Hi everyone, the last weekend i run my first game with urban shadows. It was a one shot to know the game and start 2 noob players.
I want to share my impressions and talk about few things.
– I did the sheets on the same day, and the proccess was too long for me we want to play for 4-4:30h and we spend 1:30h. I usually play fate or dungeon world and the character sheet is faster.
– The other thing was the debt system and the corruption system, i think that it’s awesome but you need some sessions to explore it.
– In general this is a great game, maybe i need some more examples to make combat conflicts easier or harder. I think that is a great game to play many sessions, not to play a one shot
what do you think about?
📌
Hey Alberto!
Like you said, Urban Shadows is definitely a meatier, longer-running game than something like Fate or DW. 1.5 hours is roughly normal for character creation (maybe a little long) and you’re right that corruption and Debt need time to flourish.
What can we help you with regarding combat? Do you have a specific question that the community can answer? 😀
For a one-shot, I would want characters at least roughly done in advance. Use email or a message board, get your players thinking early. If they’re making their own, they should show up nearly ready to start playing, not just getting started.
Also, something I read suggested starting with some XP and Corruption already marked. That way, you’re more likely to hit an advance during play.
When I ran a one-shot, I did a few things to speed up character creation:
*I had the city more fleshed out than I otherwise would, and communicated that info to the players. In a long game, I might be asking “okay, Wizard, what are your fellow wizards like?”. but for the one shot I said “Wizards are like this, where do you fit in”. Similarly, make sure they don’t spend too much time focusing on playbook questions. “Pick one to answer now, and feel free to answer more in play”. For start of session moves, create two or three rough threats facing the city, and then choose one of them based on characters created and ask players to describe rumors or conflict relating to that threat.
Something I didn’t do but will next time is have a long NPC list ready to go–debts took a lot of time b/c it’s very hard to distribute all three to other PCs in a four-player game. Giving people a list and letting them choose an NPC for one of their debts means less agonizing over choices where there aren’t any good answers. I’d also use the same chart for the debts PCs get and give as a result of the start-of-session roll.
The book suggests that characters start with three corruption and one advance for a one shot–but choosing that one advance is eating up into your time–next time I run a one shot, I’ll skip it or tell players to pick it sometime during play instead of at character creation.
Debt is a cool system, but some players are not fans of mechanics that force you to do something for someone who you owe. It’s a matter of taste, I like it, it makes good political game for me.
Corruption – took me maybe like 10 or more games to stop being afraid of it and rather embrace it. Some corruption moves are better than others, Spectre corruption moves are beyond awesome and make for a good story.
Combat in US is short and brutal, if you want longer combat scenarios you might need to run DW. Mechanically you can give NPC more harm, maybe a vamp or fae lord can survive and still fight after receiving 6 or 8 harm.
But it is mostly about fictional positioning, enemies might have custom moves or other strange behavior that might require players to somehow attain position to engage Unleash against an opponent.