Author: David Hayes

I posted here about my difficulties with combat in a recent US game I ran. I’m still not entirely sure how to do it and I’m always looking for more examples of play in AW games.

I found this really great write-up from the Dungeon World side of things called “A 16 HP Dragon”, very inspirational: http://www.latorra.org/2012/05/15/a-16-hp-dragon/

http://www.latorra.org/2012/05/15/a-16-hp-dragon/

Hello awesome community! I’m back with another US question that I’d love to explore.

The scene: a fae Lovecraftian morality play is coming to an end. The major players in the web of intrigue we’ve built over the last eight games are all here, and the PCs have prepped for it the past couple of days: securing alliances, doing research, scraping together some weapons… they’re ready.

During the Big Fight, the Wizard seals the deal with an unseelie fae (+1 corruption for deal with a dark power) to achieve the dread “Upon A Pale Horse” corruption move. The Veteran spends a hold to have “just what you need” and whips out the true name of the vamp that she and her assistants have been researching for days to find.

Wizard + true name + Upon A Pale Horse + 2 corruption = 6 AP harm to the big bad. Night night!

My players knew that a lot of narrative threads were getting tied up in this fight. They also knew that we would be taking a Urban Shadows break to play around in Fate-land (Dresden? Secrets of Cats? We’ll see!), so this was Season Finale time.

The way we would continue this, narratively, is that the Wizard is persona non grata for just outright blowing someone he doesn’t like away. No one will see him face-to-face anymore. That’s some super dark stuff that’s gonna pull that Wizard down down down in the coming months.

I’d love to hear from other people about how they handle this particular corruption move in their groups, what kind of narrative pressure/consequences comes to bear on their Wizards, if/when/how the MC uses that move against the players to turn it back on them..? Any and all. This particular move seems like a Very Big Hammer to swing around and I’d love to get some perspective on its use.

I feel like I’m doing Start of Session moves incorrectly.

We just played session 8 last week. The first few times it was great because it gave us lots of new characters, interesting threads to pull on, and gave everyone some space to inform the other players what interested them about the world and the system.

Later, it got frustrating because everyone felt they had to bring in NEW people and NEW threads. When we agreed that we shouldn’t expand, but should try and contract (focus on existing characters and threats) things got a little better — until we got to weird territory where, in the middle of the arc, it’s suddenly, “OH YEAH, that enemy owes me a debt!” It felt like a clumsy kind of retcon.

We’re at cross-purposes with the move as we understand it: don’t expand, but try not to make unlikely debts in the middle of the game.

Our resolution, until the current set of threats have lightened up a bit, is to not do SoS… but I still want my players to mark Faction for advancement.

Any advice?

Help me Urban Shadows Community, you’re my only hope!

Last night was game 4 in my new US adventures. I’m the MC. My players fought a particularly nasty bear-demon-thing left as a trap by a vindictive hunter. All of us are rules-heavy transplants from other systems: D&D3.5, Pathfinder, GURPS.

So… how does combat work? I mean, it kinda worked, but I’ve got a lot of questions:

* Unleash on a 7-9 makes the player choose “they inflict harm on you” or “you find yourself in a bad spot”. Why would the players ever take harm? What would encourage them to do so? Do I just ask them to be reasonable, only so many bad spots you can find yourself in before it catches up to you?

* If the player took “find yourself in bad spot”, what could that mean? At one point fighting the bear-demon-thing one of my players took find yourself in bad spot just as he’d done the “take something from them” to take the bear-thing’s balance (shot its foot off). They fell down a ladder, lost their footing, got in someone else’s way. But they recovered as soon as the bear did, so it didn’t really cost them anything… so how could I have adjudicated that better?

* Does that mean I’m not taking my MC move of inflict/trade harm enough? Like I should just fiat “you take 3 harm from its bilious claws”?

I don’t need a lot of systems or case-by-cases, more of a narrative guide, maybe? Or example combats from others?

The combat spooked my group enough (two people are in the hospital now) that I don’t know that there will be lots of combat going forward but I’d like to be armed with more knowledge than I have now when it comes up.

What’s a thing you wished you’d done more of in your first sessions?

For context: I’ve got a first-ever session for everyone involved coming up. I’d like it to turn into a longer-term game. Two of my players are my 20-year regulars who’ve played lots of D&D, White Wolf, GURPS… the other two are relatively newer to RP and have only played d20.

I’m one of those “he’s always the DM” people with lots of experience in lots of systems, but PbtA is a very exciting twist on making a good story and I’m stoked! I don’t know if any of the previous storyteller-ish systems I’ve run have ever focused so tightly on crafting a story experience.

Mark Diaz Truman Any plans to do a gaming podcast with you as the MC?

In the example for “hit the streets”, Veronica rolls a 9 and “can’t get help on a Faction roll”.

I couldn’t find confirmation elsewhere about that in the rules. All Faction moves, or just hit the streets? Anytime the players roll faction?

I’m looking to play Urban Shadows and it looks like I’ll only have two players. That doesn’t feel like enough players for me to bring out complications around different Factions or have many interesting PC-to-PC interactions and Debts.

Is this a problem? Besides getting more people (working on it), where else can I pick up the slack? Should I prod them into giving me lots of fiction to swim around in?