So! I just threw this together tonight, because I’ve been watching Fate/stay night (Unlimited Blade Works), which is currently coming out in Japan. Realized that, hey, that’s a cool character archetype which would fit right into Urban Shadows!
Given that it’s terribly late at night, it’s probably not the greatest archetype right now, and I’d love to see more interesting options to customize the Servant.
First thing I thought of was Helsing and Alucard from the Helsing manga. Neat idea.
Not familiar, I may have to have a look. It’d be cool to have more influences than Fate/stay night.
Basically the daughter of Abraham Van Helsing (the guy who beat Dracula) now uses Dracula (aka Alucard) as her personal assassin/army.
Is it a Mortality faction or a Power faction playbook?
Interesting concept… I do suspect that the servant is currently overpowered and that you need some breadth to the master to keep it integrated with other PCs. I might also suggest that the relationship with the Master should not be managed by debts – otherwise play might become insular.
Mo Jave: Definitely Power. (Noted at the top.)
That’s definitely the main concern I have–how to keep the Master-Servant duality intact while also connecting them with other PCs. I haven’t thought about it enough. The main thing binding characters in Fate/stay night together is that there’s a bunch of Masters all fighting one another.
I could probably tone down the Servant and make them an extension of the Master triggered by a move, instead of a full-on NPC.
Hmm. At the same time, I really do want to preserve the idea that the Master and Servant are not necessarily on the same page. I wonder, what if I had a move or two that focused on your Servant accruing debts…
“Hey, um, so I just saved Beowulf bigtime, I think you owe me one.”
That’d require the Servant to have a lot more volition, but that’s not necessarily a bad thing.
So, update: I’ve decided to seriously rework this playbook! It just plain works out better to have a playbook for the Servant, and have the Master either be an NPC or one of the other PCs.
I will tackle this revision sometime next week, perhaps.
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1tRkUdQejM50sUgIpwHMJXsV7GqE5XYGC9_PmFxAqWio/edit
This is what I’ve got so far for the Servant! It’s really rough, and it’s late at night so I’m low on mental energy, heh. But I think I have a good core for the Servant: it’s about learning to balance your Ideal and your dealings with mortals. Corruption means abusing your power for your own gain.
How is this archetype coming along? Curious now that I’ve actually watched Fate/Zero. ^_^;
Darn! I haven’t touched this in forever! The link in the above post is the most recent I’ve got so far.