Does Urban Shadows still work well if you set in an openly supernatural urban setting, like the movie “Bright” or True Blood?
I have an idea for a campaign where every PC is a cop in a Shadowrun-like city, and it occurred to me that Urban Shadows would be a cool system to use for it.
Hmm what makes US the most appropriate system? I don’t think the core conceit of US is that the supernatural is hidden – rather that there’s a number of competing groups within the city. It also presupposes that supernatural power corrupts.
You could use my alternate faction rules here docs.google.com – Urban Shadows: Alternate Factions
Urban Shadows might in fact make more sense in a setting where the supernatural is known about.
I think it might be hard to bring the supernatural of Urban Shadows into overt reality simply because of what Corruption is about. But maybe there’s something there I’m missing.
Jason Corley I think if supernatural folk are treated like addicts or something, corruption would still fit. In Bright, which the OP mentions, the orcs are still seen as lesser citizens who are vulgar and violent.
I think you’d have to define Corruption a little more clearly for this setting, but it’d work.
Daniel Krashin – I think Urban Shadows always has a kind of “supernatural = criminal” vibe for me. Everyone knows that the drug trade is happening in the real world, but that doesn’t mean you know drug dealers personally. I think the game might work just fine without “a secret world” because the world in Urban Shadows isn’t that secret anyway.
But… I think that the logical extension of things like “Wizards can do magic” is huge changes to our world. Like why bother getting a graduate degree in physics if wizards have better answers? I think that kind of shift might be more destructive to the fiction than anything else.
Also, Aaron Griffin’s alternate faction rules might make a lot more sense for your game if you’re up for implementing them. 😀
You might bring some areas of the supernatural in but not others – sure, vampires exist because they’re essentially a disease, and they’ll smile and say “you’re not prejudiced against ME, are you?” but wizards? who can do literally anything they imagine? pfffffffffff cmon man
In the early part of the 20th century there were lots of quite serious scientists and scholars who thought that within 100 years psychic powers would be part of our understanding of the world. But very few of them believed in, say, fairies
I think this won’t work, but not for the reason you think. And Aaron Griffin ‘s rules might help.
US has a core conceipt of several different power structures all competing, often for different things. Sometimes for goals that are utterly foreign to another group.
If everyone is a cop, then everyone is part of the same power structure. The core abstraction is broken.
Monster of the week may be closer to what you want. Just ensure someone is the professional.
Aaron GriffinThe play structure of US, the “go around and talk to people, who sometimes try to stab you” seems fruitful for a cop drama. Thanks for the link, how many factions do you recommend?
.Jason Corley Yeah, this makes sense, but that’s a thing in True Blood too, vampires are on TV but the Fae are in stealth mode.
The rules there use 4 marked factions to advance, so at least four. When I played that game, we had six major factions (dispossessed fae with their underground court, gun running vamps, drug dealing vamps, rich human collectors, local government, and necromantic demons). There were of course smaller players, but they were plot points more than anything else
I think the supernatural being kinda out could work fine, and True Blood is a great example. Everyone knows, in an abstract way, that there are vampires and supernatural forces, but most people never encounter them or assume they haven’t. The rare few who abandon normal life to pursue it are the Power(?) faction, becoming wizards and such. And for most people, being aware the supernatural exists doesn’t mean they know any more than wild speculation – they may know werewolves are real, but not that silver comes from later embellishments on the beast of Gevaudon and Lon Cheney movies.
In other words, just don’t ignore that most people are still people, who have never met anything nonhuman or didn’t notice, who are more worried about paying the bills and what jerks they work with, and who get their news from Facebook. In our world, guys hold pizza parlors hostage with guns because a podcast said there was child sex trafficking in the basement, kids are getting measles and scarlet fever because their parents think vaccines are worse than fatal diseases, and idiots who don’t know the US has Carribean territories assault people in public parks and police don’t intervene. Is it so hard to believe that there would be groups who refuse to believe ghosts are real, or would try to ward off the fae with crosses, or think wizards are all conspiring to turn their kids into protesters for the Westboro Baptists using the drugs, or something even stupider than I can make up?
I’m playing an Aware police detective right now. As much as my character would have liked to keep the supernatural a secret, it was completely exposed by the second scene of the game.
All of the characters could still be cops even they are members of different factions. They just might have to “play it cool” when on the day job.