Character Advancement

Characters in stories tend to become better as the story progresses. This is part of the character's heroic journey, and also serves to keep the audience interested. After all, once the protagonists have bested one problem, it is much easier to keep the listener's interest if the subsequent problems are bigger. Which in turn requires greater abilities on the part of the protagonists to solve. And so on. This can be seen very well in the movies Alien and Aliens. In the first film, the characters were dealing with one unknown monster and spent most of the movie trying to figure out what to do. But in the second movie, there are instead hundreds of the things, and yet the main character has already bested one in battle - the movie focuses on fighting rather than hiding most of the time. And both of those movies are very good. Indeed, Aliens 3 is one of those apocryphal movies like Highlander 2 that probably doesn't even exist. But if it did, its primary flaw would be having rolled back the progress of the second movie and thereby creating a story that the audience didn't give a crap about.

It is easy for advancement to get out of hand. By the time Spawn beat up the lords of each realm of existence and the creator of the universe, the story really no longer held interest. A power fantasy is only interesting as long as there's still tension. While a fast rate of advancement may feel good, remember that it also advances the timeline towards the point where the game will stop being fun. It's a trade off. Advancement that is too fast or too slow is stultifying.

Acquisitive Advancement

In picking up a santa-sack full of antiques, I feel that I learned that I now own a santa-sack full of antiques.

Resources and Status as well as Obligations are gained during the course of normal play. Sometimes these are gained together: if during the course of a story a character boosts a car, they can reasonably expect to have gained a Financial Resource (the car), but may well have gained some Enemies or Stalkers as well by the same act. At other times, a character may end up with a new set of Contacts or a sack of gold totally free and clear.

Generally speaking, characters should use things they find over the course of a chapter with impunity and discuss with the MC what acquisitions are going to be remembered in the next chapter or chronicle at the end of the session. Things that will persist into future chapters are probably worth writing down, as well as formalizing them into numerical Resource values. So if a character ends up with $100,000 in cash and some jade statues in the trunk of a car during a story it is generally worth referring to in those terms for the rest of the chapter; but when play comes to future chapters, it is better to just write it down as: Resource: Finance 2 (Cash)

Obligations even more so, since the character will often not be aware of newly gained Obligations and that lack of knowledge can cause well appreciated suspense for the player. However, when the game comes to a close, these things should probably be written down (and if you rotate MCs it should definitely be written down).

Status is frequently gained in the aftermath of a story, making the accounting of it at the end of a session rather natural. However it is also true that a character can be promoted to Bishop right in the middle of the action. And that's fine. However, it is suggested that players not bother to write such career changes down on their character sheet (at least, not in pen) until the end of a session. As the saying goes "There's many a slip 'tween the cup and the lip." and status gained quickly can also be lost quickly. A return to the status quo is perhaps nearly as likely as the retention of status until enough time has passed to be sure that no one is coming to challenge the appointment.

Transformative Advancement

There should be only me!

Transformative Advancement is when a character gains substantial amounts of power and radically changes what they can do - and even what they are. Major life changing breakpoints such as this are very much a staple of the gothic genre. Indeed, every time a Luminary becomes a vampire or lycanthrope, such a transformative juncture has been reached.

The precise moment when a character becomes supernatural is not always clear. Sure you become a Nosferatu when another Nosferatu kills you with blood draining and passes you a power point. And you become a Bagheera when another Bagheera mauls you with a Terminal Wound and you spend an Edge to survive. But for others it's less cut and dried. A character becomes a Fallen when their connection to humanity has been burnt out by Infernal magic, and that can take time. Androids and Troglodytes often discover their non-human status only gradually, sometimes the uncovering of powers is dragged out over the course of multiple chapters.

Regardless of the type of supernatural creature that the character is becoming (or discovering that they have always been), the character gains certain things when they stop being a human Luminary and start being a Supernatural Creature:

• A Potency of 1.
• A Power reserve of 10 (13 after Potency Modifier).
• A Master Passion appropriate to the character's transformation story.
• The 6 Basic and 2 Advanced Powers common to their supernatural type.
• 1 additional Basic Power.
• 1 additional Advanced Power

Whether these new aspects of the character are discovered gradually over several chapters or gained all at once in a flash of insight and despair, these changes are automatic and have no impact on any other sources of advancement the character may have coming.

Creatures in After Sundown normally gain Potency and learn Elder Powers only very slowly. Many Elders only have a single Elder Ability for each century or three of their persistence - or even less. The King with Three Shadows has a Potency of 10, indicating that his Potency gain per century averages out to like ¼ or so. In the default After Sundown chronicle we can expect the number of centuries to pass to be some number very close to zero. Getting Elder Powrs and increasing Potency the "honest" way is simply not going to happen. Characters in After Sundown can gain these powers over the course of a story, but only by grabbing a hold of asymmetric power of some sort.

The destruction of powerful elders gives off a flash of power that empowers those present or leaves dark fluid which will empower those who drink it or some similar rite of power theft that is generally available to several characters at once. Siphoning the power out of an elder is generally frowned upon by supernaturals (even in the Cauchemar Communes) and is called "Titaning" (or by snarkier members of supernatural society that don't care for Chronos references: "Quickening"). Having taken down a Ifrit and gained Potency well before one's time is a fast way to gain respect as well as power - but it also causes many members of supernatural society to regard the characters as dangerous loose cannons no matter what their reason for the battle was.

Similarly, powerful artifacts can be Titanized under certain circumstances, and various tomes and places of power exist that can imbue a character with Elder Powers that would normally take them decades to master. However, it is important to note that characters are not normally going to be "entitled" to gain Potency or learn Elder Powers over the course of the stories. They come as rewards for completing especially difficult chronicles or defeating particularly powerful antagonists.

Karmic Advancement

What goes around will have gone around.

At the conclusion of chapters, characters may advance personally in addition to having advanced their cause over the course of the chapter. Advancement of this sort is difficult to plan ahead of time. No one really knows what lessons they will learn from the future and supernatural creatures don't always get to decide ahead of time what powers they will develop or when they will do so. And so when a chapter ends and the players are ready to do the accounting at the conclusion the MC may deal out cards for players to bid on. They bid with karma tokens. Tokens are gained by the following means:

• Each player may have one or more karma tokens banked from the previous chapter. Any tokens that are not spent are banked automatically.
• Every chapter, each player gains two tokens that they can bid for themselves.
• Every chapter, each player has another token that they can nominate another player to get when they do something awesome. What constitutes something awesome enough to warrant getting a karma token depends upon the style of game being run

When it comes time for bidding, the MC deals out a number of Tarot cards and one of the players can choose one to begin bidding on by bidding a number of tokens for it. Then it is auctioned off, with each player in turn being offered the opportunity to bid more tokens or pass. When everyone has passed, the player with the highest bid spends that many tokens and adjusts their character sheet as dictated by the card gained. Then the player to the left of the one who got the last card nominates another available card by bidding on it or passes the opportunity to the player to their left. This continues until all cards have been sold, none of the players wish to bid on any remaining cards, or no one has any more tokens (no card can be "sold" for less than 1 token).

Karma tokens should be physical objects of sufficient mass to be effectively slid across the table from one player to another, without being big enough to be unwieldy or heavy enough to accidentally hurt people. Poker chips and glass beads are good bets.

Minor Arcana

Major Arcana

Key

Dealing

There are several different methods for determining advancement deals. Generally speaking, a relatively consistent system should be used throughout a chronicle and a campaign. Remember that a Major Arcana is worth about 4 times what a Minor Arcana card is. Bidding is very different when players are spending the same tokens on a +1 to Research and a +1 Logic in the same auction than when they are evaluating only one or the other.

Commensurate Achievement: In this system the MC determines whether they think that a major milestone was passed in the current chapter or not, and accordingly deals out a number of cards that are pre-selected to be either Minor or Major Arcana exclusively. The deck is simply divided and cards from only one type are dealt.

Minimum Awards: In this system, the MC determines how many Major Arcana the last chapter was worth (usually 1 or 2) and then deals out cards from the combined deck until that many Major Arcana appear. There may be many Minor Arcana on the table or none at all. And as such, the number of cards to be potentially bid on may be very much higher or lower than the number of players.

Minimum Coverage: In this system, the MC determines ahead of time how many cards the chapter was worth (usually 1 or 2 more than the number of players), and deals out that many cards from the combined deck. There may be several Major Arcana showing or none at all.