Although i understand the rules for using debts, and we create great stroyplots during the first session, i guess…
Although i understand the rules for using debts, and we create great stroyplots during the first session, i guess we’re not using them to their full potential during game sessions.
Any tips for using debts during games?
Last week my group had its first session.
Last week my group had its first session. We only had two hours to play so mostly we were establishing the last few debts and setting up some conflicts. The cast includes:
Jack-Tainted working for the demon Murmur
Joanna-Hunter with a beef against Red Vampires
Mel-Wolf just trying to keep his territory safe for the people that live there
Steven-Immortal trying to fix the city up by taking it over
Victor-White Court Vamp trying to establish a base of power to defeat his father, one of the biggest drug lords in Mexico
The session start move really helped to get the ball rolling since everyone had to come up with something in terms of conflict and tension. We ended up with:
Locals are being possessed by ghosts from the Indian burial grounds.
Father Delay has been nervous lately. Rumors of a Knight of the Cross coming floating around.
Little Folk (Fae) are being trapped by a local restaurant owner. No one knows why.
The Romaro cartel are causing a lot of trouble. The locals are arming themselves to do something about it. It appears that the cartel are trying to use demon possession to make their troops stronger. (That can’t possibly backfire.)
Once play started Mel found himself walking through his turf, which has been lovingly called the Wastes. It consists of mostly trailer parks and low income housing. Mel discovers Joanna’s mother emotionally losing it. Joanna’s father has wandered off muttering some crazy stuff. Mel agrees to go look for him. Along the way Mel runs into a few youths acting suspicious with their truck and what’s inside, but Mel doesn’t push it. Mel found Joanna’s father and it appears he is possessed. Didn’t get violent but kept talking about “Destroying the dragon.” Mel thinks he’s referring to Kur, the Baron of Phoenix.
Joanna and Steven are doing a weapons exchange at Steven’s legitimate shop when a loud thump is heard out in the ally. They go to investigate and discover blood all over the ally. They follow the blood trail all the way to the Scarlett Pearl, the biggest casino in Phoenix and it belongs to the leader of the Red Court, Cortez. It was fun watching the Hunter try to be safe and stealthy while the Immortal was to old to give any bothers to his safety. They go inside, despite their better judgement, and find a body mangled and half eaten. They also discover a woman who is covered in blood and weeping. She says the monster came in and ate that poor man, then started hunting her when those two showed up. Joanna went to go find the monster and Steven started escorting the woman outside. My favorite piece of dialogue I got to deliver was from this woman.
“There was so much blood, he just kept screaming. He kept looking at me. I saw as life left his eyes. So much blood. The screaming. Heh. It’s funny. The funny part was I got close to him the same way I just got close to you.”
That was when Steven looked over and realized the woman was a ghoul and started to tear into Steven. There were bad words said. Joanna and Steven ended up getting the upper hand and dispatching the ghoul.
Jack was approached by Murmur while playing Bingo, his favorite pass time. Murmur wants Jack to hunt down some rogue demon that is working for Kur. Jack needed information so he headed to the Red Courts turf to meet a contact. Jack ended up at the Scarlett Pearl to meed his contact and was approached by Lilith, a sorceress and sometimes lover of Jack. Lilith chewed him out about something he didn’t do and stormed out. While in a daze he was approached by Cortez’s assistant and asked to head to the main office for a word. Jack gets on the elevator and two very big men get on with him. They stop the elevator and try to beat Jack up. Jack quickly dispatches the goons and goes to escape. He’s being surrounded by more goons and as he makes his way to the front door Victor pulls up.
Turns out Lilith had found Victor at a bar and hired Victor to find out what Jack is up to. So Victor offers Jack a ride and the two head out of there.
We’re picking up the game tonight so I’ll update more hopefully early next week. Feel free to click the link to see all our notes, maps, and NPCs.
https://drive.google.com/open?id=0BxTYJavOijLGd1dpUzVXc3BMclk&authuser=0
Since I’m on a bit of an anime kick…
Since I’m on a bit of an anime kick…
…holy smokes, the Tainted could easily be reskinned into a magical girl. It even has a transformation sequence.
Play Report for Urban Shadows: High Society Parts 1 thru 4
Play Report for Urban Shadows: High Society Parts 1 thru 4
Our Cast
Ariana Ramos as Natalie the Wolf
Aaron Merhoff as Ron the Tainted
Andy Hauge as Anthony the Aware
Beth Mitchell as Yuko the Oracle
solange simondsen as Galina the Hunter
Once upon a time there was a small hole that linked our world and the world of beings known as the Fae. Some of these Fae found their way across and discovered they were in a magical land along a western ocean. Into this land they infused their temptations, and from across the land mortals trekked to seek fame and fortune in this place. Missionaries briefly glimpsed these Fae creatures and mistakenly thought them to be angels thus they named this place Los Angeles.
Natalie is the leader of an urban pack with Inglewood as her territory, her rival/ally Castor rules the pack to the north in South Central. Ron is a struggling middle aged actor who made a deal with the devil for fame and fortune and ended up cursing his daughter Bella to a life plagued with angry spirits haunting her for his sins. Anthony is a rising star in screenwriting who has had the doors of perception opened for him after glimpsing elements of the supernatural on the set of his series Werewolves in Paris. Yuko has made her fortune on informing the Hollywood elite about which paths they should take and she has made it this long by being pragmatic and picking her battles carefully. Galina was a young immigrant lured into the world of adult films and subsequently substance abuse, saved by a veteran hunter who trained her to be tougher than she ever imagined.
These characters’ lives seemed to revolve around the presence of an artifact acquired by the Power faction but coveted by the Wild faction. It was discovered that coterie of celeb vampires indulging in their assorted vices was being recruited by demons to aid in the acquisition of the item. Even Anthony was tagged as being so insignificant that he would be unnoticed taking the item. He was offered a multi-picture deal by a hallucinatory Fae studio executive that only appeared when Anthony partook in a narcotic produced by mages.Anthony refused the deal as a result of being jerked around by the supernatural a little too much (attacked by mafioso mages, sex with a werewolf, tossed through the wall of an apartment by another mage). The Fae subsequently burnt down Anthony’s apartment complex, all his scripts and back ups destroyed, in an effort to get their message across.
Galina was hired by Yuko to track and stop the Vamp Pack, the aforementioned hedonistic celebs, who were trying to stop Yuko from outing them and ruining their careers. Galina staked out their Hollywood Hills den and got help from a pursuing Renfield-types from a vampiric plastic surgeon and her thrall Ron the Tainted. Ron and Galina’s paths crossed again when they ended up at a beach party in Venice. Alexis, Galina’s mentor, claimed to be staking out a demon possession and ended up killing Ron’s daughter Bella. This manifested a nearby demon and Ron popped up to see who hurt his little girl. Galina ended up killing her mentor to gain enough corruption of her soul to slaughter the demon and ended up Ron’s patron. Bella was resurrected and she followed Ron and Galina out only to end up in the clutches of the rest of Galina’s hunting clan who suspected Galina had betrayed Alexis.
Natalie the Wolf had Castor call in a favor to have her house a van containing a strange artifact he had helped the Fae hijack from the Mages. Natalie agreed but only ended up having a mage call in a debt to have her lure Castor over and get killed. The Mage took the artifact back and Castor’s pack started a gang war with Natalie’s group. The Mage returned and offered his people’s help if Natalie would pledge her pack to work security at a special event that night. Natalie agreed.
Ron and Galina convinced their captors to work with them to stop the vampires before settling their grudge, but not before Bella was injured and Ron asked Natalie to help his daughter. Natalie pawned the girl off on two of her soldiers who were attacked by mages who took Bella to their mob boss, The Little Mage. Ron, Galina, Yuko, and the angry hunters took on the vampire pack only to find out one of the hunters was in league with the vamps. They barely survived and returned to Yuko’s shack only to find Anthony had been their and drugged out of his mind. With these four players together they compared notes and realized what was going on:
The Fae were working to open the rift between this world and their own so that they could swarm into Los Angeles and feed on all the wild emotions, the low lows and the high highs, whether natural or drug induced. The Mages had acquired an artifact that would allow them to seal the rift for a 1,000 years but were going to need a mortal conduit that had been touched by the supernatural…poor poor Bella. These fours arrived at different times to the grand gala held in a converted warehouse. Ron tried to bum rush the party only to be subdued by wizened mages who shackled him in cold iron and made him a point of mockery for the party. Natalie hung back trying to make sure her people were protected. Even Yuko, seeing Ron, knew it was in her best interest to pretend they had no connection. Anthony and Galina arrived with a forged invitation and Anthony spied the mage who has given him a savage beating a day earlier. He opened fire sending the proceedings into chaos.
In the confusion, Yuko quickly released Ron who followed after The Little Mage, Bella, and a Golem Guardian who rushed away to avoid any further trouble. Galina intercepted Ron and managed to create confusion by claiming the artifact had been tainted while in the Fae’s possession. Surprisingly, her lie turned out to be true when the Little Mage had his scholars examine it. Ron tried to go for Bella, but Galina held him back and Ron had to watch as his daughter was taken away in the custody of the Mages. Galina falsely gave Yuko the credit for discover the taint in the artifact and The Little Mage extended a place in the Inner Circle to the oracle who accepted so that she would be close to the most vital information in her community.
Natalie tried to save Anthony by pretending that she was going to take him out back to execute him but the Mages saw through this and took them both out to the loading dock to be killed. Before the wizards could kill them a figure moving at great speed slaughtered the three magic wielders. Natalie saw this was the believed dead Castor, who died as a result of her betrayal, in all out wolf form. Upon closer examination she saw he was a reanimated werewolf corpse who informed her, “Your Abuela has words for you!”
And that is where we left our characters. At the start of November, we’ll return to them some time later in another 4 part story that will find Yuko taking part in the major decisions of the Inner Circle of Power, Natalie having to face her ancient and grand wolf alpha grandmother, Galina dealing with instability in t
So!
So! I just threw this together tonight, because I’ve been watching Fate/stay night (Unlimited Blade Works), which is currently coming out in Japan. Realized that, hey, that’s a cool character archetype which would fit right into Urban Shadows!
Given that it’s terribly late at night, it’s probably not the greatest archetype right now, and I’d love to see more interesting options to customize the Servant.
Watching Burn Notice, realized that it’s very much like an Urban Shadows game minus the supernatural.
Watching Burn Notice, realized that it’s very much like an Urban Shadows game minus the supernatural. Characters cashing in debts (and gaining new ones) with each other ALL OVER THE PLACE. That’s a really interesting side of the show. Not sure where to go with that idea.
Me and my Hangouts group started a mini-campaign on Wednesday. We got a slow start, and only spent the time…
Me and my Hangouts group started a mini-campaign on Wednesday. We got a slow start, and only spent the time building the connections and city. It was my first time testing it out. I had a blast just setting up the connections and seeing the drama unfold. Looking forward getting into the world.
Just noticed our amazing community just hit 700 people today, this is so incredible!
Just noticed our amazing community just hit 700 people today, this is so incredible! I feel so fortunate to have so many of you join us here and support our game, truly touching.
I continue to encourage everyone in posting their play experiences, archetype ideas, or anything else for the matter.
Thank you for making this community a pleasure to moderate.
Just started doing Urban Shadows at home. Check out our creation at the link.
Just started doing Urban Shadows at home. Check out our creation at the link.
http://ramblingsofjacobanddelos.com/2014/10/17/urban-shadows-1st-session/
I am preparing to run Urban Shadows/AW for the first time…what AW rules would you say I need to focus on before…
I am preparing to run Urban Shadows/AW for the first time…what AW rules would you say I need to focus on before running? What are the key points of understanding?