We’ve started a five player campaign of Urban Shadows 2e and I couldn’t be more excited. The first edition is an all-timer, easily in my top five-or-so, sometimes higher depending on the week you ask me. Run it at least a dozen times in the past decade.
The new edition of Urban Shadows adds and moves around some stuff, which I’ll talk about in a future deep dive. For now I want to talk about our setting and how I prepped for it.
The initial pitch was “1950s Los Angeles,” which after choosing our Hub – a sort of setting playbook US2e has introduced – evolved into “1955 Hollywood.” The golden age of so much media coming out of California! Movies, television, sci-fi, music. But also the Cold War, the postwar economy, civil rights battles, the Red Scare, the Hollywood Blacklist.
The IGRC HQ group ranges from 25 to 60 with representation of every decade in between. It’s always a tossup as to what folks will know, what their cultural touchstones might be. It’s just as often the oldies (me included) will have no idea what the 20-30somethings are talking about when it comes to, say, anime. But also the 20-30somethings have no idea what the oldies are talking about when it comes to, dunno, pre-Star Wars sci-fi or classic rock or politics.
My concern with historical settings always revolves around avoiding history panic: are we doing it right? Is it respectful and representative? Are we appropriating a past that’s still in living memory? Are we getting the details right? Missing context? Ugh what if we’re getting it hilariously wrong and…and I’m not sure what comes after that. We don’t livestream. Nobody will “know” except us. Although even that can be triggering for some players, getting shit wrong that only we know about. Nobody wants to look clueless in front of their peers.
For our 1950s Los Angeles pitch, I created two pages of notes: one for the United States broadly, and another for Los Angeles specifically. The stuff I aimed for:
- Top notes about major events and trends to nail down the overall vibe. What’s a vibe? In our case I want my players to feel, generally, the stuff our period would be feeling. So that’s Cold War anxiety, the culture shifting toward what the ‘60s will become (teens, rock, drugs), post-war optimism. The thing is, it’s up to me to decide what elements I want to push and what I feel comfortable ignoring.
- Relevant hooks for an Urban Shadows game. Again, that’s on me to decide.
- Entertaining, easy to incorporate details anyone can drop in and reinforce the setting. The popularity of the Chevy Bel-Air, transistor radios, and the hula-hoop? Fun!
Obviously you need to bring your own discretion to these things. It’s a good exercise, though. Look at your specific situation and build toward that. Leave out distractions. Define the big picture for yourself, then show it to the players through examples. Sometimes – sometimes! – drop the whole idea after learning a bit more about it.
Here’s what I came up with for our campaign. Maybe they’ll be useful to you too!
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