Urban Shadows
Had our setup session and a little action last night. It’s my second campaign of it I’ve started.
It’s really interesting to run two PbtA games in such close succession! I just ran Sagas of the Icelanders at Dreamation a couple weeks ago so the experience is still fresh in my mind.
I found myself antsy and disappointed in what felt like a slow, lurching start. The players chose Aware, Spectre, and Hunter: two new playbooks and a heavy emphasis on the Mortality faction. We had an Aware in the last session, too. I assume the playbook’s inherent human-ness, and maybe a dash of True Blood or maybe Buffy, makes it a compelling choice. Interesting!
Anyway, slow start relative to the racehorses in SotI. For me the big thing is that Urban Shadows doesn’t structure the starting relationships so that everyone is up in everyone else’s business. Instead of a de facto melodrama, you’ve got a mix of debts and action leads…but no enforced fictional or mechanical reason to be involved with each other beyond the debts you hold.
More soon.
Yeah, it feels like a game where the players have to be complicit in their characters’ entrenchment.
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