I have a couple of doubts about Factions.
To me, the concept of Faction imply a combination of identity, ideology and common intent.
Do the Factions in Urban Shadows necessarily imply one or more of those elements?
I’m asking this because in the last game I played, the MC just treated the Factions as Tags to distinguish supernatural creatures. Hence, Factions remained an abstract and off-game notion. I mean, in that game vampires, werewolves and ghosts all belonged unwittingly to the Night Faction, just because they were all “creatures who were once human”, and there were not any other implicit connection between members of the same faction.
In doing so, the game just broke, because moves like Refuse to Honor a Debt didn’t work: why, if I refuse to honor a debt with a vampire, I lose face with all the ghosts, if vampires and ghosts don’t know or feel to be part of the same big faction?
Are we missing something here?
Plus, have you ever tried to reskin Factions?
For example, replace Factions with supernatural races, assuming you are playing with only 3 kinds of supernatural creatures + humans (e.g. Humans, Vampires, Werewolves, Faes).
Or maybe, assuming that the supernatural underworld is split in four courts (e.g. Spring court, Summer court, Autumn court, Winter court) or independent predetermined organizations (e.g. The Cult of Dagon, The Mysterium, The Esoterrorists, The Syndacate).
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Factions aren’t groups that share common goals, but we intended them as communities that hold similar ways of seeing the world. At some level, that makes them tags like you describe (most vampires are from the Night Faction, so you roll Night to hit the streets with them and they have access to the Night Faction moves.)
But it’s also about boundaries and identity. All the Night characters care about the streets, about territory, about blood and sex and drugs. Power characters might care about some of those things, but if they were really invested, they would switch Factions and change their focus.
As you noted, Factions have to be something more than an abstract tag: they have to reflect the structure of the city itself.
As for reskinning them, it could totally work! But at that point, you’re almost creating a new game… and I’m not sure that most of what makes Urban Shadows work is going to survive the transition. I hope you let us know what you discover if you try!
Marco Andreetto
Interesting!
In our campaign I’ve pushed during the creation to bond the ghost with her faction because i felt that was isolated.