Hi all! I am really diggin Urban Shadows! I do have some feed back as I ran a demo tonight at Con-bravo here in Hamilton Canada-land. First time using the 2.0 sneak peak pack. Nice new layout, like some of the changes and additions. Drew, we’ll prob chat about this tomorrow but gotta say I wasnt too keen on the new xp mechanic. The new and experienced players found it quite confusing and I don’t think we had a single advance or maybe 1. I tried to regularly suggest to the players to use the faction moves and explained how they worked…but i was like a broken record and the action was focused more p vs. p. in this game, so not allot of opportunities for faction moves. Also had trouble with xp from when you settle a faction debt…this means that if a faction has a debt on you like an npc if you get rid of it or do it then you get xp? Unclear to me and the players. Since xp is no longer tied to moves/stats what about keeping the xp on a miss option also or work this in? Also I have always really like “let it out” but seems that it’s used all the time as there is no read t. sitch move. I know the aware has r. t. sitch but any thoughts of changing this move or adding /removing a current option – I think that the take hold of something vulnerable is better suited for unleash.
There’s my 2 Cents!
Thanks! Hank : )
Henry Raab – Thanks for running, brother. Looking forward to hearing more about your experience!
As for settling a debt: whenever anyone cashes in on a debt, both parties mark the other party’s Faction. So if the Wizard owes the Hunter a Debt, and the Hunter cashes in that Debt for the Wizard to join her on a hunt, the Wizard would mark Mortality and the Hunter would mark Power. If the Wizard refuses the Debt, neither of them marks Faction.
To some degree, it sounds like they weren’t earning advances because they didn’t want them. If you’re giving your players Places of Power and dangling new NPC names and faces in front of them… they’ve got to take you up on that stuff.
As for Let It Out, can you give us some of the situations in which it was used? That would be really helpful!
Mark Diaz Truman I think there’s a distinction between “Didn’t want them. ” and “Didn’t drive their play to earn them.”. That distinction may be a central feature to your design goals (pushing players to do the latter by leveraging former) but I think that the distinction matters to people playing, and can affect their fit in play.
Mo Jave – Can you say more here? In this case, my read of the situation is that Hank’s players weren’t interested in advances because they were focused on the problems right in front of them, and perhaps didn’t leverage Debts and Faction moves to accomplish their goals, ie they were more interested in X than Y.
Mo, there is no reason to read a situation …. as the MC make informational a soft move, give them clues and tell them observations. Rather than having them make a roll to see that the door across the room is the best way out, it is okay to tell them that.
IT’s okay though, I am struggling with the removal of Keep an Eye out as well. But, I am trying desperately to see Andrew’s and Mark’s side of things.
To the faction move and xp ….. what factions were they? If they were all one faction, then I agree …. this is hard. If they were a variety of factions, then even dealing with each other plus the session intro move can give at least two faction xp.
Mark Diaz Truman, wasn’t there a “Give a clue” type MC move added?
Tommy Rayburn – I’m pretty sure Mo was talking about my comments on the Faction moves, not on the Read a Sitch stuff.
That said, I definitely use “give a clue” or some variant when I MC. If folks are looking around the scene of a crime, I give them information about what has happened. But we also want to see folks “letting it out” to get extra info, turning on their wizard sight or their vampire senses or their hunter training to notice the small details that ordinary people miss!
Mark Diaz Truman Curious how you push mortals? Is it by their gadgets or that sixth sense they may have?
It depends on the mortal:
– The Hunter… lets it out by turning on the Buffy-vision. Everything is a threat. They live and die by violence. They tend to notice blood, trails, claw marks. Signs of their prey.
– The Aware… lets it out by snooping, prying, bravely pushing themselves past the points they shouldn’t. They tend to find evidence, taking advantage of opportunities.
– The Veteran… lets it out by going back to the old ways, turning on old habits. I key a lot of let it out for the veteran to their old career.
Yeah, Mark Diaz Truman I mean in general not to confuse desire for player advancement and the willingness (or ability) to change method, or engagement of play to achieve them. Advancements are often used as player /gamer incentives but not character incentives or story incentives. The design asks for behaviours that you want to encourage but sometimes engaging in those behaviours can be disruptive to engagement or satisfactioon of play so they don’t work as incentives, not because players didn’t want them, but because they won’t trade their satisfaction or flow to get there… or just can’t.
(extremely sleep depped so may not be making as much clear sense as I’d like)
Mo Jave – Totally. The way I was thinking about it was that players face an option:
– pursue my character’s immediate goals.
– invoke and invite the larger world into the game.
Obviously, that’s a false choice. The MC can use Put a Name to a Face to drop lots of good NPCs into the way of the PCs so that they are advancing. In fact, I love that it reminds me to do that for my players. “Oh, we haven’t seen Wild in a bit, eh? Let’s get some demons!” But if the MC isn’t doing that, sometimes the above choice occurs.
Now really skilled players will find a way to do both: “Hey, vampire NPC. Can you put a hit out on my buddy, The Wizard. It just can’t be known that it’s me…”
I played The Vamp in this game, and it was fun! I’ve played and run ton of AW and other hacks, but this was my first crack at Urban Shadows.
Put a face to a name is an amazing move! “Do I know them” is a question that comes up all the time in tons of games and having a mechanic to answer it is brilliant. I will probably come up for something similar for other games.
The other faction moves didn’t really come up, but we had 6 players and within a con game we didn’t really find ourselves needing to reach outside the group to find other people. We were way more caught up figuring each other out than trying to investigate each other’s places of power.
I really missed a way to offer other players XP to do what I want. What was the reason that persuade an NPC doesn’t have a PC version like seduce/manipulate? Figure someone out became the defacto form of persuasion- not sure if that is as intended?
The option to give XP is sort of there with debts; settle a debt, mark a faction, you may now be closer to advancing.. But it is fairly obfuscated. If this relationship was clearer I think it would drive players to use the debt system more. (I have to play more to really figure out if that is a problem that needs solving though.)
Had a great time with the game! I expect it will become a regular with the groups I play with!
Rob, you just use debt.
You don’t need to “persuade a PC” because that devalues debt. At first I thought the same as you as a an initial tester, but I like that this really pushes debt now, which as you said pushes “xp”.
….. You say “Hey, I need you to do X because remember that time when I helped you with Y” and then the other person uses either the two debt moves .. Cash in Debt or Refuse Debt.
Why not: on a 10+ choose 2, on a 7-9 choose 1.
-if they do it, you owe them a debt, or they no longer owe you a debt, their choice.
-if they refuse they must keep their cool.
What they do then is up to them.
Because Players have individual choices while NPC’s are set to the choices by the mechanics or by the MC. Let the player choose what they want to do. If they refuse, there is a move for that.
I suppose my complaint is theoretical at this point. I will play more and report back. “Do someone a favour” may cover it?
Rob Deobald, I promise it works. Again, I greatly disagreed with this at first but then I started thinking of the 100’s of games I ran using earlier of versions of this system and debt was not used enough and could have easily instead of Persuasion.
My ONLY complaint is what happens i f you do not have debt, but I was able to solve that by just telling players out front that even if you do not have debt, tell them “Hey if you do this favor for me, I owe you” so you may not have debt, but you will.
Mark Diaz Truman It may be worth noting in the MC section or in the players side of suggestions if players do not have debt.
I can see this be a fun mechanic, you owe me big (like 2 debt), ect…
Rob Deobald – Tommy Rayburn has it right, I think. We’re leaving that “persuade” space open so that the PCs make use of their Debts more actively. Push them to use their Debts (and remind them they get to mark Faction).
Tommy Rayburn – I love the “you owe me big” thing! That’s clever!
The question, when I say that … do I negotiate how much debt you owe me or does the MC?
I think the default is one. We don’t want people to spend all their time negotiating over how many Debts. But I think some owe me big times are cool.
/sub 😉
Thanks Mark Diaz Truman and Tommy Rayburn, I appreciate the insight.
The question I have in the back of my head remains, “are players who have invested a lot in Heart going to feel cheated that they are great at influencing NPCs, but have no advantage dealing with PCs?” and I suppose I’m going to have to play to find out what happens. 🙂
Rob Deobald – It’s a good question! If you look at the Refuse a Debt option, notice that they are the best at resisting Debts…
Rob Deobald How are the cheated? Because there is debt and there are moves for how to deal with it … it is something no other game has.
Think D&D, “Hey, can you help open this chest.” “No!”
Here, “Can, you open this chest, you owe me from the time I pulled you out of the burning building?” Then the character can be like fine, cash in debt. Or, “No … I don’t know what you are talking about” Assume rolling refusing a debt. Depending on his roll, he may fail even worse. That’s why you can’t feel cheated, the opposing player has the chance for even more against him.
Thanks Mark Diaz Truman! I hadn’t quite put that together yet. Characters with lots of heart may not be better at persuading other PCs, but they sure have an advantage when refusing to honour their own debts.
Tommy Rayburn, I meant cheated compared to other playbooks; An Oracle with Heart -1 is no good at persuading NPCs, but just as good as a Heart +3 Fae at persuading other PCs. Or a Wolf with Alpha Dog rocks at persuading NPCs within its territory, but PCs appear to be (mechanically) unaffected by the fact they are inside the Wolf’s territory.
(At least two other Powered by the Apocalypse games have mechanics with a similar theme; Avery Mcdaldno’s Monsterhearts has Strings, and James Mullen’s The Hood has Debt. You should check them out! They are both great games!)
I helped develop the ‘Hood…. So, I know it quite well. Lol
To your point I think some kind of mechanical benefit or negative when you can cash in debt and they try and refuse, though you have a gained advantage would be useful.
Cool you worked on the Hood! I don’t follow your second comment though.
I reworded the last comment, was typing on the phone.