Hello folks, can you help me with some ideas on how to bring characters together?

9 thoughts on “Hello folks, can you help me with some ideas on how to bring characters together?”

1. They all have shared backstory due to their Debt questions!

2. Bringing them together is part of the art of running a game like this. I personally feel like Lost Girl is an excellent example of how to do this, so watch that if you can.

   So you got a Vamp, Hunter, Tainted, and Spectre, right? You run them through the Session Intro move and get some stuff flying. Maybe the Vamp has a problem with the local Fae. Maybe those Fae approach the Hunter too, for help against the Vamp. Maybe the Spectre’s link is in cahoots with the Tainted, or the Tainted’s patron. Maybe the Tainted’s patron has been able to break the barrier and can speak to the Spectre.

   Spitballing but what you need to do is take each character’s problems and force the other characters to get involved. They might not bite and that’s totally fine.

3. Lex Permann Yes, but all of them chose npcs. I often ask myself questions – isnt that cheap that i push Such diffrent PCs with various agendas to deal with the city’s problems? I mean, that the problems must be big enough to bring them together – i dont think that any of us want to play a suicide squad/avengers type od game, where the only reason for them to stick together is the world coming to an end.

4. Aaron Griffin that’s great advice, thank you Aaron!

5. You don’t need city level problems, you just need triangles. You need character A connected to NPC B connected to character C.

   Also, choosing NPCs for backstory questions is problematic – I don’t think it’s sucgested in the rules.

6. What does each character care about? Make those things intersect in unavoidable and possibly conflicting ways.

7. Also, you can have their NPC overlap, or be victims of the faction intrigues, involved with other PCs, etc. NPC Oracles and Aware are a lot of fun that way: always pulling players into trouble.

8. I’m with Aaron that starting debt should be assign to PCs. Firstly because it creates a starting relation between characters. Secondly because it pushes PCs together – they have a problem and they have a debt on Tainted so let’s ask that muscle to help me or provide me with some crucial info.

   Secondly what is the stage of game, are you after session zero or in the middle of campaign?

   A lot depends how much PvP you want to play, sending Hunter or tainted after vamp or his Web should be easy. Sending hunter against tainted sounds even easier.

   Listen closely to what they create as session start move and don’t allow something boring to be created, players should use that session start to create a trouble for someone else or something they are interested in, you can then ask questions as MC “pc A how are you involved in pc B start of session move?”.

   As for city wide problems they are not good for urban shadows, threats should be personal, maybe tainted patron is weak and other powers want to kill him, will the Tainted protect him or use the opportunity to change sides or break free, he obviously cannot take direct action against his patron so he needs hands of someone else.

   Maybe there is a group of hunters after vamp or another vamp and they want hunter to get involved, will he join pc vamp or be against him (another reason why you want initial debts to be assigned to PCs).

   After all players should have at least a little will to play together as well.

   When Specter chooses Link move it should be toward PC as well not toward NPC as that would allow them to investigate who what and why linked them, the Link might not be happy that there is a ghost spying on him, but once trouble comes knocking he might be happy that he has some back-up.

   Urban Shadows works best IMO when PCs are separate, so it is fine for them to be separate for half of session, but for the other half you might want some scenes with them together (be open and say it to your players “hey guys, how about we have a scene with some of you together?” and let them come up with reason, no point having it if there is no reason for it).

   A lot depends how do you manage spotlight as well, are you jumping between PCs all the time and having 4 scenes played at once in 4 different locations or are you playing once scene beginning to end and then jumping to anther?

   Both approaches has merits and flaws. When PC A has finished his scene and we jump to PC B who is hitting the street to meet and NPC but rolls a miss, you can have PC A come by a scene where PC B is in trouble because of his miss, will he get involved to get debt on PC B or just move by etc.

9. choosing npcs for debt is totally something the book mentions as an option, but it is presented more for if you have a small number of pc’s. for instance, my group uses npcs for that sometimes because we only have two pc’s usually, but we always make sure to get the pc’s connected through them and then pick npcs after.

   the best answer to bringing them together is to make their npcs know eachother. pc-npc-pc triangles, you know? then the npc needs help from their friend, who is currently with another pc, and they take the pc with them to the meet up, things snowball and escalate, and then you have strongly linked pc’s, especially if situations happen where they end up with debt on eachother

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