Hi folks,
We started playing Shadows this week and everyone seems to be having a good time (me included).
The session threw out a lot of plot hooks and elements, and I’m slowly winnowing them down to a handful that I can effectively use in this three-session game.
However, one thing I’m struggling with is turning these ideas into Threats. (I’ve had difficulty with this in other PbtA games too.) It’s tricky for me to break an idea up into the six clock-ticks; I have a habit of overcomplicating things, putting too much into each tick and dragging in additional plot bits that don’t connect to the core idea.
So it’d be great to hear from y’all about how you make effective Threats – particularly if you could share some you’ve made and talk about how they worked in play.
Thanks!
/subbing to respond later
Also interested in this topic
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/sub (I’d like to see what other folks say first! And I assume you’ve read The Storm in Urban Shadows, right?)
Mark Diaz Truman – yes, and that’s a great starting point, but it’s still not clicking for me.
Patrick O’Duffy – Cool! Just wanted to make sure we covered the basics. 😀
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I tend to start at the beginning and the end. The steps in between are just the most logical course from the former to the later. I then fill out the steps in play and in prep.
For me, Threats are a way to inspire ideas by giving my creativity a kickstart and structure. They aren’t something that really constrains my usual processes from that point, other than pointing me in the right direction.
Okay, let me put up some examples of how I’m coming at Threats, starting with one that I’m pretty happy with.
Background: the game’s set in Melbourne (Australia), we have four PCs (Fae, Veteran, Vamp and Wizard) and a variety of hooks and ideas that involve geomancy and mystical architecture/infrastructure. In the first session we established that the Fae’s cousin (Dylan) had infiltrated the secret society of tram drivers to steal a map of the secret Tellurian Circuit hidden within the network of tram lines; we also established that the Veteran (a mystic architect) and the Wizard collaborated on maintaining wards to seal a magical portal in Flagstaff Gardens, an inner-city park.
Riffing off those points, I came up with this:
Closed Circuit
Threat Type: Ritual/Theft (impulse: to take something from another)
Cast: Albion (wizard looking to gain power), Solomon (part-time hunter and occult investigator), Dylan (fae and petty crook) and the Conductor (ghost trapped within the Tellurian Circuit)
Description: Albion is trying to open the Flagstaff portal. To do this, he needs to destroy the wards around it, which are powered by the Tellurian Circuit. He got Dylan to infiltrate the Network to get a map of the Circuit.
• 3.00: Dylan delivers the map to Albion.
• 6.00: Albion conducts rituals to drain power from the Circuit, which frees the Conductor.
• 9.00: Solomon investigates ghost sightings around the tram system.
• 10.00: Albion kills Solomon.
• 11.00: The Conductor helps Albion destroy the wards.
• 12.00: Albion opens the portal. Its energies overload the Tellurian Circuit and allow all the ghosts in it to escape.
I’m reasonably satisfied with this. There are several contact points to draw in the PCs, both obvious (ward disruption, ghost appearances) and less so (Albion is using a relic the Fae is looking for, Solomon is the Veteran’s apprentice, etc). I wonder whether it needs punching up in a few places (3.00 is pretty passive; 11.00 is kind of vague) but I’m also wary of overcomplicating it, so I’ll let it go for the moment.
I’m also putting together a second Threat, to involve the other major threads from the first session, but this one isn’t working.
Background: The Vamp and the Veteran are in a business relationship to build a block of luxury apartments. They’ve just been told that Iannos, leader of the fae Winter Court, wants to take control of the apartments, and that he’s working with a vampire elder to do so.
So here’s the initial (and unfinished) draft of the Threat:
Ice on the Blood
Threat Type: Power Play/Annexation (impulse: to wrest control from others)
Cast: Iannos (fae leader), Lillian (elder vampire), Nazz (upstart vampire), Mac Cechd (fae from rival court)
Description: Iannos wants to take control of the Arcadia apartments; the symbolic magic, powered by the Tellurian Circuit, will cement his control of the Winter Court. He’s allied with Lillian, who wants his assistance in killing Nazz and his gang.
• 3.00: Iannos steals information on the Circuit from the Veteran’s library.
• 6.00: xxx
• 9.00: xxx
• 10.00: xxx
• 11.00: Lillian kills the Veteran to usurp control of the geomantic flow from the Circuit.
• 12.00: Iannos kills the Vamp and takes control of Arcadia.
This one’s going nowhere. At first the middle section had rising conflicts between Nazz’s gang and the Winter Court, culminating with Nazz’s death at 10.00 – but that felt completely disconnected from the point of the Threat. So I need to keep it focused on the main issue – but I also want it to involve more than just two NPCs, and to show off the variety of other conflicts and tensions in the city.
The other issue is that this is a Threat that fundamentally involves two PCs, to the point where they’re both killed if nothing’s done to stop the countdown. Which would suggest including them in the cast and clock-ticks – but that feels too railroady and doesn’t allow the players enough freedom. And despite their involvement, I’m struggling to see strong contact points for them to grab the clock hands, or additional hooks for the other two PCs.
So in a situation like this, I wonder – what makes a Threat dynamic and engaging? What level of focus does it need to keep it moving in one direction, but also allow room for PCs to change it? How do you best set the stakes and then break them up into ticks?
(I’ll keep plugging at this Threat over the next couple of weeks, so there’s no need to fix/finish it right now. I’m more interested in hearing people’s experiences and general ideas.)
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Yeah, I’m not sure I’d make killing a PC a tick, because if you fall you’re just kinda doing the same thing, directly to a PC, again. Your idea of an internal struggle within the Threat is great, definitely keep doing that, but perhaps it’s over more than just who gets a seat when the music stops. Maybe the vampire method of takeover is different than the fae (one thinks the other goes too far, or not far enough, etc) and that escalates.
I like to make each tick a concrete hard move, like “Big Al sends his goons to burn down the church.” My idea is to minimize the thinking I have to do during play. Also, concrete moves are easy to use in different situations: I know how to describe that move whether the PCs are in church, staking out the church from across the street, or eavesdropping on Big Al himself.
Hey, picking this thread up again to share my progress on making good Threats.
I read through the Storm chapter again and realised there was a resource there I’d overlooked – the additional sample Threats in the ‘All the King’s Vamps’ sample Storm. I hadn’t really read deeply after the ‘Ley Lines Loose’ sample Threat earlier in the chapter, since I’m not using a full Storm in my game, so I missed these until now.
(If/when Magpie take in any further corrections, a pointer on p259 to check pp265-9 for more examples could be helpful.)
Once I had a good set of examples to cross-check, I realised the key thing my problematic threat was missing – meaningful aftermath. 12.00 isn’t (or isn’t just) ‘the last big thing happens’; it’s ‘the city is changed permanently due to the previous events’. To make the Threat kick, you have to have a payoff – ideally a concrete, specific one – and the payoff needs to be outlined in the Threat.
My ‘Ice on the Blood’ Threat had no payoff – nothing happened once Iannos claimed the Arcardia apartments. So I needed to rethink things from that angle – what happens after that – and to keep the countdown clock focused specifically on tick that lead to that payoff.
The other thing I took on board was some advice from Daniel Krashin, to make every tick a hard move. (Well, reasonably hard). Looking through the Wild and Night moves suggested some appropriate ticks; looking through the Threat moves first made me decide to change the Threat type, and then again to make some moves into ticks.
All that said, here’s the revised version:
Blood on the Ice
Threat Type: Territory/ Expansion (Impulse: to create and multiply)
Cast: Iannos, Lillian, Elsa (archivist at the State Library and information broker to several supernatural contacts)
Description: Iannos wants to connect the Vamp PC’s Arcadia apartment construction project to the Realm of Winter, in order to bring more Winter fae to Melbourne. He’s allied with Lillian, who wants his assistance against the younger local vampires.
• 3.00: Elsa supplies Lillian with pertinent legal and architectural records from the State Library.
• 6.00: Iannos’ fae sabotage the construction site to temporarily stop work.
• 9.00: Lillian uses the records to make a hostile takeover bid on the project.
• 10.00: Iannos kidnaps Elsa to use as a sacrifice to fuel the Realm connection.
• 11.00: Iannos sacrifices Elsa; streams of frozen blood enmesh the apartments.
• 12.00: Iannos connects the apartments to the Realm of Winter. A dozen powerful Winter fae come to Melbourne, and the apartment complex becomes a feeding ground for them.
This still needs work, and I suspect I’ll rewrite a bunch of it on the fly while running the game, but I’m feeling a lot more confident about it.
So that’s my take on Threats now – a clear and specific payoff that changes the city, and a clock that uses hard moves as ticks to coherently set up that payoff.
…which is more or less what the book says, I guess, but I needed some help and examples to see it.