Continuing Heartbreaker notes on my AS remix-hack

[Judging__Eagle]

Since the last thread I posted devolved into people exploiting their privilege and hate speech, it obviously got locked.

K's note that what I want to do is a minefield is completely justified; most male Caucasian inhabitants of the United States of Aristocrats don't actually know what discrimination is; and are generally completely misinformed about how to discuss people without being reduced to using racism and culture appropriationing parody.

Regardless of that, my objectives for my project are to be more along the lines of National Geographic, not ... Dungeons & Dragons, or Warhammer Fantasy RPG. If you are unwilling to speak of different genders, cultures, faiths, and ethnicity with a neutral journalistic level of respect and tolerance, then you can go kindly caress away to educate yourself on race and gender privilege before spreading your kyriarchy-induced fear-mongering in this thread.

This is my Heartbreaker, and my goals are to talk about actual Earth cultures, because truth is stranger and more interesting than fiction; and I personally would prefer to talk about existing cultures that I could present to players, than to make up cultures that I know are always going to be some pale imitating culture appropriating copies of actual Earth cultures.

Personally, I do not trust my imagination to create original content; and prefer to be a researcher and storyteller of actual original content; which is why I decided to take this direction.

The two major benefits that I hope this has are that: 1) this projects vidjya gaem and larp formats have "almost infinite expansions" and 2) I, and potentially other people, who are developing content for this project will have a wide range, and a structured model, for what can be added to this project.

In any case, some of the rough notes I was writing last night based on the thread that I've come up with; as well as some additional After Sundown based remixes are....

Okay, so far, this is what I'm thinking might work:

Start:

Okay, so far, this is what I'm thinking might work:

Start:

1) Don't even pretend to do Earth historically. At least not in the last two thousand years or so. My setting will have to have diverged radically from Earth, and be an alternate Earth setting.

A) The specieal, ethnic, gender, sexuality, egalitarian movement has to be a thing that already happened, ages ago.

I) Technology should have hit Gibsonian Cyberpunk, Shadowrun, or Frank Trollman's Asymmetric Threat levels of technology; at least. Ideally surpassed it. As well as inherently been the source of its own collapse.

Middle:

2) Don't even begin promoting a Euro-centric, or possibly a Eurasian-centric, power structure model. Australian Dreamwalkers, First Nations Medicine-workers, and African Rainmakers should be just as important as Hellenic steam-mech inventors; Chinese Nano-Tao granite-makers; and Indian Hindu iron-priests. However, these examples are are just conceptual descriptions.

B) Apply the "Everything is Monsters" aspect of "Dead Man's Hand"; via the After Sundown lens (everything is Spawn; all the the AS types have to be restructured along biological groupings (so Troglodytes are Primates; Gnolls are Bagheera-Ocelotol); Witches, Transhumans, and Frankenstiens are based off of Spawn types; Lycanthropes can be spawn now).

Further to this; all of the existing creature/monster types need to have their biological types vastly expanded, as far as they can, without overlapping with other monster types, and the assumption is that the setting is a fantasy kitchen sink.

Creatures of any specific species originate from their species native environment, and their culture vaguely resembles what their human analogs of the early paleolithic to early iron age did (or bonze/iron age, if the region developed bronze before iron).

Then the world goes cyberpunk/quantum-tech; avoiding the colonialism period of our Earth which is incredibly harmful to the presentation of human cultures in an equitable manner.

Vampires:
-Drakes [All Chirpoterans (bats), Possibly Soricmorpha (Shrews, Moles, Hedgehogs and other insectivores; yes that fact that Mi Go are the prey of Infernal vampires isn't lost on me as being a happy coincidence]
-Kraken [All invertebrate Aquatic organisms that are not Arthropods]
-Dragons [All Reptiles, turtles, crocodiles, snakes, dinosaurs, birds]

Lycanthropes
-Hell-cat/Ocelotol-Bagheera [Felids; includes Hyena] (note: are Infernal now, and take the formerly Nezumi power)
-Berzerkers [Canids, Ursines, Pinnipeds (seals)]
-Kobalt-Gnomes [Rodents; also moles] (note: are Orphic now, and take the formerly Bagheera power)

Transmortals
-Erased* [Demon/Fairy slaves]
-Shaman [Take body/mind altering substances; change appearance]
-Reincarnated [Can basically 'be' anything else in their backstory; so a Macaw spawn could have been a Berzerker champion; and will now always look/act like a Berzerker, even though they still look like a Dragon]

Animates:
-Simulacra [Gender neutral replacement of Android; also more accurate to the intention; since "android" is often used in mainstream entertainment when they usually mean a robot that barely looks like a person; which should be a golem-robota; Data/Lore; Galatea; Talos;]
-Golem-Robota [Robots that look like robots; Transformers, Johnny 5; R2-D2]
-Frankensteins [Any of the other spawn that have been: made into a cyborg, cloned, stitched together]

Witches
-Warlock [An english literature friend of mine who was taking a course on the history of witchcraft in literature that I've been talking to about my AS remix project pointed out that the Disloyal disadvantage, and my original labelling of Baali as Warlocks is correct; since the word warlock essentially meant traitor; this creature type 'could' be used to represent something like Dominions Abysians; or simply the fact that there is more mass of biological life within the Earths mantle, than on it]
-Druid [Ungulates, and their cousins cetaceans; which neatly fixes a problem that I had of "where do minotaurs go" (instead of them being Chimeras; which almost anything can easily be placed); and also covers whales and dolphins
-Khaibit-Liche [Dead things; look like their type; if they pick up animal form they'll be limited to corpse eaters; includes Tasmanian devils, vultures (possibly corvids); I'm reluctant to include carrion eaters; as most predators are also carrion eaters opportunistically]

Lovecraftians
-Mi Go [Arthropoda in general; crabs, spiders, ants, bees, scoprions; yes this is a divergence from AS in that 'blood suckers' are in here; but Krakens already get nice things like cephalopods, anemones, urchins, nudibranches, and hagfish]
-Deep Ones [Aquatic/Amphibian Vertebrates; included lampreys, eels, most species of 'fish', sharks, frogs, newts; making Altanteans from Dominions 3 able to look like frogs, or angler fish]
-Troglodytes [Primates; I didn't think of where to put this type of mammal until I was looking up Chimpanzees (Pan Troglodytes); and it works; more "cannibal cave hominds" than "mole men" now; but Luminary Troglodytes are seriously "Cave leaders"; Dom 3's Argatha would be classified as Troglodytes; this classification also gives me the side benefit of "always" being able to classify players/cast at a larp as a type of 'monster' without makeup (but only as an Extra, you need to 'look' like a Ghoul to count as a luminary); and makes players much more respectful (and slightly more immersive) of non-participating people; since they inherently look like "cannibal mutants"]



*: I'm still not happy with this name

II) The three worlds + earth model is to be reduced to "three worlds" instead. The Astral is also traditional views of Heaven, and our universe (really it's all about the EM specrtum; where the Heavens represent other bandwidths of energy/light/aether). While the Charred Reflection is a quantum universe spinoff where all things that reached 100* C are copied to (the first time that happens; if not it'll be flooded or overly humid). While the Frozen Reflection is an other quantum universe where all places that have reached 0*C (again, the first time) and/or have had no sunlight touch its surface. The Charred reflection often looks like the floor is lava; and the Frozen Shadows often have massive glaciers.

End:

3) The existing power structures are locked in a thousands year old war with the Charred Reflection, the Frozen Shadows; and plant & animal monsters from other stars. They control regions; but the wilderness is filled with ruined cities that built too large; and were then conquered when the fires of industry summoned Infernal forces; the dreams of the masses spawned an Astral rift; or a single winter brought too large of a zombie horde. Tech is asymmetrically advanced (and it's not a disadvantage or advantage); but civilization isn't able to get too large without destroying itself.

C) Characters 'start' as Extras (or at least the general population is made up of extras); and go out to slay monsters; or capture enemies who will work for their captors for a socially established amount of time. This gains the characters power or respect. Killing monsters unlocks a characters powers, and killing enough monsters of a certain type turns them into a fully fledged version of their spawn-type of creature; unless they become a witch, transmortal; or get transformed into a Cyborg (frankenstien).

III) Technology has to be both super primitive; and quantum tech. Feather armour-wearing Deep Ones with obsidian macuahuitls should also carry looted Ancient micro-fusion laser-projectors over their shoulder, and access the controls for war-mechs via Nadesico/Lensman hand-implants, or SR style head-jacks.

Edits to the AS rules.

.... I've also been hacking the After Sundown character sheet (first hack p1p2; replaced with this hack; and have been able to rearrange the information into three major columns; Form (Retro); Abilities (Stupid); and Resources (Pretentious); instead of the 2 sheet method that is in use.

[additionally; I did some basic copypasta to arrange the tables in Lokathor's pdf into three semi-related pages p1(danger, equipment); p2(resources/obligations, advancement); p3 (Magic tables)]

Additionally; I've stripped the six attribute system; and replaced it with a 4 attribute system. Removed 'combat' as a skill; and re-organized the existing 20 skills into 4 hard-locked categories based on the 4 attributes I'm now using.

Combat is sort of in limbo, as to how a creature generates a combat dice pool (I was using Earth + Water for melee; and Air + Fire for ranged; but that's only been for 2 sessions, and only one party combat so far).

I'm considering having a character pick which skills they use for their Combat dice pool. With [P]hysical being used for melee; ocial used for unarmed (and small weapons); and [T]technical for ranged. Thrown still hinges off of the Athletics skill, b/c I like that a lot; and Archery may also hinge off of it as well (or be a 'pick and choose' option; where a creature can use a Physical skill, or a Technical skill to use a bow and arrow; grenades, javelins and using an atlatl is never going to change from Athletics).


As for magic; and characters using magic that "they don't know"; but have a book for.... earlier this week I thought that the D&D model for wizards could/might be a good idea.

The character has to carry their book(s) with them (a liability); and either carry expensive focuses for some spells, or use appropriate material components for (not sure how to adjudicate which spells gets used for what; I'm thinking basic spells use components; and advanced use foci; elder powers require an artifact; and the book that has an elder spell doesn't work for casting said elder spell).

With the general idea being that Astral needs living things (or once living things?); Infernal involves burning things (plus other options?); and Orphic involves dead things (or killing things?).

This doesn't mean that the spell will even work; merely that the character can make a roll to see if it works; and needs to get 6 hits for the spell to even go off. Basically, all spells you 'don't know' count as having -5 Hits; even if you're spending components, and carrying expensive foci.

Which brings in the elements of "Doubt" that I wanted magic to still have.

I'm probably going to also have spells that you don't know, cost +1 power points. Which means normally 'free' Sorceries cost Power Points to use.
==========

Of course, if no one likes any of this, I won't be surprised; I'm only partly sure on most of this; and I've been slowly spit-balling this and bouncing it off of players in several play test games in the last few years.

I would appreciate advice and critique though.

[Strung Nether]

K's note that what I want to do is a minefield is completely justified; most male Caucasian inhabitants of the United States of Aristocrats don't actually know what discrimination is; and are generally completely misinformed about how to discuss people without being reduced to using racism and culture appropriationing parody.

Tip: Not insulting people will probably get you closer to whatever your goal is than not. You don't really gain anything by being a dick.

[Judging__Eagle]

Actually, I'm stating observable facts.

The funny part is that you think I'm being insulting by explaining that people in a position of privilege aren't able to fully understand discrimination. You're proving my point, and you think it's insulting; and your argument is one of 'offended' privilege.

Unless you have personally been subject to discrimination; it's unlikely that you're able to even consider how privileged you are.

That's the very definition of privilege. You assume that the way you are treated is normal; and that you deserve to be treated that way; while anyone who confronts you about it is offensive because it undermines your feelings of entitlement to said privilege.

Having been on both sides of the privilege/discrimination fence, I've been able to recognize the moments where my privilege as appearing as a white caucasian male being really apparent, and it's always been shocking to receive preferred or deferential treatment simply because of how I look.

The fact that most people who are discriminated against are not able to escape that discrimination on an institutional, daily, basis is why I try to talk about confronting ones own unknown privilege in the first place.

Owning up to privilege is incredibly difficult, and many people have different sorts of privilege; just as many people also suffer different sorts of discrimination.

Being able to undermine your own comfortable positions is seriously counter to how humans function; and you have to fight your primitive monkey brain every step of the way. Myself, I am barely able to fully understand the extent of my privilege on a daily basis (which is a result of many reasons; colonialism, racism, sexism, heteronormativity, kyriarchy and patriarchy are just some of the larger ones), and when confronted with it have to make an effort to find out what is meant by those who confront my pre-conceived notions.

The most ridiculous argument some one said to me recently was that straight white males are the most discriminated against.. which is insane on so many levels; and is an example of 'offended privilege'.

[Strung Nether]

United States of Aristocrats

I make close to minimum wage. also: Don't generalize that much. it makes you sound dumb.

You're proving my point, and you think it's insulting; and your argument is one of 'offended' privilege.

My "argument" is that you are being a dick. Not because of what you are saying is untrue, but because you are being a dick. Then you go on and accuse me of a whole bunch of things under the assumption that I don't agree with you. You have an axe to grind and are swinging it at the wrong people. You REALLY aren't going to change anyone's mind going about it the way you are now, so I recommend you try to be more diplomatic. It doesn't matter if what the dude screaming on the street corner is true, no one is going to listen because he is offensive and annoying.

[erik]

Alternative names for Erased/Fallen/Changelings:

Forgotten Ones
Stolen/Lost Children

Or... any reason not to just go back to Changeling? Surely it is in common domain.

I haven't fully digested the implications of your changes. Going to 4 stats means an overhaul of many important things tho.

[infected slut princess]

[Seerow]

Judging Eagle, doing his best to turn the Gaming Den into a gaming parody of Tumblr since 2008.

[Judging__Eagle]

United States of Aristocrats

I make close to minimum wage. also: Don't generalize that much. it makes you sound dumb.

Actually, I'm not referring to you specifically. I'm referring to the ruling class of that specific state you live in. The ruling class of the USA was, and for the most part still is, some sort of descendants or relatives of old European feudal powers. It's not a state of america, but a state of; or rather for, aristocrats.

The separation in productivity and earnings in North America is frankly astounding (around 1986 did this start happening); and only because of corporate lobbying is there a situation where the minimum wage is criminally low, while the actual productivity of the laborers has continually increased with very little pause.

Fectin,

I'll have to admit, you've got me beat. I'm too stupid to know exactly what you mean.

Erik,

That's completely understandable. I spent months trying to think of how I would arrange attributes and have less of them.

For the most part, the base attributes divide as follows

First, I reduced the amount of total points a character can spend across the four attribute (to 14); while still having limits such as "minimum 1" and "maximum 7". Now, I can't say that I remember why I picked 14 points; but probably because it was a 30% reduction if I summed the points AS normally grants to divide across its six attributes.

For the most part, each of the three attribute pairs can be split between 2 of the four attributes.
Physical:
Strength [Earth/Determination; Fire/Cooperation]
Agility [Air/Exploration; Water/Imagination]

Social:
Willpower [Earth, Water]
Charisma [Air, Fire]

Mental:
Logic [Air, Earth]
Intuition [Fire, Water]

Happily, none of the pairs repeats.

The 20 remaining skills that remain after combat still retain their Physical, Social, and Technical, identifiers; they've instead been sorted among those four traits.

The reason for "hard coding" skills to traits is that it removes a negotiation step; and the traits that they are linked to aren't as rigid as the original six were.

The reason that I'm reluctant to call the Fallen Changelings is that Changelings are what are supposed to 'replace' the Fallen; not be the Fallen themselves. Most likely, the 'Changelings' from myth are Mirror Goblins (I've been overhauling the non-playable types as well; I've made a connection between the lorax, ewoks, pac-man, dwarves and goblins for example; and Elves, Eldar, Spriggan, Xenomorphs; Trolls cover a bunch of types in core AS).

Also ... damn; yeah, Lost Boys (from Peter Pan; not fire vampires) is a good title; I've actually made that connection more than once, and keep forgetting it. I've just had trouble making it stick or be summarized. Simply calling them "Lost" works well (and better than 'Erased' @_@); and meshes with the fact that their histories are also lost.

Infected Slut Princess,

I'm glad that you see how the disciplines that Shaman/Icarids get match the photo you linked; with powers such as Mask of a Thousand Faces.

I only made that connection in the last few weeks myself.

Edit:

Seerow,

Sorry, you're not from that time period; but TGD was previously hosted on bboy.net; then moved enmasse to this domain in 2008, whereupon all previous members were listed as joining in 2008. I've possibly been doing this since .... 31 Dec 2006.

[Avoraciopoctules]

[Judging__Eagle]

[img]

O hope you realize that you're not making it a harder sell that Shaman inherently have Dark Night of the Soul, because that's totally how that power works. They same something rude/scary; and the target has a Despair frenzy.

[Judging__Eagle]

img

I hope you realize that you're not making it a harder sell that Shaman inherently have Dark Night of the Soul, because that's totally how that power works. They same something rude/scary; and the target has a Despair frenzy.

[Lokathor]

Hey. I just thought I'd mention that if you're also remixing After Sundown rules-wise, you should delete the sentence in the "Being Dead" subsection of the "Healing and Death" section of the "Danger" chapter that reads

A character's Power pool is also emptied at the moment the character actually dies.

All it does is fuck over anyone with a Ritual or Feeding power schedule that has the Restoration power. The intent was to keep Trolls (and other Continual power source creatures) from coming back to life right away, but Restoration still has a 4 hour countdown of its own, and you can always separate the dead thing's heart from it's brain anyway.

[Judging__Eagle]

You know what? Thanks so much.

I've actually been looking at that, and wondering if the only way to solve the issue of non-lunar creatures with Restoration involved pouring the Path of Blood Power Points substance (i.e. "cocaine blood") on such a corpse.

Do you have any recommend way to make further edits to the PDF you made?

I've printed off... several copies at this point for players at the table to use (like 4 in binders), or keep for themselves (via printing 4 of the PDF's pages per page side); but I'd also like to start implementing more changes to the text, and adding in my own drawings and art.

[Bill Bisco: Isometric Imp]

most male Caucasian inhabitants of the United States of Aristocrats don't actually know what discrimination is

This is racist dribble. You should really post this in MPSIMS. And save us.

For the rest of what you're saying, your ideas seem fine, but again, the devil is in the mechanics. We need mechanics to give any meaningful feedback. And, your flavor is only as good as your mechanics.

[Lokathor]

Do you have any recommend way to make further edits to the PDF you made?

https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/118 ... Tablet.zip

https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/118 ... 0print.zip

Well... You can use the LaTeX source in either of these. But you'd have to learn a little LaTeX in the process. The "tablet" version had all the images stripped out, font upsized, pages made smaller, and I highlighted all the dice pools shown so that you could skim it faster. Also I reorganized the section ordering because some of that stuff needed it.

[Judging__Eagle]

Bill Brisco,

It's not dribble. Some minor inconveniences =/= a life time of oppression. Jane Elliot's Blue Eyes/Brown Eyes exercises have always been controversial (even as recently as 2009 in the subtly racist UK as seen here; it's a 47 min video), but they do demonstrate that the reality is, it's really hard to accept and confront racism within yourself; and that for most people because it doesn't exist for them, they don't perceive it when actual black people who experience it daily, and "play the game" to avoid it, say it still does exist.


I won't say that I never was racist myself, because I was an ignorant little shit as a kid, who really wasn't aware of anything, and grew up in a subtly racist caucasian suburb.

However, with self-education, and having experienced oppression based on my appearance over decades, I've learned to try and understand the point of view of those oppressed by racism.

Very rarely, I'm able to use my white privilege to confront racist things that I encounter; and hopefully that grain of sand will be added to the boulders other people have pushed towards the ongoing issue of subtle hate.

Even adults engage in victim blaming, and excusing, when confronted with the fact that racism hasn't disappeared. I have to watch myself, and be aware of my privilege.

As for mechanics...

I really haven't changed much of standard AS.

I decided to hack/remix After Sundown because it needs almost no changes to be made to it.

The dice results are still on the sale 1-5 Hits = Mortal, and 6+ Hits = Supernatural.

The most that I'm doing are reductions in complexity, or additions to what can be done within the engine.

One thing that I've been trying is the following:

The character sheets that I posted in my original post.
Ver 4.7; Which are compression and revisions to previous character sheets
Pg 1 Pg 2. With a Retro/Stupid/Pretentious division.

On Sorceries you don't know: That's an additional mechanic I've come up with in the last couple of weeks that I want to use to see if it can handle spells that characters don't know; but have access to.

I'll handle Sorcerous Focuses as Equipment; and Sorcerous Components as Supplies; but I'm not sure if either will function well, as the mechanics I have for Equipment/Supplies will mean that on a fail they do nothing of note; and the components will be consumed.

Equipment & Supplies

This is a Cray computer, I hope you're sufficiently impressed by it's two gigabytes of processing power

Outdated Batman references aside, characters in narratives very often do have pieces of equipment that they use, that aren't a face-stabber or murder-spitter. Such items can be classified as Equipment, if using them doesn't leave the audience expecting them to be "worn out" upon use; or Supplies, if the audience does expect them to be "worn out" with use.

Buying Equipment or Supplies; a character can buy one set of mundane Equipment or Supplies per Finances background rating, whose rating is equal to the Background.

For example:

Equipment
Malkero "the Duke of Cheese" is a Vampire (Dragon) and has Finances 3 (Cheese Importing Concern). With this Background, they could purchase a Rating 3 set of Equipment, or Supplies; and choose a blistering high end portable micro-computer (Equipment 3; Micro-Computer (Electronics)) with which they use for a variety of Electronics related purposes in relation to their work as a Business person, and as a "Business" person, as well as helping to manage the Band's logistics.

Supplies
Needleteeth, a Troglodyte doctor/bassist and Cleanser of Flesh, carries a black bag full of an assortment of narcotics "strictly for medicinal purposes; also 'medicinal' purposes". To afford this, he has Finances 3 (Preshious metals), and buys a Supplies 3 Black Bag (Medicine).

For Sorcerous Focuses, and Sorcerous Components; the same is done on a per sorcery basis, and are paid for with Secrets instead of Finances.

Focuses count as Equipment, and are not consumed; while Components may be consumed.

Using Equipment & Supplies

You put mags in your rifle, and rubbers on your gun.

Using Equipment and Supplies doesn't actually make you roll more dice, because that would go to crazy town too easily.

Instead, Equipment and Supplies limit your scale of failure.

Upon botching a check, for which you have Equipment or Supplies for, you instead use the Rating of the item in question, and receive an amount of hits equal to their rating. Yes, this means that even if you roll a single Hit with a Rating 2 or better item, that you got a worse result than if you had 'failed'; even an expert with state of the art equipment can perform poorly.

Additionally, Supplies have a 1 point penalty applied to them each time this is done. When this penalty is equal to the supplies rating; that set of supplies is assumed to be "used up", and cannot be used again, until a reasonable "resupply" has occured.