Urban Shadows is an Urban Fantasy Tabletop RPG using the Apocalypse World Engine. Set in a city of the MC's choosing, players take control of various archetypes and play out a story of urban politics...only the archetypes are all supernatural creatures, and the politics in question are between vampires, werewolves, fae, and more.
A large part of the game centers around Debts, the favors and obligations that PCs And NPCs owe each other. Players can cash in Debts to get the people around them to do what they want...and those people can do the same if they have Debts on the players.
A second edition was Kickstarted in 2020.
This game contains examples of:
- Gambit Pileup: Because the game encourages MCs to come up with several threats with which to set against the players, and because it's a political thriller, it's very easy for a game to descend into this.
- Gray-and-Grey Morality: It's recommended that no one be purely good or evil; everyone has an objective and everyone's working towards it, doing both good and bad deeds along the way. Generally, though, everyone sans the player characters will likely be on the darker side of gray at best.
- Slowly Slipping Into Evil: A game mechanic, represented as Corruption. Players can take corruption points for better results, get corruption advances for more powers...aaaaaaand next thing you know, you have to retire your character as a Threat. Whoops.
- Spanner in the Works: It's explicitly noted in the corebook that players are liable to send whatever plans the many schemers have tumbling down, which lessens the above-mentioned Gambit Pileup somewhat.
- Splat: Archetypes, all of which represent a different sort of Urban Fantasy creature. 1E has ten, while 2E has twelve.
