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#DiceShaming #UrbanShadows

#DiceShaming #UrbanShadows

That wizard was at a -1 Heart. The wolf at a +3 Blood

Heres some feedback- I’ve run 1 game and played 2 at various cons.

Heres some feedback- I’ve run 1 game and played 2 at various cons. I did like the coverage of the various urban fantasy tropes, and loved being able to play an Highlander-esque immortal. Thats a 20 year old dream realised.

One thing I and others like Neil Gow observed is that the playbooks need some.. ooomph, or a bit more meaty provocation in the style of Apocalypse World or Monsterhearts.

For example could the questions on each Skin be made unique instead of standard 3 that get repeated a lot?

Who are you?

 How long have been in the city?

 What do you desperately need

e.g. Wolf “How many did you kill when you first changed?”

Vampire “What do you regret you can never now do in daylight?”

Monsterhearts does some hard framing in its questions for Strings, and that is part of what is missing here- the questions are too generalised and open. But they are also a bit dull (“How long have you been in the city” vs say “Why cant you leave the City?”) and need something to sex them up, make them a bit more challenging.

Some of the moves are a bit dull too, and again a revision to see how they can be made a bit more provocative/challenging/defining would be good, even if mechanically the same, they need a bit of flavour (such as the roll with X instead of the normal Y in situation Z type ones)

Some feedback on the Intimacy moves (originally from Kickstarter comments page).

I played in Chirags 2.0 playtest game and thought some of the Intimacy moves needed punching up, as a few seemed pretty dull, or dont really fit the theme. Specifically…

Hunter has an interesting sex move (honest questions) but how is it in theme to the Hunter? Wouldnt it work better for the curious Aware? Indeed you might be better swapping the Hunter and Aware sex/intimacy moves (since supernatural sex seems to be a trangression for the monster hunter, it fits better for gaining corruption). But also include an effect for intimacy with a Mortal too, since just marking corruption or no effect is fairly dull.

For the Fae, wouldnt an exchange of promises work better with intimacy (a 2 way street) rather than it being a demand? Perhaps they can refuse if the Fae doesnt give them a promise in return?

The Immortal shouldn’t be about saving lovers- their tragedy is they always outlive their mortal loves, so the Intimacy move seems out of theme. Giving up their Immortality to save their love on the other hand might be an interesting (if archetype-destroying) intimacy move. Definitely needs punching up or changing to something like the Vamps intimacy move about owing them a debt or giving them a glimpse of your past (flashback time?).

Oracle & Spectre & Veteran- reasonable, no issues.

Vamp- reasonable

Wizard- this seems to be the Harry Dresden rule. Not sure what the logic of marking Faction is with the wizard than say another character type? What are you going for there?

The Wolf- reasonable, though you might go for the Monsterhearts version instead of you have a bond until one of the 2 of you is intimate with another partner.

Our second session of Urban Shadows ran tonight. The first post was here: http://goo.gl/vHKaTN

We still loved it. 😀

Over the two sessions, each character averaged just over one advance and one corruption advance each.

Continuing from last time, here are a few more questions and comments that came up during the session for your consideration:

Can you figure someone out on an NPC? We assumed you could, but the language of the move references player and their character, but does not mention the MC. This could be reworded to add clarity.

Can a wizard use their sanctum / workspace to remove corruption?

Wizards cannot erase a corruption advance as an advance like other playbooks. The player of our wizard reported that this caused him to be very cautious about gaining corruption, and therefore using magic. He also found that the corruption advances were not tempting enough to make him want to use his corruption move and make deals with the dark and powerful.

Does erasing a corruption advance also erase a corruption move? Is there a way to make this clearer on the playbooks themselves?

It felt a little awkward for our wolf to be in control of territory but not have a gang right away. Our wolf also questioned how often his start of session move should be triggered. If the start of session two is happening on the same days as the previous session, and he hasn’t yet resolved the previous session’s trouble, does it get triggered?

We tried out the new start of session move posted here a few days ago. In general we liked the intention of it. (Choosing a faction that isn’t already marked was a hit!) I missed that it wasn’t a roll though.

Debts were an awesome way to create a starting weave of tense relationships, but we found in play that they didn’t have much appeal. It was very easy for our players to have one player offer debt, and have other players turn it down. Going back to a point I made earlier, I think having Persuade and NPC also apply to PCs might eliminate this situation. In either case, being able to say no to a favour without consequences sucked.

Any early ideas about the conversion to Victorian era in the City book?

Any early ideas about the conversion to Victorian era in the City book? Is it MC guidelines or will there be playbook or move conversions to emphasize the theme?

I’m bondering on trying to do Victorian hack and the Urban Shadows based Penny Dreadful builds sound perfect match

Hi all – I played the Spectre in Ian Howard’s game and wanted to give some archetype-specific feedback as well as a…

Hi all – I played the Spectre in Ian Howard’s game and wanted to give some archetype-specific feedback as well as a little general feedback on the game. Starting with the latter:

US is a great game with a lot of really excellent and innovative mechanics. I know I speak for the whole group when I say we’re very excited about what the game has to offer. Debts in particular produced some extremely interesting and exciting possibilities, but the Drama moves produced a lot of intriguing possibilities as well, to name just a few things.

I think a lot of us felt our archetype moves were a bit bland, or there were only a few really interesting choices. I’d really like to see expanded lists, and moreso, some really strong choices in selecting new moves, that really add some flavor of being a particular “type” of whatever thing you happen to be. The Corruption moves, by contrast, I think pretty much everyone was impressed by 😛 It seems the Corruption moves (rightly) represent the more supernatural, inhuman aspects of the archetype – excellent abilities, but to gain them you distance yourself from humanity. I’d like to see some archetype moves that are similarly juicy but represent more of an integration of the human and supernatural, or at least encourage characters to cling to their dwindling humanity. (maybe I can brainstorm some proposed Moves another time)

I picked the Spectre archetype because I am a long-time fan of the old White Wolf game Wraith: The Oblivion. What immediately struck me was 1) in US a ghostly character integrates with a corporeal party much more naturally and easily than in old WoD, and 2) I am left with an awful lot of questions about the nature of Spectres and their “world”. Many of the archetypes could benefit from more leading questions to establish what it means to be a Dragon/Wizard/Werewolf/Vampire in this setting, but the Spectre in particular needs it most, I feel.

Some of the questions I found myself asking:

a) “What keeps you anchored to this world?” — A Link is a possibility, but it could also be a driving goal, simple force of habit and/or fear of the unknown, or even something external to you: the psychic energy of those who still mourn you.

b) “What could cause you to move on?” Or even, “What do you need, to willingly pass on?” and “What could banish you for good, against your will?” — I like the design decision that character death is generally something of a player’s choice, but I think it is often good to set some parameters for even an immortal existence.

c) “Are you the same person you were in life, or are you changed somehow?” — Death can change a person, after all. I conceived of Emily as not-really the person she was in life, but fragments of her personality anchored to the world by a profound sense of injustice, hurt and anger.

d) “What ‘feeds’ a Spectre?” — Some possibilities would be Memory/Emotion/Belief. For Emily I took the same route as Wraith, supposing that a ghost absorbs emotional energy, whether their own or that of mortals, to continue their existence. Much like with the Vamp, however, this leaves open the possibility that not all Spectres are the same and others may sustain themselves in a different manner.

e) “What are some strengths & weaknesses that all Spectres share?” Many obvious things (invisibility, insubstantiality) are built in, of course. But maybe Spectres can perceive the life force of living creatures – can see when they are hiding a sickness within them, or tell the difference between the truly living and the undead (vampires). Maybe they can sense emotional states (particularly if emotion is what feeds them) or can look into a living creatures eyes and know how they will die. But maybe this also means the shadow-world they exist in, between life and death, sometimes plays tricks on their perception. Maybe they can see life force, but cannot truly perceive details of faces the way a living creature could – or cannot see colors. Maybe they can see the objects a person carries that are significant to them, but cannot see anything that they consider disposable. Maybe they are unable to properly perceive anything they had no experience of in life. Maybe their potential is only limited by how much they cling to their idea of who and what they were in life, but the further they stray from the constraints of that self-image, the closer they are to dissipating entirely into smoke and vapors.

Those are all the thoughts I had to share – that I can remember right now, anyhow.

Oh, and if anyone was wondering, despite the name, Ian and I are not related, though we have been gaming together for about 15 years.

Alright second half of my write up of our Urban Shadow Experience. This will cover Debts and first play session.

Debts are brilliant!

When we got to this stage the table clearly had its doubts when I told them that we would be going around the table one by one and the other player had to accept the debt you chose for them. We got started and after the first two people most of the table saw the beauty in the system. The sharing of Debts slowly, allowing time for people to think, and the power to choose who the Debt affected and why (with their input) allowed for some amazing connections. The Vamp supplying the Hunter with his drug fix. The Hallowed having provided the information to the police that scared the human traffickers causing them to drown their cargo creating the Spectre.

After having read some of the comments here about the Debts system I told them all that they needed to have at least one PC Debt and one NPC Debt. This allowed for more creation of a cast of characters as well as tying the group together one step removed since they used some of each others NPC relations. Overall we were really impressed with how this worked out. Even in a large nine player group the process was smooth and very fruitful.

This week we sat down to actually play.

One session was not enough.

We started with out beginning moves. The Vamp used his Web ability to learn a secret about the Hunter (It was that he used to voluntarily feed vampires his blood). The Oracle used her ability to see the future and got a 10+ so she was holding two moments of possible vision. The Immortal used his Session Move to learn that a Fae named Lord Goldenrod of the Summer Court was in the city seeking an amulet stolen from him 3 years earlier by a man named Yanosh. Who happens to be The Veteran’s assistant.

Then we started the opening move for everyone. It was great to see who did not trust whom right from the beginning with our Debts already in place. The information created in this phase was brilliant. We learned a lot about the supernatural society and a lot of NPCs were named and this info led to almost every member of the group getting embroiled in something from the rumours, gifts and opportunities. The problem was nine players. With nine players it was really a long process and would have been hard to replicate time wise every session. We all liked the results but could see the problem with it for such a large group. This was the only part that felt like we couldn’t pull it off with so many players. It was nice to be able to mark a Faction though because it allowed you to help the other player if you wanted as well as allowing someone to avoid a lot of Faction contact and still Advance. I think we will tweak it somehow such as every three sessions do the rumours and such. Not sure on that one.

Once we started playing everyone knew what they wanted to do. There were so many possible stories, alliances, and setting details already in the collective minds that the characters all hit the ground running. They werent all running in the same direction but they were all racing somewhere. It was great.

We all wanted more and will definitely revisit US again. It is a long campaign game if I have ever seen one. Looking forward to writing up more detail and exploring this system further.

I do not have all of my observations from the players handy so I will need to add those in later. Great work overall guys. Well done.

Here’s my post about Session 2 of my Urban Shadows playtest.

I won’t do a full Actual Play run down like last time, but here are a some situations, moves and rulings we thought worth mentioning here:

– The Quick Start Guide definitely helped, even just reading it a few minutes before running the session.

– After watching the demo on Indie+ I saw how awesome/important Put A Face To A Name is. We didn’t use it at all first session, but this session it happened a lot and was a fantastic source of story, hooks an debts between PCs and NPCs (creating PC-NPC-PC triangles when one PC rolled 10+ and the other 6 for the same NPC).

– Session Intro was weird this time around. We were in the middle of a story, so rolling to hear a rumour or get wind of an opportunity seemed forced to us and I actually forgot to come up with and tell anyone any rumours and we were all fine with that. Already had so much going on.

– We used combat a fair bit this episode and it went well. It was easy to understand and the PCs felt power. Perhaps a little too powerful? One thing that somewhat troubled me was I had created these big scary tough fae but the PCs did so much harm they took them down easily even with them having 6 harm per monster.

Perhaps this was because it was 2 PCs vs one NPC. I think it may have more been due to me – correctly or incorrectly, I’m not sure – treating the monster like one from Dungeon World and not having it attack unless they failed or partially succeeded on a roll or left things wide open.

I wanted a tougher fight than what we encountered. I’m not sure how I could’ve fairly done that, as I had the creature dealing 2-3 harm and having 6 harm worth of hp. Perhaps I needed to give it some armour.

– We had one advancement and the Wolf took some great transformation options, beefing him up really well. That helped take down these monsters too. He only advanced because someone marked Wild for him at the start of the session.

I’ve seen some comments to this effect and we found it too: the advancement seemed forced and strange. We had fae in the game, but they were monstrous. No other ones had been introduced yet that seemed reasonable to use Faction Moves on. I now realise I didn’t “Name everyone, give everyone drives” for these creatures. Perhaps I should’ve done that, but it didn’t quite seem appropriate for these hulking monsters.

In any case, it was challenging and felt a bit contrived to have every player interact with every faction, when the plot was not about every faction. No real Wild NPCs existed till the very end. Few mortal NPCs were encountered in this area, and while Putting A Face To A Name gave the PCs Debts to settle with them, they didn’t come up yet.

So, I’m curious on how quick the advancement is intended to be. Except that we had one each of Power, Night and Mortality PCs, I don’t know that Power or Mortality would’ve come into the plot that much at all. What do you do when it’s a pack of Night PCs dealing with a Night plot? We felt it’d be difficult to advance in some circumstances without artificially including other Factions.

– One PC promised and reneged on an NPC Debt. He planned from the start to not uphold it, so we ruled that when he actually took the action of not upholding it, that was when we used the Refuse To Honor A Debt move. He got 10+ and it made sense to weasel out of it.

– Another question we had was if Let It Out is the only way to “take hold” of something. Two PCs wanted something and it didn’t seem they needed to exactly “let out the power within” but we couldn’t figure out what other move to make, as they wanted to take definitive hold of something. Both rolled it at once and both took definitive hold of the same thing. So, that was a stalemate. Is that how it’s intended to go? Like two people seeing the same object at once, lunging for it and both succeeding.

OVERALL FEELING FROM THE GROUP

– We had heaps of fun! It was great!

– Put A Face To A Name is a vital piece we were missing from the first time around. It really created action and tension. Great move!

– Like last time, my favourite part of this session was two PCs struggling over Debts. They had both killed a Spriggan and had grabbed onto the gland behind its heart that creates illusions. One cashed in Debts, the other countered. So they grappled and Unleashed on each other, but still were matched. One cashed in more Debts and the other Persuaded her to modify the terms. It went well, I think, being a tense struggle between semi-allied PCs with different values.

– We think the Advance move may make some things a bit tricky for us, but are nevertheless looking forward to playing more.

– I’m happy to give more comments or explanation of needed, but I think I’ve gone on long enough for now.

Game Session 1 of the 2.0 to report: Our game is set in Paris at the turn of the century focusing on the nightclub,…

Game Session 1 of the 2.0 to report: Our game is set in Paris at the turn of the century focusing on the nightclub, the Moulin Rouge. The game has started smoothly enough; however, the changes in the moves, rules and advances are awkward for vets of the 1.1 system.

My current problems:The advancement system has an artificial, plot focused feeling, forcing players to interact with a focus on the faction orientations rather than character improvement.

Also, Wild needs support even in playtest, currently only represented by the Fae.

Debts seem to have gotten weaker from PC to PC, only seeming to have story functions rather than true mechanical purposes. It feels like attempted mechanics on what could easily just be roleplay.

What I LIKE: Skins are still well done and got better. I want the rest! But from what I’ve seen, they’ve bene tightened up a touch here and there and that works well.

Basic Moves and Faction Moves feel cleaner. I can sense a certain reliance on Mind more often, but that’s just cause we started with a lot of new faces in the crowd.

Looking forward to seeing what comes next.

I am finally getting to write out our first session report.

I am finally getting to write out our first session report. Our first session was strictly character creation. There are nine players in the group but only eight were available for character creation.

Our story is taking place in Charleston, SC. We had voted and were tied for Charleston and Detroit. I decided on Charleston because it fits the themes and images I was thinking of for an urban fantasy game. Detroit was a very close second for me because of the imagery of decay and desolation as well as the potential for rampaging monsters through the streets. Ultimately, though I liked the idea of Charleston better. None of us have any great understanding of Charleston but that allows us to create a mythical Charleston of our story.

I will first introduce all the characters and then talk about Debts and the creation process.

We have two members of Mortality:

Getharius Chaples (The Veteran) was a Russian Sleeper agent for 15 years. When his unit was crushed five years ago he went deeper underground and began to find work with the

supernatural underworld of which he was already aware.

Saturday Hawthorne (The Hunter) is a local early 20s punk who took on the mantle of hunting vampires because he couldn’t stop them from killing someone he had cared about. He is a drug addict.

We have three Power faction members:

Oracle: She was not here this week but will be making her character Wednesday.

Dr. Henry Caldwell (The Immortal) is a man who joined a secret cult in the early 1800s and quickly became a devout follower. He sold his own soul and body to his dark masters for power and eternal life. When his wife died he brought her back with their dark gifts but it was no longer her. He left the cult at this time and has survived as a doctor and scientist studying the connection between life and death since.

G. Jonathan Knight (The Hallowed) is a man blessed with a mission to help those in need. He is a young man who joined the Guardian Angels motorcycle group for a purpose in life. One night he could not save a person from a traffic accident without a miracle. That miracle occurred and he knew he had a new directive in life. He does not know where his power comes from only that he will uses it to protect.

We have one member of the Wild faction:

Alexander (The Tainted) is a being born from a man and the Arch-Demoness Lilith. He does not know his father and was raised by his mother on her home plane until he was seven when he was cast on to Earth to survive. That was two decades ago. He has a love/hate relationship with his mother and he seeks human companionship to show him what it truly means to be human.

For the Night Faction we have three members:

Emily (The Spectre) is a young girl, around 13, who was being trafficked by smugglers. The group who were trafficking her got nervous and dump the goods outside Charleston. Emil has sworn to kill the men who did this before she moves on.

Miguel Villalobos (The Vamp) comes from an old Charleston family. They chose to become vampires when they ran the largest slave market in the South but after the War of Northern Aggression they became a secluded family who live on crime and monetary power in Charleston. Miguel revels in his monstrous animal side.

Raphael St. Claire (The Wolf) has been a werewolf for over 1,000 years moving as the need arises. He has been in Charleston for only a short while. His territory has turned into a crime ridden neighborhood that also happens to be haunted by a supernatural presence.

That is our cast of characters. I will do the process and Debts post next.

Hi, we’re gathering for our next playtest session this Sunday, and I heard there was a new opening session move?

Hi, we’re gathering for our next playtest session this Sunday, and I heard there was a new opening session move? Where could I find that at?