I have played PbtA (Dungeon World specifically). I’ve ran lots of Fate and Pathfinder. I’m going to run my first PbtA game on Sunday (Urban Shadows) anyone here have some tips for GMs new to running the system? For Urban Shadows in particular, or the system more generally… as, I plan to also run a longer campaign for an in-person group if I like it as a GM/Master of Ceremonies (I know I like Dungeon World at least as a player).
I have played PbtA (Dungeon World specifically).
I have played PbtA (Dungeon World specifically).
The big thing, for me, was shifting to a stance where you’re asking questions. You don’t frame scenes or arrange things, you ask ask ask ask. Sometimes they’re leading questions (“Where are you when the Skullcrushers find you?”), but still. It’s a very different place to GM from.
I do that sort of thing a little bit with my players in my in person Fate game at present, but, yeah, is a shift to rely on it as a main thing…. I will have to be mindful of that.
The GM rules are rules, not suggestions. That part specifically is very different from how rpgs usually handle the role of GM but it’s a shift that makes a lot of sense.
Otherwise, remember to setup your hard moves with softer moves first – it’ll make the narrative flow much smoother.
Oh and there’s an Urban Shadows specific community around these parts as well, if you need some game-specific advice: Urban Shadows RPG
It’s much easier to make GM moves if you think about them BEFORE the player rolls. When they go to roll the dice, you should already have a good idea of what will happen if they fail.
Also to ask the players when they’re clearly edging towards a particular thing, reaching for dice, ask for clarity if there’s any doubt.
Make sure the players know that US is about political movers and shakers, and not just playing urban fantasy. Otherwise, they’ll run into headwinds with the games advancement mechanics.
Josh Roby I’d just like to note that the GM totally can frame scenes, as some moves allow for it (put them in a spot, separate them, and more). You can make these moves when they look to you to see what happens, meaning, of course, that if the players aren’t biting on the questions, you can just frame scenes too.
GM: “Hey where is Carl today?”
Player: “Uh he’s at home”
GM: “Ok, what’s he doing at home? You building something?”
Player: “yeah, building a thing, I guess… I dunno…”
GM: “…” (waits)
GM: “ok well, you have to head out to get new parts, and enter the hardware store down the street. […]”
J Stein Dark Streets has an alternate advancement systems which I’d been using for some time.
Aaron Griffin Are you referring to the bit about making more generous advancement rules when adapting to historical settings, because “lower population density means fewer factions are around”?
‘Cause, I gotta be honest, that part didn’t make a lick of sense to me when I saw it in Dark Streets. It only takes one person to represent a faction’s interest – just ’cause the Pinkertons didn’t show up in town, doesn’t mean they can’t send one guy with a bank account to represent their desires, right? In a game about multi-factional politicking and conflict, if you can’t justify having at least a handful of factions, I’d argue you have chosen the wrong setting for that game.
I find the number 4 to be particularly important: two factions is just a war; three factions is inevitably two-on-one with a little backstabbing; the move to four factions more than doubles the number of possible relationships (actually… you know, four-fold). You don’t have to aim for “curse your surprising but inevitable betrayal!” Just the base relationship map means you have shit-tons of complexity in the relationships you’re pushing at when you horse-trade and try to budge the status quo. I don’t think it’s an accidental number for “minimum number of very distinct groups you have to interact with.”
I mean, that’s not entirely a crazy assertion, is it? That some games are just not compatible with every possible setting? I mean, you can’t really play AW in a setting of peaceful, utopian abundance. I mean, you can make the characters and roll the moves and call it AW, but it doesn’t produce AW play anymore. That’s neither a failure of AW nor of the setting; it’s just that they’re not necessarily compatible with one another.
I’m largely against modifying the advancement rules to move away from “make Faction moves against all the Factions”. The “you have to politic with all of the competing interests” is core thematic content for Urban Shadows. It’s not a minor or irrelevant mechanic: it’s directly tied into what the game is about, and what sort of roleplaying experience it’s trying to provide.
Rewriting AW to work in peaceful Utopia makes it not-AW; Urban Shadows adapted to work without having to trade horses and politic with a bunch of different factions becomes not-US.
In the games I’ve played where we’ve moved away from that and more towards character-exploration-type stuff, … it’s fallen kind of flat, in the way that “RP-focused” AD&D tended to do. Monsterhearts is in the toolbox for that; I don’t mind pulling it out when that’s what people actually want to play.
If people don’t actually want that sort of political, faction-oriented play, I’m not one to tell them they have to, but then why play Urban Shadows? It always feels like some hold-over from old-school DnD (ugh, and GURPS) days, when the expectation was set that a single RPG system would provide any type of play you felt like, as long as you could stat out a vaguely appropriate character.
I’m sorry. I think this post turned into a little bit of a rant, and it was not meant to. I’ve come across a number of posts (mostly on rpg.net, where I should know better than to go) and podcasts lately that are along the lines of “this game is a different game than DnD/pathfinder. It has the following flaws: (list of ways in which it is not DnD/pathfinder),”
or
“I especially found it frustrating when I tried to make a PC Janitor whose life I thought would be very interesting to explore, but the advancement mechanics penalized me for not pursuing my sorcerous studies in this game about pursuing sorcerous studies. This game is flawed because it doesn’t let me explore any character I can possibly stat up that has nothing at all to do with what the game is about.”
I always find that a very frustrating complaint, you know? I feel like rule alpha-and-omega of being a good roleplayer is “enthusiastically commit to playing the game on its own terms.” Embrace monopoly when you’re playing that; embrace chess when you’re playing chess; don’t criticize monopoly for not being chess, and don’t play monopoly if you don’t like it. Am I way off-base here?
Thomas Berton Very true!
I’d argue you can zoom out on that a little bit, too: always know what the stakes in the scene are. As long as you know what the people involved want to achieve, and are trying to achieve, dice rolls will tend to flow very smoothly, because you have that bigger picture narrative in mind.
Megan Bennett-Burks A place where I’ve certainly tripped up on disclaiming decision-making (and still occasionally do, to be honest, because it’s not always super-obvious in the moment):
Ask ask ask, but be careful not to ask them about their challenges. If a player ends up responsible for their PC and for their PC’s obstacles/difficulties, it gets boring for them real fast. But you can use them to provide setting detail, descriptions, history, and if the players get separated or have non-aligned interests, you can disclaim to other players. (That is, I wouldn’t ask Player A about Player B’s difficulties if they’re directly at odds, but if Player A wants something totally unrelated to what Player B is pursuing, player A can be a valid contributor.) In short, avoiding conflicts of interest.
I think I’ve most recently heard this called the Czege Principle, but I’ve heard it go by a few other names too.
J Stein the suggestion is that any move that targets a faction allows you to mark that faction, not just when you ROLL with the faction. This lines up with my favorite advancement system – Sagas of the Icelanders, where you mark relationships when you target them with any move, and advance when you mark four relationships.
What this means is that players don’t have to stretch to Hit the Streets with unrelated contacts to advance, or whatever. They can just go Unleash or maybe Trick some people in the relevant faction.
I find this keeps the pacing up and keeps the conflicts focused (rather than pulling in 3 other factions to help settle a conflict between two werewolf clans, because the players want xp)
Aaron Griffin
>”any move that targets a faction”
I must have missed that one! Can you clarify for me: any move (faction move or not) that targets any faction, and still hitting all four factions, or any move (factino or not) that targets any faction, until you hit any faction 4x?
The former – opening up the palette of moves – sounds entirely reasonable. The latter – allowing you to narrow down to fewer factions – does not.
I’m sympathetic to the “we’re artificially pulling in other factions” feeling, but I feel like that tends to result from failures-in-play to committing to the game premise: everyone has a stake in everyone else’s business. If two werewolf clans are going to war in a setting with properly constructed r-maps/conflicts of interest/etc., the other factions should have their beaks buried in it. Entirely internal, inconsequential beefs should be side-plots at best.
IME, we’ve had more of that artificial feeling when we’ve focused overly much on the supers world, so we’re just running around dealing with supers politics against some backdrop. Then you get feelings like, “well, this is a werewolf factional issue, the Mortals really have no involvement to speak of.” When the factions are pushing and pulling against real-world politics (e.g., they’re fighting over a change in zoning laws because Faction A wants to preserve hunting grounds while faction B wants to drive down property values and bring in their drug trade and …etc…), it doesn’t come up much at all. Everyone’s affected and everyone’s involved and everyone’s got leverage. You don’t have to pull in unrelated factions: everyone’s related, and if you don’t manage their input, they’ll manage you.
Though I admit, the latter is an evolution that didn’t immediately come up in our games. Early on, we played US with all-supernatural-allegory of political stuff, and it didn’t play nearly as well. It was one of my issues with Dark Streets that it emphasized the former, where the latter is where the game seems to shine best (IME).
J Stein It is the former. Just open up normal moves to faction marking.
There are plenty of Urban Fantasy touchstones that include one or two “factions” in a meaningful, political conflict. I think it’s wrong to say that any game where pulling in all four factions feels artificial has an “improper” setup. It stinks of “playing wrong” opinions.
Aaron Griffin Opening up normal moves could work well – sounds reasonable.
The thing about touchstones is that they’re authored pieces with a constructed narrative. You don’t have to play to find out; you don’t need any narrative to emerge organically from player choices. Story Games… do. AW has touchstones that revolve around 1 character. AW does not work well with 1 PC – its mechanics and emergent play really need a few interacting PCs in order for it to produce the play it sets out to produce.
There are set-ups that align with the mechanics of the game to provide the game experience and set-ups that don’t. I’m not saying, “Oh, you want to partake in a two-way battle royale? You have bad opinions, and are bad for having them.”
I am saying, “That does not work for creating the experience that Urban Shadows tries to create, as it is in opposition to the way the mechanics are structured to produce their target genre/narrative, and is a counterproductive way of setting up an Urban Shadows game.” Or, in short, yes it’s a “bad” way to structure an US game.
There is a gulf between “there is one true way to RP” and “This game tries to do X, for which it has structured its rules in manner Y, contingent about assumptions in the fiction Z. Depending on how much you undermine Z, the game will not produce its target play effectively.”
“System matters, and constructing your game setting to be in alignment – or opposed to – the system has a meaningful effect on the game’s ability to produce the promised play” isn’t One True Way-ism. It’s a direct corollary to “System Matters.”
I’m trying to interpret your last comment charitably, but it feels to me like it crosses into ad hominem. I hope that I’m just losing tone in an all-text exchange? Because I very much enjoy your posts and respect your opinions, and would like to think this isn’t getting disrespectful in either direction.
I’m not sure how you can interpret my comment as an ad hominem one, but how about we not screw up Megan Bennett-Burks thread with this
Megan Bennett-Burks I would advise to also inform your players that they need to be more active that usual and that they have more creating power than in other games and game will be only more fun when they use it. It is important that players know that they have to come up with something that theirs characters want to achieve and actively pursue it rather than wait for MC to introduce the plot.
When you come to session start move tell your players to introduce rumors and conflicts that they are personally interested in investigating or being involved in.
Also talk to you players that especially Urban Shadows is not a team based game, and they are not expected to always be together, they are expected to want different things and use debt on each other to request someone else’s help or interference with opposition.
As for your MC preparation, the book is very well written, stick by what is says, do moves, follow the principles and it should go well.
Also remember there is only one currency in game and it is debt, cash doesn’t matter. If someone wants to buy a 9mm it is not a problem but an assault rifle or magical sword they will have to owe someone or go do someone’s dirty work.
Have fun.
A good pbta system provides a ton of tools to tell you what the players find interesting. All you need to do is seed some possibilities, pay attention to how they react, and build off their choices. If people aren’t interacting with an aspect of the setting, then they’re saying it’s not important. Maybe that aspect goes to shit, or maybe it’s just dropped out of the narrative, but don’t sweat it until a player does. Here are some basic things that you can do to suss out what the players care about.
the moves they take
who they take hx/strings/debts/whatever else sets relationships
who they fight over
who they team up against
what they freak out over when you endanger it
A lot of feedback… now I must sort over it all.
David that seems sound, and largely not off the beaten path from what I ordinarily do with most any game, unless I’m just really having an off day.