Urban Shadows RPG: Discussion – Page 15 – Powered by the Apocalypse G+ Archives

Just played US for the first time last night, and had so much fun!

Just played US for the first time last night, and had so much fun! There were a lot of cool beats and great storytelling, which was pretty exciting for everyone involved.

However, a question did come up: I am playing The Tainted, and my playgroup was a little confused by the mechanics of The Tainted’s intimacy move:

“When you share a moment of intimacy–physical or emotional–with another person, they give you a Debt they hold on someone else.”

I understand how this happens mechanically, but how does it follow the fiction of the story? Does the other person feel connected to The Tainted and “give” it willingly? Why would they do that? Or does my demonic power force them to “give” it to me, even if they wouldn’t normally do such a thing?

In my game’s example, The Wolf had a Debt over The Oracle because he was protecting her from harm. I shared an intimate moment with The Wolf and now my Tainted has a Debt over The Oracle. This left us all a little baffled and there were a few minutes’ discussion of the logistics of this. Anyway, if anyone has thoughts or insights on this it would be appreciated.

Anyone looking forward to Gencon? There are a few urban shadows games being ran there!

Can anybody tell me, who the Immortals are?

Can anybody tell me, who the Immortals are? According to the rulebook, Power consists of Wizards and “the immortals”. Are Oracles and Hallowed considered immortals?

Has anybody ever played Scion?

Has anybody ever played Scion? It was once a White Wolf game and now it;s Onyx Path, and it was the game that got me into tabletop games — but it was a hot mess, mechanically, and playing it was a chore. Happily, PbtA games do what I’d always wished other tabletops would. Urban Shadows, specifically, scratches the Scion itch pretty well for myself and my group.

But not all the way, all the time. Sometimes we find ourselves missing playing the children of gods, pawns in a great war between pantheons. But not enough to go back, or to attempt to learn the new 2.0 which looks hardly any better.

So, has anybody ever tried adapting Urban Shadows to fit Scion, to bring some Scion material into Urban Shadows, or anything else similar? My table is interested in seeing if we can recapture some of that old magic with a system here that’s so well done. Would it maybe be as simple as making a Scion playbook?

I just actually finished a game of Urban Shadows last week, which is a huge pleasure, because often (for me at…

I just actually finished a game of Urban Shadows last week, which is a huge pleasure, because often (for me at least) games don’t end, they just stop. We were playing in Nashville, my home city, and had a climactic battle in the Parthenon against Alan LeQuire, tainted sculptor of the Athena replica statue there which was slowly being possessed by some sort of nature spirit. The possession was unsuccessful, but only because my Tainted’s brother showed up, the Vamp sacrificed herself to save the Wizard, and the Aware worked in the background while no-one was paying attention to her.

It had been a while since the last time we played, so I had written each of my characters a custom move to start off the final session, which is a technique I’d advise everyone to try. It’s a fun game design challenge, and really set up the final session for success. I’ve attached a link to the Google doc with those moves, if you’re curious. The Vamp one led to a night-time vampire attack when she rolled a 6-.

Something I’ve learned from this game: if you don’t have a lot of time to play in, I would recommend allowing your PCs to mark Faction if they lend a hand or get in the way of a fellow PC. I ended up doing that because our sessions were infrequent (and there weren’t all that many of them) and it was challenging for them to remember to go talk to different NPCs and establish relationships and learn about those Faction moves.

If you’ve got any questions about how I did a whole story arc, or what my fronts were, or anything like that, please ask in the comments! I’d love to have a bit of a post-mortem on this.

Hi everyone.

Hi everyone. I have recently run a US game settled in the dresdenverse. the group was composed by a white council guardian (wizard), a changeling (Fae), a Specter (a dead wizard), a white court vampire (Vamp) and a mortal (Aware). Everything revolves around a inminent conflict between the local faeries (a gargyles-like faeris that turn to stone during the day “wink-wink”) and the werewolfs. the local white council and everyone want to stop this conflict because the consecuence could be awful. Some local faeries are desapearing during the day and they blame the wolf for that, because they have always been enemies in the past, but now thay have a sort of truce that the wolf “broke”, at least , this was what the faeries believe.

Actually, the faeries are disapearing because a vampire is using an ancient vampiric magic tome and the faeries are the ingredients, and she is blaming to the wolf for that.

The game was super political, everyone were very nervous and the party keep together solely for the debts interwined between the character. The game tasted really to dresdenverse and it was amazing.

GREAT GAME!

Hey :)

Hey 🙂

Debt related question. Possibly a very stupid doubt, but still, I’m curious to hear what is the general consensus.

In character generation some relationships are represented by “big” Debts.

Like: once I saved your life, so now you owe me not 1, but 2 whole debts.

But then it is not clear if it is possible to Do Someone a Favor agreeing that the favor is worth 2 debts, or if 1 favor always equals 1 debt.

Hi :)

Hi 🙂

I’m not sure what to make of the Fae move Scales of Justice.

At first glance it looks like a great way to earn debts, like: you owe me a debt and I put my magic at your service.

But instead it requires the Fae to cash in (to spend) a debt she already has on the recipient of the magic.

Is this meant to be only used as a punitive action?

If you cross me remember that I can magically burn you because you owe me?

Or am I misreading something?

I MC’d my first session of Urban Shadows yesterday, and I absolutely loved it.

My group and I have been playing AW and some hacks for some time now. We used them only because they were rules-light, but never really adopted to the “play to find out” philosophy. Basically, we used moves as skills and all the GMs (we rotate at GMing) prepped their railroady adventures in a traditional way.

When I suggested we try playing the true PbtA way, there was some resistance because “we like it this way” and “I don’t want to read rulebooks”, but everyone accepted in the end.

I was a bit scared to not prep any story, but I trusted the system and everything clicked really good. After the charactrer creation we only had less than two hours to explore the city, but a lot of things happened. The PCs engaged with all four factions and I managed to set cool scenes based on answers I got from the PCs. It all seemed to connect in a more meningful way.

For me, as an MC, it was ten times more fun than GMing a traditional game like D&D!

My players liked it too, and I hope they’ll like it even more when the story heats up. Only one of them seems to be struggling a bit. He tends to choke up when improvising on the spot in a non-mechanical way (meaning: other than using his skills or spells), and it looks like the collaborative storytelling part is putting even more pressure on him than usual. Any ideas how I can help him?

The Urban Shadows rules have a lot of useful guidelines for running an ongoing story.

The Urban Shadows rules have a lot of useful guidelines for running an ongoing story. Every session we do things that snowball into other things, moments that make me go, “Aha! And next this leads into this problem to be solved…” Now we’re winding up our campaign, though, and I’m hoping I can ask: Any tips for ending an ongoing Urban Shadows game?