A question about Basic Moves: I’ve only played Dungeon World before Urban Shadows, and in DW there is this catch-all move called Defy Danger that can be roll+ any attribute – the description of this move is similar to Keep Your Cool.
I found it a little weird that if my player says: I wan’t to avoid being hit by that alley trolls club, I go: “roll with spirit”. This would mean that an Oracle or a Wizard is better at avoiding tough situations than say a Vamp (because they tend to have higher spirit than Vamps).
How do you handle these situations?
I don’t have an issue with the move as written. It encourages characters with strengths outside of Spirit to proactive resolve situations in ways other than the reactive Keep your Cool move.
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As I see it the vampire could unleash an attack an try to take the weapon or the upper hand from the enemy. There would be situations when even a vampire have to keep their cool, but every character have different tools to deal with the same problem.
I feel like you’re misunderstanding the fiction in the moment. Your vampire PC absolutely can avoid that club, because she’s a badass vampire. But can she do it calmly, without repurcussions, and without flipping out and going all dark side?
“The troll swings his huge club at you, what do you do?”
“Uh, I dodge out of the way?”
“Cool, how can you dodge something like that?”
“I turn into a cloud of bats and reappear slightly to the side”
“Holy shit, Vamps can do that? Awesome! But you’ll need to Keep Your Cool if you want to be able to reappear in time to help deal with the troll”
tl;dr you’re rolling to avoid a risk (in this case, to be able to reform), you’re not rolling to do a task (like dodge)
Victor Segell The key idea here (that Luke JW touches on) is that there are other options the Vamp has access to besides Keep Your Cool. They’d be better off responding to the alley troll’s swung club with the Unleash move – throwing themselves at them, clawing and gnawing or however it is the Vamp goes about it. By comparison, the Wizard or Oracle is indeed more suited to just trying to avoid the blow.
You can see this in a lot of other PbtA games – Apocalypse World is the obvious example. Dungeon World (along with a few others) goes for the different approach of offering a few different ways to overcome obstacles, to make the move a definite catch-all when it needs to be.
Victor Segell – Great question! Our community has already produced some great answers, but I think it’s worthwhile to say a little bit from the design perspective here as well.
I think that one of the biggest differences between games like Urban Shadows/Monsterhearts/Apocalypse World itself and Dungeon World/Epyllion/MotW is the degree to which the system fights player intent. In other words, some PbtA games intentionally work to twist what players want to do, both in how they approach problems and how the outcomes of those approaches play out.
As Cameron Burns and KaribuI noted, the Spirit-focused Keep Your Cool incentivizes some playbooks like the Vamp to be hyperaggressive: “If I can’t just get out of the way of danger, I’m going to pivot to my Blood moves.” That’s awesome! That means that the fiction is diversified. The Oracle is going to be great at getting out of danger, but terrible at convincing people to do what she wants (low Heart). If there’s a move like Defy Danger, that differentiation ceases to matter to the fiction. Everyone can always resist… they just roll a different (usually high) stat.
Yet as Aaron Griffin notes, it’s also on you to play to the character concept as well. This is just a version of being a fan of your player’s characters. Perhaps the Vamp who misses on dodging the club might grab the club out of the troll’s hand and rip his throat out (giving into his Vamp nature) instead of getting hit with the club. Misses != failure!
That’s doubly true for the 7-9 condition on Keep Your Cool. In DW, the 7-9 is just a generic cost, complication, etc… but in Urban Shadows it’s specifically a hard bargain: you tell the PC what it’s going to cost for them to stand strong in the face of danger. This is your opportunity to drive home the core themes of corruption and compromise:
MC: The troll swings his club at you. What do you do?
Vamp: I duck out of the way. [Rolls Spirit. Gets an 8]
MC: The troll moves fast, faster than you would expect. You realize that you’re not going to be able to duck quickly enough…but is the troll really stronger than you? If you’re willing to go at this guy hard, you could keep him from hurting you.
Vamp: Ack. I was trying to avoid killing anyone, but I’ve already marked like 4 harm tonight. Yeah, I’ll go at him.
Luke JW Good for you not having any issues! 🙂 KaribuI Thanks for the advice, I need to remind my players (and myself) to look at what their characters actually do well. 🙂
Aaron Griffin I understand that it’s not a “task” in that sense, rather a narrative solution to a situation – the dodge thing was just an example! In your example, the Vamp still rolls +Spirit so my point still stands, they are still in trouble. And while feeling cool, the troll is still coming for them.
Cameron Burns Thank you! That is a cool way to look at it. Remind the players with high Blood that they’ll probably be better off using violence (haha it’s quite obvious now that I think about it).
Thank you Mark Diaz Truman, for a great answer – I understand so much better now. And thank you for making a great game. We have lots of fun! 🙂
Thank you everyone for clear and great advice. I feel more pumped than ever for the next session. 🙂
It is hard to add more to such great answers, but I’ll like to turn your attention also to that Urban Shadows and Dungeon World are emulating different genre and as such while DW is about zooming into combat scenes and doing almost blow by blow sequence, Urban Shadows is game about politics, combat very rarely last longer than two Unleash An Attack, therefor combat moves are more abstract and Keep you Cool in games where I played was more about avoiding combat as a whole rather than doing one dodge to one blow, in such circumstance Vamp is much weaker because as natural predator he is inclined to violence rather than avoiding it.
Beside playbooks usually have moves to replace stats, so if a vamp is tired of not being able to Keep his Cool in stressful situations he can take a move that would allow him to use Blood instead.