10 thoughts on “How the first session is handled in Urban Shadows on City Creation side?”

  2. I think most people dive in with an Apocalypse World-like “day in the life” first session, just seeing how the characters live and asking lots of questions.

    I’ve run some “themed” first sessions, with some ideas presented and discussed before character generation, to get things rolling.

    Don’t think there’s anything “official” out in that regard yet.

  4. We’ll go into more detail in the finished product, but essentially we borrow a lot from Apocalypse World. The key is asking loads of questions, just like any collaborative game.

    The difference is you want to focus on the political landscape of the city and how the protagonists fit into that web. Start with the establishment. Who is in control where? How long have they held that? Who are they allied with/at war with/building aggression towards? That kind of thing.

    Then move onto the game changers and revolutionaries. Who is trying to change the established order of things? What are they trying to gain/destroy? How will that change affect the protagonists?

    All the while ask them loaded questions about their characters in regards to all of this. If the Vamp tells you the werewolves control the riverside district, ask them why they’ve chosen to throw their support in with the wolves. If the Wizard eludes to a coven of witches moving into town and making their presence known in the city core, ask them about their past relationship with one of the witches and maybe ask why they still love them.

    We’re working on some tools for making the web intricate and unstable. If anyone has suggestions for how to refine that, we’d love to hear feedback.

  5. I’ve also focused a lot of attention on the relationships between characters during creation because the Faction moves will build out the city through play. There’s no need to build the city block by block because the PCs will add details to the sections they care about by Hitting the Streets and Putting a Name to a Face.

  6. The “Session Start” moves pretty much give you the way to start the first session, don’t they?

    In the online game I’m running right now, we had 2 Werewolves, a Wizard Hunter, an Immortal, and an Aware. The Wizard Hunter established that the mayor of the city was actually an evil wizard, and the Immortal’s first love was killed by an evil wizard cult and that he was financing the Wizard Hunter as a tool for when he eventually tracked down the cult in modern times.

    That pretty much gave me the plot, and then they all highlighted each others factions and rolled. One Werewolf rolled a 7-9 with Power, and suggested she heard about some people disappearing in a bad part of town. She said that she had smelled grave dust, so thought it might be magic-related. Boom, that got everything rolling.

    The Hunter got a 7-9, so met with a contact who also had info on the disappearances.

    The other werewolf rolled a 4 on Power, so owed a debt to someone in that faction. He’s a college-age kid, who had established in chargen that he knew some of the Mayor’s kids, so, he owed one of them a debt, a daughter. I think that daughter has something to do with the disappearances.

    The Immortal rolled a 5 so had an old Fae acquaintance show up, whose nephew had mysteriously disappeared in the same bad part of town, and asked him to look into it, since he was experienced with Wizards.

    Without having to do much other than connect a few dots, the Faction rolls and chargen should do just about everything you need to get a first session started right in the middle of some fun.

  7. I’d love some guidance on how to transition from basic questioning about the characters, to the first moments of in-character play. It tends to be pretty abrupt in my games, which I don’t think is right

  8. I did it by having them roll their highlighted Faction, then asking them to set their scene. They’ll almost all be starting in different places, so just bounce around. Once they set the scene, just riff.

    So, the Immortal was hanging out in his estate having a drink in his study. I tell him that his old friend/lover/contact shows up. I ask him what sort of security his place has and what he does. He says his head of security contacts him and he says to let her in.

    Jump to the Hunter who is waiting in her car at the meeting place. I say her contact is a bit late, but then she heard a tap on her passenger side window.

    You basically should transition from chargen to play by asking the questions that lead you into it. “Where are you and what are you doing?” Seems to work pretty well.

  9. Sean Hess – I usually take a break after doing the start of session moves so that people can kinda cleanse their palette. It also gives me time to look over everyone’s sheet, note their corruption moves, and any moves they’ve chosen that will push us in a specific direction.

    After that, I usually just pick someone that I think is interesting and either say:

    1) “It’s Tuesday! What are you up to?” and then complicate the situation.

    or 

    2) “So you’re probably looking for that item / guy who shot you / young kid you’re trying to find. What does that look like? Where are you now?”

    Then I try to drag another player or two into that scene as quickly as possible. “Did you need some muscle for that? Maybe you call in The Wolf?”

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