Urban Shadows (A New Apocalypse World Game)

Not long after having ranted about how much I dislike Monsterhearts in Episode 32, in one of my regular trips through the wondrous world of Kickstarter, I stumbled across this project:

There are 25 days left on the project at the time of me writing this. Urban Shadows is “a dark urban fantasy” and pretty much appears to be everything that I wanted changed in Monsterhearts. You get to play a whole range of supernatural templates, and there’s no revolting teenage angst in sight (WOOHOO!). The different races have various alignments to help provoke some friction, and there’s even a corruption mechanic in there too.

On a more aesthetic level, I quite like the look of the artwork – black and white, stylised very much like the original Apocalypse World rulebook, and more recently, Tremulus (yes, I’m aware it should have a lower-case “t” in Tremulus, but the grammar Nazi part of me hates the title not being capitalized!). There’s options for hardback and softback. I’ve pledged for hardback as that’s my format of choice – paperbacks get damaged too quickly I find. Also, the hardback comes with a set of custom dice for the game. I have a nicely growing dice collection and I’m determined to find some dice that like me!

Essentially, from the description, Urban Shadows feels a lot like the World of Darkness, but using the Apocalypse World mechanics. I’m certainly willing to give it a try (especially if there’s no sex moves in there!). I’m looking forward to seeing what stretch goals are funded between now and June 30th.