[OOC] Word on the street

[Wynamoinen]

People are talking about our protagonists...

Your standard OOC thread, for standard OOC stuff.

[Wynamoinen]

Welcome to the game! I think this first phase will need to take a leisurely pace - I think a few of you are just reading the rules for the first time, and I still need to recruit another player or two. And some of you may be seeing/discovering this page before others.

Please don't build a character yet! There is a good bit of interconnection that needs to happen, so I prefer that you all build at roughly the same time. And in order to build at roughly the same time, I think we need to resolve two questions.

1) What city is this taking place in? I've suggested Chicago or Washington DC. jbear suggested London or Rome or Wellington. I don't think either one of us is hung up on any of those suggestions. I think London is classic (but maybe overdone? for the same reason, I want to avoid New York or LA). Chicago is one of the rulebook examples; I don't know if that's a plus or a minus. Any other suggestions? Answering this question really is the first order of business.

2) We need to make sure that no one picks the same archetype; that's against the rules. So I'd suggest you pitch the set of playbooks you're thinking about, and we can try to suss out any overlaps in interest.'m happy to admit any of the playbooks posted on the official site, the ones from the rulebook, plus Immortal and Dragon. (We should definitely discuss dragon, though, if you're interested; I think they have a tendency to take over the plot of the game, or put a very strong shade on it. That's not necessarily bad; I think Awakened for example can do the same, and that helps to actually create a story. We just want to make sure that people are OK with that type of story.)

I like to be pretty orderly as PbtA starts, so I've got planned order of business in this "session 0" phase. Please try not to work too far ahead. The joy of the system is collaboration, and if you take a pace much faster than the rest, it can make collaboration more challenging.

 

We don't need to hash it out right now, but I don't want to forget it later:

3) do y'all want secret player threads? I generally skip them in my games. PbtA is all about being open and honest about what you want from a game, and how to build a story collaboratively to achieve that goal. "Metagaming" is kind of not really a thing in PbtA. That said, Urban Shadows is a little different. Since it can be about dark secrets and machinations, and sometimes PC goals are at odds, I'm open to the idea. I personally don't need them, but if many of you think it's valuable, we can have them. An alternative would be non-private character-specific threads, so that you and I can have conversations just between the two of us about your character, but the conversation is out in the open. That would, I think, build trust between players, but it would help to organize side conversations about each PC.

[wodine]

Happy to be here and happier still to not have to chat via PMs.

[Wynamoinen]

Yeah boy, it would be really nice if the mythical forthcoming forum software update brings a different PM method. I also hate PMs.

[hafrogman]

Hello Everybody,

1) City.

I think DC could be an interesting choice, a hot bed of dark secrets, foul deeds and shadowy deals signed in blood... and that's just the mortals (rimshot). I think the central hub would help encourage interaction (between PCs, with important NPCs, etc.) by forcing everyone into one area. Everything clustered around the capitol, catering to the politicians, lobbyists and tourists.

Wellington also jumped out as an interesting idea, but I'm given slight pause by the fact that its entire metro population is slightly smaller than the suburb where I grew up.

All in all, I'm not actually familiar enough with most of these cities to be able to ground myself fictionally in any of them. I'd be relying on Google and Wikipedia for any details I come up with, so apologies to anybody with actual knowledge.

2) Playbooks.

I'd like to submit a strong interest in the Oracle archetype. Normally I wouldn't go into a PbtA game without at least a couple of potential concepts in my back pocket, but I made the mistake of reading the wrong edition of the game and neither the Imp nor the Sworn exist yet. If someone else wants the Oracle, perhaps the Veteran. I'm kind of open to suggestions after that.

3) Secret Threads.

I'd put in a vote against Secret Threads. Not for any reasons of transparency or openness, but just because I tend to favorite games at the folder level and that "new posts" icon haunts me with things I can neither see nor read until I go in and manually mark the forum 'read'. Perhaps the mythical forthcoming forum software update (MFFSU) will bring a different read/hidden thread solution.

4) PC Conflict.

A question I'd posed in PM initially, but was suggested I bring up here. I'm not a big fan myself, being a proponent of cooperative and collaborative gameplay styles. But I get that in this style of game friction and opposing goals are in certain ways inevitable. Ultimately I'm curious where the rest of you stand, and what direction you think your characters will push things. Obviously we don't even have characters yet, so need to answer right now, but something to be thinking about.

[Roekahs]

Hey all, this is exciting! Looking forward to playing with some old and new faces alike!

1. City doesn't matter to me at all. I saw a suggestion somewhere to pick a city the MC was really familiar with - as I recall, the idea was that the street names, details, and locations would just flow easier and make less work for you always needing to make every detail up. Just something I saw for your consideration.

2. Don't worry about playbook for me. I have a couple that I will play if no one else picks them (because I want to see them in action, but don't need to be the one playing them). There are also several others that I will be happy to play.

 

3. I have no specific need for private threads. As Wyn ... ... also, don't mind me, just rusty from a long layoff and refreshing all the coding goodiesyou know, I always have them in my games. More often than not, people use them early and then they mostly become clutter. I think the main reason I keep doing it is that I have come to the conclusion (whether it is correct or not is a different debate) that some players - especially if they aren't familiar with the system - seem to feel more comfortable asking the "stupid" questions away from the main OOC thread and the terrible, horrible judgment of their peers.

Originally Posted by hafrogman

4) PC Conflict.

A question I'd posed in PM initially, but was suggested I bring up here. I'm not a big fan myself, being a proponent of cooperative and collaborative gameplay styles. But I get that in this style of game friction and opposing goals are in certain ways inevitable. Ultimately I'm curious where the rest of you stand, and what direction you think your characters will push things. Obviously we don't even have characters yet, so need to answer right now, but something to be thinking about.

I tend to lean the same way you do. I am not opposed to conflict, I just don't tend to initiate it because of the collaborative mindset. In my opinion (and experience to some extent), outright, direct conflict between the PCs is not required for this setting to be a ton of fun. In the US game I ran, I had mostly players who wanted to work together (I can't really remember any direct conflict), but they also weren't always working together. Everything was sort of "conflict-lite" where certain PCs were opposed enough to a certain course of action that they weren't outright opposing, but they were absolutely not going to assist. All that to say, I am good with whatever, but I think the system is set up to handle whatever we want - and you may be surprised at how opposed you end up being to someone else's actions in game ...

[wodine]

1. I, of course, would prefer a city I'm familiar with. Chicago would better suit me that DC but I can work with either. Earlier I also offered Toronto, Seattle, Berlin, and Tokyo.

2. My preference is for one of the more supernatural books, but I don't have a specific interest as yet.

3. I like having personal threads for each player and GM in a game. It provides a place for specific discussions that don't need to be held with the whole group, but I don't need it to be private. In the even that there is a secret or hidden information a secret tag can easily be used. I also just don't go into other peoples threads.

(4.) Concerning PC conflict, I think in this kind of game proxy wars and schemes are more fitting than any direct PVP.

[Wynamoinen]

I'll admit to being a little biased towards DC because (1) I am moderately familiar with it IRL, and (2) the one PbtA game I've ever played live was Urban Shadows set in DC. The game was cut down by the pandemic three sessions in, so it never really lifted off. But I've got some material that I With the proviso of "if you guys give me enough material, I won't need to import content at all"could easily convert.

DC has lots of great setpieces, and a subway, which is chock full of potential. It's also pretty compact, which I think is good. I will say it has one big drawback: the federal government. Urban Shadows is a game about a CITY, and so the feds in some sense don't matter. Or at least, they should only matter to the extent they affect the city. A president's or senator's national power is irrelevant. Which is kind of an odd tension.

Toronto in the abstract sounds amazing. But even though it's only 4 hours away from me IRL and I've been Canada-adjacent all my life (MN and MI resident), Toronto somehow feels more obscure and foreign to me than Toyko or Berlin. I just don't know a gosh darn thing about it. What I know, I learned from Kids in the Hall.

Seattle would be relatively easy for me, from Shadowrun knowledge. Chicago, I'm pretty familiar with. Of course, my personal familiarity isn't super-critical, since we will fictionalize what we don't know, and our fictional city-building is not on my shoulders; we'll all do it. Toyko and London are the non-US cities that are most tantalizing to me. Though my practical knowledge of Tokyo is tiny.

[wodine]

I have looked over the playbooks, and I think I'd like to play the Spectre, the Dragon, or the Fae.

[hafrogman]

One concern with Tokyo is that the Archetypes, specifically the more supernatural ones, are steeped in European mythology and folklore. The playbooks are kept intentionally vague on specifics, but I feel like even the underlying ideas of what motivates such creatures and how they act would be fundamentally different in Japan (or Hong Kong etc.)

One other thought I had in mind about London (or any other non-North American city) is that the game's baseline assumption for equipment is... how shall I put this?

Originally Posted by Neo

"Guns. Lots of guns."

Hardly an insurmountable obstacle, but something we might want to be thinking about if we aim further afield than Canada.

[jbear]

Re: the city - I am not going to be familiar with any US city as the closest I have been to the USA is Argentina... so it's all the same to me. A city familiar to one person will be foreign to another. There's no way for everyone to be happy. I would suggest whatever city Wyn feels most confident MCing is preferable.

Secret Threads: no strong opinion either. Discord is easily used to privately discuss things quickly and effectively.

Interplayer conflict: If it serves the story and both players are on board, with the foreknowledge that it is a temporary part of a story or character arc that will grow and develop towards a resolution, then I'm fine with it. I don't think it should ever come to blows though - there are more interesting ways to express conflict.

Archetype: I have skimmed through the first 100 or so pages. I think I understand the gist of the system. There are some things that jump out at me that I immediately think - 'yeah, nah. I would do that my own way'. For example, I was looking at the Werewolf. Even 'the look' options seem so limited and superficial. I'm assuming we can just ignore that and describe any look we want, correct? Or if we want to be a werewolf but none of the demeanours is appealing, we could just choose our own demeanour, correct? I think it would be far more fun to play a werewolf that was neither Aggressive, Excitable, Feral, or Violent.

[hafrogman]

Originally Posted by jbear

the closest I have been to the USA is Argentina...

So... we should add Buenos Aires into the mix.

Originally Posted by jbear

'the look' options seem so limited and superficial. I'm assuming we can just ignore that and describe any look we want, correct? Or if we want to be a werewolf but none of the demeanours is appealing, we could just choose our own demeanour, correct? I think it would be far more fun to play a werewolf that was neither Aggressive, Excitable, Feral, or Violent.

Looks are definitely customizable. I believe one of the intended design goals of the Apocalypse system is to be able to deal out the playbooks to inexperienced players and still be ready to go within minutes, just fill out the blanks. The 'circle one' type descriptors feel like they're there to assist people who otherwise might not be versed in describing characters in prose.

That said, the rules technically say the demeanors are fixed per playbook, but there's no actual mechanics behind that, so MC's call.

[wodine]

I think we could spend a lot of time talking in circles when it comes to cities. I think we should go ahead and use DC, since Wyn seems most invested in that and there's lots of information online for those of us who are less experienced with the city.

[Wynamoinen]

Correct, you can pretty much fluff that stuff however you please. You should think of the stock suggestions as flavor: the kinds of choices that would fit into the attitude and themes of the system. The first 10 or 15 pages of the rulebook are really important in that regard. This is a game about a city; it's a game about communities in conflict, it's a game about belongingness and being an outsider, it's a game about power and weakness. Any choices that help those themes along are valid (and considering that among the major themes are diversity and queerness, pretty much any choice can work).

I would caution that the Wolf playbook is definitely about physical power tending towards violence. You don't need to choose violence, but the option should be ever-present. Corruption moves are really important in this respect, in thinking about the playbook's "story". The central conflict/drama of a wolf is the urge to hunt. The playbook isn't clear on what "hunt" means, so we can define that, and it need not result in violence. But boy sometimes violence is easy and effective....

I almost wonder if a Veteran is mechanically closer to what you want? Maybe you were a wolf, but there was a cure? And now it's lost or held by someone in the city? So you could have the appearance of a wolf, but none of its moves, in that concept. There's all sorts of drama and threats in that idea.

Originally Posted by jbear

Archetype: I have skimmed through the first 100 or so pages. I think I understand the gist of the system. There are some things that jump out at me that I immediately think - 'yeah, nah. I would do that my own way'. For example, I was looking at the Werewolf. Even 'the look' options seem so limited and superficial. I'm assuming we can just ignore that and describe any look we want, correct? Or if we want to be a werewolf but none of the demeanours is appealing, we could just choose our own demeanour, correct? I think it would be far more fun to play a werewolf that was neither Aggressive, Excitable, Feral, or Violent.

[Elanir]

Hello everyone and thank you for inviting me, Wynamoinen. Sorry for joining the discussion so late, but I didn’t have the time to post yesterday.

1. City: Like Jbear I too am unfamiliar with most of the cities mentioned, having only visited Toronto, London and Berlin, but having no “deep” knowledge of them. If I had to choose, I would go for Washington, because of its history and its unique flavor as the capital.

2. Secret Threads: I like and use personal threads in my own game, since they are much more practical than PMs. They don’t have to be private, though it does offer some advantages in a game full of secrets as this one. That said, they would neither make nor break the game.

3. PvP Conflict: I have had some very bad experience with intense antagonism among the characters, which eventually led to antagonism among the players, ruining an otherwise excellent game (though not a PbtA one). Secrets and schemes are fun, but I would be very reluctant to endorse actual infighting. A certain cooperation between the characters is essential, I think, though they don’t necessarily have to be “friends”.

4. Archetype: I played the Oracle in Roekahs’ excellent Urban Shadows game and though I enjoyed the character a great deal, I would like to portray someone different this time. Like Wodine I lean towards the Spectre and the Fae. If not possible, I would also consider the Immortal and the Wizard.