Reviving Dead Man's Hand

[Chamomile]

So besides the plethora of native cultures, Sidhe, Ifrits, and the Alfar are going to pretty thoroughly dominate the racial demographics assuming we go with a history that maps actual nations of the 19th century west to these cultures (and I'm not sure that would actually be a good idea). Maybe also the Loci/Dryads/Whatever we end up calling them. That's kind of weird.

[Username17]

So besides the plethora of native cultures, Sidhe, Ifrits, and the Alfar are going to pretty thoroughly dominate the racial demographics assuming we go with a history that maps actual nations of the 19th century west to these cultures (and I'm not sure that would actually be a good idea). Maybe also the Loci/Dryads/Whatever we end up calling them. That's kind of weird.

The idea of "everyone is an elf" is that you go through and have everyone be an example of an elf from the folktales of roughly the region they are from. You can achieve the same level of distance from past atrocities without committing the sin of denying them by having everyone be an anthropomorphic talking animal. The slaves might be porcupines and zebras or something in that model.

In any case, you're necessarily going to have less factions than the real world did, because the real world had hundreds of countries and you don't even have space for that. I mean, Chang and Eng were a kind of big deal from the Kingdom of Siam in the 19th century - but you're not going to write up a fantasy revision of Siam, Burma, and French Indochina. Because the overall effects of those places on The West were small and something has to be cut.

Europe, for example, is being cut down to like 9 different types of people. In 1840, there were more than 9 flavors of German. You had Prussians, Hanoverians, Holsteinians, Swiss, Austrians, Hessians and so on. This sort of reductionism is a damn near necessity if you're going to write fantasy alt-history, and it's way less insulting if all the (vastly reduced) ethnicities and nations that you write up are all fantasy people rather than historical ones.

-Username17

[JigokuBosatsu]

Europe, for example, is being cut down to like 9 different types of people. In 1840, there were more than 9 flavors of German. You had Prussians, Hanoverians, Holsteinians, Swiss, Austrians, Hessians and so on. This sort of reductionism is a damn near necessity if you're going to write fantasy alt-history, and it's way less insulting if all the (vastly reduced) ethnicities and nations that you write up are all fantasy people rather than historical ones.

-Username17

Which also sets you up for splatbooks, "Dirty Secrets of the Black Alfar" and what ho.

[Chamomile]

I'd rather have, like, three or four different varieties each of native, African, assorted British cultures, and Spanish/Protugese, and then gloss over the races representing the other cultures a bit. Mention that there are other races there, but that we aren't focusing on them because the nine flavors of German aren't important to the Old West, so only one of them is playable and maybe we'll throw the other eight into a splat book sometime. And we don't even need to have some races like the Jotun to start with at all (even though we eventually will so we can make a splat book dealing with the Jotun/Jogah war in back in the 10th century or whenever that was).

[Username17]

I'd rather have, like, three or four different varieties each of native, African, assorted British cultures, and Spanish/Protugese, and then gloss over the races representing the other cultures a bit. Mention that there are other races there, but that we aren't focusing on them because the nine flavors of German aren't important to the Old West, so only one of them is playable and maybe we'll throw the other eight into a splat book sometime. And we don't even need to have some races like the Jotun to start with at all (even though we eventually will so we can make a splat book dealing with the Jotun/Jogah war in back in the 10th century or whenever that was).

What you'd probably want to do is to have a page with a kitchen sink listing of other races that presumably exist somewhere but aren't in the world, but don't have a big presence in the Dodge City analog that the game will use as a default setting.

So you have a list of stuff like "Yaksha, Rakshasa, Garuda, Naga, Bandar" for the South Asia region, but you don't really write them up. They are just out there somewhere. Similarly, you have a bunch of other tribal groups like Amak and Manitou that you also don't go into any great detail on. If you expand the stuff, you go into more detail on more groups or something. But to begin with, you have like one page that just drops a bunch of names of other spirit/people types.

-Username17

[virgil]

What do Vanir and Loci look like? The lack of external traits given makes them likely to look almost perfectly human. And do any of them have their own native magic? It's a potential problem when all of the native americans and africans get magic, while the Old Worlders universally get magitech.

[JigokuBosatsu]

The Vanir should have skin that looks like gold leaf.

The Loci I pictured as being like the Spring Sprite from the Firebird sequence in Fantasia 2000.

[Username17]

The original writeup had a couple flavors of magic for European analogs, that the European analogs had access to generally. So they had magictech engines and caster shells and stuff. Meanwhile, the various tribals had their own magic that was separate from whatever else it is people elsewhere in the world do. You'd probably want the people from the Pearl Empire across the Pacific analog to have their own magics as well. Mysterious Eastern Magics or something.

-Username17

[Chamomile]

So I know I read a set of After Sundown rules for getting upgrades with a poker deck instead of the tarot, but I can't find it on the thread in IMOI. Maybe it was just in the .pdf? I don't have that one on this machine.

[Username17]

It's called "Karmic Advancement" and it's in the Character Options chapter, post 10 in the IMOI thread.

-Username17

[DrPraetor]

If you wanted to do alternative history where the confederacy won, without slavery, it's entirely possible:
* North loses (or more likely doesn't really commit to fighting) the Civil War.
* These counties:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_U. ... opulations
(there were more at the time)
fight a war of independence, either de novo or because the South actually did Lee's plan of enlisting blacks; the returning blacks would presumably do the same thing that the Vietnamese soldiers in Algeria did.

So you'd have a group of black republics between the Union and the Confederacy who were allied with, I guess, Haiti (independent since 1804).

That would be entirely reasonable alternate-history-civil-war with a confederacy and no slaves; but it's probably not what the "south will rise again" types are into.

--DrP

[Prak]

Ok, so as much as I might want to do a split power thing, where some of a character's powers are racial and some are occupational, that seems like a distinctly bad idea. So, assuming that my initial instinct is correct there, do we want race to be mechanically meaningless, give you skills, or give you powers, or do we want occupation to be mechanically meaningless, give you skills or give you powers?

Alternatively, Races can be the splat types and occupation can replace some/all cults or...

Ugh, lets see, AS has Societies, Splat Types and Cults. DMH needs nations, races, occupations, and ideally some kind of faction set up. So the US analogue et al. probably takes the society place. Races should probably take the Splat Type place. This leaves me with the question of what to do with occupations and factions. I suppose... factions take cult place, and then maybe there are individual jobs that will occasionally change what powers you're learning?

[Blicero]

Ugh, lets see, AS has Societies, Splat Types and Cults. DMH needs nations, races, occupations, and ideally some kind of faction set up. So the US analogue et al. probably takes the society place. Races should probably take the Splat Type place. This leaves me with the question of what to do with occupations and factions. I suppose... factions take cult place, and then maybe there are individual jobs that will occasionally change what powers you're learning?

Occupations could be just be recommended "Power - Passive Skill" couplings. So the sample "Preacher" or whatever could have a bunch of Infernal, Fire-related powers, and also passive skills like "Religious Dogma," "Church Hierarchy," etc...

And why is splitting powers between race and occupation a bad idea? It seems to be what Asymmetric Threat is doing. Starting characters might have half of their powers from their race, and have from their occupation. Or your "Race Powers" and your "Occupation Powers" could go into one pool, and you'd pick from them both. The races that Frank has presented are all fairly dynamic and distinct, and I suspect that it would be a shame if, mechanically, races were homogeneous. And giving each race skill bonuses just seems like it would be likely to induce race-occupation pairings, which I'm assuming you don't want because they're bad.

[Grek]

[quote="Blicero]And why is splitting powers between race and occupation a bad idea?[/quote]

You need to decide what happens if a racial discipline overlaps with an occupational discipline? There's a few answers to that:

1. You get an extra discipline of your choice, plus or minus some restrictions. This essentially means that certain "obvious choice" race/occupation picks like duszeck wraith are more versitile for no apparent in character reason.
2. The occupations and races are set up such that no power available as a Racial is available as a Occupation pick and vis versa. This is alot of work when designing races.
3. You don't get anything special. This means you're down a discipline if you pick a combination like that, ergo your character sucks.

[Prak]

Ideally race and occupation powers should likely be separate lists. So, sure, being an Ifrit lets you set people on fire, but if you pick up a gun, you need to be a Lawman, or just know the lawman magic, to shoot people with burning bullets.

Right now I'm working on how to organize the races, working with that whole conceptual space thing, since if splat types aren't grouped together, you can't have as many. The races Frank outlined do so happen to only be 18 separate things, so that's lucky, but organizing them is tricky. So far I have "Giants" (Jotun, Tatanka and Wendigo), and maybe "Naturals" (Loci, Lutin and Maizenians). The problem is, it seems like there should be some kind of "Monstrous Appearance" group that Deep Ones, Wendigo, and, hell, maybe Tatanka or Anansi or Kachina, or whatever fit together in, and that Naturals could also include Ifrit, Skriatok, Ani Yunti, etc.

[Blicero]

1. You get an extra discipline of your choice, plus or minus some restrictions. This essentially means that certain "obvious choice" race/occupation picks like duszeck wraith are more versitile for no apparent in character reason.

I don't know if this is inherently a bad thing. Extra versatility is probably the best way of handling some sort of "Favored Class" mechanic. And writing fluff like "Duszecks possess inherent stealth abilities. As such, many are drawn toward the occupation of wraith" is as easy as writing that sentence was.

2. The occupations and races are set up such that no power available as a Racial is available as a Occupation pick and vis versa. This is alot of work when designing races.

Again, I don't know if this would be a hugely extra amount of work. After Sundown has, what, like 150 powers? I'm sure that some of those disciplines would fit best with some given race. This method would indeed require a nonzero amount of extra work, but I suspect that the payoffs could certainly be worth it.

3. You don't get anything special. This means you're down a discipline if you pick a combination like that, ergo your character sucks.

This would be really butts. I agree.

Of your "problems," #1 is probably the best solution, but #2 could be cool if done well.


Honestly, I think the worst consequence of making race be an important determinant in power selection ability is that it is going to probably create race-occupation couplings that are superior to other race-occupation couplings. Such a setup is almost always a bad thing because it encourages stereotyping and drastically limits the range of playable characters, although it can also help in the presentation of fluff and in creating a sense of narratival coherency. From a purely hypothetical perspective, moderately careful design can probably maximize the positive outcomes of this design choice and minimize its most prominent drawbacks.

[Username17]

You would not, in fact, want to copypasta the AS writeup. In AS, characters are (at least superficially) regular humans whose "big thing" is that they are a supernatural creature. Almost all of their power comes from that singular fact. The character's social connections are there primarily to give them extra contacts and sources of personal career advancement. In a Western setting, that's completely inappropriate.

If a character is from the Pearl Empire, they will very likely never go to the Pearl Empire or anywhere where the Pearl Empire has any power. They cannot "advance" within the Pearl Empire because it is far away. The Pearl Empire is someplace that they are from. No going back, because for the foreseeable future they are going to be in the Dodge City analog and there won't be any Pearl Imperials to get excited about.

-Username17

[Prak]

Right, but we need a model where a Duszek Lawman feels at least somewhat different from an Ifrit Lawman, and both feel substantially different from Loci Shamans. Then, yeah, one's from the Winter Court, another from the Burning Empire, and the last from the Five Nations of the New World. However, that, yes, means somewhere in the vicinity of Jack and Shit. Yes, belonging to the Covenant or World Crime League actually means something in AS, but seemingly not a lot, at least not if the MC and players don't want it to. What means more is belonging to the Ash Walkers, or the Five Nations Rangers.

Edit: I suppose the order of importance would be "Nation of Origin" (none)>Race (some minor mechanical stuff)>Group (teaches you magic, determines possible occupations)> Occupation (most mechanical importance)

[Grek]

One way to do option #2 for splitting powers along race/occupation lines would be that your race gives you universal powers/devotions and your occupation gives you sorceries. So a Duszek Zombie Marshall gets Patience of the Mountains, Aura Perception and Empty Body from being a Duszek and Compel Spirits, Reanimate and Light of Ennui for being a Zombie Marshall. This is distinct from an Ifrit Zombie Marshall in that the Ifrit show up with Attract, Demand and Dismissal instead of a Duszek's ghostlyness.

[Prak]

Well, DMH isn't "Old West After Sundown" (As cool as that would be), so the powers will likely be at least moderately different. Yes some, even a lot, maybe, will be the same.

While that's not a bad idea, it does mean that Ifrit, guys who are primarily characterized as being giant, hot, metal guys who walk around on fire don't automatically get Hand of Flame, or even Fire Walking.

[Prak]

Quick Note: due to the use of Option Three: All Elves, No Humans, Final Destination., and thus the lack of humans, I'll be using the term Being to mean sentient creatures, where as non-sentient, but non-animal, creatures will be called beasts. Yes, this terminology is stolen directly from Harry Potter. So sue me.

The Giants
Many men stand tall, and certain beings stand above even them. Every region has it's "big scary thing that probably wants to eat you, and, if you're lucky, kill you before they do."
Giants in the New Frontier tend to do jobs that require a high proficiency in aptitudes, such as "be big and scary," and "knock a horse out with one punch," rather than skills, such as leather working. This is not to say that they're dumb, or savage, they just play to their strengths.
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
• Jotun start with a strength of 4 before character creation
• Jotun are invulnerable to any cold, but take half again as much damage from heat based sources, and suffer the consequences of environmental heat above 70 degrees.

Tatanka
Tatanka are slightly smaller than Jotun, standing at only 2.4m tall on average, but their skin seems overlarge even for them, sagging and wrinkling and their massive, horned heads are pushed forward by a large hump, which contains stores of fat and water, allowing Tatanka to go for long periods without food or water. These humps also store time, allowing their shamans to work great magic, and their warriors to be particularly difficult to hurt in combat.
Doing anything seems, to others, to take the Tatanka an excruciatingly long time, but when actually timed, or indirectly observed, it actually take less time to do things, relative to most other beings. Even a run appears to be a plodding, contemplative movement. This is an innate illusion that even they cannot overcome.
Tatanka are a proud, stoic warrior people, who hold great respect for those who endure hardship without complaint. Indeed, the quickest way to gain a Tatanka's respect is to die in battle (which is, notably, not always much of a hindrance in the New Frontier). Though they look much like buffalo, the Tatanka subsist almost entirely upon meat, and spend a great deal of hunting.
Inspiration: Lakota, White Buffalo Woman

• Tatanka Racial Traits
• Tatanka start with strength and agility attributes of 2 before character creation
• Tatanka can spend a power point to get an extra initiative pass once per round in combat.

The Made
Almost wholly unique to the New Frontier are the Made. As industrialization geared up, beings started finding themselves suffering grievous injuries at the same time that steam mechanics and runesmiths were perfecting the artistic science of creating powerful body part replacements.
The made are hulking beings, almost more machine than man. Limbs have been replaced with rune covered or piston powered constructions, skin is implanted with stronger materials, and beings experience an increase of strength, quickness, or both.
Made were once other beings, but having their bodies artificially augmented have removed all the traits they once shared with their fellows.
Inspiration: The Clocktech Soldiers of Sucker Punch, Samurai 7

• Made Racial Traits
• Made start with four extra points to split how they choose between Strength and Agility.
• Integrated Armoury. Made have either a weapon, or armour plating integrated into their bodies.

The Elementals
There are those beings whose closest kin is not those of flesh, or even beasts, but the elements around them. Beings who are composed as much of air or rock or fire as they are sentience. Notably, these beings don't even have flesh, instead seeming more like basic matter made animate.
Elementals in the New Frontier are bound by barely more than this nature, but do often choose jobs that take advantage of their elemental nature.
Ifrit
Inspiration: Spaniards, Mexicans

• Ifrit Racial Traits
• Ifrit have one point of natural armour thanks to their metal skin.
• Ifrit are immune to fire and heat
• Ifrit may inflict 1 Fire Damage to anyone they touch, or who touches them. This damage is entirely under their control.

Skriatok
Inspiration: Russians, Slovaks

• Skriatok Racial Traits
• Skriatok start with one point of natural armour thanks to the fact that they're made of stone.
• Skriatok are immune to most any form of heat or cold.
• Skriatok must touch gold once every three days, if they do not, they become a solid stone statue, unable to move. They will reanimate with no ill effect when touched with gold again.

Ani Yunti
Inspiration: Cherokee

• Ani Yunti Racial Traits
• Ani Yunti rarely touch the ground, floating anywhere from 15 to 60cm off the ground. It is particularly difficult to affect them with ground based attacks.
• The particles floating inside the Ani Yunti's wind sheathe are conductive, and thus they are effectively immune to electricity attacks.
• Ani Yunti are able to detect metal within 4m of their bodies. This makes them handy to have in hostage negotiations where no one is supposed to have a weapon.

The Inscrutable
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
• Partial Incorporeality. During the day, or when their shadow is long, Duszek are mostly incorporeal. At noon and night, they are fully solid and their strength increases by two.

Kachinas
Inspiration: Hopi, Navajo, Pueblo

• Kachina Racial Traits
• The spring like, coiled muscles allow Kachina to mesmerize people. Kachina can roll Expression and all watching can roll willpower to resist. Those who fail lose their actions so long as the Kachina makes a net hit for each target. If they fail to make enough net hits, each target gets to make another roll to break free, the highest rolls break free first.
• Kachinas can make a Hard Expression test to change the weather. They have a modicum of control, but may only achieve roughly natural affects. They can call or stop rain, wind, and cloud cover. Groups of Kachina may accomplish larger changes, but such changes also come with larger difficulties.
• Kinetic Breathing- A Kachina who is motionless cannot breath, unless there is a strong wind blowing.

Jogah
Inspiration: The Five Nations of the Iroquois, TF2 Spies

• Jogah Racial Traits
• Shapeless- Jogah natural forms are little more than ripples in space roughly 1.5m. This does give them a natural camouflage, however. It is a Hard Perception test to spot a Jogah.
• Mask Making- With a Professional Artisan check, Jogah may create a mask that is a double of the face of some other living creature. When they wear this mask, they become an exact duplicate of that creature, and lose the use of their natural camouflage. They only appear to be the creature, they don't gain any of it's special abilities. A Jogah can copy an Ani Yunti, and will appear as a roaring tornado, but they don't gain immunity to electric attacks.

Naturals
Lutin
Inspiration: Basques, Occitans, Gypsies

• Lutin Racial Traits
• Lutins are, at the tallest, half a meter.
• Lutins begin character creation with 2 points of Agility.
• 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 an atheletics check made to jump.
• Lutin antennae allow them to hear particularly high pitched sounds. Should this come in to play, assume that if a dog could hear it, a Lutin can.

Maizenians
Inspiration: Aztec, Maya

• Maizenian Racial Traits
• Photosynthesis- Maizenians do need to eat, but gain most of their nourishment through photosynthesis. On a day that a maizenian is able to absorb sunlight and water for at least three hours, they need only 1/4 as much food as they normally would.

Loci
Inspiration: Italians, Greeks

• Loci Racial Traits

???
Deep Ones
Inspiration: Chinese, H.P. Lovecraft

• Deep One Racial Traits

Anansi
Inspiration:

• Ananasi Racial Traits
• Clinging
• Web Weaving

Wakyambi
Inspiration:

• Wakyambi Racial Traits/b]
• Supernatural Senses

The Old Ones
Alfar
Inspiration:

• Alfar Racial Traits
• Vigor

Sidhe
Inspiration:

• Sidhe Racial Traits

Vanir
Inspiration:

• Vanir Racial Traits

Antagonists
Wendigo
The Wendigo are a loose collection of being-eating tribes and clans that roam the frozen northern forests. While they started as a single, particular race, their habit of mindraping captives into thinking that they're also Wendigo makes them something of a meme, an infectious idea.
The original Wendigo are gaunt, bone white creatures whose faces bear hooks with enough structural integrity to hang pieces of meat from, and whose limbs end in jagged, sharp claws. Bone white is the operative term here. While they can blend in with snow, the older they get, the more they start to resemble old bones, yellowing with the age, save for those who wander sun baked deserts who become bleached and cracked.
The smallest of the giants, on average, a typical Wendigo stands about 2.3m tall, though they are stooped in a predatory hunch. If they were to straighten out, they might stand taller still.
Wendigo tribes tend towards being quite small, as in times of famine, they quickly, remorselessly, turn on their own children, without a thought. At the same time, these same tribes are known for taking captives, dying them white with harsh chymicals, and feeding them heavy drugs until they think they are Wendigo too. Some come down after they've killed their own wives and children. Some come down before they have, while they're doing unspeakable things to their screaming families. The lucky ones have enough thought in their heads to kill themselves. The unlucky ones go mad and swell the ranks of the Wendigo tribe. At least until food cannot be found, when the true Wendigo find them easy to kill.
More than the flesh, it seems the thought of the Wendigo's prey sustains them. An apple or carrot will pass through them like so much dross, their vile digestive system turning it into a rotted mass in it's search for value. An animal is akin to candy, delicious, maybe, but hardly nourishing. A sentient victim, especially those devoured while they still live, is what truly feeds them. Wendigo who are feeling chatty have said that different emotions give their meals different flavours, usually right before they remark how the food may nourish, even make them grow to monstrous size, but will never satiate them, and they get a peculiar gleam in their eyes.
Inspiration: Algonquin, Cree, Seminole, Reavers

• Wendigo Racial Traits
• Giant Size
• Patience of the Mountains
  Power Schedule: Feeding
  Distinctive Flaw:

[CatharzGodfoot]

First, why don't Ifrit get fire walking? Why shouldn't they be immune to flames? Or was that a hypothetical example, since they are listed as getting exactly that?

Second, are you even trying to balance the starting powers? Because if you try to go for something even remotely balanced, you can't give some starting characters advanced powers and others only basic.

Anyway, here are some suggestions:

Duszek
Starting Powers: Aura Perception (Discernment basic), Empty Body (Discernment & Fortitude devotion), Revive the Flesh (Fortitude basic).
Power Schedule: Feeding, probably.
Weakness: Wood.

Maizenians
Starting Powers: Gift of Health (Path of Blood basic), Revive the Flesh (Fortitude basic), Restoration (Fortitude advanced).
Power Schedule: Ritual/Solar (simply requires exposure to direct sunlight for a few hours).
Weakness: Iron.

Vanir
Starting Powers: Flesh of Wood (Clout & Fortitude devotion), Patience of the Mountains (Fortitude basic), Vigor (Clout basic).
Power Schedule: Feeding (i.e. sacrifices) or Lunar.
Weakness: Iron.

Wakyambi
Starting Powers: Death Note (Symphony of Silence advanced), Repel (Magnetism basic), Silent Toll (Symphony of Silence basic).
Power Schedule: Ideally something that can be prevented, i.e. Ritual or Feeding.
Weakness: Iron.

Wendigo
Starting Powers: Clinging (Clout basic), Flight (Clout & Magnetism devotion), Repel (Magnetism basic).
Power Schedule: Feeding (flesh of beings, living or dead).
Weakness: Silver.

---

One issue with power schedules in DMH is that you're no longer one of an elite cadre of supernatural creatures in a world of humans. This means that feeding can't work as it did before; instead, in most cases it has to be a short ritual that uses up valuable or hard to find resources.

---

It's also worth considering the nature of undeath and the presence of other worlds. Given the setting, I don't think that there's a reason to have Maya or the Dark Reflection: it's already deserts, ghost towns, and wilderness. That leaves the Gloom.

The problem with 'everyone is an elf' is that you have to ask what it means to be an undead Duszek or Ani-Yunti. Since undeath is such an important part of the setting, It's worth designing things such that most characters can become undead. That's fine for Deep Ones, Lutin, Jotun, Anansi, Wakyambi, and Tatanka. Duszek, Jogah, and even Ani-Yunti could be spirits from the gloom. Wendigo and Mazenians occupy a sort of vampiric state, which is fine.

The other ones start to get a bit strange.

[Chamomile]

So the rules for using a poker deck are not actually in the thread, but it turns out the AS .pdf was in my backups after all, so I don't have to bother redownloading it.

It's slightly irksome the way that you have to decide which cards are going to be Major in advance, but that might combo well with poker hands. Of course, the problem with that is that you might need much more than five cards if you have 6 players in your party. Assuming that 5 cards per advancement is workable, however, poker hands might convert a certain number of cards from Minor to Major. One pair might convert the first card to Major, two pair might convert the first two, three of a kind or a flush or a full house might convert three, four of a kind and a straight flush might convert four, and a royal flush or dead man's hand (aces and eights, all black) might convert all five to Major. This would mean, however, that there is a Major card a little under half the time, and the odds of two or more majors rapidly vanishes to nothing. You might draw six cards and have the first be Major automatically. Of course, this would also mean you have to figure out what to do with Aces and Kings which come up Major, and you'd have to figure out what to do with the Knight cards from AS since we don't want to be using Jokers or else we'll completely screw up our probabilities. Those are both pretty trivial fixes, though.

EDIT: Also, worth noting that the odds slope off much less quickly in seven card poker than five card, and the odds of getting at least one Major card go up by about thirty percentage points to ~82%, so that is also an option.

EDIT 2: Okay, someone check my math on this. In 7-card poker, the Dead Man's Hand requires four exact cards (ace of clubs, ace of spades, eight of clubs, eight of spades) along with any three other cards. Any of the 48 remaining cards works for slot 5, any of the 47 remaining after that for slot 6, and any of the 46 cards left over work for slot 7. So there are 48*47*46=103,776 possible combinations that all result in a Dead Man's Hand. The total number of combinations available in 7-card poker is, according to Wikipedia, 133,784,560. 103,776/133,784,560=.007%. Was all that math correct or have I screwed something up?

EDIT 3: Concerning power schedules: This isn't After Sundown. Your main mechanical teeth comes from your profession, not your race, so your power schedule should be based on what kind of job you have and not what weird parts you have. Odds are everything is going to be a Ritual power schedule that involves some variety of locking and/or loading.

Concerning other worlds: I think we need a Heaven and a Hell for angels and demons to come from (since a paladin shooting the teeth off a demon was one of the first visuals Prak mentioned for this), and maybe some other planes just for kicks (maybe we want an Abyss, too, so we can import the Blood War or something), but just because this is based in After Sundown's mechanics doesn't mean we need to give it anything to do with After Sundown's fluff. The Gloom is cool and I wouldn't mind seeing it in DMH, and undead are most definitely a thing that needs to happen in a fantasy western, but we don't need to import any of the worlds from AS at all. We could with that one model someone posted a while back where the Elemental Plane of Water is just a big magical ocean somewhere, and the Astral Plane is just the sky, and stars are the demi-planes, and the positive energy plane is the sun, and Baator is just a giant pit somewhere, and etc.

[Grek]

Re: Ifrit. While it's certainly thematic for an Ifrit to be getting stuff out out of Walk of Flames, the actual writeup for them does not actually specify that they're immune to fire at any point. Their powers are A] that their spit sizzles and B] that they can see through fire.

[CatharzGodfoot]

EDIT 3: Concerning power schedules: This isn't After Sundown. Your main mechanical teeth comes from your profession, not your race, so your power schedule should be based on what kind of job you have and not what weird parts you have. Odds are everything is going to be a Ritual power schedule that involves some variety of locking and/or loading.[/Edit]

In that case, Wendigo is a class. Which really works better anyway.

Concerning other worlds: I think we need a Heaven and a Hell for angels and demons to come from (since a paladin shooting the teeth off a demon was one of the first visuals Prak mentioned for this), and maybe some other planes just for kicks (maybe we want an Abyss, too, so we can import the Blood War or something), but just because this is based in After Sundown's mechanics doesn't mean we need to give it anything to do with After Sundown's fluff. The Gloom is cool and I wouldn't mind seeing it in DMH, and undead are most definitely a thing that needs to happen in a fantasy western, but we don't need to import any of the worlds from AS at all. We could with that one model someone posted a while back where the Elemental Plane of Water is just a big magical ocean somewhere, and the Astral Plane is just the sky, and stars are the demi-planes, and the positive energy plane is the sun, and Baator is just a giant pit somewhere, and etc.

If heaven is a place, you have to explain why people don't just hang out there all the time. I like the idea of "heaven" being 'on top of the clouds', which you can hang out in if you can fly for extended periods and deal with the altitude.

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Re: Ifrit. While it's certainly thematic for an Ifrit to be getting stuff out out of Walk of Flames, the actual writeup for them does not actually specify that they're immune to fire at any point. Their powers are A] that their spit sizzles and B] that they can see through fire.

I was talking about Prak's own writeup of Ifrit.