So I just ran my first session of the final version with some friends last night. It was really cool, and I love how the very core aspects of each archetype has really become just that. It isn’t a move anymore necessarily, just naturally part of them. We had an 18th Century Spectre, a young (24) werewolf alpha (the Spectre’s grand-daughter), an Energy Vampire with a live, let live attitude (first timer), and a 22 horticulturist mage just recently sent to town by his family for solitary learning. It was a slow start since we didn’t even get started until like 10:30 but turned into lots of fun and chaos. Though only issue I had was running into the issue of trying to have them uncover things without “Keep An Eye Out”. I grew so accustomed to it as well as in DW and AW that I kind of stumbled on how to help them achieve that aspect.
So I’m curious why you removed it?
And how others have handled it??
That’s awesome to hear.
Anton Dominic, Andrew Medeiros or Mark Diaz Truman may know better but I think the idea was to force questions and natural answers than having just a roll. “What is around the corner?” doesn’t need a roll, it just needs the MC asking, “Go look.” Investigating a place of power works if they are actually taking time learning someone surroundings. In our WoD book, I added some search like Hunter moves to add additional perimeters around the concept.
Tommy Rayburn that was my initial conclusion, but a concrete answer is usually preferable to a presumption hah
I’ve seen that it is hard for new players (To AW/US/etc) to adapt to the “fiction first” aspect of the game, and are used to required rolls. Thus it makes it more difficult to produce the information if they don’t know what to do or what questions to ask.??
I think the acronym of MC is quite correct for this game, it is your job to push the “ceremony” to the next stage …. and here it would be a mixture of “what are you looking for” with a reply and giving an answer. If they are looking for something very specific “a needle in a hay stack” ….. rolls can be made.
We’ve had this conversation a number of times in the community, but I think Brand Robins said it best when he noted that every issue in Urban Shadows ultimately has a person at the center, i.e. the game is about relationships and politics, not scenes and situations.
As MC, it’s your job to push them toward people who might have answers to their questions. If someone’s dead, the crime scene doesn’t tell the PCs much… they need to go find someone who knew the guy (Hit the Streets) and find out who might want him dead…
Mark Diaz Truman, I have never been fond of that reasoning. I think the game should be played how the players and MC let it ride, so saying it has to be about the people and not the place seems counter intuitive to me.
That said, there are still plenty of tools to solve the issue as I mentioned above.
Tommy Rayburn – A number of the moves are focused around relationships and discovering information from other people. If you center the game around places, those mechanics won’t kick in. It’s like saying “I get that AW is about violence and community, but I like to focus it on accounting.” 😀
I wouldn’t say focus…. But I like to let the game go where the players are having a good story and fun. If that means accounting….. More power to them