Hi everyone! I just started playing US with a small group and we are loving it so far. I’ve DMed D&D5e for about 9 months and have played in other PbtA games before, but I’m having some issues MCing US–particularly, issues with NPCs.
I know people have posted about this in the past before, but I’m looking for a little more advice.
My NPCs are simply not powerful enough to take on my PCs (one of which is a very powerful Wolf, and another is a Tainted with a lot of corruption moves–major damage dealers!). How can I beef up my NPCs in a way that still makes them seem fair?
I’m also trying to figure out a good balance between cagey, nervous NPCs working to please their bosses and NPCs that will freely provide information. I–as a person–don’t think that people would be so forthcoming with important information if it was terribly important. Any tips on this as well?
I’m constantly working to improve my DM skills, and NPCs are a huge part of that!
I struggled with these exact issues when I started with Urban Shadows. After running it for about a year, this is what I came up with:
It’s okay if the PCs wipe the floor with the NPCs, but make sure the players don’t get complacent. The PCs are, after all, some of the movers and shakers in your city. If they gang up on some NPCs, they will probably win. The NPCs can cause problems for the PCs before and even after they get taken out, though.
In our game, for instance, the PCs killed (or arranged the death of) a lot of Faeries. This led to complications, later, though, when they ran into an old enemy while they were taking a shortcut through the Faerie realm. This was her home turf, of course, so she showed up on a twelve-foot-tall wolf (flanked by twelve foot-tall wolves, because somebody thought they’d twist my words when I first introduced her, and ha ha who’s laughing now). She got in a good hit early, dealing 3 damage to two PCs (giant wolf! home turf!). They still handily wiped her out, but they ended up falling behind on some countdown clocks while they holed up a couple days because they were so terrified about going into another fight at less than full health. And it probably should have occurred to us that they could hit the streets to find someone to help heal them, magically or otherwise—which in turn leads to debts, complications, etc. Sure, they may be the ones who walk away from every fight, but fights still have consequences.
I also added some custom moves and special tools for specific bigwigs in the setting to make sure the PCs had to really work to take them out. Like, one character had 13 mystically arranged facial piercings that gave her a super high armor score, so the PCs had to figure out a way to disable that ward. (One of them got a magical magnet bracelet on a session start move, though, soooo…) Another character, the Tainted’s patron, had his own custom move specifically saying that if you try to attack him in his seat of power, you roll with Wild to see if he admires your pluck and lets you live—so they had to figure out a way to get him to leave his seat of power. (Turns out it’s not hard to do that if you have a debt on him!) And another character was so decked out with charms and talismans that he had a custom move indicating that you had to disable one before you can deal him harm. (They got around that easily because The Oracle could freeze anyone in their tracks by spending corruption. Then they used his own vampire artifact to turn him into a human and turn him over to the police. I did not see that one coming.)
In short: Don’t be afraid to hit them where it hurts sometimes, and for anybody you don’t want to just be fodder, throw in some kind of obstacle the PCs (and the players) need to think through so they don’t just steamroll everyone.
Yikes, this is a long comment. I’ll post the next response separately. 🙂
In Urban Shadows you can make the PCs lives complicated whenever they fail a roll, however strong they are. And you can make it (almost) as hard as you like. Unlike D&D, it not all about hit points and damage. You can always up the difficulty if necesarry, with numbers or with having them roll more moves to get what they want. Unlike D&D where you need a lot of stats, here you can use your imagination.
I was running a US game where a Hunter and a Veteran were fighting two vampires. They killed one and they were about to kill the other one easily. But when they failed their first roll, instead of dealing them harm that would not be enough to hurt them bad, I had the vampire jump on the roof and escape. A couple of scenes later he came back with more vampires and the odds were suddenly against the pc’s. As simple as that.
Also you said that your PCs have powerful corruption moves. But by using them they mark more corruption and come closer to “losing” their characters. By pushing them to be in situations where they mark more corruption, you could make their lives complicated, and more interesting 🙂
First, these are great questions.
1 – NPC damage-dealing. NPCs “inflict harm” when characters can’t hit their Unleash an Attack move. You can also have NPCs inflict harm when someone flops on a Keep it Cool to avoid harm. If PCs have armor, start having NPCs showing up with AP weapons. Seed in a few rumors that the local supernatural-cop-squad has gotten some new salt-silver armor-piercing rounds and then that one of them is corrupt and is selling the ammo on the street. Or if it’s a wizard or a vampire or something they are using some kind of weird magic to make an attack armor-piercing. A Scholar has some kind of magic gimcrack. And establish these things up front when people Put A Face To A Name. “Jeez, that guy can punch through a tank!”
2 – NPCs taking damage. Armor, armor, armor. A PC making an attack armor-piercing if it isn’t already entails either corruption or a stint at a work space (wizard or veteran). Both these things produce interesting things in the game. Armor-1 is just about trivial for anyone preparing for a fight to have, armor-2 is doable for most movers and shakers, 3 and 4 are Big Fuckin Deals and can really fuck up player characters. But what the hell, if this guy has some kind of weird blood magic thing going on that gives him armor 4, that’s what you say when a player unleashes an attack. Also establish this up front with rumors and clues. “He has some kind of magical gimcrack that makes him INVULNERABLE TO EVERYTHING MAN!!!”
Your ultra-corrupt Tainted here is great, not bad. When a character is hitting corruption a lot, you’re not going to take him out with dangerous NPCs – he is the dangerous NPC that will take him out. So long as he keeps marking corruption, you count that as a win even if technically he’s dunking on the NPCs of the setting. Just be sure that as he dunks on more and more powerful NPCs that you are true to the systems of the city – who supported them, who opposed them, who owed them, who was owed by them, and what will they do as a result of the PC’s actions.
3 – When to give up information quickly versus when to hold it back. This is a two stage process. Remember that the first (and sometimes only) thing you do when you create an NPC is to give them a Drive. Everything that NPC does must be loyal to that Drive. If they’re ambitious, will it help their ambition to give up the information easily? If so, give it up. (“I think this will point them at my enemy. Good. Here you go.”) If not, don’t give it up. Note that the only way to get an NPC to do something they don’t want to do is to persuade, seduce or threaten them. (You can mislead, distract or trick them only if the information you want is their weakness or flaw.) That is going to create interesting things down the road, which is fine.
Okay, so how do you decide what the Drive should be? Look at what’s going on in the Faction. If every vampire in town is urgently seeking a seat in the Senate of Night, then either the NPC should also be doing that, or they should be stridently working to take the Senate down a peg.
Hope this helps.
I wouldn’t need beef up the npc’s because the pc’s should be the unstoppable badasses of the story. What now’s do is make the consequences terrible. The wolf wants to bite the head off the vampire prince, sure. But now there is war in the streets over the power vacuum and the prince’s old allies burn your mother’s house down as a fuck you too buddy. Think of it as every character gets to be John Wick.
A lot has already been covered perfectly, but I just want to emphasize a point here: don’t worry about “fairness” in your NPCs. The fairness is in giving the players all the info up front without any “gotchas”. It’s not unfair to throw a 4-armor tank at them, as long as you say from the getgo “he’s just covered in heavy armor, and Wizard you can see that distinctive glow of magic on it – you’re probably not going to be able to punch him unless you do something about that. What do you do?”
Don’t play the game like a tactical combat game. Let them do shit, and if it’s not challenging, make it harder shit.
Okay, as for NPCs not being too forthcoming: I have struggled with this in investigative games for years, especially anything that has a “persuasion” skill that effectively amounts to mind control. And I have come to three conclusions:
First, don’t worry about just giving them the info sometimes. Watching urban fantasy genre TV has really helped drive this home for me. When Buffy the Vampire Slayer or the brothers from Supernatural interrogate someone, they might get some misinformation, but they’re also pretty sure to get some actual clue that leads them forward. It’s okay to just give the players that sometimes, just to keep things moving. I used to especially obsess over my players’ attempts to grill police officers for information, and then noticed that that’s basically how almost every investigation in Supernatural starts, and it works fine from a storytelling perspective. The only time they make a big deal about the cops being suspicious is when it’s an episode about having to deal with the cops. So, in Urban Shadows, the only time I ever have them worry about the cops is when I think, “We haven’t seen Mortality much lately … maybe it’s time to have them pay a visit…”
Second, remember that the questions asked of players are not the same as the players asked of characters. When a PC tries to figure someone out, that PC’s player gets to ask another player (often the MC) some really probing questions. They also have to describe how their character is getting that information, though—and that can severely limit how much info they are capable of getting. Prompt players to get into how they do this, and to elaborate beyond the one-sentence answer they’ll probably want to give at first. It’s probably harder to justify getting a good answer from “who’s pulling your strings?” if the PC’s just asking out loud. But there are plenty of nonverbal cues implied in that move, too: “I ask him, ‘Who’s pulling your strings? Is it Zheng? Vicario? Frost? WHO?!’ And I’m staring him down, looking for any change in his reaction.” This gives the MC something to work with if they don’t want to just have the NPC blurt something out: “He’s trying to keep a straight face, but when you mention Jack Frost, you see his eye twitch just a bit. He’s totally on the Winter Court payroll.”
And third, don’t forget about debts. That’s built into mislead, distract, or trick already, but you could even lead with that before the players trigger the move with their own “seduction, promises, or threats.” Yeah, Mickey the Leech will tell you the word on the street about why Zheng’s hiring on so many more bloodsuckers, but nothing’s free, you know? It might seem like a small thing, but it can come back to bite them in the best way possible down the line.
Also just wanted to add: This is all such great advice in here. I love reading this. Thanks to Mary for kicking this off and for everybody posting responses. Now you’re all gonna make me regret going on Urban Shadows hiatus following our “season finale (with possibility of renewal).” 🙂
Mary – Great questions! And so many great answers above. Hopefully this helps, and please let the community know if we missed the mark or need to say more on a specific topic. <3
One quick trick I use is to write custom moves for stat swaps to keep things interesting:
Ghostly – When you unleash upon the ghosts of the old factory, roll with Spirit instead of Blood. On a miss, they pull you into the spirit realm.
This kind of move lets some other character than the hitter be the focus for a bit… and it reminds the PCs walking into a fight that throwing punches is always a risky move.
David Rothfeder – YES. “_Urban Shadows_ is a game where every PC is John Wick” is my new tagline when I pitch the game to folks at cons. 😀
just want to say wow this thread is so great.
Mark Diaz Truman, you know the saying, give the nerds what they want.
Jason Tocci a long reply, but a good one! Thanks
Jason Corley it definitely helps! Thank you
Jason Tocci aaaah, thank you! And thanks for all your great tips! Majorly helpful. I agree that this thread is wonderful.
I would like to say that it is not your MC role to challenge PCs with equal level NPCs like in D&D. Tainted patron is also another league than homeless Wolf. Tainted patron is above players league unless you chose otherwise in your fiction. Usually fiction demands some NPCs to be powerful because they are a 1000 years old vampire, while some NPCs are small fish.
US for my understanding is also not a game about killing everything.
Custom moves are great way for NPCs being bigger challenge, also don’t be affraid for NPCs not only to have mystic armors but also mystic damage 4-harm AP from an ancient Wizard or Demon prince seems perfectly fine.
If players chose “put into bad spot” as an option for Unleash – make it really bad if not worse than taking damage – take away/break their weapons or set them up for another moves to break free/avoid taking damage (throw them off the roof/through the window/put silver manacles on them etc)
Regarding getting information.
Hit the street give not full information or points to person who knows more.
Investigate place of power can give solid info.
But using debt should be the one that gives players full truth and full info – again only on proper person (not every homeless drunk knows secrets of Demon Prince, but that Deamon Prince rival sure do) – and that makes PCs find correct people, gain debt on them to finally use them.
Mark Diaz Truman similarly, I’ve used variations on the wolf custom move from the book a lot: when you Unleash on X, always choose another item from the 7-9 list.