I have a question for fellow MC’s- tomorrow I’m planning on running my first Urban Shadows session.
Both me and my players are entirely unfamiliar with Urban Shadows, and I’ve read through everything over and over anxiously(I fear I might be a bit under prepared) but I wanted to ask:
Do you all have any advice for the first session? I don’t want to force my PC’s into a specific situation, but I’m not sure how to handle threats.
Should I build a threat for each PC and try to tie them together? I’ve been fussing for the past few hours over how to build good threats, but should I just leave things to improve and try and let things play out in the first session so I have more to build on for the next? My PC’s have unfortunately not given me a lot to build on for the first session.
Build a Threat that is generic : somebody wants to take control of the city by overriding somebody else / a dark ritual / something else. Something you like and want to see.
During the first session, listen to your players. They will create NPCs, Factions and that’s the time you can link that to your original creation.
Create with blanks, and fill the blanks with the players input.
Go ahead and force them into a specific situation! That’s fine for the first session. Just make sure to adapt the threat to their character builds
I’d suggest one threat to start with, and the first situation related to that threat. As they start to interact with the setting, you can always add/remove more threats to make them personal to the characters over time.
Look again at some examples from chapter eight in the book for questions you can ask the players that might help with threats.
I’ve also used the Session Intro basic move to help build threats.
Hey, first thing is congrats on running this game and telling us, I love this game and have fond memories from playing it with friends.
Ok now that’s over let’s address your blockers, use the media that inspired this game both the good & the bad. Steal their ideas and make it a part of your game.
The playbooks used will help direct the kind of story you and your players are going to create.
When I start a game I think about something so awful, horrible, and far reaching that no one could turn their back on it and leave unaffected. But that’s not the point of the first game. That threat is the “Season Ending” at least and the “Series Ending” at best.
Other posters have mentioned listening to players and I recommend it too. In a game set in Rome, Italy our series ending was directly related to the desires of the characters & the chaos they created.
Your game may not have such direct players so that threat is what gets their attention. Many other gamer referees advise on creating a series of events related to a plot the threat is working on. Thinking back to other games I’ve been in, there was a group of necromancers working on a new ritual house. This affected my group because it was starting to draw attention to what we did in the shadows.
So, look for hooks the players create for their characters and attach them to your threat. Follow the string, mess with it, find other strings, ball it up, keep it messy, wrap it around the characters. Make them pay and then make them want to win. ❤️
Hi, for my first time I:
asked a ton of questions, really, a ton. Keep in mind a simple thing: what can I (MC) do with what are you telling me? Is it useful? If not, ask more!
Recorded it all with a phone or similar. Audio is enough; otherwise you may lose something interesting.
Made a list of moves and principles.
Printed some images, like half a dozen.
Last advice: start of session moves are a pain! Useful, but a pain, especially if you’ve got players who give you something unrelated every time. If you tell them to be…good friends with the poor MC, you’re not against the rules…