Urban Shadows RPG: Discussion – Page 5 – Powered by the Apocalypse G+ Archives

Hello!

Had a quick question regarding the Dragon move Fire Born:

Fire Born: When you let it out, add the following option to the list:

» Ignore all environmental harm (fi re, electricity, etc.), mundane or

magical, for the scene. Mortals who witness your resistance construct

mundane explanations to account for your abilities.

So the question is, are there three sepearate types of damage that you ignore here (environmental damage, mundane damage and magical damage) or is there just one type of damage that you ignore (environmental damage, created by mundane or magical means)?

I’m running an Urban Shadows game and I have a Revenant PC.

I’m running an Urban Shadows game and I have a Revenant PC. The Revenant has the ability to instantly kill any NPC. While I’m okay with this most of the time, there are times when it severely undercuts the feel of some of the more powerful NPCs in their city. What are some ways to give those NPCs protection that don’t feel like I’m just turning off a PCs powers?

Hi all

Hi all,

I see some references in the rules to things that haven’t been explained. I’m guessing this is because readers are assumed to be familiar with these, but I’m wondering if Urban Shadows prefers one over another.

Things that I’m talking about here include:

– Fairy courts: what courts are there? What are their differences? Is there a universally-agreed point about each court?

– How is the wizard council structured? Do we have other councils?

– How can vampires turn other humans into vampires? Also, how can vampires be killed?

If you search about any of these on Google, different series have different ideas. I’m wondering if Urban Shadows prefers one over the other. For example, regarding killing vampires, I’ve noticed in the long game example that the vampire is killed with a gun shot, and because it’s to the neck and at intimate range, it’s assumed that the vampire can’t regenerate.

However, in some series, vampires re-animate after a while, and only garlic/holy symbols/wooden steaks/silver/fire (the weaknesses differ a lot) do the job.

I’m just thinking that if Urban Shadows picks one set of rules over another, I should get myself familiar with it because my players expect me to know those. If not, should I give people hints about what “I”, as the MC, think as “correct” in this game?

Thanks a lot!

Niche protection in Urban Shadows.

Following is my thought after many hours spent playing and MCing Urban Shadows.

I see that even if there is a niche protection regarding playbook selection, other than that nobody is really special and XP system further invites going to NPC Wizard rather than PC Wizard.

So let’s see an example. Players are a Wolf and a Wizard. A Wolf finds he has a problem than need Wizards knowledge.

If he goes to PC Wizard, PC Wizard might use his cool moves, chance are he will have to make investigation of his own and that can take 1-2-3 sessions (because some misses ware rolled and some other plots got in a way) to get back the answer and faction will probably not be marked, no xp will be gained.

If he goes to NPC Wizard not only he gets to mark faction, get xp, but also his problem might be solved far quicker.

Am I missing something, is my observation correct? Any way you see to make going into PCs better solution than hitting the streets with NPCs?

For example in Apocalypse Wold the niche protection is very strong. If we have a Chooper and a Savvyhead, for Chopper there is nobody else in a 100 miles who can fix his bike, Savvyhead is the only guy so he better keep a good standing with him.

Hi fellow US’!

I just stumbles over a small passage on the Scholar Playbook from the Dark Streets supplemental, that bugged me a little.

The final Corruption Move states, that the Scholar can:

Retire your character. They may return as a Threat.

Who are they? I guess it’s the Network, but I’m not quite sure. Any ideas?

Does anyone have experience running a pre-modern Urban Shadows game?

Does anyone have experience running a pre-modern Urban Shadows game? I have some ideas bouncing around for a 1750s campaign, but I’m curious to know any pitfalls or tips beforehand.

Andrew Medeiros, I’m wondering if it’s possible to get an ePub version of the Dark Streets supplement?

Andrew Medeiros, I’m wondering if it’s possible to get an ePub version of the Dark Streets supplement? What I see in DriveThruRPG is only the PDF version.

Thanks!

PC-NPC-PC triangles – are faction moves a problem here?

I’m starting a new game soon and I wanted to put extra attention on creating the relationship triangles, but each time I think of asking another player “So what is your story with this NPC?” after someone introduced a new NPC, I see that Put a Face to a Name move is a road block here because Put a Face to a Name is designed to create relationship between PC and NPC.

I see few ways of somehow working with it:

1. For NPCs created as a part of session 0 and character introduction, discuss each PC relation to said NPCs, this will also mean that all PCs will never roll Put a Face to a Name with those established NPCs, as such those NPCs will never get or owe initial debt to the PCs. – so we kind of rob NPCs and PCs of some XP and some possible debts.

2. Do as above but for every NPC established during setup everyone rolls Put a Face to a Name but without marking XP? So that we will have dice set up initial disposition and possible will be more debts moving around.

3. Play as normal, but after every Put a Face to a Name ask additional question – so what do you think of this NPC? This will result is a delayed creation of triangles.

How do you create PC-NPC-PC triangles in your US games?

Do you have some special way of doing it?

Hello, GM Brave back.

First of all, thank you to all of you guys who commented your thoughts and opinions, but I realized that I made a HUGE mistake with my last few posts. This was all on me and I apologize for the lack of communication, but rereading what I posted, it sounded as though this “campaign” that I have is something that I came up with all on my own and something where I didn’t have a conversation with the players.

That’s not true. The majority of what I built was in response to the party. I’m always constantly asking them questions about their characters, asking them where in Galestine they can be seen (we drew a map and together we are plotting important spots on that map based on their characters), and they’ve even been put in hypothetical situations and events that are completely improvised through group chats.

We’ve been planning this TOGETHER for practically a whole month now. And we all kinda pre-planned things together, but it’s because we love character development and storytelling so much. At times you can find us spending hours of our days simply talking about hypothetical scenes and so on. We call these scenes “goofs” where it’s just making jokes and having fun, but some of these goofs ended up becoming more than just a joke. Thus why I spent a lot of time talking about NPC’s that the Lobos will encounter. Those were goofs that are now a big deal.

All of what I mentioned previously was all thanks to the group. Quite frankly, I didn’t even come up with the demons being the main antagonist. That wasn’t until one player provided backstory of her character who is a demon hunter. And from there, looking at all the other characters and their backstories, I made these connections to provide them a main “villain”. But it wasn’t me who thought of this originally. It was because of them that this story grew.

This was my fault for not mentioning any of this, but last night I felt as though my posts were getting too long, and I didn’t want to bring discouragement to anyone who didn’t want to read such a long post. I should have mentioned these facts long ago…

And all these events and main forces that I mentioned would be in each ark isn’t exactly pre-planned either. Well it sorta is but I have a main goal for them to hopefully accomplish by the end of each said ark, but the rest is up to them. There are no limits as to what the party can do, there’s just that one thing that’s driving some sort of reason for them to stick together during this entire gameplay. They have the demons and other evil forces they will face to worry about, but other than that, everything is up to them. And session wise, I have no idea how long each ark will be (How many sessions each ark will be). It’s all dependent on the party. And the reason why I separated Recognition into arks is because I like to keep things organized. With all the ideas that were being thrown around, had I not separated these ideas into groups, then everything would become really messy, and then the game wouldn’t be fun for anyone. The point of the arks was to keep things under control and to avoid things getting chaotic.

I have that tendency to want to get things perfect and that’s why I decided to post my concerns last night. I started to feel like I needed other people to tell me what I was missing, and I am taking in consideration what you guys said about switching systems, but I honestly fell in love with Urban Shadows and I wanna try and see if I can stick with this system, but still get what me and the party wanted from this gameplay that we’re gonna have. I am NOT disregarding what you guys all recommended, please that’s not what I’m saying.

I don’t mind switching, but I have to ask the party how they feel because they already spent so much time developing their characters.

-We have a tainted college student who became a tainted in her moments close to death. After making that deal, she’s slowly become less emotional and more numb. Empty. So she’s trying her best to find a reason as to why life is so important.

-We have a wolf who has lived in his family’s territory all his life, and now thanks to a demon hunter, he’s made it out into the real world. (No, the hunter didn’t attack his family. He just accompanies her now on her adventures). He’s experiencing new things that otherwise he would have never seen on his home terf.

-That human demon hunter that is accompanied by the wolf is actually lost. She has no idea how she arrived in Galestine, but that’s because she lost her memories. What actually happened was that her father became a tainted and in order to get his soul back, she became a hunter, but word got around and she was eventually attacked, but she escaped. In the process of that, she lost her eye and she didn’t remember what had happened. All she knew was that demons had something to do with what happened to her. So now her goal is to find out what happened.

-We also have a fae who betrayed the fae court and was banned from it. She had stolen a precious item and thus because of that, her banishment resulted. This fae now lives in Galestine doing favors for other people in order to survive the streets.

-And our newest member of the lobos is a ghost who for years has been looking for who took away her life in a car accident, but after so long, she has grown tired of searching and just came to terms with what has happened. Now all she wants is a friend and interaction with anyone… ANYONE.

I’m honest to god really excited with this crew and I really want this story to be told. Thanks for all your help! I will take it all into consideration and hopefully this clears some of the miscommunications up!

Thanks again.

-Brave

Hello! It’s GM Brave again back with another request.

So in the previous post I’ve made, I was asking for help with how to make fights actually be fights in Urban Shadows, but now I need help with knowing how to be a GM in general. Like I said in my last post, this is the first game I’m ever GMing and I have 0 clue as to what to expect. I think in my last post I was starting to sound a lil too demanding as to “TELL ME WHAT I HAVE TO DO TO MAKE THIS GOOD” but really all I guess I’m asking for is tips.

How can I make this campaign of mine ring with the players as much as it has for me? How do I keep their interest and how do I just go about it?

I just need help, from GM to GM. I have the tendency to want to get things perfect, and I’m trying my best to stop that mindset and just go with it, but anything would help me tbh.

For a lil more context, my campaign is called Recognition, and it has 7 arks, each ark having a title starting with “Re” because why the hell not? Each ark has one specific end goal that “The Lobos” (name of the party playing) has to complete. The city this all takes place in is called Galestine (“Gale” for short) and is heavily based on New Mexico (with other influences too). Galestine is a pretty dangerous city with the influence of drugs, abusive homes, violence, poor economic support and poor education; there are too many elements in Galestine that make this place one of the worst in the nation. With Gale being a huge mixing pot with many different factions, there’s no telling who you’re going to bump into. Eventually The Lobos find themselves in the presence of a mixed group of Galestine citizens (mainly college students, a college professor, and their mom friend). This group calls themselves “The Guild of Good For Nothings,” TGOGFN’s or Guild for short. The Guild has been watching The Lobos and they end up becoming some of the most important NPC’s in the game. They are a source of valuable information and they can provide help pushing the story forward if The Lobos find it to be hard to know what to do next. With the Guild and The Lobos getting together, change is starting to occur in Galestine, and while most citizens either are all for it or don’t care, there are some evil forces who do not want there to be a change for the better. These evil forces are demonic, and all they want is to rule over Galestine as the patrons of the city.

These demons are the main villains of the story, and they’re out to get the Lobos, along with all the other fights that the Lobos will encounter. (Just to clarify, I do not mean tainted. I mean demons in general).

With that being said, I think I’ve rambled enough about Recognition. I can talk for hours about this, but I think I’m going to leave it there for the sake of not making this post longer than it has to be. To recap, I just really want help with GMing. Tips and tricks and some intel as to what to expect would be great. Once again, thank you guys all so much!

-Brave