Urban Shadows: City Moves and Other MC Facing Stuff

So I’m sitting here brainstorming city moves for my (Dark) Phoenix Urban Shadows game. I had it in my dumb head that they were move-moves, not MC-style moves. My first effort:

* It takes for-fucking-ever to get where you were going, and the situation has changed by the time you get there.

* When a threat advances, the weather gets dangerously and unpredictably hot.

* A place you thought was safe is now filled with new and unknown faces to whom you cannot put names.

* The desert inflicts harm as established, because harm is always established when you’re in the desert.

* Bring the city to a literal standstill when extreme monsoon storms hit.

I wonder how many is “enough?” Also, I’m way less good at MC moves than I am at the other kind.

Truth be told I haven’t really ever cooked them up before, and the priorities are a little different — obviously I want the move to, you know, move the fiction somewhere new in both cases. But on the MC side, I feel like the best moves obviously and clearly give the players a “what do you do?” at the end of them. I suspect these don’t actually live up to my own expectations. Guess I’ll play to find out!

Also: we know our own town so well that I suspect I’m making city moves all the time, but they’re not codified and called out for others’ consumption. I’m sure if I was doodling up (Dark) Phoenix notes for someone else, I’d have a whole different head.

0 thoughts on “Urban Shadows: City Moves and Other MC Facing Stuff”

  1. That third one? Happens to me occasionally. I have medical issues with remembering names and faces. It’s terrifying to be talking to someone at work and have no idea what their name is, even hough you’ve been working with them for 10 years.

  2. Eh, so it goes! I’ve had it all my life, and I’m mostly okay. It’s the arthritis that’s killing me now! (Not literally, thank goodness! Just issue-wise)

Leave a Reply