Author: Aaron Griffin

How well does Session Intro line up with a session for you guys? I play shorter 2 hour sessions, so not everything gets resolved, and continuing to pile on is probably not a good idea.

I love the move, though, I love the authorship part of it. How do you all play it? Have any specific problems with it you solved?

Quick session 2 recap:

Princeton, the Vamp, runs a wine bar near the university and is working on corrupting the daughter (and Link) of the Spectre. She is aware of the supernatural and a big fan of Twilight and Vampire Diaries, so romanticises the life. I’ve set up a player-visible countdown indicating how enamoured she is with Princeton, which will tick when he “escalates” their relationship in some manner. The Spectre can probably reduce it but it’s unclear how (yet).

Jonny, the Fae, is running from his true heritage in the fae nobility has set himself up as a human baker (“The thing I love most about humanity is cake – you can’t bake in the fae realm”) and collector of 80s toys. In tracking down a mint condition Ecto-1 still in the box, he met with a witch from a local coven who is also a collector. She had two redcap goons under her control – an affront to his court that a member of the nobility wouldn’t let stand. I keep asking questions about promises he may have made back when he was active in his court, encouraging him to go break in favor of his human life of cakes and toys.

Fontaine, the Spectre, is a Desert Storm vet killed over gambling debts who still protects his daughter (despite being a deadbeat dad after the war). He struggles with keeping her safe, keeping her away from the Vamp, and keeping his hold on reality. He reached out to the Fae baker to find out if he could make anything that didn’t turn to ashes in his mouth, so maybe he could feel again. Jonny said that the remnants of a restless spirit that finally passes on into oblivion is used by many humans to bridge the spirit world, and could possibly work (this was an immediate response from the player and I was super happy with it until…). He called it “ghost butter”.

Back in session 1 we also had Emory, the Veteran, and his hunter-in-training, Alana. Alana had returned from a night of hunting with information about a man killing demons and eating the bodies. Upon investigation, it was found to be related to an egyptian artifact recently stolen from the museum. It is too strong to handle on her own, so Emory removed his prosthetic arm, re-attaching his shotgun for the first time in years. He began reaching out to his old hunting crew, collecting a gang of chubby out of shape old folks in hopes of stopping this new threat.

Fun times so far. I haven’t been able to get Investigate a Place of Power in play, nor is there much Cashing in a Debt (2 so far from the players). Any advice on these fronts?

Investigations and the Veteran: this came up in a session, and I’m sort of curious how you guys would handle it. It appears like US pushes you to handle investigation of a thing with Faction moves, which is cool. But upon discovering unknown yellow crystals scattered about the place of a demon fight, the veteran wanted to take it back to his workshop and figure out what they were all about.

I handled it with normal Q&A and he ended up Hitting the Streets at the end, but I sort of felt like there should be a move here. Something like “Investigate an Item of Power” rolling with Mind that basically mimics “Investigate a Place of Power”.

What would you have done?

Session Zero is officially over. I’m actually trying to play this one by the book (recent chats with Paul Beakley​​ have convinced me to be a little more RAW and less cavalier). So now I get to ask some questions about Storms.

We have a few cool pivot points going on via debts, but there’s not really enough there to make more than two solid threats. That doesn’t seem like enough to make a Storm. So would it be better to hold off one session or to throw a lot of my own Threats into the mix? I worry about authoring too much of the world up front.

Similarly, how long are Storms expected to take to resolve? Are they closer to a DW Campaign Front or Adventure Front?

And finally: should countdowns be public knowledge once they’re aware of a Threat? Should the whole storm ever be public knowledge?

I’m looking to make a series of countdown clock images for use in a rollable table in Roll20. To achieve this, I’d need a good image of the empty clock with high enough resolution to where I don’t get artifacts when I fill in various wedges.

Is there any place I could get such an image?

Simple question today: Are the targets of the Vamp’s starting debts also in their web?

Show me your city moves!

For Chicago, I’m thinking:

– Put an unpunished abuse of power on display

– Disgorge a body, unrelated and newly killed

What do you use?

Ok so I’m officially giving Urban Shadows the full read through, and I have a couple of nuance-y questions about the rules as written I just want to be fully clear on.

– The Wizard’s Sanctum Sanctorum specifically mentions “spell ingredients” but the only ingredients listed in wizard spells are personal objects from others that one would assume they don’t have bags and bottles of (“Oh we need the Governor’s fingernail clippings? Third shelf from the back”). Is the intent here more for uses of power during Let It Out? Or something else?

– Spectre harm is a little confusing to me. Regular people can’t interact with the Spectre, so it’s probably safe to assume mundane harm from guns or knives doesn’t do anything, even when physically manifested, right? So supernatural harm is the only thing that can harm the Spectre’s corpus, and they reform in a few days. But what exactly triggers the “spirit passing on permanently” bit of the End Move if not supernatural harm?

– The Tainted’s Tendrils in the Dark explicitly says “assume your demon form and go to work”. I assume this means that the patron’s job requires immediate attention, but not all of the jobs you select are really things that need immediate demon-form attention. (“I need you to smash into this building and negotiate the fuck out of this demonic contract!”). Is the intent here that the “right now” job be one requiring violence?

– You can gain things by calling in Debts, but what about stuff that is… minor or not debt worthy? It’s apparent that the characters have different levels of starting wealth, but it’s not exactly clear how to manage this. The Fae can probably easily buy a round of drinks for a local bar, but I doubt The Hunter could. It seems a little silly to require The Fae to have a Debt with the bartender or something to do it. Should this be entirely managed by fiat alone?