Need some help here. A friend of mine has been gaming with the hubby and me. We just finished a Riddle of Steel game, with the death of the PCs, so we decided to play something else.
The other guy chose Hunter: the Reckoning.
I've never played it, and only played 1 session of WoD in general (Vampire with the same friend running it. Not the best). Hubby's running it, so we have a fair chance of actually having fun.
My problem is - what's it like? I'm a D&D style player. I prefer high fantasy usually, and mostly dislike modern games, which this is. But I'm not the focus, and my opinion is not quite as important :/ What sort of characters have you ran? How easy is it to pick up?
And is there a character generator out there? I didn't find one googling...
If you've played a White-Wolf game than it is pretty easy to pick up. It's a very cool if schizophrenic setting :D
Basically your Hunter's belief in themselves fuels their "edges", which are aptly named as they are just simple little tricks that give them an edge vs. the supernatural vs. regualar mortals.
Like the Spiritual Attributes in TRoS. Without having to come up with stupid reasons behind 'em :D
Might be fun...
Hunter the Reckoning is..kinda monster hunting in the modern day with superpowers. Alright they're not say fire energy beams from your eyes, but you get to be a hunter of monsters with powers. Sort of like D&D, but modern day.
Honestly, I always thought of the movie "Frailty" as what Hunter, SHOULD have been. In a way. Subtlety, however is not White Wolfs way, it seems.
However, to be fair I've only READ the book, and played the video game (It's modern day Gauntlet, in so many many ways.)
Accept its high fantasy in many ways set in the modern day. You are a D&D cleric, but without, you know, often complicated choice of religion.
Yet you specialize in how you turn undead, blast undead, or throw fiery doom from above..
It's really fun. It supports varying levels of action-fantasy, so you can run games that feel like Romero, Carpenter, or Verhoeven movies, you can play up the paranoia, isolation and degeneration and play a very gritty game of people who sit in basements arming themselves against the apocalypse. Like most modern settings, the main dial the DM has to control the tone in-game is how effective a presence they want the police to have in the game.
I found it fairly easy to pick up, and I taught it to my game group from the introduction of the premise on to characters creation in about two hours. In all honesty though, the nWoD corebook for mortals is better if you don't want to play characters with supernatural powers.
Hunter the Reckoning is..kinda monster hunting in the modern day with superpowers. Alright they're not say fire energy beams from your eyes, but you get to be a hunter of monsters with powers. Sort of like D&D, but modern day.
Honestly, I always thought of the movie "Frailty" as what Hunter, SHOULD have been. In a way. Subtlety, however is not White Wolfs way, it seems.
However, to be fair I've only READ the book, and played the video game (It's modern day Gauntlet, in so many many ways. Fun, but still Gauntletesque)
Accept its high fantasy in many ways set in the modern day. You are a D&D cleric, but without, you know, often complicated choice of religion.
Yet you specialize in how you turn undead, blast undead, or throw fiery doom from above..
I've decided that as a new player, I'm going with something simple - Anita Blake without the sex. I guess that would be Zeal - Avenger ( my DM is gonna let us go ahead and totally create the characters rather than role-play the creeds we get)
I've sorta got the pregame life figured out, but I haven't gotten the skills, demeanor and nature hashed out yet.
There are a number of different ways to run H:tR, of course, depending on your GM and the play style of your group, but the default is something like this:
You play a normal person. Soccer Mom, Retail Clerk, Teacher, Doctor, Homeless Guy (you are discouraged from playing SWAT cops or Green Berets). You come across the supernatural and, from somewhere, given the power to fight them (Edges).
Default game involves a lot of paranoia and fear. Your edges don't really help much and can be unpredictable (there is a big question as to where you got them from). Other hunters like you tend to be a bit nuts, the things they've seen and done driving a lot of then crazy (and the power they've been infused with also warps their personalities). Its a grim, harsh setting.
I'd kind of like to second what most everyone else said. I tried to post late last night and there were server issues, so my carefully crafted infodump pretty much just got eaten. Such is life.
It's true. You've got powaz, and I'm ok with that. While you're a hunter, and you do deal with the supernatural in a kind of default antagonistic way (killing zombies is a ton of fun any way you do it), you've also become a supernatural creature tottering on the edge of sanity. That theme of isolation is on purpose, but even though the books recommend regular-Joe-and-Jane type characters, there's really nothing stopping you from playing DOOM with dice.
Seriously, it's good times. I enjoy both methods of play, but I would recommend that everyone's on the same page before you start off. You don't want three people packing cricket bats and golf clubs against the night and see peep #4 pick a Wayward with a flamethrower.
I recommend you look over your default supernatural characteristics pretty early and figure out what they do. The default Hunter package gives a certain amount of protection from the mechanical effects of the OWoD which include Vampires being able to mentally control you without so much as breaking into a bloodsweat, mages being able to shut you down, and werewolves driving you into gibbering panic just by changing (nevermind those teeth).
You can't fight any of the big-name supernatural critters out there without taking some fatalities - either long wounded and healing times or outright deaths. Your characters are not as strong, and they're much more fragile. They just won't have the resources of any other supernatural splat. In many ways, they'd be better off just being the FBI, so take that into consideration.
I was a bit disappointed that hunters had to had Powers. We played a couple of WoD with just normal humans who were smart. So there power was their equipment and their cunning, kind of like Whistler as opposed to Blade.
I suppose that Hunter could be done like that or some of the Edges could be 'smoothed' off a bit but I admit to never trying it.
SWINE!!!!
haha... had to say it Shewolf, after I read your post in the 'other thread' on the 'other site'...
... I think others have said it best: Its a white wolf game. Character creation is simple and easy ( always always always skip to the one page (sometimes two...) chart that breaks down the steps and gives you the numbers... everything else is explanation for the braindead...) and realize that all your numbers just mean extra dice to roll for the most part.
I'll disagree with the 'no swat, ordinary housemoms' line. But to me, swat and military types ARE ordinary people, rather than fetishized Ninjae (plural of Ninja... prounouced Nin-Guy!... trust me... spread the meme....)... there's a dude living in my basement that's army, drinks beer, wears t-shirts and shorts and flip flops and surfs the internet... but the WW guys totally think he's not ordinary enough to be made 'Special!' and given Hunter powers. Blarg...
Anita Blake, sans sex is pretty cool. If I'd known where the series was going I'da skipped it early. Irony: I only have copies of the books that are defined as Erotica... A bit fanwankerish powerfantasy, but entertaining enough.
Ok... I'm out of words.
Bought it when it first came out, along with several splats - never played it. I loved reading it and I really like the IDEA of it, but for my group it would just never have worked. Our WoD forays were always of the Vampiric variety.
Still wish I'd gotten the chance to try it out once or twice.
Quote from: Spike;229069... there's a dude living in my basement that's army, drinks beer, wears t-shirts and shorts and flip flops and surfs the internet... but the WW guys totally think he's not ordinary enough to be made 'Special!' and given Hunter powers. Blarg...
I think regular army, navy, air force, even marines seem pretty standard people albeit people with training. I'm pretty sure I remember canon characters that were police or ex-army in the books as well. I think they were trying to lead people away from the fetishised super-stat max-rank in combat skills character.
Which there's no mechanical way to lead people away from, so I figure they tried a heavy hand. OTOH, I don't think there's anything wrong with that,
either, but really that's not normal. Someone with maxed Firearms or Melee is really pretty amazing, and I think they were trying to drive that home. I think the Hunter Survival Guide really did a good job with that. I wouldn't have messed with the narrator for anything, but he's not really a normal guy anymore, either.
Anyhow. Making a normal person doesn't require books. It's just a character sheet with Morality and no powers. If that's what you're going for, NWoD Core is my book of choice, but d20 Modern and GURPS are alternately there for your normal person needs, for certain definitions of 'normal'.
I'd personally recommend NWoD Core, Armory, and Second Sight - Second Sight being, basically, a book full of secret powers but ones that canonically, mortals have access to. For OWoD, Sorcerer Revised is a great book, but there are other avenues open. (Hunters Hunted, Demon Hunter X)
Played some last night. G ( the friend) has an ex SWAT guy on forced retirement- he's "disabled". As in, not a big enough problem for regular life, but he wasn't going to be a desk-jockey. My character, Michelle Noir ( we're in N.O) found her mentor - a older than hell voodoo priestess. We're gonna be given our powers, but we played without 'em last night.
G before his retirement went into a hostage situation, and the bad guy shot some dude, taking most of his head. Then that innocent bystander got up and walked out. Fast forward a week, and I give the ex-cop his will that I drew up (I'm a lawyer) and see some dude go in between a cpuple buildings. Missing a large portion of his head.
Go into the pawn shop(Hank's). I'm "smart" and buy a gun (oops). Later we come back, the owner comes down (apartments over the shop) G fights with him with shots fired, the zombie "wakes" and we flee.
The cops come, and the ambulance carrying Hank crashes and the techs are burned and Hank is thrown from the bus and spread across the highway. Torn apart. The zed is found crucified in a warehouse somewhere.
We do some searching (G goes to some famous voodoo shop, with all it's made in china tourist crap - I go to the web and find a real name of a real fortune teller) and find Mama Farrin. Mamma is going to be my mentor (sweet!). All she wants is a gator toenail. We get it and go to bed, and knock off for the night.
****
My thoughts:
Interesting. Sorta like Call of Cthulhu, in that I can gain derangements, and the whole shooting attracts unwanted attention thing. Good thing I'm pretty dexterous so I can do some hand-to-hand and knife fighting :D Now to find a flame-thrower ;). I like it some, and so far I'm not gaining a cute pink culy tail.
Sounds like a great game.
So is part of the game actually discovering your powers? I've been intrigued by Hunter since reading the Winging It (http://www.rpg.net/columns/list-column.phtml?colname=wing) column at rpg.net, the whole discovering your powers aspect especially. However, I got the impression that the writer was taking some liberties in that area. I really like the kind of game that column and you describe, shewolf. I may have to see if I can dig up a few of the books from the used bin now...
We were able to choose our creeds and stuff like that (I wanted an Anita Blake type character, so I went with Zeal: Avenger and a touch of Vision: yet unknown). I don't have the actual Edges yet, whuch is fine.
The book ( I only have the PHB - we're using Vampire for the DMG) mentions the DM/GM/Storyteller can run a starter game where your actions can determing the path you take. Our DM is pretty fair, and he decided to make things easy (at least for me) and let me pick my stuff so I can build my PC around it. (I'm the kind that picks abilities and from there and a session or 2 pins down who and what my guy is)
If you can find a copy, then hell, go for it. I love to collect books anyway, and game books are just so great :)
And thanks for the links. I wish I'd thought of 'em sooner - I am terrible with remembering rules, and the character creation bit would have helped! :p
I forgot to mention a chronic problem with WW games, to include Hunter: hurtin' stuff is occasionally awfully damn hard, depending upon the iteration of the game. Obviously, they give the monsters in hunter stupor powers to make up for it so they can kill you. Which, I suppose, makes sense.
To illustrate: Every WW game I played from 96 to 99, on up into the early 2000's included multiple players taking, as their primary weapon, the... erm... elephant gun. Because it had the only reasonable chances of wounding stuff. Never mind that meant we were all lugging around insanely large double barreled rifles (or whatever, to be honest it's been a while) with shells longer than our own hands... if you wanted to shoot stuff, that was the only way to go.
nWoD is, from all accounts, much worse about this little problem. Not the elephant gun, the fact that combat results in few, if any, 'wounds' being dished out.
We saw that somewhat. The PC was using a Mag light as a club, and he was scoring hits ( the person we were fighting was a normal so he had base stats of 2 across the board) but somehow thie guy couldn't hit a non-moving target 5 feet away with a pistol. Then I cane in and held the guy. My 3 strength was enough along with the lost dice from his injuries. Including busted junk from a mag light to the crotch :D
DM quote " Bad news, he's still consious" *wince*
There are different ways to handle powers. You can just let the PCs choose them as they advance. In my game, I chose them for them as they got them and never out and out explained how they worked. The PCs had to figure it out for themselves. It added an extra layer of fear and uncertainty to the game, which I think was appropriate.
Quote from: shewolf;229221Including busted junk from a mag light to the crotch :D
I am doubled over in pain just reading that. Yowch!
I definitely need to check this game out. I think my girlfriend might warm to it better than D&D.
Is there a Hunter book for nWoD? Just curious to see if it's similar.
Quote from: KenHR;229260Is there a Hunter book for nWoD? Just curious to see if it's similar.
That would be
Hunter: The Vigil, which hasn't actually been published yet. WW is currently releasing teasers and previews for it at their site,
here (http://www.white-wolf.com/index.php?related=979&id=991).
Thanks for the link!
I'm using lots of old rules :)
I'm a huge D&D fangrrrrrl though, so I can't really help there. What doesn't she like about it? I have a few different things, here, and I've played 3/4ths of it :D
Nothing to do with rules (I try to handle as much of that load as possible when I GM, especially with folks who don't play RPGs a lot). It's a genre thing. Meredith's not a fantasy or sf nut, and about 99% of the games I own have been fantasy or sf.
She is, however, a big horror fan, so I think Hunter would hold her interest better.
Same with my GF Ken. She was pretty much 'horror only' when I met her, and through that I was able to slowly lead her in different directions in gaming (though horror remains our favorite to this day, which is why WFRP is the fantasy game we play).
-=Grim=-
Best horror game I've found is Call of Cthulhu. The SAN stuff really drives home how bad it can get.
And my last character, gained a fear of open spaces and outside after seeing Ithaqua. I was able to act (we failed to save a vermont villiage too) but I wasn't "right". It was the next morning that it all really came home and I got my sanitaruim time.
Ah, WFRP...I'd never thought of that! Thanks, GrimJesta.
And I do have CoC. Never ran it, just played a session or two. I have this podcast of a CoC game Sandy Peterson ran involving soldiers in Iraq; it was wickedly cool.
Hmmmm...now the gears are churning.
I've ran a CoC game. It's really easy. Start with the awesome one in the book (assuming it's the great one I played 3 times :)). It's a great intro for new players and lends to all kinds of fun, like bleeding walls and the like.
Since this is probably going to become a thread about the game I'm in, should I repost the pertinent parts to that section? Or just continue this one?