How do you handle multiple people wanting to roll for the same move at the same time?

How do you handle multiple people wanting to roll for the same move at the same time?

How do you handle multiple people wanting to roll for the same move at the same time? I find this is fine for some moves, but not so much for others.

For example: When I introduce a new character, I’ll often have 2-5 people suddenly asking if they can put a name to a face. No problem – each of them knows something different about this person. They’re all welcome to roll. But when a group of 5 of them wants to hit the streets to visit a contact together, it doesn’t really make sense for everybody to roll – one person might roll a 10+ (they have the stuff!) but another might roll a 7-9 (they’re juggling their own problems/it’s costly) and yet another might roll a miss (and who knows what that means).

I’ve just been letting everybody roll because everybody’s eager to mark factions, but I’m starting to get a little confused…

4 thoughts on “How do you handle multiple people wanting to roll for the same move at the same time?”

  1. I’d say one of them rolls and the others can Lend a Hand. If they’re upset they don’t get to mark the Faction they wanted with Lend a Hand, let them mark the one they’re all going to see instead. Easy peasy. 🙂

  2. Part of your job as the GM is to work the spotlight around the table and make decisions about how the fiction is going to be channeled through the moves. For example, if five people all want to the hit the streets to visit a contact together, you’ve got to figure out who is going to make the move based on the fiction:

    – who wanted to go first?

    – is this contact more closely tied to one PC?

    – who hasn’t gotten the spotlight in a little while?

    Urban Shadows doesn’t have a combat system, so you’ve probably already practiced this with a fight. If everyone says “I hit the badguy” at once, you still need to pick someone to go first… because each move is a moment for one character to have the spotlight.

  4. Thanks for the tips!

    Andrew Medeiros: “One person rolls, everybody who goes gets to mark faction” is a pretty easy way to solve the problem with that particular move. I feel kind of goofy it never occurred to me. Thanks!

    Mark Diaz Truman: Yeah, good point, I was thinking about this right after I wrote this, actually – about contrasting how I deal with this situation with how I manage combat, or how I move focus around in scenes with group social dynamics. I think part of what threw me was that I was thinking, “In a fight, each person acts separately, but when you hit the streets, you all show up together!” … but you don’t all talk at the same time. I should probably advise them to pick one person to roll, and make clear that this is the one who’ll be opening the conversation. They can then make their own moves separately – Mislead, cash in Debts, Figure Someone Out, etc. – as we move around the table.

    Mathias Belger: Five is more than I prefer, but schedules are tough so we often only run with four, which is my favorite size group for this game.

    Derrick Kapchinsky: Convincing the players to split up has been an ongoing process for us. They’re definitely better than they used to be, back when they still thought “splitting the party” was dangerous due to years of D&D, before they realized they barely ever get into fights. They’re just moving as a unit a lot more lately because they’ve discovered an “all hands on deck” kind of threat…

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