Hi all. I’ve a little problem with my group. We’re playing with a tainted, an hunter and a wizard. It seems that the players want to play in a traditional “party” way. So they tend to play between themselves instead of the usual “factions” way. As an example, they never “Hit the streets” and the main used faction move is “put a name to a face”, more as a way of easy advancement. I don’t feel like US is meant to be played like that.
Can be US played that way, or are they loosing the most important part of the game?
If they’re happy with the game, then they’re not missing out. You could throw some moves their way that force them to interact with factions more, to see if they enjoy it.
What sort of problems are they presented with?
My group did the same thing for much (maybe even most) of our 13 session campaign. Honestly, it kind of drove me nuts just because it was less interesting to me as the GM and felt like it was working against the genre, trying to turn a contemporary fantasy noir into something structured more like D&D. They were especially nervous about “splitting the party” because they were nervous they’d get killed if there was a fight. It took a long time for me to convince them this is not that kind of game.
That said, this kind of behavior did not “break” the game. In fact, when we wrapped up finally and we only had a couple threats active, it works just fine and everybody had a lot of fun, me included. Until then, though, trying to play as a “party” and avoiding faction moves just made it so that they covered a lot less ground and those who weren’t gaming the system advanced really slowly at first. They eventually realized this worked against them: If they don’t split up the party, and don’t actively seek out people from each faction, and they’re dealing with a storm with 4-5 countdown clocks representing every faction, they’re probably ignoring at least one problem, and eventually that problem will come to bite them in the ass. In our game, we had multiple clocks almost fill up (and at least one that did, if I recall) before they realized they weren’t just dealing with a “main quest,” but a whole city with interconnected parts. If you want to make that point sooner, focus on advancing one clock they’re being especially bad at dealing with, and when it fills up, have the pressure this change exerts be palpable so the players know they need to avoid that kind of thing happen again.
I also found it helped to actually write down in a non-spoilery way all the threats in the storm they knew about, and write a list of every NPC organized by faction. Part of their confusion was just having a hard time keeping track of everything. It helped them see how much was going on and prompted them to use faction moves more.
How are they solving mysteries without hitting the streets?
Re Jason Corley’s comment: My group attempted to over rely at times on investigating a place of power and just sitting around in the wizard sanctum doing research and debating what to do next.
We all also underestimated at first just how easy it is to trigger hit the streets as a move. One of my players said doing this—going to meet a contact to ask for help, call in a debt, etc.—does not sound like her first go-to action in any roleplaying game she’s ever played. (Again, lots of D&D in this group’s history.) But hit the streets is phrased so generally that it even covers, say, hunting someone down to interrogate them, or hell, even rob them face to face. Basically anytime you go anywhere in search of another person for an actual reason, you may be triggering that move. I ultimately even ruled that they could mark it for phone calls in certain circumstances (despite the warning in the rule book not to allow this), as they were still “going” to contacts for aid, and it typically led to some kind of excursion to help the contact with whatever they were juggling.
I always assumed that at least text messages were involved in hitting the streets, but you can’t do it from a place of safety.
Jason Corley the book specifically says you can’t just call someone, but in our game I allowed phone calls sometimes.
The way to get people working at cross purposes is the same as Apocalypse World: find those triangles. Find a thing that two characters are related to in different ways – an NPC, an object, a community.
Well, I always assumed that “calling someone” was part of hitting the streets. In other words, it’s not the only thing you do when you hit the streets, but it’s not prohibited from being a part of it. Just based on what little I know about how finding people out and about in a city works, cellphones are a big part of that.
I think Lost Girl was what I most emulated for Hit the Streets.
Aaron Griffin main issue is that they want to play as a group of people that trust each other. It’s complex to put them one against the other because they prefer to play against an external threat from a spot of relative safety (no danger from other PCs).
So it’s more like a problem solving game than a world building one.
I don’t think US is meant to be played like that.
simone biagini: That is EXACTLY what one of my players said—that they wanted to play a game about group problem solving. I think we ultimately found some common ground, but we needed to talk about that specific impulse so that they could understand that while there’s room for that in this game, there’s other stuff going on too.
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simone biagini I don’t want to know YOUR issues with their playstyle. I want to know the issues the characters face in play.
If you want them against each other, even momentarily, it’s up to you to present problems the characters would differ on. Maybe you have a vampire who feeds off hookers, and the werewolf PC finds a dead hooker with fang marks in his territory.
They have all sort of problems: A vampire warlock political schemes. A duke of hell trying to reach this reality. A rogue elven lord trying to dethrone the Queen of Summer and prey on humans. A blogger that is trying to expose the supernaturals living in the city.
I think is enough 😀 Aaron Griffin
simone biagini sure, but now take THOSE threats and have them make deals with one PC. “Hey Aware, you have a missed call on your phone from that blogger guy. Voicemail says he’s offering to pay a consulting fee. You interested?”
I know how to put the PCs one against the other 🙂 the problem is that THE PLAYERS prefere to do not play like that. My question was related to that; is it acceptable to play that way or are they wasting part of the beauty of the game? Jason Tocci had the same issue and solved in game. I think I’ll try to do the same.
One thing that helped at least nudge us in that direction was having NPCs offer deals to PCs, but only one on one. Like, the vampire crime boss offered to hire the Tainted but with greater autonomy, appealing to her desire to get out from under her patron’s thumb. That same demonic patron, meanwhile, offered to help with Wizard learn how to use a powerful artifact so as to get back his dead family. The players mostly ended up still working together anyway, turning on everyone but each other, but it added some intrigue along the way.