Category: Urban Shadows RPG: Discussion

Is it sensible to make a custom move using Faction stats to indicate familiarity with a group? We’re setting up for a religious thing, where holy folk (Mortality) and Night don’t mix. I am considering something like:

When you enter the sanctuary of Rockefeller Chapel, roll with Night.

On a 10+, you are too close to the darkness, and the protective magics cause great discomfort (take -1 ongoing while within the sanctuary, but you may take 1 harm to shake free from the enchantment).

On a 7-9, you are merely disoriented for a few moments (take -1 forward).

On a 6-, the darkness does not hold sway over you; you are unaffected.

Refusing a Debt question. I had the following scenario happen:

Vamp goes to meet Libby, apologizes for treating her poorly, and asks here to accompany him on a thing (get rid of some ghosts, collect the ectoplasm they leave behind as they exit our plane for oblivion), so he could make use of her budding necromancy skills. She says sure, but I’ve done so much for you in the past, so I’m gonna take 80% of what we get (she’s calling in a debt here). In inform the Vamp that what remains will probably not be as much as he needs, so he goes to refuse the debt and succeeds on a 10+.

Here’s where the problem comes in. He presses the matter. Nothing in the situation changed, but he keeps asking. The player is expecting to try to persuade her with promises and sweet talk.

But this confuses me. He knows what it will take (the debt) but doesn’t want to give up 80%. He thinks he could talk her down to an equal share, but it doesn’t feel right to me on the rules side because the debt was already part of this.

We ended up rolling to persuade and he botched it, so it ended poorly anyway. But what would you have done?

So there’s this building, witch coven holed up inside, doing witch-y ritual things. The Spectre’s Link is in there – his living daughter, who is trying to learn necromancy because she may have seen her dead father once in a fever dream and wants to contact him.

The Fae rolls up, with his Dish Best Served Now, seeking vengance for one of his redcap followers, Tom, who’s brother, Dom, says he saw fall in a witch’s hex trap so they could drain his blood.

Fae Lets It Out, calling to the spirits and elementals of the earth trapped in the stones of the building, urging them to be free! The building rumbles and creaks and begins to come down.

Now the Link is in danger, but the Spectre is there – he was just outside keeping an eye on his daughter. He moves in, to get her out. But now the coven is pissed, their eyes on the Fae, blocking the Spectre from moving in. And it’s his turn. He Lets It Out, summoning all the sadness and despair he felt at the moment of his death, all the pain and the regret, and pushing it into the room. And he rolls a 13 and decides to pay the corruption to make this permanent.

[We basically paused here on a cliffhanger for the night]

So this mega-depression emission, I need to figure out a move for this, I think. A passive “you can make people really sad” isn’t going to cut it. Any good ideas? I’m feeling an “unintended victims” consequence in there…

The human eating demon dressed in the meatsuit of a little girl in a white dress has asked the Veteran for help. Someone is hunting demons and killing them truly, not just sending them back to the underworld.

It culminates in a car chase, the killer speeding down the road in his Oldsmobile, the Veteran chasing in his beat up truck. He Keeps His Cool well enough [7-9 result] to hold the chase but can’t quite catch up to him.

“Well that’s why I installed this…” he rips open a panel on the dashboard exposing a big red button with “Nitro” written on it. Slamming his fist down, the truck jerks forward, catching the Olds in a pit maneuver – spinning and T-boning it. [Let It Out=12, chose seize control of his car and +1 forward from the wreckage confusion, taking corruption].

At the moment of the crash, as the windows shatter, the killer reveals it’s true form, unfurling a set of wings that rip it from the wreckage like a parachute. It lands twenty feet away in full demonic form. There’s no way the Veteran can fight this thing toe to toe… unless… The last point of corruption put him over. He takes the “Pack Rat” corruption move.

“I reach into my jacket and pull out a pouch of white powder. It is the ground bones of cherubs, and incredibly painful and acidic to demons.” He tosses it into the air, as the demon screams, swatting at its face and body as the skin sizzles and bubbles. [I rule this a reduction of his 2-armor to 0, as he did take corruption to do this]

Unleash with the +1 forward, terrible harm, no armor. Dead. Poor demon.

Veterans seemed like such a boring character to me at first. I’m loving this guy.