The award-winning tabletop roleplaying game of political urban fantasy returns with a bold new edition!
Latest Updates from Our Project:
Chapters Update and Chapter 8 Preview
over 1 year ago
– Sat, Dec 24, 2022 at 08:46:04 PM
Hey, friends! We know it hasn’t been that long since we last chatted, but we wanted to make sure we got you an update before the new year comes rushing in! This will be a shorter update as we haven’t had a lot of time since we last updated, but we’re excited to show you where we’re at in the process.
Chapter Update
As we outlined last time, we’ll be giving you regular chapter updates so you can watch the book come together as we complete the phases. Now that we’ve completed a section—Chapter 8: The Master of Ceremonies is done!—we’ve added two new categories to reflect the final stages of production.
Proofing: This process involves multiple team members, from editors to writers to artists, combing through the chapter to ensure it looks and reads perfectly. This happens once a chapter is done in layout.
Art: The final step involves the graphic artist adding in the art we’ve commissioned for the project. During this process, they look at spaces where art would work well in the current layout and place the pieces within the spaces deliberately left for art. The chapter will go through a second proofing once art has been placed to ensure it looks good, the colors are correct, and that it fits the chapter in tone and mood.
On hold areas are waiting for the rest of the book to be done.
Writing involves the writing team creating the chapter.
Developmental Editing is the process of an editor working with the writer on a written chapter, restructuring and finalizing the text.
Copy Editing is when an editor goes through the text to ensure that all grammatical, spelling, punctuation, and style errors are corrected.
Layout takes the text from the copy editor and puts it into the final form for print.
Proofing: the team looks over the chapter in all its laid out glory to ensure it’s perfect.
Art: art is added to the ch
Here’s where we are at the end of December, changes from last month in bold:
Urban Shadows Chapters
Front Materials (credits, opening, etc) - on hold
Chapter 1: Introduction - on hold
Chapter 2: Cities of Shadows - writing
Chapter 3: Fundamentals of Play - writing
Chapter 4: Character Creation - layout
Chapter 5: Core Moves - developmental editing
Chapter 6: Playbooks - layout
Chapter 7: Advancement - developmental editing
Chapter 8: The Master of Ceremonies -proofing/art
Chapter 9: Long-term Play - developmental editing
Chapter 10: City Guides - writing & developmental editing
Back Material (play aids, index, etc) - layout
For the last couple of weeks, we’ve been getting work on several chapters done, such as Chapter 5 and 7, though not quite enough to move them into the next phase. Layout on Chapter 8 finished, which you can preview below, and Chapter 4 is moving to layout now!
Chapter 8 Preview
Now that Chapter 8 is done in layout, we’ve moved it over to proofing. But, more importantly, we’re releasing it to you all so you can finally dig into the GM chapter! As many of you know, the GM chapter is one of the most important chapters in the book, and is certainly one of the largest!
You can get your copy of the new chapter preview via Backerkit’s digital download system. We’ve already pushed out the files to your account, and you should have received an email letting you know that the files are ready for download. If you didn’t, you can access them directly from Backerkit here:
Please have a look, dive in, and let us know your thoughts! We know historically that the GM chapter has been a treasured part of Urban Shadows, and we want to make sure that 2nd Edition is no different! If you have any feedback to send—keeping in mind that we haven't sent this to proofing—please email us at [email protected] using the subject “US2E Feedback: Chapter 8”. We can’t wait to hear from you!
We will be out of office from Dec 23 - Jan 2 to spend time with our families over the holidays. We hope you have a wonderful winter holiday, spend time with your loved ones, eat delicious food, and get to play some amazing games! We’ll be back in January with more news on Urban Shadows!
Chapters Update, Final Pins, & City Guide Preview
over 1 year ago
– Thu, Dec 01, 2022 at 07:19:11 PM
Hey, friends! We’re back for an update a week late because of turkey season in the USA! We had a fabulous break to see our families, eat some tasty food, and of course, play some games. If you celebrated, we hope you did the same! Let’s get started with our November update!
Chapter Update
As we outlined last time, we’ll be giving you regular chapter updates so you can watch the book come together as we complete the five phases. Here’s a brief reminder of what each phase means, but for a full description you can see Update 30: Chapters Update & Dice Preview:
On Hold areas are waiting for the rest of the book to be done.
Writing involves the writing team creating the chapter.
Developmental Editing is the process of an editor working with the writer on a written chapter, restructuring and finalizing the text.
Copy Editing is when an editor goes through the text to ensure that all grammatical, spelling, punctuation, and style errors are corrected.
Layout takes the text from the copy editor and puts it into the final form for print.
Here’s where we are at the end of November, changes from last month in bold:
Urban Shadows Chapters
Front Materials (credits, opening, etc) - on hold
Chapter 1: Introduction - on hold
Chapter 2: Cities of Shadows - writing
Chapter 3: Fundamentals of Play - writing
Chapter 4: Character Creation - copy editing
Chapter 5: Core Moves - developmental editing
Chapter 6: Playbooks - layout
Chpater 7: Advancement - developmental editing
Chapter 8: The Master of Ceremonies -layout
Chapter 9: Long-term Play - developmental editing
Chapter 10: City Guides - writing & developmental editing
Back Material (play aids, index, etc) - layout
This month, we spent most of our time finalizing Chapter 8 for layout. As the largest chapter–easily a fifth of the whole book–Chapter 8 is a foundational part of the game, the section that shows both novice and experienced MCs how to run the game. Now that it’s in layout, we can move our focus to other (shorter) chapters, including the Core Moves and Advancement. We’ll have a preview of Chapter 8 for you all just as soon as layout is complete!
Final Pins Preview
We’re thrilled to share that we have a final preview of the pins! We’ve attached a few images here so you can see what they look like in their final form. These pin designs are final–production has already begun in full!
Chicago City Guide Preview
Finally, we’re delighted to share a preview from the Chicago City Guide. Each City Guide features summaries of the city’s politics and conflicts, including secret supernatural histories, important locations and neighborhoods, and NPCs and factions tied to each Circle. We’re focusing in 2nd Edition on giving each city a central conflict, a throughline that makes running your game in our version of that city a special experience:
The wizards that forged Chicago in The Great Fire–the mages who bound the great chaotic beast of a city to fuel their magics and extend their lives–are dying. The keys they hold could lock the city away for another 150 years…or free it forever from Power’s yoke. Which will you choose?
This preview showcases the Mortalis Circle in Chicago, featuring the Circle’s general politics, two NPCs, and a full new faction for you to add to your game:
Mortalis Circle Preview (Chicago)
We continue to thank you for all your support, kindness, and excitement as we continue to work on the game! Please let us know what you think of the City Guide preview! We’d love to get your feedback by either reporting your experiences here or jumping into our discord and letting us know your thoughts!
Till next time, friends! We’ll see you in December!
Chapters Update & Dice Preview
over 1 year ago
– Fri, Oct 28, 2022 at 01:48:02 AM
Happy spooky season, friends! We’re excited to be back with an update for you all! We apologize we were quiet last month–we’ve been heads down working on Urban Shadows. We delayed an update so we could come back with an update on where we are with production, a breakdown of what that means, and some previews of what’s coming soon!
We have been working diligently to move chapters of the book forward, expanding our team in house to include multiple writers and editors and providing writing sabbaticals to the writing team to give them more time to write. We know the project is very late and many folks are reasonably frustrated. We continue to apologize for how long this project is taking and offer refunds to those who no longer wish to support the project. Email us at [email protected] if you’d like a refund.
Chapters Update
We’ve made good progress on the book over the past few months, and we’re happy to say that the structure of the book has been finalized and most of the chapters, including the largest chapters in the book, have finished writing.
As we head towards completing writing and pushing everything through editing, we’re ready to move to providing chapter by chapter updates. This way, you’ll know where everything is in the process, what that process is, and what to expect next for each section. Thank you to everyone for your feedback on what we’ve shared so far; we appreciate your patience!
There are five key parts to the process of finishing the book: on hold, writing, developmental editing, copy editing, and layout.
On hold areas are waiting for the rest of the book to be done. They’re the last bits of information that go into the book, like credits and the introduction, and so will be the last to go into the writing phase. Usually these are done in layout, so they are completed quite quickly.
Writing involves the writing team creating the chapter, both through writing new material and using previous text from Urban Shadows: 1st Edition to create a cohesive chapter. There are a lot of new features in 2nd Edition, so a lot of the writing is being done from the ground up.
Developmental Editing is the process of an editor going through a written chapter and leaving notes for the writer, restructuring the chapter, or adding parts that are missing. This process involves going back and forth with the writer to get the piece to be the best it can be. This phase only occurs when the text is complete, and indicates that the piece is close to completion.
Copy Editing only happens once development is done. Copy editors go through the text to ensure that all grammatical, spelling, punctuation, and style errors are caught and corrected. They’ll also catch any continuity errors and ensure that all terminology is properly notated.
Layout takes the text from the copy editor and puts it into the book. Layout artists spend hours perfecting the look of the book, integrating the artwork, formatting the text, and ensuring a cohesive overall product. They also set up the layout of the book before importing text so that the team can approve the overall look.
Below, we’re giving you an outline of each chapter, which phase of completion it’s in, and what all has been completed. We’ll be doing this monthly until all chapters are moved into layout. Once all of the chapters are in layout, we’ll be able to give you a firm timeline on how long it will take from there for the book to be finished.
Urban Shadows Chapters
Front Materials (credits, opening, etc) - on hold
Chapter 1: Introduction - on hold
Chapter 2: Cities of Shadows - writing
Chapter 3: Fundamentals of Play - writing
Chapter 4: Character Creation - copy editing
Chapter 5: Core Moves - developmental editing
Chapter 6: Playbooks - layout
Chapter 7: Advancement - writing
Chapter 8: The Master of Ceremonies - copy editing
Chapter 9: Long-term Play - developmental editing
Chapter 10: City Guides - writing & developmental editing
Back Material (play aids, index, etc) - layout
We expect the status of all these chapters to change before our November update. In that update, we’ll give you the same breakdown for each chapter as above, so you can track the progress we’re making. We totally hear that you all want more detailed feedback on our process, and we’re thrilled to share this with you now that we’re so close.
Progress on the rest of the book is going well! Our graphic artist is working on the various layout elements within the book so that the layout is ready once copy editing is complete. Our art department is working on procuring art resources, some of which will wait until the layout is complete so we know where art is needed in the final product. We’ll keep you posted on this as it progresses!
Sneak Preview of The Spectre
Our layout artist, as we mentioned, has been hard at work deciding what the book will look like with our art team. Together they are creating the overall aesthetic of the book, defining how each chapter will look, and integrating layout and content. This process is a very fiddly one! For example, moving from the condensed play materials in the Quickstart to the full presentation of the playbooks involves preparing more than 70 pages of text!
We’re excited to share with you a preview of what that Playbooks section of the book will look like for The Spectre. This is close to the final layout for the Playbooks within the book and contains the information that explains each element of The Spectre playook, its moves, and features . The team is extremely excited about the direction the layout is going and can’t wait until we can put all of the book into layout. Check it out!
Dice Preview
We also have received preview samples of the dice! You can see that some of the image edges are rough or a little jenky because these are laser-cut prototypes. The Urban Shadows text logo dice aren’t coming out well, and so we’ll be changing the design on those for the final product.
Despite the changes coming on these dice, we wanted to give you a sneak peek to see what they’ll look like!
Until Next Time…
We’re so incredibly grateful for your support, despite the delays, and your excitement for the game. Urban Shadows is near and dear to our hearts and we’re continually thrilled with your feedback, engagement with us in our discord, and your incredibly thoughtful insights into the game. We hope you enjoy a spooky Hallowe’en and stay safe!
Pin Preview and Updates
over 1 year ago
– Fri, Aug 26, 2022 at 02:39:10 AM
Hey friends! We hope your summer has been lovely; we’re excited to be back with an update! We missed the end of July because we were headed to Gen Con and it was an all hands on deck situation! Thank you for your patience!
Project Update: Writing Continues
Our team is hard at work wrapping up chapters to get them into editing. Specifically, we’re going over the old text of 1E and then adding and improving with all that we’ve taken from internal playtesting and what we’ve heard from you, our excellent community. We’ve learned a ton from great discussions here on posts as well as in our Magpie Games Discord where folks deep dive the rules and give really great feedback!
This feedback has deeply impacted how we explain the basic moves in Chapter 5, how we explained character creation in Chapter 4, and most importantly, helped us develop the GM chapter (Chapter 8) because making better tools for the GMs is a huge part of ensuring the game sings. This past month, we’ve been focusing on expanding the explanations of the basic moves and including the edge cases we’ve seen pop up as you all playtest.
So, that is to say, that writing is continuing. Writing updates aren’t all that interesting, because the best we can say is here’s what we’re working on and that work continues. We appreciate that’s not the most exciting update, but we want to assure you that the writing is going well and our writing team is working diligently to ensure that you’ll be delighted by what you read and that your influence will be clear when it comes to each chapter.
Other than the writing, we’re excited to say that the dice, dice tray, journals, and pins are all headed to print or at print right now! The GM screen art is complete, as we’ve shown you, and we’re working on putting in all the important information on the GM facing side before we go to print. We will definitely get feedback from you all on the GM Screen before it’s finalized.
In fact, we’ve gotten in some samples for one of the pins just this week. Check them out below!
Let it Out: 1Eto 2E
For the past few updates, we’ve included some design discussion to help explain some of the main work we’re doing to update the game. This month we thought we’d spend some time discussing one of the major changes to the basic moves: let it out, version 2.0.
The original let it out was a powerful tool that gave GMs and players the flexibility to adapt the powers and abilities of the characters at the table to each fictional moment, but… it often turned out to be harder to use in practice than it sounded in theory:
When you let out the power within you, roll with Spirit. On a hit, choose 1 and mark corruption. On a 10+, ignore the corruption or choose another from the list.
• Take +1 forward on your next roll
• Extend your senses, supernatural or otherwise
• Frighten, intimidate, or impress your opposition
• Take definite hold of something vulnerable or expose
The theory here is that a vampire can let it out to rip a car door off (taking hold of an object that was vulnerable to their super strength) while a hunter could let it out to disarm a rival (taking hold of a weapon that their hunter “training” made vulnerable). It’s a great all-purpose move, one that balanced the chance for corruption against a broad array of powers and abilities.
But… it also required a good degree of mental gymnastics on the part of the players. They had to decide they wanted to use the move at an abstract level, then look at the outcomes to see if maybe they could make those outcomes fit, then roll the dice (hoping for a hit!) and then pick from the options. When you escape a situation, you are thinking about the trigger and what you want from the obvious outcomes of the action; when you let it out (in 1E), you have to hold both the trigger and the options in mind, authoring your abilities in the fiction without any guidance!
The new version of let it out gives up that flexibility for a set of specific abilities, such as the Oracle’s “frighten or impress someone with knowledge of their past” or the Hunter’s “improvise a weapon (2-harm hand messy) or armor (1-armor fragile)”:
When you let out the power within you, choose an ability from your playbook and roll with Spirit. On a hit, mark corruption and activate the ability; the MC will tell you how the effect is costly, limited, or unstable. On a 10+, ignore the corruption or the complications, your choice.
Now–rather than doing the mental gymnastics of selecting a set of abstract options, players instead look to their specific abilities tied to their playbook. If one of them seems helpful, then the roll is really about determining the efficacy (full or partial) and the cost (corruption or no corruption). The playbook abilities do limit things a bit, but offer players a concrete set of prompts that clue them in to stuff they can bring into the story right now!
Thank you to our GMs!
A huge shout out to all the amazing humans who joined us at Gen Con 2022! We ran over 300 games at Gen Con and many of them were amazing sessions of Urban Shadows 2E! We got some great feedback and had a marvelous time meeting folks from our community and welcoming new people to our games!
Thank you to all our fantastic GMs who joined us and ran the heck out of the convention! You were all amazing and we’re so grateful for all your hard work!
Until Next Time…
As always, thank you for your continued support as we move ever forward on the project. We’re making great progress and are excited for when we can show you all the writing and art together! Stay tuned, friends, and we’ll be back next month with some great updates!
Writing Update and Gen Con 2022
almost 2 years ago
– Fri, Jul 01, 2022 at 04:38:08 AM
Hello all!
Our apologies for the late update this month! We’ve been hard at work pushing forward with writing and editing Urban Shadows 2E, but we wanted to make sure we kept you all updated.
Project Update
Writing and editing continues on the core book! This month has been quiet as we’ve worked on finalizing the GM chapter for editing, as well as developing the text for the new faction turn and status mechanics released last month. We think that the GM chapter of the original 1E text was a standout part of the original book, but we’re taking a hard look at it to make sure that it’s both streamlined/improved and reflective of all the changes that were made to 2E, such as adding information on running games for the Imp and the Sworn and detailing how to make use of the City Hubs!
While part of our team is dedicated to those GM tools, other writers are working on finishing the text for the moves, including all of the Circle, Debt, and City moves. US2E has a ton of tools—each of which kick in at different times and different levels of abstraction—and we want to make sure each tool is thoroughly explained with examples. Again, some of this text draws on existing materials for moves from 1E, but we’re making sure to review and refine everything.
Refusing to Honor a Debt: Status vs. Heart
Last time, folks were really excited to hear a bit more about the design philosophy behind some of the changes to the game. So… this month, we thought we’d talk a bit about one of the big changes to 2E: changingrefusing to honor a Debt from Heart to Status!
In 1E, refusing to honor a Debt relied on Heart, allowing playbooks like the Fae to be really good at keeping their creditors at bay. But the addition of Status for 2E—reflecting each character’s relative position within the hierarchy of the city—gave us some new tools for thinking about what makes a Debt hard to refuse. Is refusing to honor a Debt a function of personal persuasion or political power? The latter seems much more in line with the game!
We also loved taking the idea even further and invoking relative status—the difference in status between the refuser and their creditor—to determine the roll, but we worried that Heart would no longer be as valuable. Most stats in Urban Shadows are attached to two moves (Blood is used for both turn to violence and escape), but Heart is only used for persuade! Would Heart characters be diminished by the change to Status?
Of course, symmetry isn’t always the most useful lens; we want each stat to be equally meaningful, but the moves aren’t always equal in their spotlight time. Persuade is uniquely powerful in Urban Shadows—it’s one of the few ways to resolve a conflict that doesn’t spin out into new conflicts. When you mislead, distract, or trick other characters or turn to violence against them or escape the situation, those conflicts tend to follow you; persuade allows you to come to deals that might actually resolve things (sometimes). Heart, it turns out, is plenty powerful and important all on its own.
Changing refusing to honor a Debt to Status required us to think carefully about balance, but it also gave us new ways for characters to advance and develop. Want to wield more power in the city? Up your Status. You not only get access to stronger City moves; you make it harder for people to avoid your Debts…or make you honor the Debts you owe them.
Join Magpie Games at Gen Con 2022!
Team Magpie will be headed to Gen Con in Indianapolis Indiana in August! It’ll be our first convention where we’re back to running games and we’re excited to see everyone! To that end, we’re looking for GMs to come run Urban Shadows and some of our other amazing games like Avatar Legends: The RPG, Root: the RPG, Zombie World, and more!
All our GMs get an awesome swag package that includes a game of their choice from Magpie Games. If you run 4 or more games, you’ll also get a badge to the convention! If you’re up for volunteering, and want to join Team Magpie, please fill this form out:
https://forms.gle/rdAvjUsAC9ahqAgp9
Until Next Time…
Thank you for all your patience and support. This part of the process is slow and steady, and we’re on track to hit our goals over the next few months. We’ll share more when we can, but please remember to send any feedback you’ve got to [email protected]. We always appreciate hearing from Urban Shadows backers!
