AS2: Incorporeality.

Username17 · Post by **Username17** » Wed Feb 17, 2016 3:01 pm

Intangible creatures are a mainstay of horror, science fiction, fantasy, and role playing games. So it's no surprise that it's an important thing in After Sundown as well. I want to clean it up for AS2, and that's obviously very difficult. Incorporeality is a giant mess in pretty much every game, whether it's D&D or World of Darkness, so it's pretty much no surprise that the version I wrote up had too many moving parts as well. About the only game that handles such things in an explicable way is Shadowrun, which is why I leaned heavily on Shadowrun for a lot of the mechanics. But After Sundown is not Shadowrun, and specifically it has multiple other coterminous realms and the model isn't a great fit.

So here's where I'm going with it:

The core thing where there are three alien worlds and an in-between world for each stays. You go to the Shallows of Limbo and you're in Silent Hill. You go to the Shallows of Mictlan and you're in Nightwatch's Gloom. You go to the Shallows of Maya and you're in Jumanji.
You don't do the Shadowrun-style dual natured thing any more. You can see into the Shallows with magic powers, and there are places that are coterminous, but there's no longer Shadowrun-style astral perception where ghosts can punch you in the face while you can see them.
Ghosts aren't going to be physically but intangible in the mortal world. They are going to stay in the Shallows of Mictlan and use magic to project images of themselves or telekinetic force into the Mortal World.

So that's fine for what it is. Ghosts can have Necromancy powers that project a ghostly image into the mortal world and let them use powers like Telekinesis and Possession if they have them. If said image is also a conduit of damage when struck by bane weapons and dispellable as an enchantment with seeds, the basics of ghost hunting are fine. You can wait for them to project an image and attack it with monster hunting weapons, or you can cross over to the other side and just punch them out there.

Empty Body doesn't need to be a thing for Ghosts to have. They can just look like Patrick Swayze if you look into or travel to the Shallows of Mictlan. And Poltergeists look like a Giger sculpture. Fine.

What's not fine is evil Hologram ladies.

They don't really fit into this model. Which is a shame, because they are desirable, I think.

-Username17

hyzmarca · Post by **hyzmarca** » Wed Feb 17, 2016 4:46 pm

FrankTrollman wrote: They don't really fit into this model. Which is a shame, because they are desirable, I think.

-Username17

Evil holograms are just an illusion projected by a computer, which is where the real AI lady lives.

They're basically Androids or Icarids who live in a box and use Phantasmagoria or some other illusion power to interact with the world.

Mord · Post by **Mord** » Thu Feb 18, 2016 2:39 am

hyzmarca wrote:Evil holograms are just an illusion projected by a computer, which is where the real AI lady lives.

They're basically Androids or Icarids who live in a box and use Phantasmagoria or some other illusion power to interact with the world.

This. How the heck does a Hologram leave its house, anyway? Red Queen doesn't leave her research facility because the tech to project her doesn't exist outside. If she downloads herself into a robot body or hooks herself up to some kind of remote-controlled projector on wheels, then she's an Android (or close enough for government work).

If she doesn't need the tech to manifest herself, then she's effectively a ghost projecting herself from the Shallows of the Digital World or somesuch.

hyzmarca · Post by **hyzmarca** » Thu Feb 18, 2016 2:45 am

Mord wrote:
hyzmarca wrote:Evil holograms are just an illusion projected by a computer, which is where the real AI lady lives.

They're basically Androids or Icarids who live in a box and use Phantasmagoria or some other illusion power to interact with the world.
This. How the heck does a Hologram leave its house, anyway?.

They don't. That's one of the things that makes them scary. You'll always face them on their home turf.

Mord · Post by **Mord** » Thu Feb 18, 2016 5:09 am

hyzmarca wrote:They don't. That's one of the things that makes them scary.

And unplayable.

OgreBattle · Post by **OgreBattle** » Thu Feb 18, 2016 5:45 am

I could see parallels between an evil AI and a haunted house, the conflict is in trying to escape its domain. An evil AI can be like a 'digital ghost', possess technology stuff via internet connections, wireless signals, electricity and so on.

As this is the After Sundown setting, your supercomputers could have some kind of supernatural power source for a literal ghost (or demon) in the machine.

There's also tinfoil hat conspiracies about technology used to mind control people via invisible waves.

Found a wiki entry on this kind of thing, 'mind control machines' are mentioned even in 1919:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/On_the_Or ... izophrenia

The paper describes Tausk's observations and psychoanalytic interpretation of a type of paranoid delusion that occurs in patients diagnosed with schizophrenia. The delusion often involves their being influenced by a 'diabolical machine', just outside the technical understanding of the victim, that influences them from afar. It was typically believed to be operated by a group of people who were persecuting the individual, whom Tausk suggested were "to the best of my knowledge, almost exclusively of the male sex" and the persecutors, "predominantly physicians by whom the patient has been treated".

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"The schizophrenic influencing machine is a machine of mystical nature. The patients are able to give only vague hints of its construction. It consists of boxes, cranks, levers, wheels, buttons, wires, batteries, and the like. Patients endeavor to discover the construction of the apparatus by means of their technical knowledge, and it appears that with the progressive popularization of the sciences, all the forces known to technology are utilized to explain the functioning of the apparatus. All the discoveries of mankind, however, are regarded as inadequate to explain the marvelous powers of this machine, by which the patients feel themselves persecuted."

"The main effects of the influencing machine are the following:

It makes the patient see pictures. When this is the case, the machine is generally a magic lantern or cinematograph. The pictures are seen on a single plane, on walls or windowpanes, and unlike typical visual hallucinations are not three-dimensional.

It produces, as well as removes, thoughts and feelings by means of waves or rays or mysterious forces which the patient's knowledge of physics is inadequate to explain. In such cases, the machine is often called a 'suggestion-apparatus.' Its construction cannot be explained, but its function consists in the transmission or 'draining off' of thoughts and feelings by one or several persecutors.

It produces motor phenomena in the body, erections and seminal emissions, that are intended to deprive the patient of his male potency and weaken him. This is accomplished either by means of suggestion or by air-currents, electricity, magnetism, or X-rays.

It creates sensations that in part cannot be described, because they are strange to the patient himself, and that in part are sensed as electrical, magnetic, or due to air-currents.

It is also responsible for other occurrences in the patient's body, such as cutaneous eruptions, abscesses, or other pathological processes."

Zaranthan · Post by **Zaranthan** » Thu Feb 18, 2016 8:10 am

Can I get a suggestion-apparatus that produces erections and deprives me of my potency? Condoms are expensive.

Username17 · Post by **Username17** » Thu Feb 18, 2016 7:33 pm

OgreBattle wrote:I could see parallels between an evil AI and a haunted house, the conflict is in trying to escape its domain. An evil AI can be like a 'digital ghost', possess technology stuff via internet connections, wireless signals, electricity and so on.

This is a good point. At the basic level, it seems really useful to have "haunts" which are ghosts or demons that are tied to a house or artifact and talk to people by projecting images, causing hallucinations, or telepathic contact. You go into the house or open the puzzle box and then the creature has a number of powers that it can use to torment you. That's pretty classic shit.

The question then, is how yo go about fighting them and how that interacts with planar travel. On the one hand, I think it's pretty cool to go to the underworld and meet the ghost lady at the bottom of the maze, but it's pretty disappointing to find that the whole demon idol is being controlled by a man behind the curtain. To use a Silent Hill example:

This seems legit:

This does not:

I think the way to thread the needle on that is to have the basic kind of ghost be Patrick Swayzes stuck in the Gloom and able to use the manifestation power only when they are "powered up." Then to also have Haunts that have no Patrick Swayze body on any plane of existence and are attached to a location or artifact and have the ability to use powers within arm's reach of their point of origin.

So Red Queen would be a Haunt. The house confined couple in Beetlejuice would be Wisps. Most of the Ghosts in Ghost Busters (who can manifest translucent bodies wherever they want) would be Wraiths.

-Username17

pragma · Post by **pragma** » Thu Feb 18, 2016 10:19 pm

Does that make a haunt an additional creature subtype within the category of ghosts? I like it because it suggests that haunts are required to have a power source and a power schedule. The idea of a feeding house tickles me.

Having a codified way to interact with haunts other than burning them down would be good. I liked the idea of Shadowrun ghosts having a chain which bound them to the mortal world, and having every haunt tied to a chain gives physical players a way to interact with or combat the haunt.

hyzmarca · Post by **hyzmarca** » Fri Feb 19, 2016 1:25 am

pragma wrote:Does that make a haunt an additional creature subtype within the category of ghosts? I like it because it suggests that haunts are required to have a power source and a power schedule. The idea of a feeding house tickles me.

Having a codified way to interact with haunts other than burning them down would be good. I liked the idea of Shadowrun ghosts having a chain which bound them to the mortal world, and having every haunt tied to a chain gives physical players a way to interact with or combat the haunt.

I honestly like "burning it down is the worst possible solution" for haunted houses, to explain why professional ghostbusters never do. Even if you can't exorcise the spirit, it's at least trapped in the house. So long as you stay out you're fine. But if you burn the house down, you don't kill it. You free it. And its powerful, nasty, and utterly insane. If you couldn't exorcise it when it was a house, then you certainty can't exorcise it when it's a murderous cloud of free-floating ash that used to be a house.

Mord · Post by **Mord** » Fri Feb 19, 2016 2:33 am

pragma wrote:Does that make a haunt an additional creature subtype within the category of ghosts? I like it because it suggests that haunts are required to have a power source and a power schedule. The idea of a feeding house tickles me.

How else would you classify the Amityville Horror? Maybe Ritual...

hyz wrote:I honestly like "burning it down is the worst possible solution" for haunted houses, to explain why professional ghostbusters never do. Even if you can't exorcise the spirit, it's at least trapped in the house. So long as you stay out you're fine. But if you burn the house down, you don't kill it. You free it. And its powerful, nasty, and utterly insane. If you couldn't exorcise it when it was a house, then you certainty can't exorcise it when it's a murderous cloud of free-floating ash that used to be a house.

I like this idea, but this kind of implies that Haunts are the kind of Poltergeist that are bound to a specific place.

Maybe Haunts can best be described as a subtype of Poltergeist.

Grek · Post by **Grek** » Fri Feb 19, 2016 3:07 am

In my home game, I did something similar to haunts with Locked Gates. If you seal a gate, the power that would normally be flowing at a constant trickle into the mortal world instead comes through in bursts, manifesting semi-intelligently as malign sorcery appropriate to the type of gate. A Locked Shadow Gate might be aligned with the Song of Silence and exist in the mortal world as a glacial cave from which sinister music plays and people periodically freeze to death under suspicious circumstances. You can stop it from doing that, but only by performing a ritual to permanently open the gate and allowing ghosts and zombies to pour out instead of creepy sounds and deadly cold. Haunts could work similarly - If you just burn the place down instead of going in and dealing with it properly, you end up with poltergeists all over the countryside instead.

Lokathor · Post by **Lokathor** » Fri Feb 19, 2016 8:44 am

I assume you mean NightWatch (2004) and not Nightwatch (1997).

JigokuBosatsu · Post by **JigokuBosatsu** » Tue Feb 23, 2016 4:06 pm

Lokathor wrote:I assume you mean NightWatch (2004) and not Nightwatch (1997).

And not The Nightwatch (1642)

or Nightwatch (1978)

Though to be honest, I'd totally read splatbooks for AS based on either one.

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AS2: Incorporeality.

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