Character and World Creation

@Drgwen:

Have you looked through what we already have in the game? Else we can talk about how to make your ideas fit. Some of your ideas may need a little tweaking, and we will adjust the world to match the new characters.

Lillian seems to be in a very different strata of society to all the others. This could make integrating them into the group challenging.

The type of establishment you describe also has the tendency to isolate that character from the world, expecting the world to come to them, and not forcing them to go out into the world to engage. This is often the source of such games fading (for The Maestro d' style characters, if you will pardon harking back all the way to the OG Apocalypse World:). I always encourage players to find ways to get their character out of their Establishment as much as possible. When creating a fresh world, we can make it center around the Establishment (in the Hard-Hold, ...), but, even then, most of the game happens outside the Establishment.

In an already-established world (and party), we will need to work to make this an important place to everyone playing. I can see ways to do that, but would prefer to have the character, rather than the Establishment, be the thing that brings the PCs together... or at least, the thing that keeps them together if the Establishment is what originally brings them.

None of the other characters (I don't know about Malachi) would have the economic ability to come to a 'prestigious, invite-only' place like what you describe. :)

I apologise for leaving you in the dark. We do not want to overwhelm you till you are ready to start chatting. Maybe talk to the other players a bit, and get a feel for what we have and what we are doing and how your new character could fit, currently they seem to have materialised, whole-cloth, without collaboration.

The character might need a few tweaks. Some aspects might be more aspirational than actually real. For instance: 'she claims to be the child of a wayward angel; and Circe, a siren with an entrancing voice' are mainly for advertising purposes. :)

I suppose that Crowley is a common name for demons, we can work to avoid or enhance confusion over these two characters [existing Crowley [seach]]. :)

First, thanks for the detailed feedback! It’s really helpful. I read the After Arundel thread and a bit elsewhere, but I clearly missed some context from an earlier threads.

I’m tempted to give you Lillian to use as an NPC and make a new character from scratch. I had a few ideas when I went to make her, so let me propose two others here in brief and see what people think.

The Tainted
Persephone was a Stanford grad working in the tech sector. She and her best friend had formed a startup. She had invested all she had in it, so when her 'friend' took the money and disappeared, she was devastated. A certain entity came to her then, when she was at her lowest. Now she other things to worry about. She arrived in town recently to complete a job, so she’s sticking around for a while. What awful business will her master demand of her next?

The Wolf
Selene is an anarchist punk who lives on the streets. Recently arrived in town, she has laid claim to a stretch of neighborhood in a rough part of town, filled with squatters, gangs, and abandoned industry. She most wants to join , or build, a pack, but she’s not the easiest person to get along with and she tends to have a problem with authority. Will she find the right people before the wrong ones find her?

And thank you for the affirmation. It is so hard to get tone right in PbP, and I am glad it did not come across wrong. :)
Yeah, that is going to happen. We obviously don't expect you to read all the ...wow... 2176 posts (by scrape-math).

We really need a summary, and I have been meaning to put together a NPC list since the start (my notes are a mess:).

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As Delirium points out, Emma is a struggling writer, and Benji blew hundreds of years of savings buying her dress for a swanky soireé a few nights ago (with the expectation of being reimbursed before his patron vanished, leaving him in the lurch). So that is the scale we are working on. Our previous Imp had a small bookshop as his Establishment, for instance.

We can make Lillian work, but it would mean retooling a lot of the flavour of the story. That sort of place would also result in an explosion of NPCs, changing the low-level feel of the world and discovery we have had so far.

Note that this world-flavour was purely because that is what we ended up with based on the original PCs, so it is not sacrosanct, the game shapes itself around the PCs, they are what is important.

It just might be hard to connect the existing PCs with Lillian, as you describe her. It would not take much to do so, or to bring her in line with the sort of power-level we already have. We can make it work.
No thank you, if she does not fit as a PC she does not really fit as an NPC.

However, all players are encouraged (asked and expected) to make NPCs, so, no matter what you end up playing, you could always bring her in if she seems appropriate to the events.
Only if you want to. We can work together to make Lillian fit into what we have, adjusting both. But, if you are happy to talk with the group about other options before deciding, that we can discuss all three (or more, if you have them:).
Both of these are a bit more ... militant than what we have, but that is fine. We have only had two 'fights' so far in this game, and they occupied less than a dozen posts. We started out with a demon Hunter, so we opened with some demons who ended up attacking. Then we heard about a Hell-Hound in the subway system, but when we encountered it, the demon Hunter set about trying to learn how to befriend and tame it.

If you go Tainted or Wolf, we will realign out game with a bit more fighting, to keep them relevant, but it will never be a huge part of the story.

Also: We are in London, in England. No one has guns, and we even discovered that Tazers® are illegal for civilians and the few cops that get to carry them only do so after receiving special training. There is a lot of restrictive legislation around owning swords and such as well, so any weapons will be a challenge. This actually makes both the Wolf and the Tainted good choices for fightery types, since they both have significant abilities to fight without need to carry 'weapons'.
We could make this Tainted work. With her being new to town we could link that into current events and have there be 'reasons' her Dark Patron had her come here, now.

We can also link her to Emma through the demon summoning/worshiping cult Emma has just (unwittingly) stumbled into. This demon could be your Patron or a rival, whatever works.
There are currently 'no werewolves in London', but that was just because we had no Wolf players and it fitted with the story, it is easy —and apropos— to bring them back with the future-current-events.

If you play this, I will reveal some lore to your character as it comes up. We have already heard reference to 'the werewolf wars' [ref], so this is fresh in some people's memories... but 'some people' are older than they seem, and memories are long.
Do you want to be alone in London: freshly arrived, but not all that freshly a Wolf? Or do you want to be freshly a Wolf, having been turned by the one remaining werewolf hidden in town? These are different stories (both about aloneness), and present different challenges. We can do either, as you like it, or something else. We can talk about these options.

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If the Imp is your first choice, we can make it work, either by toning down the 'power level' in the fiction to bring it line with- and into reach of- the other characters, or by doubling down on the class disparity and making that a even bigger part of the story.

Let's see what they other three players (yes, @Verrain, I am including you) think of the options. But you have the ultimate say in which character you play.

Ah, I think there's been a bit of a misunderstanding. I have zero interest in combat in Urban Shadows.

For example, my Tainted, Persephone, would be more like a soulless corporate drone doing her boss' dirty work. She's the one that shows up to evict people, or seize the family business that had fallen behind on its payments, or any other awful evil corporate activities. For me, the Tainted is all about working for someone evil while trying to maintain a shred of humanity. Her demon form is gonna be for intimidation purposes more than anything else. Similarly, the Wolf is more about protecting the neighborhood than fighting.

And I like both hooks you suggest, connecting my Tainted to Emma via the ritual, and my Wolf to the one existing werewolf left in town.

I think I would prefer to go forward with Persephone, but I'll wait to hear from other players before moving forward.

Fair enough. There should still be enough in those Playbooks to support that sort of play-style. They are both primary-Blood playbooks, and many of their options deal with fighting (the Tainted might be the only way to get permanent Armor in this whole game:)
There is no easy way for us to know that you have edited a post after we have read it (and are checking the rulebook, maybe), this can lead to missed points (of the: "Oh, and most importantly, I forgot to say: ..." type of point which is then missed:).

Rather than editing a post, just add a new post with the further content. This way the site notifies us about it and it is easy for us to see what is new. See Don't Edit.
Fine by me, but only if you want to take them over Lillian. We can make any of them work. Let's see what the others say.

Well, Persephone doesn’t WANT to do evil. Her problem is, she is trapped doing so. The Tainted is a tragic character. I mean, don’t you know people in the real world who are good, but work for evil companies, because they have to so they can support themselves or their kids? It’s the same idea.

Look, what makes Urban Shadows interesting to me, and most PbtA games really, is that the characters are flawed and complex, often tragic. They are not two dimensional — this isn’t Vampire, where everyone is dark and edgy, but it also isn’t Monster of the Week, where there are clear good guys and bad guys, and you are the good guys.

Persephone is fundamentally a good person, or she’s trying to be, but she’s trapped. Same with Selene. And the same with Lillian! She’s a demon trying to be better. And her struggle would be trying to survive while figuring out who or what she wants to become now that her fate is her own.

I’m becoming concerned that this game has enough lore and history that only a very narrow character concept would fit, to be honest.

Like, the characters don’t have to like each other. They can hate each other! This isn’t D&D where we’re like found family. This is a game of social capital, of debt and manipulation and politics. But it might be that my conception of this game differs too much from your all’s to fit. I’m not sure yet.

What do y'all think?

Yeah. Even our Vamp is pretty much a 'good guy'. People struggle with the darker side of Urban Shadows, and often view Corruption as a thing to be avoided, or ignored in play, and sometimes lose connection with their characters when they get too Corrupted. This weakens the appeal of the ruleset.

Emma has racked up some Corruption already and will soon need to take a Corruption Advance (which tends to accelerate the Corruption). Maybe she needs to be dragged down into the gutter and learn that being in denial about the bad stuff can not last?

You don't have to be friends, but you do have to work together. The Tainted is a tragic figure, (hopefully) trying to be good, but compelled to do bad things. Emma freely associated with a vampire lord who she knows killed people (just so he can eat), and had no real redeeming qualities. I am sure she can be persuaded to work with a character like the Tainted, even if we have to put effort into making that work. It can be fun to play out the developing relationship, it does not need to be easy.

It would be simple enough to make the cult into the 'bad guys' that drive the two characters together, possibly out of mutual desire for their destruction.

We could also arrange a preexisting relationship between Emma and Persephone? That could give them a reason to need to work together. (One wonders why Emma will not talk about her family. :)

Or our Oracle might force them to work together for reasons that both can accept, even if only grudgingly.

I’m happy with all of what both Delirium and Vague have said here! I’m not interested in PvP, just tension and emotional conflict. Persephone was an A student, rising star before her world fell apart and she made a single horrible decision. Maybe Emma knew her from before? All Emma knows is that her old friend Persephone went to Stanford for grad school and hoped to debut a hot new art app, but it fell thru and now she has taken a high paying, cut throat corporate job.

That’s perfect! Did you have a school in mind? Say, LSE? Or maybe Cambridge or Oxford? Persephone was a creative person, writing, doing electronic art, and also designing video games and apps. She was definitely ambitious, but always friendly, so that would work!

Hey @Drgwen! Haven’t had much time to respond but I just wanted to chime in and say I’ve liked all of your ideas so far and I’m happy to work to incorporate any of them. Benji likes to be friends with everyone and anyone so there shouldn’t be any problems there. Benji is a vampire and a violinist, who has busked on the streets of London for a living for the past 200 years. His Harbour and his current favourite spot to play is at the Piccadilly Circus tube station.

He is currently helping a friend who found a mysterious magical artifact washed up on the shores of the Thames, helping Emma protect an acquaintance of hers from another vampire, and trying to find a missing book for a sentient statue to finish up a scheme on behalf of the previous Imp.

Lovely! Well maybe the job that has brought me back to London is related to one of this issues?

@vagueGM , feel free to assign whatever motivation to my Master you like. Though I would imagine they are the kind of demon who is *really* good about seeming to be a good guy until it is too late. Like, they probably are really good at luring in people with good intentions, you know?

Oops! Yes, I see that in the guidelines. Will do!

How about University of London? It's a good school, centrally located. Persephone was an art/comp sci double major.

I had leveraged everything -- my parents' retirement, angel investments from powerful and dangerous people, my reputation, everything -- for my startup. When my "friend" Meredith disappeared with the funding, I panicked. A friend I'd me recently offered a way out and, in a moment I have replayed in my mind every day since, I took the offer. Stupid company failed anyway.
I arrived last month and took care of some time sensitive work. Now I'm told I'll be working here for a while, so I might as well get comfortable. I lived here during college, after all.
Archibald Charlesworth III. He is the senior agent working for my patron here in the city. He is a million years old, distantly related to the royal family, and absolutely intolerable.
Hedonism and dissociation, mostly. I blow mad money shopping, indulge in vices at clubs and bars, or stay home in my PJs and eat pints of B and Js while binging shows.
A friend. A real friend. One over whom I don't have power and who doesn't have power over me. Just... a friend.