cone of frost and cold that freezes all in it's path.
• Black Rage The Jotun flies into a furious blood frenzy, displaying increased strength and resistance to pain.

Skriatok
Skriatok are small figures, scarcely more than 1.2m usually, with skin like marble. They grow lichen in the places that other beings grow hair, and derive sustenance from little other than alcohol and lichen, and need little of even these, even considering their small size. It is possible for them to grow larger, and in fact their size is generally linked, to some extent, by their other need. Being made of rock makes them amazingly resilient, even to dynamite blasts, but also makes them shockingly heavy, and incredibly dense, weighing about 80-90kg. They sink like the proverbial stone in water, and they require larger mounts than other beings of their size, though it is thought that the growing population of dire wolverines is the result of them bringing mounts suitable to their needs with them when they first immigrated.
Skriatok need to touch at least some small piece piece of gold every three days, or they will petrify into solid stone with the rising of the sun on the fourth day. Skriatok who touch more than a modest amount of gold will find themselves rapidly growing, and their appetites for lichen and alcohol growing even faster. The Czar of the Winter Court is a hulking monstrosity of 4m and drains down a barrel of vodka daily. If a petrified skriatok is touched with gold, they will reanimate instantly.
Skriatok have a reputation for being greedy, possessive, and xenophobic, which isn't entirely unearned, as they are often subject to paranoid thoughts that other beings, especially taller beings, want to take their gold, alcohol or rock algae. To be fair, the other beings typically do, or the alcohol and gold, at least.
Inspiration: Russians, Slovaks

• Skriatok Racial Traits
• Abilities:
• Small: Skriatok are physically smaller than other beings. As such, they receive a -2 dicepool penalty to grapple and stand ground*, and can carry half as much as another character of their strength*. Being small comes with advantages, though, as there is a wider range of mounts available to them, and they are 1 threshold harder to detect. (*these do not apply to skriatok, and are only noted for completeness of the Small trait. See Below)
• Stone Body: The marble bodies of skriatok are especially resilient. They are also especially heavy. Skriatok skin acts as armour with Ballistic, Melee and Heat Ratings of 3. They will sink in water and most other liquids of equivalent density, and require sturdier mounts than other small beings. However, they also do not receive the typical penalty of a Small being to stand ground, and carry weight as a normal sized being of their strength.
• Golden Means: Skriatok must touch at least a marble sized piece of gold once every three days or turn to inanimate stone at dawn on the fourth day. A petrified skriatok who is touched with such gold will reanimate with no ill effects. A wedding band or other golden ring is enough, and most skriatok wear gold rings or thin necklaces for this purpose.
• Meagre Needs: A typical skriatok needs only a glass (roughly 8 oz or 236ml) of reasonably pure alcohol (any hard alcohol will do) and 57g (~two ounces) of lichen each day. This increases at a steep exponential rate as they become larger.
• Economic Growth: A Skriatok's size depends on the amount of gold they can touch each day. The more gold they have, the larger they are, the less they have, the smaller they are. They do have to keep this gold to stay this size, so they can't just grow then use the gold to buy stuff. A skriatok with less than 240kg of gold (about 20 gold bars) is Small, a skriatok with access to 250-280kg (21-40 gold bars) is normal sized, and a skriatok with access to more than 290kg (41 gold bars) is Large.

Skriatok who accumulate enough gold can learn the following unique abilities:

Duszek
Duszek have a variable corporeality that depends on the length of their shadow. When their shadow is smallest, at noon and night, they are tall, and completely solid. At dusk and dawn, barely a centimeter of them is solid, the majority an ephemeral shadow. Chalk or birch ash allow them to touch items normally as the substances counter this fact. Caster shells have also proven to penetrate this incorporeality. Duszek cannot fully walk through walls, as the soles of their feet remain solid at all times, but they are able to reach through solid barriers.
Inspiration: Poles, Russians

• Duszek Racial Traits
• Abilities: +2 Strength
• Large: Duszek are physically bigger than most other folks. They receive a +2 dicepool bonus to grapple or stand ground and can carry twice as much as another character of their Strength. Being big comes with drawbacks, as steeds smaller than a unicorn cannot carry them and they are 1 threshold easier to detect.
• Partial Incorporeality: At noon and night, duszek are fully solid. During the morning and afternoon, or whenever else their shadow is long, duszek are mostly incorporeal, and lose their +2 bonus to Strength in exchange for a +2 Agility. Anything covered in birch ash or chalk is treated as an impassible barrier to an incorporeal duszek, his ghostly form cannot pass through it. A duszek who covers themselves in birch ash or chalk is treated as solid and does not lose their strength bonus when their shadow is long, but also do not gain a bonus to Agility under these circumstances. Magically enchanted objects, such as Spellshells, treat the Duszek as corporeal.
• [/b]Monstrous Mouth[/b] Duszek have mouths full of rows of sharp teeth which inflict 3 lethal damage. Their right and left lower jaws can move independently, allowing them to swallow objects much larger than other Large beings could.

Duszek can learn the following abilities

• Night Stride
• Ghost's Touch: (Sealable) The Duszek invests a number of points of power into an object (1pp/cubic meter) and rolls Willpower+Stealth, Threshold 2. As long as the duszek is touching the object, it is corporeal or noncorporeal, as he wishes. Should he end contact with the item, it returns to default form. When he touches the object again, it returns to a state matching the duszek's. This power lasts for one scene.

Lutin
Small, winged beings that stand less than half a meter tall, with antennae coming from their pastel coloured hair. These antennae allow them to hear higher pitched sounds than other beings and detect scents with more acuity.
Lutin have very smooth and soft skin, much like the flesh of a flower petal, and even smell like flowers, and can, in fact, be tracked by this scent. Different lutin have slightly different scents, but to most beings they just smell like various sorts of flowers.
Lutin are like the runts of the world school yard, kicked around by everyone because they're short and generally better looking. They've never had much in the way of land holdings in the old world, partially due to their small stature not requiring particularly large sprawls of land, but mostly because Loci, Ifrit, Sidhe, and most other major Old World powers have taken the lands time and time again.
Lutin are frequently considered weak by other races, for the simple fact that even skriatok are at least twice their height, and they have a reputation for being thieves, jovial hobos, and flighty entertainers
Inspiration: Basques, Occitans, Gypsies

• Lutin Racial Traits
• Abilities -2 strength, +2 Agility
• Small: Lutin are physically smaller than other beings. As such, they receive a -2 dicepool penalty to grapple and stand ground, and can carry half as much as another character of their strength. Being small comes with advantages, though, as there is a wider range of mounts available to them, and they are 1 threshold harder to detect.
• Winged: Lutins have colourful insectile wings on their backs. They may fly at a speed of 10m, for no longer than 1 round per point of Strength. These wings also greatly improve their jumping, giving them three extra dice on athletics checks made to jump.
• Keen Senses: Lutin antennae allow them to hear particularly high pitched sounds and smell subtle scents. All tests to hear or smell have a threshold one lower for Lutin
• Cold Iron Burnt: Cold Iron burns the Lutin, and acts like a poison with a Delay of 0, a Timer which lasts as long as the iron is in contact with their flesh, and which inflicts the Agony condition.

Lutin can master the following unique abilities:

• Flight: The Lutins wings strengthen to the point where they can fly at greater speed and for longer periods.
• Faerie Tricks: The lutin can expend a power point and make a roll of Charisma+Persuasion, Threshold 3, and cause misfortune in it's surrounding area. The more net hits, the bigger the misfortune:

  Hits	Example Misfortune
  1	Minor. Blunt a weapon, snap a bow string, wet powder in a single charge.
  2	Noticable. All mundane lights in a radius of 1m/Potency go out.
  3	Dangerous. A horse throws a show,
  4	Major. All opponents weapons in a radius of 1m/Potency become useless (blades blunt, strings snap, powder wets)
  5	Fatal. Train jumps a rail, Horse hoof hits a snake hole throwing rider, All lights in a radius of 1m/Potency explode.
  6	Fell. Steam engine explodes, cattle herd stampedes off a cliff. A Lutin who knows Faerie Tricks becomes repelled by salt, and must make a Threshold 4 Willpower test to not be compelled to stay 1m/Own Potency away from salt not in a sealed container.

  
  

Loci
Loci are strong featured people commonly quite beautiful. Each one is tied to some geographical feature, such as a tree, a rock, spring, or even mountain. Because of these ties, they do not travel much, except by necessity, save for the wide sailing Oceanids, the most seen of these people who give their whole race a reputation for wanderlust that is completely undeserved.
The High Pontiff and Eastern Patriarch are both Loci, but no major political entity speaks for the Loci in either the Old World or New. The Sun King of the Sidhe has taken control of most of the Loci city-states which had been independent, and now displaced dryads, as well as some few oreads and naiads.
Inspiration: Italians, Greeks

• Loci Racial Traits
• Abilities: +2 Strength (for Loci tied to trees, rocks, and other solid features) or +2 Agility (for Loci tied to water features), +2 Charisma (All)
• Meld with Focus: Loci are able to meld with the feature to which they are tied as a simple task requiring no test. They may meld with other objects of the same type (Dryads with oaks, Meliae with ash trees, Auraids with gold, etc.) as Threshold 3 task using charisma and survival, and with other objects of the same general sort (dryads and meliae with trees, auriads with minerals, naiads with any water feature) as Threshold 5 task using charisma and survival.
• Natural Flesh: Loci flesh is very similar in composition to their linked feature which often makes it difficult to hurt them with various forms of attacks. Plant linked loci have flesh with a Melee Rating of 3, Mineral linked loci have flesh with a Melee Rating of 2 and Ballistic Rating of 1, and Water linked loci have flesh with a Rating of 1 in each of Melee, Ballistic and Heat.

Particularly powerful loci can learn the following tricks:

• Coils of Focus: With a complex action, and a Logic+Rigging or Intuition+Survival test, the Loci can cause material that is similar to the feature to which they are linked to lash out and ensnare enemies. The bonds' strength and agility equal the number of hits the Loci rolls. This power works on water and earth just as easily as it does on plants.

Alfar
Standing shorter than the average skriatok, but taller than lutins, the alfar are 1.1m on average and have skin which appears as the sky, usually dusky or night, with clouds or stars, and pupil-less eyes.
Alfheim and Nidavellir are only recently independent nations, and many alfar have traveled the world to excape the abuse of the Ifrit sultans. In their oppression in the old world, the alfar turned to science and industry, and created the Spell Engines, which harness wild magic and power civilization.
Alfar are known as master engineers, mechanics, magicians and artisans. They can be gruff and surly, and their reputation as such often discourages others to trade with them, but the demand in the New World is strong, and many have gone that way.
Inspiration: Germans, Bohemians, Jews

• Alfar Racial Traits
• Abilities: +2 Logic
• Small: Alfar are physically smaller than other beings. As such, they receive a -2 dicepool penalty to grapple and stand ground, and can carry half as much as another character of their strength. Being small comes with advantages, though, as there is a wider range of mounts available to them, and they are 1 threshold harder to detect.
• Craftsmen: Alfar have long been artisans and builders, and skilled in all manner of making things. The threshold for an alfar to make an object through the Artisan, Aether and Rigging skills is 1 lower (this does not apply to the Threshold of making Magitech with Magicraft below).
• Magicraft When the first Alfar discovered the technique of Spell Engines, they disseminated the knowledge to all of their kind, that it could not be easily stolen and hidden by the Ifrit. As such, all alfar have the knowledge to pull spirits and magical energies out of objects, spells, or wild magic pools, and place them in objects. They make magitech as a Threshold 5 task.

Alfar who study the techniques of their forefathers may master the following abilities:

• Transmute the Form: With the expenditure of a single power point per 3 strength/physical resistance/whatever objects have to represent hardness of the object, the alfar can make it act in unusual ways. Classic examples are creating hair from gold (making gold wire flow and drape like hair) or dusters from iron (making a sheet of iron a couple cm thick as pliable as leather or canvas). When making one substance act like another, you pay 1pp/point of difference in (object stat).

Sidhe
The sidhe average 1.5m in height, and have hair the colour of the sun, usually the bright yellow of noon, or the deep red of dusk. They cast no shadows and are lithe with tall faces.
Like the Lutin, the sidhe have an extreme allergy to iron, and treat contact with any decent amount of it as a poison with a Delay of 0, Timing of “As long as contact is maintained” and which causes Agony. Iron less than about 200g/8oz is more akin to a spark, painful, but not mechanically damaging unless held to the Sidhe for a long time (treat as a Delay of 2). Because of this allergy, the sidhe are renowned as master craftsmen in silver, wood, copper, brass, and stone. Sidhe breathe in a continuous loop in and out, which appears to be the complete lack of breath, and can hold any position endlessly without tiring.
While Sidhe peoples live throughout the West of the Old World, from the Burning Empire to Vanheim, the nations which are truly Sidhe dominated are the Kingdom of the Sun King on the mainland, and the islands of Tir na nOg. The Sun King demands all of his subjects bend knee to the high pontiff, while the Queen of the Emerald Islands demands that her subjects do not do so. These edicts have brought the Sun King into confrontation with Tir on several occasions, as well as with Vanheim and even his own Lutin subjects. Neither the Sun King nor the high pontiff have much power in the West, though they stand tall in alliance in the Old World.
Inspiration: British, French, Irish

• Sidhe Racial Traits

Powerful Sidhe can learn the following powers:

• Faerie GlamourWith a complex action, and a Charisma+Persuasion test, a faerie can conceal the nature of objects. Each hit beyond the first allows either a larger object to be glamoured, or a better glamour. 1 hit allows items less than .5 cubic feet and less than 20kg to have minor glamours placed on them, making a gun appear to be of a different caliber, for example. An additional hit would allow a minor glamour to be placed on an object up to 1 cubic meter or 50kg (whichever is greater), or could disguise a blade as being made of wood.

Edit: Figured I'd do up the Vanir real quick and round out the European races:

Vanir
The vanir are a people with a penchant for sailing, swordplay, and music. The average vanir stands 1.8m tall, and has an aloof, laconic manner. The are exceptionally flammable, but do not have blood, and do not leak when cut.
Most Vanir have long since rebelled against the High Pontiff and Burning Empire, and there are now independent nations of Van all over the Old World. The United Provinces of Vanheim and the Helheim Republic are both relatively non-interventionist republics that are quite wealthy and powerful. Van colonies make up a significant fraction of the segments of Union territories and many of those who go out West from the Union are Vanir.
All Vanir have perfect pitch, but most of them subscribe to religious views which discourage song and dance. The stereotypical Van is both flat of affect and exacting of tone – making them persuasive and unnerving.
Inspiration: Nederlanders, Belgians, Burgundians

• Vanir Racial Traits
• Art of the Old World: Vanir have a +1 dicepool bonus to tests made to sail, fight with a sword, or play music or dance.
• Inflammable: Vanir take 1 extra damage whenever they are damaged with flame or fire-based attacks.
• Dry Body: Vanir automatically stabilize when damaged and are at no risk of bleeding out because they literally do not have blood.
• Van-children: An old word for boar was “van-child.” The Vanir certainly have a kinship of some sort with porcine creatures, and receive a +2 dicepool bonus to any social check made to influence a porcine creature.

Powerful vanir can learn the following tricks:

• Van-child Rearing The Vanir may invest a point of edge into a porcine creature. This does not reduce the amount of edge they roll, but it is inaccessible for other ways in which they can spend edge. The porcine creature increases in size to be large enough for a Large being to ride, gains a natural bite weapon capable of inflicting 4 lethal damage, and receives +2 Strength and Agility, along with +1 Intuition. The vanir can revoke this edge in a ten minute ritual, reversing the transformation, and recovering the spent edge at their next normal opportunity. Should the creature die, the spent edge recovers normally, or the Vanir can spend 10pp and perform an hour long ritual which resurrects the creature. In the later case the edge remains spent until revoked or the creature dies again and is not raised.

[Korgan0]

Under the alfar write up, you have "make make magitech."

Some kind of map of the Old World would also be super helpful as I'm not really sure what is where- presumably Tir na Nog is Ireland, and the kingdom of the Sun King is in France, but otherwise I have no idea.

Otherwise, this is looking really good.

[Prak]

Thanks for the proof reading.

I did up a rough analogue map for the Old World, but you have to understand that all of the political history stuff is stuff that Frank came up with, and I was a complete slacker in (and because of) a California public school. The map isn't what we'd finally use, as I think it'd be a bad idea to not at least somewhat distance the setting from the real world politics, and doing so geographically is the absolute least we could do. This is how I understand it:

[Prak]

It would help if some of the races were just renamed something which players are automatically familiar with. That, or if Prak could draw up ~20 pictures of all the different races. Probably the first one is easier. If the Sidhe are called Sidhe Elves, players instantly feel a bit more grounded in the world. The Loci can be called Dryads or Naiads or something. The Jotun works well as a name, but it should be mentioned they're often nicknamed Frost Giants or Frost Ogres. I'm also not getting a strong visual on what the Vanir are supposed to look like. They are slightly taller than the average human and otherwise not physically described (except in that they don't bleed, which is not typically apparent anyway).

I wanted to address this as I'm working on a few more races. There are 17 player races that Frank wrote up, and 1 race he wrote up that isn't really a player race. That's a lot to draw. I like to draw, but since I got out of high school and started spending most of my day in front of a computer out of habit, and little other place to do stuff (seriously, this house is not a particularly drawing friendly house. Lots of lounge furniture, not much in the way of properly heighted table/chair set ups) or actively doing things, I haven't drawn much. I can draw all those, but it'll likely take me a bit before I get to it, especially since it's even lower in the priority list than the mechanics for DMH are.

But, given that I'm just a slacker and totally have the actual time right now, I will try to get at least one drawing of each race done.

Edit: Damn you, Frank, for your knowledge of obscure folk lore creatures. I was amazed I could find anything on Ani Yunti (given that you cut off half the name of the creatures you based them on), and a lot of other races have entirely unhelpful wiki pages, whether because they talk about the thing you grabbed the name of (vanir) or have about two sentences (jogah).

Also, in writing the jogah, you basically made kender.