Session #4 of our ongoing Urban Shadows game is tonight. I’m really looking forward to it since we haven’t had a chance to get together to play in six weeks. Last session my Aware’s fiance was killed and turned into a vampire by the “man” who killed her after Liam (my Aware) asked him to save her from death and two of the protagonists fled arrest from the police after witnesses saw one of them dumping a body in a nearby dumpster. It was epic and I can’t wait to see where things go from here.
Aaron Friesen Rob Wakefield Sean Dalziel Sean Horwich
#urbanshadows #apocalypseworld #roleplaying
Same here, brother.
Awesome session last night. Apparently Ragnarok is coming to the city, and we are more or less powerless to stop it….for now.
Additionally, Gareth’s gotten rid of a pain in his ass… for now. #YesMeansNo #UnleasedToTheFace #Concrete
Rob Wakefield You’re move’s execution was BRILLIANT! 😀
do you folks have any APs or summaries written up? i’m especially interested in whether folks are using/avoiding corruption moves or how the corruption mechanic changes the feel of things.
We don’t have any APs or summaries, though I think there’s a lot of value in them. Perhaps it’s something we should set up (though honestly, you would want to mark our particular sessions as NSFW).
In our group, I think there’s been some avoidance of Corruption, and I can’t be sure exactly why that is. For myself, I have been and the only reason I can muster is that the term “corruption” insinuates “evil”, and I don’t necessarily want my character to be “evil”. At worst, he’s a narcissist. This may not be a good reason, but I also see Corruption as a slippery slope.
Andrew Medeiros certainly is pushing people to mark corruption, although he’s only a player. I don’t know if this is because he’s trying to put the mechanics through their paces, or if he’s simply a jerk.
I’ve never been very good at writing up session reports, just don’t enjoy it at all. I will see about maybe doing some quick entries in the future with a focus on the mechanic interplay since that is my most important focus atm. I had some good insights last night about some archetype moves, will be valuable when I go to make changes.
To my shock we haven’t seen a single Corruption advance within 4 sessions, but I’ve played another campaign where within 3 sessions nearly all protagonists had at least one corruption and it was ramping up nicely before the game fizzled out. I sincerely believe that is because we rolled dice a lot more in that game. In this group the players seem very sheepish to make moves, preferring to instead focus on the RP and narrative, I think years of trad gaming has led to that instinct, it’s a tough one to beat. Once you start using Let The Darkness In, Face Your Fear and Retreat more often, corruption will start to flow. But as is intentional in U-S, you almost never have Corruption forced on your character, it’s always a choice with a couple rare exceptions.
I do push my fellow players to explore and embrace Corruption. It’s not only good for playtesting it’s also a damn fascinating roleplaying tool. How close can you get to the edge before you pull back or fall? It’s a classic theme in Urban Fantasy and I will not stop encouraging players to try it out because I believe in it.
I’ve enjoyed writing up APs more as an MC, especially for the first couple sessions, because it helps to nail down all the names and faces and places that players churn out when everything is a blank slate. After awhile it can feel like a slog…The AW game I’m running now is on session 10 and the last 3 have just been bullet pointed lists.
The corruption mechanics definitely seem fun to toy with. I love the idea of a PC turning into a threat/menace as well.
Ugh, as an MC I hate write-ups even more. lol. I just don’t enjoy anything resembling paper work when I MC, even between sessions. But I’m a lazy MC.
Love Letters are the exception to this rule though. When I am in the mood to, writing love letters is super fun and I have seen some of my best MC moments come to pass through the implementation of them.