Andrew Medeiros and Mark Diaz Truman

298 Pages·2015·7.82 MB·English

political urban fantasy
powered by the apocalypse
ANDREW MEDEIROS
MARK DIAZ TRUMAN
political urban fantasy
powered by the apocalypse
ANDREW MEDEIROS
MARK DIAZ TRUMAN
Design, Development, and Writing by
Andrew Medeiros and Mark Diaz Truman
Rules editing by Brendan Conway
Copy editing by Amanda Valentine
Proofreading by Shelley Harlan
Art direction by Marissa Kelly
Illustrations by Juan Ochoa
Layout by Thomas Deeny
Indexing by Elizabeth Bauman
The X-Card was originally developed by John Stavropolous to manage
difficult and adult content in tabletop roleplaying games. You can read more
about the X-Card at tinyurl.com/x-card-rpg.
Intimacy moves were originally developed by Dana Fried in her post titled
“Three Small Apocalypse World Hacks” (bit.ly/1ScZQiW). More great
design work by Dana can be found at leftoblique.net/wp/games.
The section titled “Asking Great Questions” is drawn from Pete Kautz’s work
titled “Five Conversational Hypnosis Tools For AW MCs” (bit.ly/1FeF894).
Pete—The Black Belt Hypnotist—can be found at alliancemartialarts.com.
The Apocalypse Engine is used courtesy of Vincent Baker and Lumpley
Games (lumpley.com). Much of the text of this book was inspired by
Apocalypse World directly (as well as Monsterhearts by Avery McDaldno).
Thank you, Vincent. You’ve given us a new way to see things, and roleplaying
will never be the same.
Urban Shadows is copyright 2015 by Magpie Games, including all text and
art. All rights are reserved.
SPECIAL THANKS
Special thanks to Rob Wakefield and Tommy Rayburn for their early graphic
design work on the playbooks and the Urban Shadows Kickstarter. We
couldn’t have made this happen without you two. Thank you!
Thanks to Marissa Kelly, Tristan Price, Justin Rogers, Derrick Kapchinsky,
Daniel Fernandez, Robenson Chavez-Arnold, Jim Crocker, Kristin Firth, Jenn
Lewis, Mick Bradley, Stephen Bloom, Katherine Fackrell, Ryan Leandres, Aaron
Friesen, Sean Horwich, Amelia Broverman, Anthony Van Giessen, Ellen Van
Giessen, Mikael Andersson, Sean Dalziel, and more for your live playtesting
feedback. Your patience and comments were both greatly appreciated.
Huge thanks to Brand Robins and Mo Turkington for their tireless playtesting
efforts throughout multiple drafts of the game; Travis Scott, Eric Mersmann,
and Stras Acimovic for their insightful live playtesting feedback at and around
Origins 2014; Whitney “Strix” Beltran, Ajit George, and MadJay Brown for their
constant cheerleading and critical eyes through Gaming as Other; and Jenn
Martin and Richard Rogers for their interest and support through Indie+. You
all are amazing.
Thank you to our Kickstarter playtesters! Your feedback was amazing, and the
game is so much stronger thanks to your contributions. Please see 294 for
a list of our City Champions who went above and beyond in their playtesting
support for the game.
If we missed you in these thanks, please let us know. We’ll get you in a
future printing.
From Andrew:
I’d like to thank my spouse Sonya for the encouragement, patience,
and love throughout every step of the Urban Shadows project (and
for its name!). I’d also like to thank my friend Aaron for some of the
original ideas for the rules, which ended up being cornerstones of the
final product.
From Mark:
I’d like to thank Marissa for her feedback after dozens of
Urban Shadows playtests and one-shots; my mom, Rose, for teach-
ing me about urban politics since before I could walk; and Avery
McDaldno for pushing me to think about how to engage minority
experiences in roleplaying games. Thank you.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
THE PREFACE 7
What This Is . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8
A City of Monsters . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8
Race, Gender, and Queerness . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9
Playing to Find Out . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11
Where This Came From . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .11
What You’ll Need . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12
THE BASICS 15
The Conversation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16
Starting a Game . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 23
Why Play? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 25
THE CHARACTERS 27
Choosing an Archetype . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 28
Name, Look, and Demeanor . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 29
The Stats . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 30
Intro Questions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 32
Gear . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 33
Picking Moves . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 33
Drama Moves . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 34
Introductions and Debts . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 35
THE MOVES 37
Using Moves in Play . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 38
Basic Moves . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 39
Faction Moves . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 60
Debt Moves . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 64
Drama Moves . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 73
Advancement . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 76
Session Moves . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 77
Custom Moves . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 78
THE ARCHETYPES 79
The List . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 80
The Aware . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 84
The Hunter . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 89
The Veteran . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 95
The Spectre . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1 . 0 . 2 . . .
The Vamp . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 107
The Wolf . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 113
The Oracle . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 120
The Wizard . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 126
The Fae . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 133
The Tainted . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 139
THE STREETS 145
Life on the Street . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 146
Harm . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 146
Armor . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 152
Weapons and Tags . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 153
Groups . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 155
THE LONG GAME 159
Advancement . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 160
Corruption . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 174
THE MASTER OF CEREMONIES 177
The MC . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 178
Agendas . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 179
The Principles . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 180
Your Moves . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 187
Moves upon Moves . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 202
Using NPCs in Play . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 207
Behind the Archetypes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 214
Dangerous Content . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 219
When You’re Not Busy… . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2 . 2 . 1 . .
THE FIRST SESSION 223
Before the First Session . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 224
Starting the First Session . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 225
During the First Session . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 229
After the First Session . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 234
The Long Example . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .2 .3 .5 . .
THE STORM 245
A City Full of Storms . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 246
Creating Threats . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 247
Creating Storms . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 258
More Storms, More Threats . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 268
THE SHADOWS 269
Calling the Shadows . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 270
Building Custom Moves . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 270
Shadows Everywhere . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 281
Breaking the Mold . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 287
The End of Shadows . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 288
APPENDIX: STAFF AND THANKS 289
Credits . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 290
City Champions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 291

the preface
THE PREFACE
7
URBAN SHADOWS
WHAT THIS IS
Urban Shadows is an urban fantasy story game. When you play it, you and
your friends (or acquaintances) tell a story together, a tale of supernatural
drama and political intrigue set in a modern-day city. Some of the charac-
ters in this story are mortal, but they might also be touched by otherworldly
forces, transformed into ghosts, vampires, werewolves, and wizards and
locked into a world of supernatural debts and obligations.
Each of you takes on the role of one of these characters in your tale, speaking
as they speak and deciding what actions they take, a conversation that will
push you to interesting emotional places. Your characters might be lovers,
friends, enemies, or allies, but they are inextricably involved with each other,
like the cast of a TV show. You sometimes get to feel what your characters
feel—if you’re lucky—but other times you point the characters toward disaster
and delight in the fallout from a safe emotional distance.
The rules of this story involve some negotiation and chance. The conversa-
tion will often require that you roll dice to find out what happens, a way of
keeping things unpredictable so that the story doesn’t stagnate or deflate.
The tale you’re telling doesn’t belong to any one person, anymore than a
dinner conversation or a talk over a cup of coffee belongs to the host. Every-
one gets to contribute a bit, even the dice. Especially the dice.
The story you’re telling isn’t random, though. Above all else, Urban Shadows
is a game about cities, the people who live in them, and the machines that
make them run. It’s a political game, one that challenges our preconceptions
about conflicts between communities, and asks us to navigate complex iden-
tities in a demanding social structure. It is personal and political for mortals
and monsters alike. It drives hard toward these ideas.
But Urban Shadows isn’t just a game about race relations at City Hall or tax
code regulations on the docket with the city council—although maybe those
things will come up in your story. It’s a game about monsters—creatures of
legends, folklore, and modern-day myths—and the cities they inhabit. Your
characters all come from extremely different communities, and you have to
manage the politics within and between those communities no matter where
the rules of the game take you.
A CITY OF MONSTERS
The city isn’t safe.
The streets are filled with horrors that will hollow you out for their own plea-
sure, killers and sadists waiting for a taste of your flesh and your fear, and dark
things that linger in the shadows, reflecting back your own hideous wants
and desires. The streets are veins of corruption, bubbling up into skyscrapers
8
the preface
that watch over the urban landscape like the towers of ancient kings, home
to the tyrants of the city who want nothing more than to consume all that
you have to offer, leaving nothing behind.
And that’s just the mortals.
The city is also filled with “real” monsters: vampires and werewolves, fae and
wizards, ghosts and immortals. They are living among us and apart from us,
infiltrating our corporate boards and gala fundraisers while holding their own
secret gatherings and dark rituals to decide our fate. They’re everywhere, but
you might not notice them if you’re not looking closely. Like the city itself,
they are more than they appear to be, dangerous and unkind to those who
overstep their bounds.
But the city is not without pleasures. Where else can you hear a century-old
vampire play steel string guitar in a riverwalk blues cafe? Where else can you
feel the pulse of demonic bodies grinding against each other in the heat
of a downtown club? Where else can you learn to call upon the power of
blood—yours? someone else’s?—under the watchful eyes of a trained coven?
Nowhere. That’s where. Nowhere.
The city has you now. Whether you were born here or made here or moved
here or trapped here as the result of some terrible deal with the wrong people…
this is where you belong. We know it. You know it. The city knows it. And as
you reach for the power to make this city yours, to own a piece of it the way it
owns a piece of you, we hope you remember that all those monsters—mortal
and supernatural alike—were once just… like… you.
RACE, GENDER, AND QUEERNESS
These types of stories—tales of cities and the monsters who inhabit them—
have been told before, in blockbuster movies and serial television and trashy
paperback novels available at your local supermarket. They shock and delight
audiences by promising something dark and edgy, a glimpse into the deviant
fangs of monstrous desire.
Yet for all their purported subversion, they are shockingly normative. A girl
who hunts vampires convinces herself that a boy vampire isn’t so bad. A
wizard who lives on the edge of society realizes that his friends are a kind of
family. A werewolf finally masters his beast by falling in love with the right
woman. Demons are slain by the just; the innocent escape a terrible fate.
The usual.
Almost all of these stories—plastered on billboards and sold in bulk—are
about white people.
9