After Sundown tweaks/house rules

[Judging__Eagle]

Third; where human history and mythology doesn't correlate with After Sundown; After Sundown will have to be modified to some degree.

Real world mythology is specifically inconsistent, even contradictory. The Bible can't stop itself from repeatedly contradicting itself, and it's a single edited book. Oral mythologies, or mythologies that have multiple competing books, are even more so. Greek mythologies can't "decide" whether Okeanos is a god, a river, or a sea. It's not vague on that point or anything, different authors simply claim incompatible ideas.

Even modern mythologies have incompatible canons. How strong is Superman? What was Wolverine doing at any particular point in recent history you care to name? Does Wonderwoman have a mother? A father? How many clones are there of Peter Parker?

The fact is that real world mythologies are a series of stories told by different people in order to evoke different kinds of reactions. Sometimes a story is a power fantasy where the protagonist effortlessly mops the floor with bad guys. Sometimes it's a story of struggle and pain where the very same bad guys are too strong to confront directly.

Cooperative storytelling games require solid answers to questions like "how strong is this character?" and "what can this character's sorcery actually do?". And so it gives them. There are numbers and power lists and stuff. But real world mythologies don't even care about those consistencies. Even basic interactions aren't consistent in real world mythologies. If a vampire gets sunlight on them, what happens? I can show real world stories in the body of mythos where the answer is "Nothing", "The get physically weak", "They can't use some of their powers", "They get a modest sunburn and don't really like it", "They start burning and have to run to safety in the shadows", or "they explode, leaving nothing but a pile of dust". All of those are valid mythological answers.

Bottom line is that giving final say to "mythology" in a role playing game is a fucking horrible idea. The role playing game can give consistent answers and the mythology can't. The stories you've read almost certainly aren't the same as the stories I've read, and anything you change to be more like a story you've read is likely to make it less like a story I've read. And at the table this corresponds to you making things less like one of the players expects things to be in the name of doing something more similar to something that the player in question is pretty sure actually goes the other way. It's like getting real world physics into D&D, but even worse because any two sources you look up won't say the same things.

-Username17

That's completely true, and fair.

To be more clear, I've been trying to distill contradictory content on the mythology side. In general this has involved lots of trawling through wikipedia and cited sources; and backwards searching related information I find at other sources through tineye and/or google.

The general path that I've taken in cleaning up the contradictory nature of mythos generally involves going as far back as possible with a myth (or chunk of related myths); and then finding out how universal a myth is, and if it goes as far as 10,000 years or so, and across multiple continents.

In places where AS doesn't jive with the bulk of the mono-myths, after said mono-myths are distilled; or when it doesn't jive with scientific based structures (shifting Hyenas from Berzerkers to Hellcats). Hopefully resulting in a result that is consistent with human myths across the six inhabited continents.

Notes on The Shattered Empire:

An other thing that I've started thinking about this week based on more of my ongoing research is that the Shattered Empire might actually have some historical basis to it, if we wanted to have it.

The histories of ice-age cities that were sunk in the coming Deluge (such as Dwarka); and the intentionally back-filled religious site of Gobelki Tepe could be used as basis for more structured locations for The Shattered Empire. Although, at this point I prefer to label it The Buried Empires; and calling some of them Atlantis, Indus, Mu, Golgotha, and other names could very well happen.

[Username17]

Monomyth isn't actually... real. We don't actually know what the myths of 10,000 years ago were. Like, at all. Seriously, about the oldest story we have is Gilgamesh, from about 3600 years ago. Written stuff exists before that, and obviously people were telling stories before that. But if anyone tells you they have a ten thousand or even seven thousand year old story they are full of shit. We can't read Jiahu symbols, so if they told a story of the hopes and fears of people eight thousand years dead, there is absolutely nothing we can do about it one way or the other.

-Username17

[Judging__Eagle]

Yes, the actual stories are apocryphal, we only have fragments copied down, or tirelessly played "Telephone" with in oral traditions. However, that's all that we've got to go on, so the best I can do is to find out things that are repeated in disparate regions, and try to figure some compromise between them in order to create a story out of it.

In some ways, the After Sundown descriptions of the "Tradition of Misdirection" and the later "Tradition of Silence" could be used to explain why original secret histories have been erased; which gives me some leeway to collate what is known, interpolate/extrapolate the gaps between known aspects; and try to develop a new story (which, admittedly, I won't be happy with).

This is since I need some of those early gaps filled so that the Afro-Sino-Indo centered Alternate Earth post-apocalyptic kitchensink that I'm slowly trying to develop has an "ancient history" of high science who had their "age of steam" occur around 400-1000 BCE. So that there is time for an alternate age of colonalism that occurts before the Failed Star Saturn/El sent their child to convince people to stop using blood sacrifices, as a means to de-stabilize existing Mortal kingdoms. Which lead to starting a new wave of Quantum Conflicts between the Infernal, Astral and Orphic, realms.

So that there's enough of a chronological time line to fit in even higher technology levels. Followed by a global collapse that leaves the "present day" Altenate Earth looking like something out of D&D meets "beyond shadowrun" levels of technology.

I want people to scavenge cans of food, not from 300 years ago (which is, frankly stupid/insane; while I love the Fallout series, it's stupid in critical places); but 1000 years ago. Which can be done because the food preservation technology "of the Ancients" relied on quantum stasis; so "Hot Dog in a Can!" is literally, a still sizzling hotdog fresher than anything you could get from an actual hot dog cart today.

Some that I've found so far include:

[*]The "tree of life" is something that isn't just from Babylon to Norway; but also reaches out to pre-columbian Central America. flying serpents of knowledge" seem to be everywhere, and "the universe is a serpent biting its own tail" is sort of weird. Ultimately, I'm leaning towards this being an explanation on DNA; and that Evil Plant/Giant Animals seeded Earth from the direction of Sirius. Potentially going all "At the Mountains of Madness" with this.

[*]Myths of the global Deluge are in lots of places (however, I'm leaning towards the explanation that they're the result of the end of the last Ice Age's rising water levels covering coastal cities). I'm aiming at using this to explain the Shattered Empire, and the sites of flooded Ice Age cities to be where their Limbo holdings are, as well as using Gobelki Tepe as a religious/social site

[*] The "House on the Hill" of Ekur, probably one of the first/oldest observatories seems to be replicated in the design of other pyramids and obelisks. Tall mounds, always with a house on the top, often peaked. This could be Astral, but some could be Infernal due to blood sacrifices performed in Mesoamerican pyramids; or if they were used to observe the rising Sun, instead of the rising Moon..

[*] The great flying (rainbow/feathered) serpent as "teacher". Australia, Central/South America, India, Africa, and Mesopotamia all have similar sounding stories. This could be more of a Dragon (i.e. Strigoi) that wanted to teach humans about freedom of choice; which resulted in death being a concept they could now imagine.

[*] The repeating myth that is summed up as "The Universe is a Serpent biting its own tail" has been eerie. From Africa to Pre-Columbian America; from India to Norway; this idea has traveled, well before the rise of modern religions and cultures. For some reason, I've got the feeling that this is more figurative than literal; and that the image of a snake biting its own tail resembles this Universes primary element, Hydrogen.

I've also tried about a dozen or so drawings on pages from 8.5" x 11" to 18" x 24" to draw the three supernatural worlds presented in After Sundown as components of said "universe serpent". They look interesting, but they're nothing I feel that I can use, aside from as mental maps.

I'm leaning towards more "quantum alternate universes" as my model for the Infernal, Astral and Orphic worlds now. The Astral is the parts of our universes EM spectrum we don't normally interact with (unless dreaming, or we die in our dreams).

The Infernal are all places that have reached 100*C; and it's a place where the Big Bang didn't really expand all matter, so every stellar body is close, bright, and makes things hellish.

While the Orphic realms are where the Big Bang got ahead of itself; and only the coldest, deadest, elements of others of its quantum sibling universes pop into existence there. Seeing as Earth has suffered at least one complete global Ice Age (long, long, long ago); I'm fine with there being a strange Orphic Earth; where if you dig deep enough into the sandy soils (deposited by the volcanoes that eventually broke that ice age) you'll find a core of glacial matter); and the sunken cities of ancient times remain, surrounded by permanently still seas, frozen before life even walked on land.

I'm also treating After Sundown as a basic engine and setting that I'm pulling other elements into it, such as your Fantasy Kitchensink species list, and Dead Man's Hand's philosophy of "no humans". Mostly, turning people on Earth who would be Extras into Spawn of different types. As well as making it into an "Alternate Earth" where steam-engines based off of the Heron described Aeropilie were made into steam-powered locomotives (so I'm stretching my industrial design and storytelling muscles on this part). The idea being that on this Alternate Earth technology hit much higher than ours, much earlier; has collapsed, and thus technology


Note: I'm still not sure on the details of how this alternate Earth will look like; right now I'm just spit-balling ideas. Thus anything I mentioned at the top can be taken with a tablespoon of salt.

[Parthenon]

What the fuck are you on about?

[Lokathor]

JE... you're not really talking about After Sundown any more, first or second edition.

You're just rambling about your own mytho-horror heartbreaker.

Which is fine, except you make posts with lots of small paragraphs that take up lots of vertical space like this.

And also that's not what this is about, we're talking about ways that we could actually improve the "official" version of After Sundown to have a second edition.

And it's cool that you're using the AS engine to make your own game.

But that's about as relevant to this topic as my idea to make a "Mage game with improv magic" using the AS engine.

Which is to say it's not relevant to this topic at all.

[Username17]

So anyway, bonus Orphic splat: the Mockeries.


Hollow Men


The Hungry

-Username17

[echoVanguard]

Weren't Hollow Men earmarked as Doubt antagonists? Or are you just planning on rolling concepts from Doubt into After Sundown?

echo

[Username17]

Weren't Hollow Men earmarked as Doubt antagonists? Or are you just planning on rolling concepts from Doubt into After Sundown?

echo

They are, yes. And yes, porting in some of the Doubt stuff for Mictlan as it gets fleshed out. It's a pretty good fit.

The new fairies allow for a number of things that weren't possible earlier. One of the Three Shadows of the King is basically going the full David Bowie now that Goblins and Elves are being separated.

And the Dragons are basically just an excuse to write up a bunch of monsters like Hell Hounds that people want to have in their evil castles.

-Username17

[CatharzGodfoot]

"Hollow men" really seem to be stepping on the toes of Mi Go. In both cases you have a soft human shell with a crunchy insect center. Would they have an explicable nature, or just be 'mysterious guys in long coats'?

[Username17]

"Hollow men" really seem to be stepping on the toes of Mi Go. In both cases you have a soft human shell with a crunchy insect center. Would they have an explicable nature, or just be 'mysterious guys in long coats'?

Nah, the people who step on the Mi Go's toes are the Boogie Men, who are actual sacks full of bugs. Not sure if I'm serious there. Arguments in favor is that Nightmare before Christmas is awesome and there's a bunch of Song of Swarms powers that never end up in the hands of big-V Villains because only one character type has them and they are a PC subtype. Arguments against is that Worms That Walk aren't really all that different from a guy with a hive living in his back, and that in any case AS subscribes to Infernal bug magic rather than Orphic death magic, so it would be more Lovecraftian Worm That Walks and less Nightmare Oogie Boogie in any case.

Regardless, the Hollow Men here aren't full of bugs, they are literally empty shells. They just act like the Strangers from Dark City. If they took off their dark glasses, they might look like this:

Because that's creepy as hell. And it makes a good start for villains who are doing inscrutable conspiracy stuff.

-Username17

[erik]

I haven't followed Doubt as closely, but I expected that they were hollow in the sense of being emotionless (in addition to being psionic guys). I found that to be the more defining aspects of the trenchcoats from Dark City or the suits from Fringe. That the trenchcoats were controlled by bug parasite things was not necessary from my perspective for the story. That could be omitted and they are still hollow men. Pasty, white, bald men in matching attire is catchy enough. Added bonus: it's a cosplay that I am well suited for!

[virgil]

After Sundown

As in the link above, the game is now available in glossy hardcover. Those who read the IMOI sub-forum will know I've been working on making this for a little while and it's now ready for purchase. The interior will be as seen in the most recent PDF made by Frank, unchanged from that layout, just as a warning for those who get anal. Realistically, it's going to be a number of months before we see After Sundown Revised complete and ready; but once that happens, I can do this again.

[Maxus]

"Hollow men" really seem to be stepping on the toes of Mi Go. In both cases you have a soft human shell with a crunchy insect center. Would they have an explicable nature, or just be 'mysterious guys in long coats'?

[Hollow people]

-Username17

I was actually thinking about the Infernal and had an idea for a Limbo monster.

I think the process has a similar result with Extras, just they lose all will and remain, while somewhat able to solve problems and think, extremely unnoticeable and don't take independent action unless ordered to go fix a problem. Like those guys from Doubt, or the Soulless dudes from Wheel of Time.

Zombies happen when Extras get made undead, so that's Orphic covered.

I think an answer to "What happens when an Extra gets changed by the Dreamlands" would be useful.

I suppose you could also do something of the same for animals--Maybe chimera and manticores and Skinwalkers are just flat-out what happens when something gets lost in the Dreamlands

[erik]

I think an answer to "What happens when an Extra gets changed by the Dreamlands" would be useful.

The bit is already covered under Transhuman spawn...

Transhuman Spawn in many cases are not exactly the same thing as regular Transhumans who are extras (and therefore doomed). But the concept is similar. A human Extra who is abandoned in the Dreamlands when their body dies becomes a Jalus: what is effectively an Icarid Spawn. They live out the rest of their lives in Maya, surviving day to day in that ghastly jungle mostly by dint of no one noticing them. Indeed, they have Hide From Notice. A human Extra who is adopted by spirits that aren’t their own can be turned into a Seer. This is basically like being a Reborn Spawn, and while they get Summon Spirit, they mostly get to be picked on by ghosts and go crazy. However, breaking the pattern, a human Extra who is imprisoned for an extended period in the Dark Reflection or who draws upon the power of an Infernal artifact gradually becomes a Fallen Spawn. They gain access to Learn the Heart’s Pain and make up the majority of the human inhabitants of Limbo. In all cases, Transhuman Spawn are afflicted with Master Passion Despair, and for all the good it does them, they have the same power schedules as their associated Transhuman type.

[Maxus]

Huh. Totally forgot about that.

[Korwin]

After Sundown

Thanks! ordered it.

[Grek]

I think an answer to "What happens when an Extra gets changed by the Dreamlands" would be useful.

The bit is already covered under Transhuman spawn...

Some explanation of what a Jalus looks like, what it acts like and what their societies are like would be swell though.

[Username17]

Some explanation of what a Jalus looks like, what it acts like and what their societies are like would be swell though.

That's fair. Mediums should get some love in the Mictlan chapter as well.

-Username17

[Orion]

We've had a lot of good talk about improved mechanics and additional content in this thread. Is there any interest in upping our game textually by doing some real editing? The 1st edition of After Sundown received some basic proofreading from the community as a whole. Lots of typo corrections were posted. It wasn't edited for style or even for clarity. I remember that I posted proposed re-writes of a number of the more ponderous or cryptic passages, but I felt pretty uncomfortable doing it, because my alterations tended to stick out. Frank's idiolect is such that that is really very difficult to even add "anything" to his text without making sure you're using his distinctive intensifiers and scare quotes.

What with fiction and possibly actual content coming from community sources, we should seriously think about slapping together a style guide. That could be a "how to write like Frank Trollman" primer, if we assume that he's still going to originate 80%+ of the text. Or we could actually cook up a distinct authorial voice for this text that's distinct from Frank's default posting style. If it's a voice I'm comfortable in, I can even filter the copy from the old book into the new style.

Personally, although it's more work, I think After Sundown would benefit from a revision to its prose. Right now it feels like an internet artifact, because it's stitched together from a bunch of individual posts where every section tries to be high-impact and attention grabbing. It also uses vocabulary surprisingly repetitively. Reading any page of AS is a joy but reading straight through grueling. If we want to print AS2E, I think we can make it feel more like a "book" by fleshing out the prose a little.

EDIT: I agree with whomever said we should run a Mexican as our default troglodyte, so I'm not going forward with mine.

[Lokathor]

I can attest to this. Adding even a single word to a Trollman sentence can be difficult at times when you care about it stylistically fitting in properly.

On another note that I'm not sure was covered: while we're doing improvements, we should probably put some example actions and thresholds into the skill sections so that people know what to expect when they pick their skills.

[rampaging-poet]

Personally, the one thing I find annoying about Frank's writing voice is his insistence on starting sentences with "and." It makes every almost phrase like "and this is the implication of the preceding sentence" feel like an afterthought. There's a few parts where "Something. And something else." emphasizes the second statement (especially the Witch quote), but it usually feels tacked on. His conversational tone is a blast to read, but that's one place I feel conventions of writing should trump conventions of speech except for occasional, intentional emphasis.

I admire your work Frank, but that phrasing is seriously awkward for me to read. It's not impossible, but using periods instead of commas for connected independent clauses forces me to think back and decide how closely the two statements are actually related every time I read them. I can't tell whether the second statement is emphasized, an afterthought, or of equal importance to the first statement without taking the time to evaluate both statements carefully.

[Judging__Eagle]

Here's a question: Art

I've got some drawing skills, and have contacts with other artists doing a range of works that could be used as AS art.

I've also been collecting my own reference library of documents, reference manuals, relevant websites, and images that's around 90~ gigs that I've been uploading by chapter to my public/art Facebook account.

I'm personally interested in, and studying backgrounds, set design, level design; with the near goal of working as a background modeller/artist, and the end goal of working as a game designer (strictly speaking, using a credited version of After Sundown), and while I don't feel that I have great matt painting or background art skills, I have been able to pull off some alright pieces after doing the necessary planning thumbnails before continuing with the production parts of pipeline.

Edit: I'll have to upload all of this to Deviant Art, or something; because FB is a troublesome page, and I can't make my "public to people who aren't FB users" page load in IE when not logged into FB.

For those with Book face accounts, here's the scattered mess I've got so far:https://www.facebook.com/Tito.Ghio.IV/photos_albums

There's some older, and very recent sketches of mine in separate albums in the Photos>Albums section.

I have quite a few more sketches that need to be shuffled from my personal FB account to my public one, but for now that's what I've got.

[Username17]

Personally, although it's more work, I think After Sundown would benefit from a revision to its prose.

"I didn't spend six years in an evil medical school to be called Mister Trollman."

I passed my last state exam and I suddenly find myself with a lot more time than I have had in years. So a rather full overhaul of the text is entirely possible.

For all the Tome materials, K and I wrote in bbcode. For After Sundown, same thing. I would actually sit down and write it with the bracket codes already in. It's kind of like the Matrix really, but we got used to doing things like that. But I do agree that it lends itself to being punchy and broken up, because the text is already like that on the page when it's being written with the formatting already in place.

Moving forward, I think I'll be doing it as regular text, to be converted to really formatted text in InDesign. So probably the thing to do is not to put the chapters up as board posts, but to put the text files on dropbox and link to them. It should make dealing with all this easier.

-Username17

[Midnight_v]

Here's a question: Art

Forgive my ever present lurking, (and yes bitches it is ever present) but can't we just hire someone?

While I'm never going to pretend to be the smartest person in the room. I'd like to think those same deviant art people would love to make some cash, and that the individual reliability of any one artist would pretty easy to verify.

I vaguely remember something Frank wrote about the difference between people volunteering time and people working, but it escapes me this second.
So while I hate to be that guy, but maybe we can do some small scale crowd funding?
Of course I have only the vaguest idea of how many pictures would be needed and how much something like that would cost (I imagine shopping around would be in order.)
or am I peddling in place here?

[virgil]

I know a couple people that would likely be willing to do some illustration for money, but I'd have to go over with them. If anyone had a collection of good quality art/photos that were in the public domain, that would work well to mitigate the cost.

Another thing to consider for those who want a dead tree version of the book, we would need money for advertising. I am not allowed to promote the one I set up for purchase on a lot of forums, even casually on some, because money is being exchanged for it (even if near all of it is going to the printer). I can work on getting the 2nd edition onto DriveThruRPG, as that will at least hit a broader market on its own, but I'd like to work with Frank more closely for something like that.