Author: Michael Barrett

So in the last game of Motor City Urban Shadows, in the hunt for the missing Medium (an NPC who the Oracle had a vision of dying in a horrible manner, who happens to be a friend) the Specter decided to go to the Medium’s public place of business to see if he could find anything. When he got there he found that wards were put up against ghosts and that he’d have to find a way through. He tried to push through with the emotional force of the rage he felt from his own death, but failed (Let It Out, got a 6) and the wards tore at him, causing harm.

Realizing he’d need to find another way, he called on the young punk Fae – the Fae was known for getting into places he wasn’t supposed to, and besides the Fae owed him for taking a part in his death.

So, the Fae came down and managed to get the door open easily enough, then disrupted the line of salt and wax that lined all the entrances, letting the Specter in.

Once inside, the Specter tried to take a look around, Investigating a Place of Power. Unfortunately for him, he rolled a 6. Fortunately for him, the Fae was there, so he lent a hand, extending his Fae senses for enchantments all about. More unfortunately (for them both) the Fae rolled a 5.

The game ended right around then, as it was midnight (on a worknight) and I wanted to have a chance to think of some ideas on what cool things could happen.

Anyway, I’ve got a couple ideas, but I figured I might as well share with the community and see if you guys have any that might be better! Thanks in advance!

Has anyone played in a game with (or played) a vampire that eats flesh, rather than emotions or blood?  It definitely seems like the hardest of the hungers to maintain – and I’d be curious about the ways that people have come up to play them.

With blood or emotion you can imagine ways in which the feeding process itself could be addicting to the fed upon, but flesh seems a lot more difficult.  As well it seems a lot harder to leave someone alive after eating their flesh than blood or emotion.  Finally, I think it’d be harder for a flesh vamp to use it’s feeding as an ‘intimate moment’.  Still, I think it’d be cool to explore this alternative to the usual vampires out there, so I’d love to hear folks ideas 🙂

Got my book last week, it looks amazing – really excited to have it at the game table when my group meets up for the fourth session of our Urban Shadows campaign.  So far it’s going really well – the players, after some prompting, have stopped acting like a ‘party’ and are acting more like people with their own drives – they’ll throwing Debts all around at each other.  The other exciting thing about tomorrows game is that it’ll be the first time I’ll have all my players there!  The Veteran will finally make his debut!

Anyway, the players have all advanced once so far – and the Oracle took Conduit.  Of course, the game after she took it she rolled a 13 on Let It Out.

Two of the players (the Tainted & the Oracle) were leaving a building, when the Oracle brushed against the Tainted – she had rolled her Foretellings at the beginning of the session and rolled a 5. So I used this moment to have her vision – the Tainted would step outside the building into a hail of bullets.

Sure enough as they step outside, her a little stunned by the vision, they hear the squeal of tires – a car full of vampires (who they’d already pissed off in the first game) flies around the corners, and out comes the guns.  They dive back inside, barely avoiding the bullets, and they start to run upstairs.

Anyway, the Vampires start to catch up with them, and the Oracle decides to try to Let It Out- she wants to share with them a vision of their death by the Tainted’s hands, flames destroying them.

So she rolled amazing (even with the -1 from her vision) and now I have to figure out what that means with the Advanced Let It Out.

Any ideas?  Not sure what making it permenant would mean in this case.  Thanks!

My Oracle, in the last game, realized that they didn’t quite understand the wording of ‘At Any Cost’.  Is it basically just an extra bonus on top of Foretellings that applies only to the Oracle?

As well, I’m finding that I’m having some trouble with a few of the Basic Moves.  For example, in the last game one of my players, the Fae, used his power that lets him cast an illusion to cause a swat team to appear in the club he was playing at in order to cause a panic and give everyone a chance to Escape the scene (a lot of nasty stuff was about to go down with some vampires, at least that’s what the Oracle believed).  I had him roll Distract – taking into account he was using a power so it allowed him to do something that cool – and he rolled a 13.

He had a hard time coming up with 3 things off the list.  He wanted an advantage, but really all he wanted to do was give everyone the chance to Escape.  I had planned to let everyone bail if they wanted to without even having to roll, since he did something so awesome and rolled so well, but then the other players didn’t play along and stuck around.  I think he felt cheated.  He was trying to come up with an advantage he could use, but to be fair he wasn’t sure what he wanted to do at that moment other than stay hidden, which was pretty much covered by the Distract roll already.  He also thought “You create an opportunity” and “you confuse them for some time” were both too similar.

Finally, the other move I’m not sure how to deal with relates to a mystery that is unfolding in the game.  A local medium has gone missing, and one of the players feels like they were framed since they heard they had been seen with the medium when they clearly couldn’t remember it.  A few of the players (who are friends with her) are trying to find her – so they hit the streets.  The players all assume there’s some sort of doppelganger, or more likely, a Fae involved.

So one of the players says he wants to hit the streets with wild to talk to a Fae, lets call him Fergis, who is an outcast of the Fae, and so often deals with the other factions (They’re pretty sure the vamps are behind the whole thing).  He wants to find out if any of the Fae were paid to do this thing.

On one hand I want to let them use their moves – but on the other this doesn’t seem like something someone would talk a lot about (a Fae working for a Vampire), so picking some random NPC out of the air feels like a shortcut to clearing up the mystery a little too quickly (honestly, I’m not sure exactly who did it – I have ideas, and one that could fit the Fae angle).

Anyway, any help you guys can give would be great.  The players had a blast, though the Fae really seemed discouraged by the big roll that the other players basically made not so useful.

The Spectre owes someone, say a mortal reporter who is Aware – how does the mortal get ahold of their ghostly ally?  In a world of cell phones, I’m curious how you handle this.  Maybe the ghost has a phone somewhere he can get messages at?  Maybe a mortal friend, the person he’s haunting, takes messages for him?

Hey guys – actually got around to playing our first game last night.  Everyone had a blast, but it being our first time it obviously brought up some questions.

The biggest one had to deal with the Oracle & Foretelling.  We’re not quite sure how it’s supposed to work really.  Here’s a situation:

– Jane the Oracle is at the bar talking with August, the Spectre.  Suddenly Ahai, the vampire, comes barging in to the bar.  Jane sees him – he looks angry, and the vampire gang starts to spread out in the busy bar.  Jane says “He’s here to kidnap me!”  Now, if Ahai was there just to ask her some questions, do Jane & August get +1 forward to running away?  What about if August decides to smash a bottle and attack Ahai and his men?  They weren’t originally there to get Jane – just get information.

Basically I guess the big question is – does the Oracle have to be at least partially right to use the bonus?  In that case, it seems like it’d be in the Oracle’s best interest to not use the power until the last moment – when they have the most information – then drop their Foretelling.  The issue there is that it then feels less like seeing the future, and more like being able to get a +1 for something that everyone already knows.

Anyway, the group had a lot of fun.  I wish I’d gotten more Faction moves (we used Put a Name to a Face a lot – but none of the others really – though there were quite a few non faction moves).

At the beginning of a game, is it ok for two players to owe each other debts?

It seems like during the game, if you do a favor for someone and you owe them a debt, it makes sense to cancel the debt you owe – but is that a requirement?

Can someone owe you a debt, you do something for them, and now you owe each other a debt?

Spectre question: Without the “Wall?  What Wall?” move, can Spectre’s move through walls?  In my PbP a player recently mentioned that his Spectre “can’t yet walk through walls” but that seems like a strange arbitrary block.  Still, it does seem to make the move a little weird if any Spectre can move through walls.  Thanks!

So in my RL game one of the players is playing a Fae, and he’s waffling a lot on what he wants his relic to be.  Just curious what other players/MCs have used/seen as their relic?

On top of that, what have you, as an MC, done to bring the relic to the fore front in the game?