Pawel Solowczuk – Powered by the Apocalypse G+ Archives

Player tags in general whether Chosen tags or Spooky tags.

What do you use those tags for? Are those tags for Keeper or for player to use? Should I plan something regarding those tags?

Chose Fate tags seems to be used only by Dutiful move and Spooky tags are only used for making demands to Spooky from his dark power.

I thought about coloring some of player misses with those tags, but that has proofed extremely difficult for tags like paranoid, source of evil, damnation or depression 🙁

Duitful (Chosen) move.

What does the trigger for that move mean “you act in accordance with any of your fate tags”, does it mean when you incorporate any of your tags into your action?

I love how my player uses her tags of “Visions” and “Hidden allies” and what it adds to the fiction, however it also means that this move is an overwealming XP farm, extra 3-4XP per session – is it intended or should we put some limits to what the tags mean and limit their use?

As a result after running 5 sessions, Chosen is level 5, everyone else is level 2.

Can you please summarize for me the concepts and clocks for arc that you have run?

I’m trying to come up with an arc and I have no idea how to set up the clock, should each step be a mystery, but then if hunters kill every monster the last step doesn’t make sense etc, so I’m looking for examples.

Initiate – Mentor move – miss condition – how to?

“On a miss, your question causes trouble.”

My player has a mentor that is somewhere else, so contact will be through a phone, I have no idea how to apply miss condition in an interesting way. Please give me some examples of what would you have done?

Should I work with the player for mentor to be more directly involved or that contact should be more personal or maybe more mystic like though meditation or something?

My Spooky player has chosen his Dark Side to be Depression, Paranoia and Rage.

My Spooky player has chosen his Dark Side to be Depression, Paranoia and Rage. His powers come from Goth and Heavy Metal Prince of Darkness.

Please advice what requests can his Dark Side have of him?

I’m having hard time coming up with requests that are not PvP or that doesn’t makes the investigation more difficult.

Should I request him to just beat up a random NPCs due to Rage or abstain from taking action due to his Depression, this doesn’t sound interesting 🙁

The only good idea I had was to request him to do alternative ending to monster hunt. Instead of players killing the Monster, Dark Side wants Spooky to summon another bigger beast that will capture the Monster for the Dark Side.

That will end the investigation, but I’m not sure if this is not too big deal, I should ask bigger deals as his Luck depletes.

Please advice.

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.

Some Oracle questions for the weekend:

1. How to make an Oracle character relevant?

My other players seems to be politely ignoring and not really engaging Oracle. Why? Hard to say, we are learning how to properly implement Foretellings to be interesting and add to the story or maybe they are afraid they will have to owe Oracle.

So what can I do to make Oracle relevant, if talk to my players then tell them what?

“You have this amazing friend of yours who can see future and might tell you who will try to kill/trick/betray you tomorrow, why don’t you take advantage of that?”

2. How to make and play with and use Foretellings visions so that they add an interesting twist to the game?

So far we had two uses of Foretellings. In one Oracle has seen where a Revenant is about to kill a friendly NPC so that players could have went there and take action however Oracle herself had to go to another place to resolve another situation.

Second use was more complicated, as players have used debts and collected a whole Hallowed gang to go wage war on a demon, Oracle predicted that the demon will explode and kill everyone, she went there and tried to defuse a situation but other players ware already ready to wage war so in some regards such vision was counter productive because they’ve already used resources and made moves to set the stage for war.

3. Why does Oracle have to engage in intimacy move to be able to have a vision about NPC or PC that is not bad?

Both Foretellings and All Seeing visions are kind of on the spot and about bad stuff happening.

Vessel, their Instincts and Debts.

I recently started a game and one of the PCs is a cool flesh golem Vessel.

We discussed that all PCs know his instincts and some powerful NPCs might know at least one of his instincts.

I wonder if person using Vessel instincts should owe Vessel a debt in few cases:

1. If Vessel does what he is told without questioning it?

2. If Vessel resists and fails?

I’d like to avoid situation where player feel ripped off from having a debt for doing stuff, but he is a construct made to serve.

IMO Vessel can demand a debt for doing something for someone after a successful resist.

How do you handle 7-9 on Vessel resistance to follow instincts?

So far I had one such situation and I gave Vessel a choice to flee the scene or stay and cave in.

Which MC moves do you think fit nicely here to this situation?

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?

I’m running a one shot in two days and I need clarification for Barrier skill.

What do you understand as “leveraging your +Mettle as a manifestation of solid willpower”?

Does it mean use +Mettle as +Armor?

Or does it mean that a character can Face Adversity with +Mettle instead of Brace For Impact?

How did you use it?