Wednesday, May 31, 2017

Urban Shadows: A New Threat and Updated Clock

Time to review the preparation for session 4 of my Urban Shadows game. Last time the Cthonian Eye suffered a major setback when their leader Felix was (accidentally) mauled to death by the Wolf. Meanwhile the Tainted began a quest to take down Akiva which involved some mortal monster hunters called Mary’s Hellions.

A New Threat and Updated Clock

First the new threat.

Mary's Hellions

Type: Revolution - Mob (craves violence and satiety)
Faction: Mortality
Description: A biker gang that mixes religion and monster hunting, Mary’s Hellions seek to save people from the supernatural. With the information provided by an anonymous source (O’Malley), these vigilantes now intend to bring elements of the Night faction (angry and now Damned ghosts) to bear against their enemies: wizards, fae, and demons.
Cast: the as yet unnamed leader of the Hellions (Mortality); an as yet unnamed lay priest; Sandra Anderson (Mortality; Sam's granddaughter), Vasquez (ex-member of the Cthonian Eye and future target)

Countdown Clock:

  • 0:00: The Hellions grab Sandra to act as a medium so they can communicate with the ghosts.
  • 3:00: Working with the ghosts, Mary's Hellions attack Vasquez.
  • 6:00: The ghosts stir up trouble with the Seelie Court.
  • 9:00: The Hellions and ghosts attack the other apprentices of the Cthonian Eye.
  • 10:00: The Hellions murder the last of the Cthonians, cementing their alliance with the ghosts.
  • 11:00: The ghosts haunt the Faerie court ruining their revels.
  • 12:00: Using the ghosts, the Hellions attack the Faerie Monarch.

Custom Moves:

  • Mobile: when Escaping Mary’s Hellions choose one more option.
  • Fucking Holy: The weapons of Mary's Hellions do +1 harm to members of the Night and Wild faction.

Cthonian Eye Update

With Felix dead, I need to review the countdown clock and see if they could still accomplish their goal. I strongly hinted however that Christine managed to cast some sort of spell over the grave of Tim the Necromancer.
  • 0:00: The Cthonian Eye mark up the Old Cemetery, riling the ghosts. [Completed]
  • 3:00: The Cthonian Eye shunt the occult power of the Old Cemetery to their base of operations in West Sac. [Completed]
  • 6:00: Felix steals a contact from Hell's Bureaucracy.
  • New 6:00: Akiva gave Felix the knowledge of Tim’s grave. [Completed]
  • 9:00: Using the contract he conducts a secret ritual in Old Sac at the location of an ancient wizard's unmarked grave, giving the cabal the final power boost they need.
  • New 9:00: Christine completes the ritual using a remote connection to Tim's corpse.
  • 10:00: A gateway to the Verge is formed, granting the Cthonian Eye glimpses of the future.
  • 11:00: The Cthonian Eye uses their new foreknowledge to convince several other cabals to unite behind it.
  • 12:00: The Cthonian Eye turn the Verge on Hell's Bureaucracy, predicting its every move.

Wednesday, May 24, 2017

Campaign Pitch: Left Ended Alleys

For my next pitch for this year I have an idea that has been stewing since the end of my long Mage; the Awakening game. Or really from the game I ran before that. A story of bad choices and incredible power, of street level action and left handed paths:

Left Ended Alleys


Elevator Pitch: In a city without friendly Orders, mages must find their own secretive paths under the ever searching eye of the Panopticon. Not all routes lead to Wisdom.

Once you were asleep. A simple drone scurrying under the gaze of a million electronic eyes. A mortal blindly walking amid a sea of mysteries.

You Awakened. You glimpsed the truth. You signed your name on a Watchtower and seized the power of the Supernal.

You can do magic and bend the laws of this reality. You see the horrors in the shadows and the cracks in world. The dark places promise enlightenment and danger.

However you are alone and untutored in the limits of your powers.

You need allies. Do you trust the child with the aura of carrion birds? Do you trade for the secrets to yantras with the old woman who smells strangely of pork? A potential mentor promises you the power over the darkest of nightmares. Do you take him up on his offer?

Meanwhile the electronic eyes watch and report to unseen masters.

In plain terms, you are recently Awakened mages in a modern major city that lays under the watchful eye of the Panopticon, an organization dedicated to surveilling the population and suppressing rogue Awakened. No “friendly” organization of mages exist in the city currently, forcing you work out the secrets of magic on your own or by go to dubious mentors who might be corrupt, manipulative, and possibly insane.

Theme: Trapped in the Labyrinth. Without guidance, mages have difficulty figuring out what routes will lead them closer to the truth. Or truths. Crafting one’s soul can grant great power but also irrevocably twist it. Is it better to release the paradox caused by magic, possibly twisting spells awry, or to contain it within oneself and risk Abyssal infection? Is the mage offering to recruit you into an organization trapping you in a pyramid scheme?

Mood: Paranoia. The enemy holds the high ground. They see everything. They could be anyone. That “helpful” wizard down the block. The police officer who smiles every time they see you. Your sister who sends arcane text to her new “boyfriend”. Who can you trust? Even if someone is not with “Them”, who knows what other agenda they have.

System: Mage: the Awakening 2nd Edition with some house rules for the morality mechanics. Also some merits will be off-limits initially.

My main gripes with the system has nothing to do with Mage and more to do with the Chronicle of Darkness system in general.

One of those problematic parts is Conditions. My players and I forget to apply them, forget to use them, and let them linger well past their applicability. However I’m giving the mechanic a second try. Conditions worked better in person (which this game will be in) and I intend to try to make them more readily resolvable.

More relevant for this game is the Wisdom system. I hate linear systems for sanity/morality. I like more nuance and less direct connection to experience.


House Rules (adapted from Unknown Armies): Wisdom will be replaced by several Stress Meters which measure how comfortable a character is to certain psychological strains (like exposure to the supernatural or helplessness). Each Stress Meter consists of 10 tiers of stresses. Encountering a trigger for a given strain forces the character to roll of the lower of Resolve and Composure. Success means the character grows more hardened, eventually becoming immune to the stress of such experiences. Failure causes them to suffer a momentary break (including an immediately resolved condition with a Beat) and starts a slow slide toward madness.

Recovery is divorced from the experience system. Multiple options (magic, Astral journeys, therapy) exist to remove levels of hardened or failures, each with their own costs and downsides. Too many failures and you go insane. But on the other hand, beware of getting too hardened as that leads away from Wisdom and toward the Abyss.

In the past I’ve had great success adapting Unknown Army’s Madness meters system for Hunter: the Vigil. Since I ran that game as normal people newly exposed to the supernatural, the system helped facilitate the experience of “ordinary” people falling down the rabbit hole that is the World of Darkness.

Since this game has a similar “innocence” about the characters, I figure this system could work equally well. Hardened levels to the Unnatural strain will accrue quickly (I think I might grant a +2 bonus for exposure caused by one’s own magic) but I think all the strains will eventually come into play: Violence, Helplessness (against the Panopticon), Isolation and Self (Shadow names anyone?).

Mechanically effective “Wisdom” for spellcasting purposes is 8 minus 1 per 5 levels of hardened or failed a character has for their Stress Meters.

Wednesday, May 17, 2017

Urban Shadows: The Grave of Tim

In session 3 of my Urban Shadows game, the plot begins to really cook as the Cthonian Eye closes in on their target, Tim the Necromancer’s grave. Sam and O’Malley try to stop them. Then everything goes sideways when the werewolf arrives.

Our protagonists:
  • Anders, the Wolf is a supernatural vigilante. By day a day trader, at night he turns into a barely controlled killing machine. His territory is plagued by bizarre disappearances.
  • O’Malley became a Tainted through a deal that temporarily made him mayor of the city. Now forgotten by everyone, including his own family, he seeks work his way free of his “patron” Mephisto. Now a young upstart named Akiva is trying to take his job.
  • Sam the Veteran used be a mystical hero until he got to old, way too old. Now he runs a bar. Deep beneath it however, his old workshop holds powerful secrets.

The Grave of Tim

I began using the love letters I detailed last time.

We start with Anders confronting O’Malley’s daughter as she tries to chase a demon named Akiva.


“Why are you following that guy?” Anders asks the tween as they stand in the alley.

Julia relates that Akiva seemed weird and had been lurking near her school.

Anders warns her away from him, hinting that he is dangerous. “Shouldn’t you be in school?”

Anders rolls +Heart and convinces Julia to leave Akiva alone on a soft hit.

“Shouldn’t you be at work?” she replies.

Anders brushes her question off. Out of the corner of his eye he spies the portal Akiva used close. Anders begins to walk away.

Julia tags along.

“What was he doing at your school?” he asks his new companion.

She says that Akiva was by her school putting up posters. She struggles to describe them. “They were campaign posters with weird symbols drawn along the edges.”

Anders pauses and stretches his injured side. Instantly his bruises from his run in with the car vanish.

He decides to Let It Out and regenerates. He gets a hard hit on his Spirit roll.

Julia’s eyes widen and he seizes the opportunity to point her back the way to school.

Across the street, O’Malley lurks and watches, grinding his teeth.

After talking with Mephisto, he headed back and encountered this scene.

As the two part, O’Malley considers returning to Sam’s. Instead he heads for the office.
As the elevator reaches the secret subbasement, O’Malley steps off and finds his seat amid the sea of desks.

A folder with Mephisto’s official seal waits in his inbox. Inside he finds leverage on Leon’s landlady. That should be enough to convince the old man to come back to the portal.

Then he looks around. Akiva’s desk is a few rows down.The surface is tidy. A banker’s box lurks nearby as if waiting for his next move up the chain.

O’Malley decides to learn something about his rival.

He runs over the office chit-chat as he heads for the archives. The young demon is ambitious and well-liked. The secretaries love him. That means trouble.

He rolls +Wild to learn about Akiva.

The labyrinthine archives of Hell’s Bureaucracy contain every transaction and every deed, from souls damned to who paid for donuts. A few hours of study gives O’Malley some ammunition. Akiva has made many deals but the pacts are sloppy. The former politicians spots loopholes.

Deciding that an enemy of his enemy is his friend, he looks up who Akiva hurt on his way up. Lukas might be consigned to the basement and a wheelchair but another body could be useful in this fight.

Akiva’s latest work proves the most interesting. The archive includes records on his own time in the archives. For some reason the demon is looking into the location of the graves of dead wizards, especially the arch-necromancer Tim.
Further south, Sam makes sure Leon and his unseen passenger get back to his apartment safely.

And gets 2 debts owed by the Passenger.

As he heads back to the bar, he decides to reach out to the one mortal who might know where Tim is buried, Tim’s widow Lisa. There was history between Sam and the now quite elderly woman. Like most, it wasn’t good.

He decides to call her grandson Harper. The police officer answers promptly and confirms that she still lives in the same old house. Harper also lets him know about the recent disappearances in Ander’s neighborhood.

After thanking him, Sam heads for the bar.
Sam spots Anders talking to Piper as he arrives.

The towering woman lets the werewolf know Kimiko isn’t in. As Sam approaches, Anders asks her about Akiva. The troll unfortunately doesn’t have much for him.

Anders fails his +Wild roll to hit the streets.

Sam asks Anders what he is doing. As they idly chit-chat, the door to the bar opens up again.

A crew of pale men enter, led by Arthur, Conrad’s new head ghoul. He scans the room with an icy glare before settling on Anders. They approach the bar.

Anders rolls +Night to Put a Name to a Face.


Arthur asks the werewolf what he knows about the attack last night. Anders tells him about the warehouse and the events as he saw them.

The ghoul thanks him and leads his posse away, perhaps to enact some vengeance.

Anders earns a debt on Arthur.

Kimiko squeezes past them on their way out. Anders asks her a few questions including where Conrad might be “living” these days. She gives him an address and goes to get a drink.

Anders cashes in a debt for information.
Sam then heads to the Chimera. These strange vanishings to another dimension makes the old mystic think about how there may be local weak points in the fabric of reality. With the right herbs and a well rolled cigar, one can smoke them out.

He finds the shop being handled by an African-American woman in camouflage clothing. He buys the herbs even though it sets him back a few weeks of profits.

Stepping out he rolls some cigars and gets to smoking. Cruising around the city, he watches as the purplish smoke gently curls around hidden soft spots. Weak but present, he notes. He marks each location on a map.

Gradually a pattern emerges. A spiral working its way from Anders’ turf and out into the city.

If this continues long enough, the whole city might be in danger.

Sam contemplates his next move. He calls Lisa.

Her voice is as crisp as a half century ago. They pave over old bitterness with pleasantries before Sam brings up Tim.

Lisa listens as he describes how the Cthonian Eye seeks to desecration of Tim’s grave to harvest its occult energy.

She agrees to help and invites him to meet her in Old Sac that night.
O’Malley finds Lukas in a sub basement storage room.

Thunk. A knife sinks into a dart board by the door.

“Hey”, says Lukas as he wheels himself over to retrieve his blade.

“Hello, I have a proposition for you.”

The disheveled man pulls the knife out of a tattered image of Akiva.

“I’m listening.” He pushes himself back to his stapler cluttered desk.

The tainted explains how they have a mutual enemy. Lukas nods and grunts as O’Malley outlines the plan, occasionally adding input in the form of a thunk of another throw.

“I’ll help you. But I’ve got a price.”

“What is it?” O’Malley asks.

“You put in an official recommendation for me for a promotion when this is done.”

They shake on it and arrange to meet after work hours.
That evening, before sundown, Anders visits the warehouse the gang was using. No visible signs remain of them. Nor does he see any trace of Arthur and his goons.

His senses detect the scent of recent gunpowder and with a little time, the whiff of cool air rising from a hidden chamber below.

He examines a place of power with a +Mortality roll. I think he got a soft success.


Under a rug and through a trapdoor, he finds the secret cellar. Empty weapon racks attest to a considerable armory. An oriental symbol decorates each wall, unfortunately in a language he doesn’t know, Cantonese perhaps. The map on the northern wall however shows the gang’s progress on taking over Conrad’s territory. Based on the gang signs, most of Sacramento’s criminal element is aligned with them.

As he does a final pass, he spots a large clay jug, adorned with the same symbol. He picks up the almost empty jug easily. Something small rattles inside. He takes the jug with him.
Lukas and O’Malley meet in the evening. Quickly they hatch a plot. They will feed a band of mortal monster hunters, a group of bikers known as Mary’s Hellions, details on how Akiva’s contracts can be unraveled. Being “good doers”, they will then do their work for them and Akiva will fail. O’Malley pens the anonymous note.

And gets a soft hit on his Persuade roll.

Night falls. Anders leaves the jug at his apartment and in werewolf form goes on the hunt. He sniffs the air for Akiva and bounds across roof tops. With each leap his surroundings grow darker and more crimson.

He tries to hit the streets but fails his +Wild roll. I activate the downside on his transformation...his loss of control.

Elsewhere Sam and Lisa walk through the crowds of Old Sac. Across the street O’Malley spots them and follows.

Lisa guides the way to an intersection. “There. They buried him beneath that street.”

Sam scans the surroundings. Cars push through the thick crowds at a pace somewhat slower than a toddler.

Suddenly five figures appear within the intersection: Felix, Christine, Neema, Percy, and a new man clutching a laptop.

O’Malley steps back into the crowd and watches.

Sam acts. He pulls out his cigars and quickly makes his way to the trash cans at each corner, dropping a burning heap of ash in each. Slowly the garbage burns and smokes.

While the wizards use their magics to examine the region, Sam cries, “fire!”

The mundanes begin to vacate the area.

Above a hulking mass of fur and muscle lands atop a roof. Anders can smell Akiva’s stink in the area. But everything is blurry and red. Someone down is talking and gesturing, someone who smells of brimstone.

I give Anders a roll to keep his Cool and recognize what is really going on. He fails.

A man-wolf crashes down to the street, landing atop Felix. The wizard raises his arms to defend himself.

Anders only sees some sort of weapon. He disarms him.

Basically I narrate events in the worst possible light to Anders and let him make the choices.

The crowd screams as the werewolf rips Felix’s arm off and hurls it across the cobblestones.

Neema and Percy back away as the beast begins to feed on their leader. O’Malley watches as the willowy mage, Christine slowly chants and concentrates on a spell as she retreats. Vasquez, the fifth mage, quickly raises a magical shield in a swirl of glowing ones and zeros. Then he bolts.

And falls flat on his face.

Sam withdraws his foot and places it on the young wizard’s computer.

Vasquez grabs at it. “Let it go man.”

“No,” Sam replies.

“I don’t want any trouble, I’m just leaving.”

“You can have it back if you come by the bar tonight.”

Vasquez glances at the monster devouring his leader. He let's go and runs.

The others melt into the crowd as well. Christine is last, a strange smile crossing her face.

The red recedes from Anders’s vision. A savaged mess pools beneath him. Around him people stand in horror and snap pictures from their phones. O’Malley looms nearby a burning scourge at the ready.

However the tainted failed his demonic form roll so owes his patron another debt.

Anders quickly bounds off to the river, Felix’s remains seized in his jaws.

A few quick minutes of running and jumping lands him the dark waters. He dives deep only releasing the corpse once he is sure it won’t rise again.
A half hour of sneaking and dripping water later, Anders visits Harper to see what the fallout is. Despite being confronted by nine feet of savagery, the officer gives him a chewing out. The werewolf shrugs it off and heads back home to sleep.
Sam isn’t surprised later that night when Vasquez slips into the bar.

The rebel mage requests his mystic laptop back. Sam agrees on the condition that he leave the Cthonians. “They are riling up people and that won’t end well.”

With Felix’s gruesome death in his mind, Vasquez agrees. It all seems to be falling apart. Their plan to gain recognition, the gathering of death energies, and the plan to summon the Verge.

Sam listens and nods. In a way he can respect his desire to find a place for himself. He then asks if, with Felix dead, they could even complete the ritual. Vasquez thinks not but when pressed agrees that Christine has a lot more skill than the average apprentice.

Vasquez drinks for an hour and comes to some sort of plan.

He stumbles out into the night.

Sam’s persuasion roll only got a soft hit, so Vasquez isn’t going to entirely give up on his dream. Instead he’ll make some new mistakes.

Wednesday, May 10, 2017

Campaign Pitch: The Apocalypse is Other People

Next up on my pitches for this year is another Apocalypse World game. This time using the new edition and with a bit more focus.

The Apocalypse is Other People


Elevator PitchAfter the end of the world, everyone has to rely on their neighbors. Even the ones they hate.

Once, when the world was whole, things were better. People could get food anywhere with just a piece of plastic. Water came out of a pipe clean and fresh, even hot if you wanted. Everything you needed would show up magically at your door and entertainment flowed like water into your hands.

Now we live in the wreckage of what was. If you need food, you make a deal with with the Barrow Boys for servitude or salvage. Mother May is the only one who can fix the water filtration system but she’s getting old. And if want something more exciting than fire, you have to pay to get into Rod’s. He only accepts blood.

System: Apocalypse World, 2nd Edition

This was inspired by how my previous Apocalypse World games failed to deliver certain relationships. Notably my players tended to become murder hobos and we’d end up without a continuous community. 

So basically I want a Hot focused game.

Initially Available Playbooks: Battlebabe, Brainer, Child-Thing, Chopper, Hardholder, Hocus, Maestro`D, News, Waterbearer

The rationale behind these is to include playbooks with a focus on either the maelstrom or people/communities. 

The Chopper and Hardholder bring gangs (plus I rarely see them played). The Hocus adds cults. The Maestro’D is a social manipulator with a place of entertainment. The News has to investigate and propagate information through a community while the Waterbearer delivers law and order through control of a resource.

I still need some weird options (besides the Hocus). The Brainer needs people even if others might not want them. The Child-Thing makes children a thing and thus brings out an often neglected dimension to societies. I considered including the Savvyhead (my favorite playbook) but they are perhaps too useful in this setting and too easily isolate themselves from others.

Of the pure combat types, the Battlebabe has the most social options so it also gets included.

After play begins all standard and extended edition playbooks (except the Quarantine) will be allowed.

Wednesday, May 3, 2017

Urban Shadows: Love Letters

For the third session of my Urban Shadows game, I did relatively little preparation. Session 2 introduced many of the threats but advanced few of them. Instead I compensated for the holiday gap in play with some love letters, short move filled bits of recap that set the stage for future conflict.

Session 3 Preparation: Love Letters

Anders,

You ran into a well armed gang moving in on the vampire Conrad's territory. You killed Conrad's ghoul a while back but he doesn't know that yet.

A cabal of wizards known as the Chthonian Eye convinced you to clear a cemetery of ghosts. Along the way one of their own, Percy, became trapped in the underworld with you. You saved Percy and the two of you eventually escaped with the demon Akiva's help.

People have been going missing in broad daylight from your neighborhood. Only one, an elderly man named Leon has come back. You were hoping to get Sam's help with the disappearances but his bar was closed. You were just heading back to it when you encounters a girl shadowing the golden-haired Akiva. You stopped her but she is demanding answers.

Roll +Heart. On a hit Julia agrees to leave Akiva alone and tags along with you. On a 10+, gain +1 forward to figuring her out. On a miss she realizes there is something strange about you. What is your tell?

Oh and the bar is opening back up.
Sam,

A cabal of rebellious mages known as the Cthonian Eye desecrated a cemetery to steal its death resonance. They seek an artifact known as the Verge. To pull it from the Underworld, they need the death energy at the lost grave of Tim the Necromancer. 50 years ago, Tim made a deal with Hell's Bureaucracy and they called it due. Only they know where he is buried.

At least that's what they think. Roll +Mind. Tell me who else knows and why there is bad blood between you two. On a 10+ they owe you a debt despite their displeasure. On a miss, you owe them a debt and they are not about to forget it. If they belong to the Mortality or Wild faction, mark that faction.

People have been going missing in broad daylight from Ander's neighborhood. One man, Leon, came back. You opened a gate to realm outside of time for O'Malley using Leon's blood. Unknown to the Tainted, you also spied the "Passenger" clinging to the old man and advised it to possess a cat. If you help Leon get home, the "Passenger" will owe you 2 debts.

This was intended to help Sam mark some more factions and advance.
O’Malley,

You are helping a seer known as Chetana to find a cure for poison that robbed her of some of her abilities.

You ran into a well armed gang moving in on the vampire Conrad's territory.

A cabal of rebellious mages known as the Cthonian Eye desecrated a cemetery. One of them, an artificer named Neema, now owes your patron her soul. As for the ghosts the wizards drove out, your ambitious underling Akiva snatched that contract from under you.

Roll +Wild. On a hit, you've had your eye on Akiva, ask 1 question about them. On a 10+, gain +1 ongoing when acting on that information. On a miss, the demon has already bailed you out with a problem before. You owe Akiva a debt.

People have been going missing in broad daylight from Ander's neighborhood. One man, Leon, came back and something came back with him. Sam opened a gate to a realm outside of time for you. There you met the "Collector" and made a deal to return Leon to it for a contract. Mephisto has offered leverage over Leon's landlord to help "convince" him. If you take another debt with Mephisto you can use a debt over Old Mary Allen to gain her help in convincing Leon to "return". Or not. Your choice.