[OOC] Word on the street

[Roekahs]

Originally Posted by hafrogman

end up with the warning, the getting into hot water anyways, and Charity (or someone working for her) shows up to kindly pull Victor's bacon out of the fire. But we sort of cut it off there to give us room to explore in character?

Done and done

Two quick (optional) notes for @Wyn in response to suggested pieces:
I like the idea that hafrogman suggested that it is an agent of Charity who pulled Victor out, so he maybe knows it is a demon-y problem, but not which demon.

Is Victor's current path "out" to broker a meeting/deal with <blank> (as opposed to bball-Wizardsspell-Wizards was the original suggestion)? If this helps tie the loose end for Charity using Victor as her new attack vector on Cole, that works for me.

Just bringing those two things back around because they were good suggestions. If they fit your developing plans, I am all for it

[Wynamoinen]

I'm back! This weekend was somewhat-unexpectedly a single parent weekend for me, so I had less time than I had hoped to work on the game. But on the other hand, the time spent was more productive than I expected. A common occurance, in my experience, in time crunches. Bottom line: I've got 6 threats, and I have the major push (the 12:00 item on the "countdown clock") and NPCs of each. Three Threats are close to done and three will take me a little more time. So in that sense, I'm not quite ready.

That said, it had totally slipped my mind that I don't need to be entirely ready. The players have one more step to go through before we begin. Let's do it! Every Uhhh.... let's agree not to press our poor MC with exactly what a "session" means in this context. I expect that this will just mean "thread," which will be close to the concept of a "scene" - the action that happens in a particular place, surrounding a particular topic. But we may need to be a little loosey-goosey with the definition of "session", so bear with me.session has a standard move at its start and end. They both set the scenes to come, and allow you to mark Faction, and so they are key to advancement. We can't forget them!

Session move Session move: Intro At the beginning of every session, announce which character your character trusts the least; their player will spotlight a Faction for your character (that isn’t already marked). Mark that Faction. Tell the MC about a rumor or conflict that you’ve heard about that Faction, building on previous established information if you’d like, and roll with the Faction. On a 10+, you’re prepared for the conflict you laid out: you’ve got a Debt on someone in that Faction or a useful piece of information or equipment, your choice. On a 7-9, you’re neck deep in it: you owe someone in that Faction a Debt, and someone in that Faction owes a Debt to you. On a miss, you’re caught flat-footed, unprepared, or unaware: the MC will tell you who is coming at you.

I've added a roller thread to the forum. (I've also moved character threads to a dedicated subfolder, FYI)

Cards on the table: there are six of you, and so I'm inclined to start the game with two threads of three PCs. To the extent you can tie your session moves together, great. But ultimately the tying is my job, so don't worry about it too much. It's very easy in Urban Shadows to have everyone go their seperate ways. It's one of my jobs to rein that in. I'm not totally averse to the occasional solo thread. But I'd prefer to be continually mixing and matching who is together in one scene. (And I prefer not to juggle 4-6 threads at once.) Getting all six of you into a single thread at once is all but inevitable, and will certainly be interesting. But I don't feel the need to force it as soon as possible. We need to see where the narrative takes us.

Lastly, as you're thinking about your session move, I want to put this out there: we are really short on the Power faction in our current stock of NPCs. I've got a See the NPCs post of the "the city breathes" thread for a few inklingsfew ideas in that vein, and there's a dangling thread between Victor and Cole about Wizards involved with drugs and gangs that I'm not clear on (and that's fine; we can clarify as necessary or interesting). But without Power in the game, it's going to be hard to mark that faction. So we'll need to build them in, and session moves are one way to do it.

[Elanir]

Hm, let's see... I think that Anne trusts Victor the least, thanks in large part to his ungentlemanly, blackmailing ways!

Taking advantage of a defenseless (and very dead) woman is monstrous, so there!

[Roekahs]

Not even a tough one ... Victor doesn't trust Farhad at all. Betrayal is so uncool.


@Elanir - the quick reference for anyone else: Wild, Mortality, Power, Nightfaction I will highlight for you is Mortality. Curiously, despite having 2 PCs from Mortality, both of us have focused details around the supernatural so I wonder what rumors are flying around the Mortal realm!

[hafrogman]

Cole doesn't trust Brassavola, @Vislands
Nothing against her personally, but a previous bad experience with a contract has left him leery of the fey in general.

[Wynamoinen]

Feel free to interpret "characters" broadly, as either PCs or NPCs, by the way.

I'll need your rumors about the spotlighted faction and a roll from each of you eventually, but I'm fine if we want to weave our web of distrust first and then tell tales afterwards

[jbear]

@Elanir Andre least trusts Anne - her snooping near his mother's hospital caused Andre to lose the trail of the supernatural scent he had caught near his mother. Andre isn't sure it was a coincidence.

[wodine]

@Elanir @Wynamoinen

Fahrad is also inclined to trust Anne the least. She stole a part of his sibling and then lost it to his MORTAL enemy.

[Elanir]

Roll with the Faction (Mortality): 7

Anne owes someone in that Faction a Debt, and someone in that Faction owes a Debt to her.


Rumor about Faction: Mortality
People have been trying to look beyond the veil since ancient times. What they saw gave rise to beliefs about gods and monsters, along with myths and legends more numerous than the stars in the night sky. The Age of Enlightenment, however, put an end to all that, focusing on what was considered “real” - the things one could see, hear, smell, taste and touch, the things that mathematics could describe and rational minds could analyze and comprehend. The ones still interested in the “supernatural” were marginalized and called deluded, charlatans and frauds. Many of them were. To this day most of them are.

Things have recently changed. A group of five highly respected journalists from different television networks, daily newspapers, and magazines have formed an alliance to investigate the corruption that lies at the very heart of the City, a corruption everyone is talking about, but no one is willing to face. What they have discovered is not something they expected - traces of a shadowy world tightly intertwined with the world they thought they knew.

The “truth seekers”, as they are known in social media, have yet to publish the results of their investigation. Finding proof about what is intangible and hidden is time-consuming and nothing can ruin a stellar reputation and remarkable career as rapidly and thoroughly as impatience. How will the public react? How will those involved respond? Only time will tell once the shocking revelations see the light of day - if that ever comes to pass.

******

@Jbear: The Faction you will mark and create a rumor or conflict about is Night.

@Wodine: The Faction you will mark and create a rumor or conflict about is Power.

[Vislands]

Originally Posted by Roekahs

 

This is pretty nice actually. I have been meaning to get a response to the acceptance of the Aware debt. I like the secret - which by the way, I have no issue sharing with the players even if their characters aren't supposed to know, so share or keep secret at your discretion. One of the questions that jumped out to me is: Why? Why did Brassa trust Victor with this big secret. A moment of weakness? Accidental spillage? Victor has a trustworthy face? I don't know that we need to answer that specifically at the moment, but it may be interesting to explore as the game begins.

Of course, that could be answered with your proposal here. Did Brassa share her secrets as a part of Victor trying to track down the Spring Court's HQ? Or were the two things separate incidents? There could be some really interesting dynamics between the two depending on the answers (e.g, Victor was asked to track down the Spring Court then Brassa spilled her secret ... ooh trust issues, etc.).

Ok, enough of my questions! I am going to actually answer yours! Here it comes... Any time now (). I am going to say that Victor did succeed in finding the HQ. I have sort of envisioned Victor as being pretty decent at 'detective-style' work, though he failed as a police officer, so this would support his effectiveness in that arena. Now the question: where is the HQ. Is it particularly compelling that he tracked it all over the city and wound up back in Andre's neighborhood (where Victor also lives)? Has he not told Andre yet? I think I like that, but I leave it open for any and all comments!

I don't know for sure what the moment was that led to Brassa telling Victor, I'm sure it'll come up in play, but I do know that it wasn't necessarily the same moment that Victor was asked to track down the Court. Still, I think in some ways she's confided more in him than any other PC at the moment, which is a cool relationship.

But great, that's two debts she owes Victor!

Originally Posted by wodine

 

I'm not a big fan of doubling up on the Agent Kensington debt since Farhad already owes you one for that.

Fahrad already has a history of dealing with other Fae - what if Fahrad promised not to tell them about Brassa (she's in exile right?) but sold that information off for another favor to someone else, thereby incurring the additional debts?

That sounds great to me. I imagine Farhad wouldn't betray a Fae's trust so lightly, even one Uncourted, so there would have to be a pretty compelling reason for him to do so, which we can discover later.

Originally Posted by jbear

 

@Vislands Well, if Brassa thinks Andre is young and foolish, then perhaps she is keeping something important from him.

Could she have an inkling as to his disappeared father's whereabouts? Might she know about his messy other life when he became a thug? Could it have some ties to the Fae Courts?

Or might she have a clue about what ails his mother? And she doesn't want to say cos she has some connection to it that she isn't proud of? (this would probably require some conversation with Wyn)

I love this too, although it feels like it'll need a some Wyn massaging to fit with larger storylines.

Originally Posted by Wynamoinen

 

This idea is kind of blowing my mind. If Fae magic is all about promises, what promises are bigger than those of Rule and Majesty and Dominion? The kind of magic that would break that stuff seems like it must be some of the biggest magic there is. The holder of that crown is sure to garner some, uh, ATTENTION.

Oooh, this is good, I was wondering whether Andre's father would be a dropped thread or not. Andre's father worked in an animal shelter, and that seems easy peasy to turn that into a Fae connection.

I'm not super hyped on starting with an NPC debt, but it could work. I'm wondering what kind of a debt we could build where Brassa knows what happened to Andre's dad but she can't just tell him (it's a mystery to Andre to start out with, at least). The baying hounds of autumn, the sprightly puppies of summer, they brought interested parties from the autumn/summer court to the shelter. Maybe Andre's father, working at the shelter when these weirdos came in, became the keeper of the hounds, hired by the Court. Maybe he tried to protect the dogs and was imprisoned. Brassa has made a promise not to of course, there are always ways to let people know things, without TELLING them...tell Andre what happened. I can imagine a promise like that to a Fae NPC. I can imagine a promise like that to Andre's mother ("It would break Dre's heart..."). That would get Brassa very closely connected to Andre's story, while not technically having that debt connection. I'm failing to think of a way to get a direct Andre --> Brassa connection with a storyline like that, though. This is all obviously just an idea, of course, feel free to reject anything along these lines.

Edit, lol, I got double-ninja'd there!

Re: The Crown, I imagine it was imbued with a lot of power long ago by those same Powers that be, but yes it would be a massive artifact able to do something along those lines still!

And with that debt, those sound reaally cool to me. I could see it going any of those ways or even a debt owed by Andre's father himself.

[Vislands]

@wodine Brassa trusts Farhad the least. She may not know that he betrayed her trust (yet...?) but she's dealt with the regal many times type before and knows not to trust them any further than she can throw them.

@hafrogman The Faction you will mark and create a rumor or conflict about is also Power.

[Wynamoinen]

OK to summarize the current state of progress on the session moves:

• Victor distrusts Farhad. Action item @wodine: wodine needs to choose a faction to highlight. Then Roe will need to make a roll with that faction and make up a rumor about that faction
• Cole distrusts Brassa. Power is highlighted. Action item @Frog: Frog will need to make a roll with Power and make up a rumor about Power.
• Andre distrusts Anne. Night is highlighted. Action item @jbear: jbear will need to make a roll with Night and make up a rumor about Night.
• Farhad distrusts Anne. Power is highlighted. Action item @wodine: wodine will need to make a roll with Power and make up a rumor about Power.
• Brassa distrusts Farhad. Action item @wodine: wodine needs to choose a faction to highlight. Then Vis will need to make a roll with that faction and make up a rumor about that faction

I think if (1) wodine is busy and not able to respond quickly, and (2) either Vis or Roe want to get to rumor-writing quickly, then it would be safe for at least one of you to take Wild as a highlighted faction, since it hasn't yet been higlighted, and that's the Dragon's faction. I'm OK with waiting for wodine's feedback, too. We're clearly not in a big rush here.

Finally,

• Anne distrusts Victor, who is highlighting Mortality. Elanir's roll means Anne needs to swap debts with a Mortal. There is a small group of "truth seeker" journalists seeking Shadows within the city's corruption.

Which I think puts the action into my lap! @Elanir, my first instinct here is to go straight-up Woodward and Bernstein on this. How does it strike you to have an investigative reporter from the Washington Post, who has made contact with Anne (or vice-versa, Anne to her). We could even go full "Deep Throat" and make it so that Anne always chooses "can be heard, can touch and be touched, but can not be seen" when Anne meets with the reporter. I think a newspaper reporter would appeal to Anne more than members of other more modern media, yeah? Let me pitch a name for the reporter, if it helps: Celia Hershfeld-Reyes

[wodine]

I'll respond this weekend.

[Elanir]

@Wynamoinen: Sounds perfect!

Anne is probably being owed a Debt for sharing with Mrs Hershfeld-Reyes information about her shadowy existence, and perhaps that of other creatures and factions as well.

But why does she owe the journalist a Debt? What does she want that Celia would be able to provide? A more sympathetic view of her past? Information about someone beyond Washington DC, like her family back in England? Something more tangible?

Any ideas?

[Wynamoinen]

It could be something as simple (in the Woodward -Bernstein vein) as a promise to never reveal that Anne is her source, and to only use the information to take down those in the Shadows who are doing corrupt things to be in power? Or to go after someone in power that Anne particularly wants taken down? Or maybe something like, “in her writings, Celia promises not to reveal the existence or actions of those in Anne’s circle” (however Anne would define that).

If Anne wants the relationship to be more directly transactional then I guess Anne should define the transaction. The problem with Specters is that when they want something, and they know where it is, it’s so easy for them to get it! So I’d need to essentially know what Anne wants and why she can’t just get it herself. Information makes sense. An object somehow beyond Anne’s reach could made sense.