I really, really wanted to like The Sprawl. I love the PbtA ruleset and I love cyberpunk. Ultimately, two things killed this RPG for me. First off, both myself and my players hated how for every single mission, the players have to roll and decide if the employer will double-cross them or not. I’d rather just decide that as the GM. It ended up creating some awkward and unwieldy situations. Still, that could be taken out or tweaked.

The biggest thing I hated about The Sprawl, and the reason I quit running the campaign, was because of the clocks in the game. The mission clock was a bit awkward, but the biggest problem I had were the corporate clocks. They felt ham-fisted and forced. I figured if I was going to run an RPG I would have to tweak in order to feel right, I’d rather just run an RPG that works right from the start. That’s what I pay money for, after all – to buy an RPG and not have to create my own.

I do appreciate the effort to make a cyberpunk PbtA ruleset, but I didn’t end up liking The Sprawl.

Whoa.

I have never seen an RPG push a political agenda as hard as Urban Shadows. Oh, there have been hints of political agenda in other RPGs, but whatever, that never stopped me before. Urban Shadows takes all of those other RPGs combined and doubles down, hard. And the thing is, I consider myself a liberal, so you’d think it would jive with me. But nobody likes being preached to, especially when it’s so thinly veiled in the case of US. Seriously, I am embarrassed to show this RPG off to other people, both veterans and novices to RPGs, because a lot of the wordage makes US come across as less of a game and more of a political manifesto. As it stands, I’ve been directing players to just ignore any and all advice and fluff sections and focus entirely on how to make rolls.

I like the core idea of US – a modern urban fantasy setting. I don’t like what US turns my gaming hobby into, that being a vehicle for a specific political agenda, even if it’s one that I might agree with. Because of that, I can’t recommend this game.