Category: Urban Shadows RPG

Last Sunday we had our first playtest. I waited a while to post for a couple of reasons. One, I wanted everyone to simmer on what was happening and to give some distance from the game. 

Before the game we had a long look at the Spectre, Vampire and Wizard as Josh was on the fence about what to play.  We all had an issue with the lack of flaws/flavor to the Vampire. Obviously, we could and did talk about just leveling some flaws against the vampires and that the roots of vampire flaws not being universal. Since we had a hunter in the group that wanted to go after Vamps and would have the option of creating flaws and strengths for his Prey. We opted to go with letting the Hunter define the Vamps completely (he went with True Blood style vamps). This seems like a powerful meta-game advantage over a Vamp player if this was the intent or would require a potentially fictionally straining hand-waving to let a vampire Player ignore the Hunter’s prey questions. That said, it may be an interesting approach that a Vampires’s Corruption move ‘awakens’ weaknesses. the final thing about the Vampire that caught all of us was the move Keep your friends Close… there needs to be a drawback to this, yes, the vampire could blow the roll and kill the PC, but if this is done early on it is just a open door to shenanigans, which everyone joked they would be willing to do.

Finally, we set the time period in the mid-90s. My players, David West played Dr Ikenov (Veteran) a Cold-War Soviet Fringe Scientist working with the City’s local branch of “The Company” (Think Firestarter meets the  Buffyverse Initiative) Jeff Kern played Sam the Vampire hunter, Josh played Harland Danvers the dispossessed soul (Spectre) of a 70’s era Hunter, and Robert played Elliot the Autumn Court Fae /Harbinger of the Harvest.

This was Josh’s first time playing any *W style game and Josh is very good at optimizing anything he does, but with a very honest mechanical approach to it. Jeff, David, and Robert have been in a couple of Monster of the Week and Apocalypse World games. At the end of the game, he said he ultimately picked the Spectre just to see what he could do… and he did a LOT.

So here were some of the thoughts we had collectively as a we talked about the game and played. Hopefully the others will chime in

Session Intro moves – Only the Spectre had a hit, he got word of a Necromancer eating ghosts in the employ of the Company from the local npc Wizard. 

This meant everyone else had to push to get involved in the action as this roll really launched the Spectre into the action. I would almost prefer to see these as on a hit, you have the upper hand in a situation which you have been drawn into instead of a chance for it.

Harland decided that he would not stand for this type of abomination and guns straight into the Company stronghold thanks to a good roll on Let it Out allowing him to seek out the ghost eater/death energy.

It seems that Let it Out is a very powerful Swiss army knife ability, with not enough bite (at least early on when you are not as concerned with Corruption). 

Thoughts on the Spectre – So through the course of the game we saw a lot of things that just left me curious if we were not getting something. The end move in particular is just a little over powering. There is no downside to the Spectre being dispersed other than time lost. Hell, he can never really be killed without his Link (which is optional) being destroyed.  Maybe a roll to make it through the dispersal process or to come back via Corruption. Now,the fact that the Spectre does not interact with the physical naturally, which should be something that drives a wedge between him and the rest of the world, in practice makes him a great spy/assassin. Even with the interpretation that “regular people” can’t sense or interact means that all players and other supernatural threats can interact with the spectre for free while he has to manifest to affect them, he can still pass through walls without effort or cost (I think it should by the way) and he was able to get to the Necromancer with just a couple of Keep your Cool rolls, and then a Manifest roll to then Unleash on him. 

I really think that the Manifest roll is bland and needs to be spooked up a bit. Some sort of disturbance that happens with the roll dampening that weirdness, else showing that they are not normal. Without that, why wouldn’t they go after a loved one and expose themselves to the world? Or maintain their old life and just keep their spectral nature a secret? (which, don’t get me wrong could be interesting). 

The Fae – Elliot was the harvester of debts and mortals for the Autumn Court. Robert was awesome in the RP part and really fleshed out a great character… he worked out this hook about Sam and he having tried to take out the local vampires to gain control of their drug rings so Elloit could take over the  designer pharmaceutical markets. We did mess up the Faerie Powers and I just let him use the Wild Fury to take out a small vampire nest with area effect fire, not a huge thing, but the wording I am sure will clarify this as it has been discussed already in the community. I will say this again, there needs to be something that helps define Fae Courts and what a Court is, maybe a worksheet or set of questions to help guide its creation and the Monarch since it is referenced in the Fae primary move. Also. this playbook seems like it is one type of fae (Sidhe) to me and does not really open up to other flavors of fae very well as written. I would love to see Fae almost be a Faction unto itself or multiple Fae playbooks so you could have a Jenks (Hollows Series) type character or troll or gruff or tinker fairy or goblins.

Both the Hunter and veteran did things, but the memorable things they did was mechanically speaking done mainly through the basic moves, so their archetypes did not play much into the game. Though, I enjoyed the use of Veteran’s  Old Friends, Old Favours to bring in a NPC Vampire called Sarcrovy “The Blood King” to help Elliot establish a higher class of vampire control in the city… nothing can go wrong there.