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Posted: Tue May 17, 2011 7:56 pm
by CatharzGodfoot
My wife offered to do some illustrations. I showed her the descriptions of the monsters, some characters, destinies, etc. She'll probably just do whatever strikes her fancy, but is there anything specific that you'd like to see done?
Vampires wrote:Exemplars: Dracula. Did we mention Dracula? I mean sure, we can talk about the vampires from Blade or Buffy, and we will even. But all Vampire mythos in the modern world always comes back to Dracula, because he is that awesome. Also-ran to the beast from Nosferatu, because he is also awesome.
Wat?
Posted: Tue May 17, 2011 8:38 pm
by Chamomile
Well guys, I guess it's time to just pack the Homebrew forum up. Frank wins at designing TTRPGs. Forever. gg
Posted: Tue May 17, 2011 8:48 pm
by Username17
CatharzGodfoot wrote:My wife offered to do some illustrations. I showed her the descriptions of the monsters, some characters, destinies, etc. She'll probably just do whatever strikes her fancy, but is there anything specific that you'd like to see done?
I would like to see several pictures of what is identifiably the same character. Ideally I'd like to throw in some fairly active-looking comic pieces in the Danger chapter, and it would be nice if it involved some iconic cast doing various stuff. So for example, we have these two women:
And we could see them in Scooby Doo style chase scenes or in a combat pose or whatever. Here is a piece of special guest art that was already done:
But it doesn't all have to be slightly creepy women. Some of it can be creepy dudes too.
Vampires wrote:Exemplars: Dracula. Did we mention Dracula? I mean sure, we can talk about the vampires from Blade or Buffy, and we will even. But all Vampire mythos in the modern world always comes back to Dracula, because he is that awesome. Also-ran to the beast from Nosferatu, because he is also awesome.
Wat?
Also-ran. It's like honorable mention.
-Username17
Posted: Tue May 17, 2011 9:14 pm
by fectin
Try, "A special also-ran award goes to..."
It's unclear as is.
Posted: Tue May 17, 2011 9:28 pm
by CatharzGodfoot
You're using "also-ran" like "honorable mention" or "second place" ('Honorable mention/second place [goes] to Nosferatu'), but that's a really strange and confusing use of it. The ninjas in Blade are "also-rans". Nosferatu is a primary source.
Posted: Tue May 17, 2011 10:27 pm
by Username17
Starmaker wrote:there's no guarantees that any humans will survive
“there are no guarantees” or “there is no guarantee”
I'm working through edits, but this one I want to pull aside: it's actually correct as-is. The contraction form of "there are" is "there's". This is because "are" and "is" are both forms of the word "be". A contraction of "are" is normally "-'re" as in "they're". But for "there" that would be hard for English speakers to say: "There're" is a no-go. So when you contract "there are" it converts to the closest form that fits in an English speaker's mouth: "There's".
That has been your obscure Natural English Linguistics lesson for today.
-Username17
Posted: Thu May 19, 2011 3:14 pm
by CatharzGodfoot
[*] The reference to carnivorous plants in Mictlan is jarring. Why are there living plants at all? Isn't Maya full of carnivorous plants anyway?
[*] You start talking about attributes in resistance tests before you actually introduce them. Perhaps it would make sense to move the resistance test section to just after the attributes. Alternatively, you could fold it into the Edge section (before "spending and recovering edge").
Posted: Thu May 19, 2011 4:06 pm
by Kaelik
Rules questions:
1) Character Advancement, how do you feel about players sitting down and deciding in advance that all cards will be bought for one token no matter what, to maximize advancement, and they just work out who gets what in advance? Would you be upset? Would you encourage it? Would you just accept it if it happened? Would you try to ban talking during the bid phase to limit it?
2) Specializations:
a) Here's some specializations, Medicine (Circulatory System), Animal Ken (Insects) Are those out of line? IE, for example a character that wants to then apply Circulatory System to every time they use a Path of Blood ability that involves Medicine, or a Mi Go that wants to apply specialization every time they use a Swarm Song ability involving their insects.
b) Am I right? Like, you can actually use specializations with your powers? Or is that not okay?
c) How do powers that pull off of technical skills work with specializations? Do you take a -1 defaulting penalty every time you use Progress of Glass unless you have a specialization that plausibly applies to Magical Glass Manipulation? Should be have specializations like "Operations (Progress of Glass)"?
3) Powers/Sorceries:
Can you have a Sorcery listed in another type than your source? Are you allowed to be a Kaibit who uses Progress of Glass? Some creatures appear to naturally have abilities from different sorceries (IE all three power sources for Vamps have Path of Blood Basic), and you reference Lure of Destruction under Swarm Song, and that's Orphic whereas Swarm is Astral. Is it safe to assume that a Kaibit can just use non Orphic Sorceries, and they just become Orphic in their interactions with, for example, seeds and mayflies? Or do they remain Astral? Or are specific supernatural base abilities exceptions to the otherwise rule that you can only do stuff within your power source or Universal?
Posted: Fri May 20, 2011 12:55 pm
by Username17
Kaelik wrote:Rules questions:
1) Character Advancement, how do you feel about players sitting down and deciding in advance that all cards will be bought for one token no matter what, to maximize advancement, and they just work out who gets what in advance? Would you be upset? Would you encourage it? Would you just accept it if it happened? Would you try to ban talking during the bid phase to limit it?
This sort of thing would be acceptable. If the players decide amongst themselves who deserves each advancement card or who "needs" what advancement in order to accomplish whatever the team wants to do, then they should be rewarded for that. Having everyone save all their advancement tokens doesn't really get them more advancements, because when the cards run out they run out. The only thing that could happen is players could get into bidding wars and run out their tokens before running out of cards (though that's severely unlikely since you bid on the cards one at a time, and if bidding is severe enough whoever got bidded out just picks up the remaining - presumably less desired - cards at discount).
2) Specializations:
a) Here's some specializations, Medicine (Circulatory System), Animal Ken (Insects) Are those out of line? IE, for example a character that wants to then apply Circulatory System to every time they use a Path of Blood ability that involves Medicine, or a Mi Go that wants to apply specialization every time they use a Swarm Song ability involving their insects.
b) Am I right? Like, you can actually use specializations with your powers? Or is that not okay?
Sure, you could do something like that. You can only apply one specialization to any roll. So in the fullness of time, specializations amount to "Player Characters get a +2 bonus for describing how stuff relates to other stuff".
c) How do powers that pull off of technical skills work with specializations? Do you take a -1 defaulting penalty every time you use Progress of Glass unless you have a specialization that plausibly applies to Magical Glass Manipulation? Should be have specializations like "Operations (Progress of Glass)"?
Powers don't actually have that particular problem, but I should definitely write that in. Thanks!
3) Powers/Sorceries:
Can you have a Sorcery listed in another type than your source? Are you allowed to be a Kaibit who uses Progress of Glass? Some creatures appear to naturally have abilities from different sorceries (IE all three power sources for Vamps have Path of Blood Basic), and you reference Lure of Destruction under Swarm Song, and that's Orphic whereas Swarm is Astral. Is it safe to assume that a Kaibit can just use non Orphic Sorceries, and they just become Orphic in their interactions with, for example, seeds and mayflies? Or do they remain Astral? Or are specific supernatural base abilities exceptions to the otherwise rule that you can only do stuff within your power source or Universal?
The only limitation on Sorcery is that when you get a power advancement card that would allow you to gain a sorcery, you need to fulfill one of three conditions:
- You already have that power and are buying an extra ability.
- It's your cultic sorcery.
- You have an appropriate magic book that tells you how to do it.
When you use a sorcery with a different power source than your own, it detects as and is countered by whatever is appropriate for its actual type, not yours.
-Username17
Posted: Sat May 21, 2011 6:48 am
by ...You Lost Me
All right, I'm probably missing some giant chunk of information, but this smells an awful lot like aWoD...
Posted: Sat May 21, 2011 7:11 am
by rampaging-poet
That's because it is aWoD. Frank's re-writing it with all of White Wolf's intellectual property swapped out for invented or public-domain names so that it can be published without anyone being sued.
Posted: Sat May 21, 2011 7:13 am
by Quantumboost
...You Lost Me wrote:All right, I'm probably missing some giant chunk of information, but this smells an awful lot like aWoD...
The entire point of After Sundown as I understand it was to scrub aWoD of product identity so that people could do things like publish and sell splatbooks for it (like the otherworld supplements Frank mentioned) without getting into trouble with whoever owns the World of Darkness property.
Edit: omg ninja poet
Posted: Sat May 21, 2011 4:54 pm
by Username17
CatharzGodfoot wrote:[*] The reference to carnivorous plants in Mictlan is jarring. Why are there living plants at all? Isn't Maya full of carnivorous plants anyway?
Good point. How does the current version measure up?
-Username17
Posted: Sat May 21, 2011 5:09 pm
by CatharzGodfoot
After writing up a pair of characters, I begin to question the wisdom of allowing specialization and miscellaneous bonuses to apply to disciplines. Here's an example:
Troglodyte. Logic 6. Research (archives) 6. Advanced Descent of Entropy (Aura of Decay in case you care).
This results in a Psychometry rating of... 18 (6+6+2+4).
This was not an intentional min/maxing beyond putting the key skill and attribute at max rating.
The second issue is that, while certain specializations obviously apply to certain disciplines (a Faustian astronomer with Progress of Glass powers and Operations (optics)), others are really unclear (from the previous example, what Survival specialization applies to Aura of Decay?).
By the way, even without maxed attributes the Baali astronomer has Curse of Failure and Dark Nicht of the Soul scores of 17 thanks to Walk of Flame (Sabotage +4) and a specialization in "disabling stuff" (which presumably is good for making people fail too).
This was also an unintentional synergy arising from trying to make a Faustian Baali as Ifrit-like as possible.
It's quite possible that these are lowscores. For an actual min/max exercise, imagine a werewolf with Giant Size and Transformation. Little bunnies everywhere.
Another issue is whether a mirror with a pocket can be placed in a mirror pocket. Right now I've got this character written up as keeping a 100 x 100 cm mirror in a 7 x 100 cm mirror in a 5 x 5 cm mirror.
And also, whether a character needs Mirror pocket to access an existing pocket. I can see good arguments both ways.
Posted: Sat May 21, 2011 5:40 pm
by Kaelik
CatharzGodfoot wrote:It's quite possible that these are lowscores. For an actual min/max exercise, imagine a werewolf with Giant Size and Transformation. Little bunnies everywhere.
I think Str things have extreme potential to get out of control, but not going into Str, because that's too much work, a Potency 1 starting Mi Go could be rolling:
7 Willpower + 6 Animal Ken + 2 specialty (insects) + 6 Animal Ken bonus from Call of the Wild Insects with Beast Form Insects, or 21 dice.
Course, 21 Magnify Swarm Dice doesn't appear to be terribly more powerful than 15. Unlike something like:
Flames of Panic on someone with Advanced Chasing Storm and Path of Blood (So no starting character but still Potency 1)
7 Agility + 6 Survival + 2 Speciality + 2 Chasing Storm + 2 Path of Blood for 19, and every net hit is a round of them not being able to do anything useful, and it has a pretty good AoE.
Posted: Sun May 22, 2011 4:28 am
by ...You Lost Me
Under "Plants", the section "Mantrap" talks about "Aubrey" from Little Shop of Horrors. The plant's name is actually Audrey II.
Posted: Mon May 23, 2011 12:30 am
by CatharzGodfoot
FrankTrollman wrote:CatharzGodfoot wrote:[*] The reference to carnivorous plants in Mictlan is jarring. Why are there living plants at all? Isn't Maya full of carnivorous plants anyway?
Good point. How does the current version measure up?
-Username17
Fine, except I'm still not sure how plants that need blood to survive don't just wither and die. Having only fungi (that fruit on corpses and otherwise just encyst) would make more sense.
Here's another death-related issue: Dream vision (and possibly DoP) should be usable while
dead, just like Restoration.
Posted: Mon May 23, 2011 3:24 am
by Koumei
...if you get it on Amazon or whatever before tax returns come in, and thus any purchases are part of this financial year, does that mean any roleplaying books you bought in the last financial year can be written off as business expenses?
Posted: Mon May 23, 2011 3:58 pm
by Orion
The problem with deducting business expenses if that you can generally only deduct them from your income from that business.
Posted: Mon May 23, 2011 4:40 pm
by CatharzGodfoot
Orion wrote:The problem with deducting business expenses if that you can generally only deduct them from your income from that business.
Unless the business is a farm. Is there any way to get Sundown classified as a farm?
Posted: Mon May 23, 2011 4:43 pm
by fectin
Rent a farm, then sublet to LARPers?
Posted: Mon May 23, 2011 5:30 pm
by Maxus
fectin wrote:Rent a farm, then sublet to LARPers?
Buy a plot of land here in Alabama and just let the trees grow and then do what the hell you like?
No, really, claiming land for agricultural use here is really that easy. Developers do it all the time while they're killing time and letting property values go up and cities expand and junk. Let the trees grow, pay the super-low 'agricultural use' rate for property tax, then when they close the deal, a lumber company pays them for the privilege of cutting down the trees and carrying them away, and they also get the couple-hundred-thousand the land is -really- worth to someone who wants to put in a subdivision or build condos or what have you.
You can also sublet it to LARPers to let them play in the woods. That helps make it closer to truth.
Posted: Mon May 23, 2011 6:17 pm
by fectin
That was trying to answer "how to get an RPG classed as a farm". I figure, if your RPG expenses are tied to your farm business, that's good enough. Therefor you need to be bringing in RPG revenue from your farm. Sounds like LARPing to me.
Posted: Mon May 23, 2011 8:27 pm
by Koumei
So my "Do one art commission, claim my tablet as a tax dodge even though I basically get all of my tax back (lowest income bracket) anyway" plan is pointless anyway because it would only apply to the $5-10 gained from the commission? Damn.
Posted: Mon May 23, 2011 9:23 pm
by Josh_Kablack
In the US, income from freelance writing or selling books from a vanity press counts as Self-Employment income. As such, it is subject to Federal Income Tax, FICA taxes (Medicare and Social Security) as well as potentially subject to State and Local Income Taxes (although those vary with State and Locality).
At the federal level, you can deduct all "reasonable and ordinary" expenses from your business income on your Schedule C and related documents, and there is not a numeric limit to what those expenses can be. Instead there a legalese meaning attached to "reasonable and ordinary"; and there is a general guideline that the IRS will reclassify any Schedule C type business as a non-deductable "hobby" if it fails to show a profit for three years running.
Of course, all that applies only to individual income taxes - where your business is a Sole Proprietorship, Spousal Partnership or (member or spousal) Limited Liability Corp. If you are a C-Corp or an S-Corp the rules are different. Likewise if you're somewhere other than the USA the rules are also different.