Hi guys!
I haven’t played Urban Shadows yet but I’m wondering if it would be easy to run it in an open table format? What would need to be hacked/changed to allow a roster of characters to play in the story?
I don’t have the luxury of a stable group currently but I know a lot of people with varying availability.
The Factions might provide the necessary structure to allow that. Different cases with different players from each Faction participating at the behest of their Faction. Each session would have to be a series in a TV show, but there could be an overarching arc uniting the season. Debts could be transferred behind the scenes, which the current moves allow. Kind of an urban West Marches. I like it.
That’s a series I’d watch
I think the biggest change is probably just making sure you have enough relationships. Urban Shadows can drag when you’ve got too many side scenes, so you need to make sure you have lots of reasons for characters to spend time with each other instead of heading off into their own subplots.
Travis Scott and Jason Cox have run a ton of large Urban Shadows games though. They may have additional idea!
I would for sure lean heavy on the pc-npc-pc relationships.
I like points of interest toon between PCs and NPCs. The more connective tissue, the realer it feels, and the easier it is to accommodate shifts in faces. It is a bit of an issue with cutting down face to a name, but not too bad.
I was thinking I might borrow from the Fate Dresden files game and have any new characters describe a group, a small area or specific spot in the city with two qualifying traits the first time they are introduced so they have a buy-in in the shared creation of the city. Would multiple of the same playbook be an issue?
Individual agendas matter. So a rotating cast off work or none would work. Fifteen or twenty would not.
I played a long game with a revolving cast, but not necessarily an open table.
Most of the players were around for session 0. I also kept a complex relationship map detailing debts and NPCs.
Give an incentive for making starting rumors coincide. Build off the answers. Then, it doesn’t matter who shows — they’ll be connected and into it.
William Nichols I might even keep an open rumor sheet for the players along side a Relationship map.
Vincent Quigley – I’ve found multiples of the same playbooks to be tough, but there are now 14 published playbooks, so you should have enough variety for everyone!
Next to my r-map I kept a running list of locations and things happening that we’re public knowledge. They didn’t work super well for my group, but they leaned heavily on reusing NPCs on the r-map which made up for it
William Nichols What would that incentive be?
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Christo Meid In this one, I think mere peer pressure works. Talk to a the players, so that the first rumor or two brngs in a couple of PCs. Make the standard format something like “Well I heard that is about to go after for . “
After some thought I think it might work if you make the story to be about characters that are there on the session.
Use start of session move and just have fun for some time, almost like running a one shot in the same city over and over.
Keep NPC list persistent and maybe over time some broad threats.
I think some ongoing conflict that’s easy to explain, and players can pick sides or try to remain neutral, will be good.
To build on my idea of an ongoing situation.
You don’t have to force it, just play first 3-4 games, see how many players come again and what is the ongoing fiction. Maybe then you will see a threat that emerges from all that.
Ongoing situation will be background while you can focus each game on what current players want.
Example:
Ongoing situation – war between Wizards and Wolfs.
Player wants to see some drama of his Veteran who used to be a Wizard but now wants to retire.
Sides of the conflict might come and want to get him involved or while driving through the city a half-dead Wizard lands on his car and asks ‘please get me to safety’ and there are wolfs in hot pursuit, does he gets involved or not?
I settled for exactly that Pawel Solowczuk . I will be starting my game set in Prague on our french (canadian) discord channel on friday. I will keep you posted on how it goes.