Urban Shadows RPG: Discussion – Page 29 – Powered by the Apocalypse G+ Archives

Lets brainstorm!

What are some things that can “go terribly wrong” when a Vamp feeds that aren’t just “they die.”

I’ve got a Vamp PC who loves cashing in debts to feed on other PC’s. So far, we haven’t had that roll miss yet, but I’d like to be ready when it does.

Help me Urban Shadows Community, you’re my only hope!

Last night was game 4 in my new US adventures. I’m the MC. My players fought a particularly nasty bear-demon-thing left as a trap by a vindictive hunter. All of us are rules-heavy transplants from other systems: D&D3.5, Pathfinder, GURPS.

So… how does combat work? I mean, it kinda worked, but I’ve got a lot of questions:

* Unleash on a 7-9 makes the player choose “they inflict harm on you” or “you find yourself in a bad spot”. Why would the players ever take harm? What would encourage them to do so? Do I just ask them to be reasonable, only so many bad spots you can find yourself in before it catches up to you?

* If the player took “find yourself in bad spot”, what could that mean? At one point fighting the bear-demon-thing one of my players took find yourself in bad spot just as he’d done the “take something from them” to take the bear-thing’s balance (shot its foot off). They fell down a ladder, lost their footing, got in someone else’s way. But they recovered as soon as the bear did, so it didn’t really cost them anything… so how could I have adjudicated that better?

* Does that mean I’m not taking my MC move of inflict/trade harm enough? Like I should just fiat “you take 3 harm from its bilious claws”?

I don’t need a lot of systems or case-by-cases, more of a narrative guide, maybe? Or example combats from others?

The combat spooked my group enough (two people are in the hospital now) that I don’t know that there will be lots of combat going forward but I’d like to be armed with more knowledge than I have now when it comes up.

I’ve been considering using Ben Aaronovitch’s Rivers of London series (Midnight Riot in the US) as the basis for an…

I’ve been considering using Ben Aaronovitch’s Rivers of London series (Midnight Riot in the US) as the basis for an Urban Shadows series of games.

Basically the protagonist in the books is a policeman seconded to the magical investigation unit of the Metropolitan Police in London. He has some talent for magic hence the secondment and his boss is the last English wizard. So from the getgo we have a Wizard and his apprentice. The stories feature the river spirits of London so we have a variety of Fae and Goblin Nightmarkets add to the flavour. At least one story features a ghost and other story lines feature various old /retired wizards and at least one evil Wizard mastermind. There are a race of beings that live underground, descendants of Victorian railway workers IIRC. With a little tweak or two I reckon this could work with the players being Aware, Fae, Oracle or Wizard. I’d probably drop the other archetypes as not fitting very well with the fiction.

Comments?

Transition between the Archetypes whose grounding is less physiological is pretty straightforward – it’s easy to…

Transition between the Archetypes whose grounding is less physiological is pretty straightforward – it’s easy to move out of almost every Mortality Archetype, for example – but others require a lot more character sheet surgery and fictional wrangling to make sense.

How have you adjudicated Archetype switches in your own campaigns and one-shots?

It’s an audacious mechanic, and I’d love to see a more in-depth discussion of that in a future supplement.

Hello!

Hello! I’m just posting this to introduce myself, and say that I just grabbed Urban Shadows from DriveThruRPG’s GM’s Day Sale.

I’m typically a Chronicles of Darkness player, so I’m looking forward to seeing what US has to offer: I’ve hear a lot of good things and am a fan of Powered by the Apocalypse games already.

I have a couple questions about the Vamp’s web.

I have a couple questions about the Vamp’s web. My initial reading of it is that if a character owes the Vamp a debt, that character is in the Vamp’s web, period.

But then I looked at the wording, and it’s “When someone comes to you to ask for a favor, look for advice/info, or threaten your interests” they enter your web. This brings up two questions:

1) Say the Vamp is breaking in to the police department, and without character X’s knowlege, destroys evidence that would have surely landed X in jail.

The Vamp then informs X, and says “you owe me” and get’s a Debt. Is X in the Vamp’s web?

2) How does the threaten part work? If the leader of a Werewolf gang walks up to The Vamp at a night club and says “I’m taking over your territory, and there ain’t nothin’ you can do about it!” how does that narratively translate to owing The Vamp a favor? How do I express that in the fiction?

One-shot advice & recommendations

One-shot advice & recommendations

I’m thinking of running a one-shot of Urban Shadows at a regular story-game event at a game store and I’m curious about advice for running one-shots of US. So far I’ve mostly gotten things along the lines of “partially make the characters” which is something I really don’t like being on the other side of so I’m not going to do that. (I also don’t see it saving much time in PbtA games if I choose a move or feature of an extra.)

Some thoughts I’ve already had:

-Not allowing certain Archetypes: Probably not allowing Hunter as its automatic PvP slant might be a hindrance to tighter play. Are there any other Archetypes that might be problematic in a one-shot? Maybe because of narrative issues (Hunter) or due to being a “slow-burn” (In Monsterhearts I felt The Fae was not good for one shots because they need to collect promises).

-Start with an initial threat and give the players some vague info about it before character generation. “There’s an old mansion in the center of town that has begun leaking impossible creatures from… somewhere else.” Or something like that. When doing the beginning of session move ask them to focus their rumor on that threat and how the highlighted faction or some part of it wants to interact with the pre-defined threat. “The Vampire elder wants to contain or destroy it.”, “The Mage’s Guild wants to study and harness it’s power.”, etc.

-Love letters for each of the allowed archetypes. “[Tainted], you have agreed to check out the mansion for your patron but what else does it want you to do while you’re there? [Something mechanical I haven’t thought of yet.]” This could be in addition to the beginning of session move or instead of it, though I lean towards in addition to. I see this as pushing for an opening scene that’s hard framed with all the characters there.

Anyway, curious what others think of these ideas or have other ideas for one-shots. I already read the book suggestions.

I’m about to run my first Urban Shadows game and I’m going to have a few questions, so I might as well start asking.

I’m about to run my first Urban Shadows game and I’m going to have a few questions, so I might as well start asking…

The Oracle has an ability called Conduit that says Advance Let It Out for all characters in your presence… What exactly does that mean? Do they automatically count as having rolled a 12+?

So, we started our game last night.

So, we started our game last night. The relation map is in French, sorry. The action takes place in London, in 1993. And already our heroes are running through the streets of London with the corpse of Sir Elton John and an old book of spells owned by the Freemasons. This is going to be a lot of fun. I haven’t added the rumours of the intro session move yet, and the debts it created.

Has anyone considered how a ‘bonus’ system like Fate points would work with Urban Shadows?

My thinking is that players could spend earned points to do things like upgrade the result of a roll by one step (failure -> success with cost -> success), perhaps even allowing unlocking the Advanced successes on basic moves without having bought them yet. Maybe allow them to be spent to avoid marking corruption or something.

But what I’m less clear about is how I’d want to go about awarding these points. I could simply give them for great descriptions or awesome play, but Fate also tends to award points for allowing a character to be compelled to do something, and the only thing that really seems analogous in Urban Shadows would be paying a debt without resisting it.

What are people’s thoughts? Are there ways that this could ‘break’ the underlying assumptions of the game that I might be missing? Are there similar hacks already out there that I could look at? Any other ideas for both awarding and spending these points?

I’m getting ready to run my first-ever session of Urban Shadows next week, and I’m of two minds about trying to add this kind of mechanic from the beginning.