As it stands now, I’m nearly 100 pages in— more on that in a moment— and it doesn’t break character. It’s a collection of files, notes, journals, and ephemera detailing people’s encounters with the various nasties in this book. There’s nary a stat to be found and even the credits are at the back of the book rather than the front. Altogether, it’s 300 pages, covering 16 different phenomena. If you were to mistake this for a collection of short stories, you wouldn’t be far off the mark!

It’s definitely in a more Hunter-y context than any of the other games, a plain World of Darkness mortals game being one big possible exception. By that I mean that these stories are laid out more like mysteries than threats. So far, they’re fairly localized phenomena, though for at least a few of these horrors it’s obvious how you could increase their scope, at least to the point where they might give any of the other supernaturals cause for concern.

Anyway, it’s a real treat so far. It adds a lot to what might come to mind when you think about Hunter: the Vigil in particular and the sorts of things you’d see in World of Darkness in general.

All that said, I imagine you’ll get a bunch more more mileage out of it if you pick up Collection of Horrors. From what I can tell, it gives you something more concrete than a story, using the SAS system, various props (incl. audio) (!), and presumably statistics for some of the phenomena concerned. I’m intrigued, to the point where I’m considering buying the bundle. I like it when companies experiment like this, and I suspect these would be ideal for one-shots.

Since it’s evening when I’m writing this, I’m going to have at the rest of the book.

On the way home with it, I joked that it had must have character creation rules for playing a murderer. (“Step 1: Attributes … Step 7: kill somebody. Step 8: don’t get caught.”) I was intrigued enough to start flipping through it. This is quite a bit more thorough than I expected. 

For starters, it looks like they’re almost a splat in their own right. They’re much like  hunters, in that they have a bunch of specific tactics and merits that set them apart from regular people, mechanically and stylistically. Enumerated herein are also a bunch of archetypes, called “undertakings.” I must say that I appreciate that choice of word.

I’ll confess that I was expecting something more along the lines of the other supplements to annual games, and this surprised me. Good times.

Oh, I’ve also got my hands on Mekhet. More on that later.

Also, look for a post on Monday about, of all things, gnomes.

I finished Gangrel: Savage and Macabre as well as Ventrue: Lords over the Damned. I’m part-way through Daeva: Kiss of the Succubus as well as Witch Finders.

Clanbooks

Gangrel seems like the strongest clanbook of the lot so far. Ventrue is also pretty solid. Daeva is hard to place. It started off quite good, but the Felix & Dracula parts started to drag a bit. I had a hard time making my way throught the Carmilla stuff, as well.

I have to reiterate that these books are gorgeous. It’s high-quality paper with full color art. I’m not what you’d call an expert in role-playing books, but I don’t think it’s very often that people go all-out like this. 

Witch Finders

Witch Finders is the first supplement for the latest yearly game, Hunter: the Vigil. As you might imagine, it’s a book about hunters who go after witches. Early on they define witches pretty broadly, so the label covers mages, psychics, or any other sort of human that wields supernatural power.

This book is pretty sizeable as compared to previous supplements for the yearly games, and there’s quite a bit in here. Like the core, it’s got a story between each of the chapters. The story itself is pretty solid. I like it.

So, because it’s such a big book, there’s a lot of material in here. The first chapter is ostensibly about the history of witches, and offers faux historical documents from various eras along with a couple of story hooks related to the subject matter. There’s a rundown of various compacts and conspiracies’ takes on witches (and a bit for unaffiliated, tier one hunters, as well), a few new compacts, a new conspiracy, some new Endowments and Tactics, and a new magic system for people that don’t have Mage: the Awakening or aren’t interested in using those rules. 

It’s a little hard for me to read about hunters killin’ mages, I’ll confess; mages aren’t your traditional monsters, and I find the idea of going all inquisition on a mage a bit disturbing for some reason. Chalk it up to my preference for Mage, if you like.

Of course it doesn’t have to be that way, and the relationship is somewhat more complex than that, though I notice that most of the conspiracies like the Lucifuge, Malleus Malificarum, and Knights of St. George are pretty hostile by default. The compacts tend to be more measured.

As much as I have a desire to play characters that directly conflict with my own affect and beliefs, playing a conspiracy hunting down random mages is something I have a bit of a hard time with. Chalk it up to my preference for Mage, or my inability to really get into the mindset of a Christian zealous enough to torture.

That said, I could definitely see using these kinds of hunters as antagonists, as kind of a tangible disincentive for vulgar displays of magic, as a political pawn, or any number of things. Having these fleshed out groups available to draw on is quite a remarkable resource, especially when you throw either competing groups into the mix, or groups that could act as allies. More than most other groups, I see a lot of room for intersection between mages and hunters, at least from the perspective of Mage.

Posting schedule

You’ll notice I’ve managed about one post a week, if that. Yeah. I’m a bad person. Not playing D&D has had a pretty big impact on how much time I spend thinking about it, and of course intermittent traveling has put a damper on my interest in doing much beyond vegging out.

I’m hoping to remedy my lack of gaming. A friend of mine is talking about DMing a 4th Edition game, starting at level 2. I’m already trying to think of characters (eladrin warlord comes to mind as one possibility).

I’d also like to resume & finish Er-Eret. Given that Evan is still quite busy all the time, I’m not sure how likely that is. I’d start a new game but that might end up being the last nail in the coffin for Er-Eret.

You know what that means: first impressions!

A little bit of crunch

For me, the question that first sprang to mind about hunters is: what exactly can you do with hunters to make them interesting enough to produce a core book but without making them function just like any other supernatural to receive a splat-book?

It turns out that hunters get a constellation of mostly mundane benefits rather than a handful of supernatural attributes. I think this is an interesting approach, and I like it— if vampires, werewolves, and mages are all the social, physical, and mental types, then you might call hunters the Skills & Merits guys.

First, they get this stuff called Practical Experience. Practical Experience is extra XP they get from confronting and/or defeating monsters, reflecting the fact that hunters rely quite heavily on their skills and Merits and that the ones that survive are the ones that learn a lot.

Another interesting mechanical bit that they get is the ability to risk willpower. They can opt to spend a point of willpower and choose a benefit, like the usual +3 dice or 9-again on the roll. If they succeed, they get some extra willpower back. If they fail, it’s a dramatic failure.

Hunters also get Professions, which reflects professional training in a field and confers a modest benefit to skills in that field, and Tactics, which I’ve mentioned before.

Incidentally, one of my favorite Tactics is called Dentistry. Why is it called Dentistry? I’m glad you asked! See, it goes like this: you get your buddies to tackle a dude and hold him down. Then you hit him in the face.

Hunter doesn’t have the equivalent of Clan; instead, there are twelve opt-in splats (your Covenant, Tribe, or Order equivalent), divided into compacts and conspiracies. Compacts are one step up from a cell: they’re a bunch of organized guys, and investing points in one means you get stuff like more Allies.

Conspiracies are a step up from that, so they get some of the most overt stuff, like tactical gear, alchemical elixirs, magical relics, or divine blessings. These are called Endowments, which are souped-up Merits you get access to when you sign up with a conspiracy and put points into its Status.

Impressions

I like what I see so far. Except for the conspiracy-level guys, hunters don’t have much whiz-bang shit they can pull. Instead, they’ve gotta be careful, work together, and rely mostly on their skills.

Inevitable

I don’t want to slag Hunter: the Reckoning, but as with each of the re-implementations, comparisons are inevitable, and I’d be remiss if I didn’t talk about this a little bit.

Reading Vigil, I realized why I didn’t much care for Reckoning. There was a lot of missed opportunity, I felt, in terms of exploiting various hunter archetypes; the well-defined and somewhat limited nature of the supernatural stuff overshadowed a lot of other ideas that I found more interesting.

The new game tries to cover all of the bases, and they do this somewhat exhaustively. Aside from your unaffiliated street-level guys, you have your government conspiracy types, your mega-corp doing weird bio-medical research, your paranormal pseudo-scientists, your religious fanatics, your occult conspirators, and more.

One criticism is that this is kind of a shotgun approach. You wouldn’t think that’d be a bad thing for a hunter-themed game, but hear me out! I’m somewhat sympathetic: there’s a lot there, which makes me wonder how difficult it is to really focus on a given theme in any game.

Another thing that comes to mind is that this game seems better suited towards a low number of compacts in a cell, or an even lower number of conspiracies in a cell.

Too bad I can’t play

Yeah all right I could “play” if I wanted to run a game. :P But right now my stupid gaming dance card is full.

First, I’ve gotta finish up Er-Eret, which probably won’t happen until late September, or perhaps mid-October. I was also interested in running a paragon tier game. Someone else wants to run that, though, so perhaps I could set that aside. And then of course at some point I wanted to run Changeling: the Lost.

Since I am not sure we’ll be able to play Er-Eret next week and the weekend after that is PAX, perhaps the best compromise is to run the Hunter quick-start next weekend.

We’ll see, won’t we, blog?

I saw on EnWorld the other day that, among other things, the Player’s Handbook II is in the latest catalog from Wizards. It’s due in March 2009.

I’m glad we’re hearing about it but March? Dammit! That is basically Forever. I’ve really been spoiled by White Wolf’s release schedule, where there’s a 128-pager every couple of weeks. There’s always more material to read, and it’s almost always really good, even though I’ve really only run one game of Mage: the Awakening. (I intend to remedy this once 4e slackens its grip on my cold, shriveled heart.)

Some of the classes that appear to be as good as confirmed are the bard, barbarian, druid, swordmage, and sorcerer. After paging through the Swordmage preview (click the “Download the preview material” link), I am sort of interested in that class.

But let’s be honest: it’s the old classes redone that I am most interested in. I like seeing how they express the core concept of the class. I think the fighter’s never been cooler than in 4th Edition, and I can’t wait to see what they do with the old classes.

…except for the bard.

Yeah, all right, fine! I can’t lie. I’m curious about the bard, too! Despite my inherent skepticism, I know they’re going to do something interesting with it. I just have no idea what.

I guess there’s a Monster Manual II coming out in May, also. That’s like Forever plus Infinity.

Fortunately, Hunter: the Vigil is due out in a week or so. Or so they tell me.

OK, I’m going to level with you, blog: I find this hard to believe. Deep down, I suspect shenanigans; there’s no way it’s August already. Right? The Pacific Northwest barely got a summer as it is, and now the summer is over? Look, you might be able to fool everyone else, but I’m not falling for this one.

Still, I decided to play along. I told my FLGS that I’ll be buying Hunter when it comes out, even though I’m signed up for D&D for at least a few more weeks, and I’m thinking about running a paragon tier game after this one.

Tangent again: the old Hunter game

I had mixed feelings on the old Hunter: the Reckoning. My ideal image of hunters was something out of the Book of Nasty’s Dirty Tricks. Hunters are utterly ruthless, extremely resourceful, and in terms of sanity, barely hanging on. These were the only reasons they were at all effective or alive. I’m trying to think of another milieu to draw on to explain this, and I’m failing.

At any rate, Hunter: the Reckoning threw in an element of the supernatural, and I didn’t particularly care for it. I didn’t think a good hunter game needed the supernatural to be interesting, and in some ways, it detracted from what hunters were by, in one way, making them just like the other supernaturals out there.

That was then and this is now

The new World of Darkness mortals book is (was?) basically the Hunter game I always wanted. You’re a regular person, there’s all kinds of weird shit out there, and you don’t have any magic powers.

I wasn’t terribly excited when I heard they were doing a new Hunter game. I assumed it was going to be a different kind of supernatural power. I could think of a few directions in which they could take it but they weren’t very hunter-y, in my mind, except in the strictest sense of the word.

Was I curious, though? Hell yes. Freelancers who worked on it, folks whose work I’d read in various other new World of Darkness books, said “trust us.” All right, fine. I set aside my misgivings, and somewhere along the line, D&D 4th Edition came along and snapped up my enthusiasm and attention.

Tactics

What stands out for me about the new Hunter is that hunters don’t have magical powers. What do they have instead? Tactics. They really are just what they sound like: group tactics that have special mechanical effects. Players don’t appear to choose a few powers from various sets. The group picks a Tactic, and that’s something that augments their mundane abilities, but supernatural it ain’t.

Mechanically, a Tactic involves everyone in the hunter cell rolling, which adds to the primary actor’s dice pool. Then the primary actor rolls and his or her success determines whether or not the Tactic works.

The example Tactic is effectively a pep talk called Moral Support, where the cell steels itself for the coming fight. The mechanical effect is that it increases their resistance versus mental influence and compulsions. The story effect is that they’re fucking hardasses that can potentially shrug off Dominate or Mind effects.

Another example is Controlled Immolation. I’m not sure how to read the mechanics, and I’m not that interested in the ins and outs at this point. (The new World of Darkness has some fun mechanics but that’s not what I’m here for.) The story effect it is that you and your cell roll up and burn some fucker.

Granted, it’s not as much of a departure as one might think, if only because it’s still something Hunters get that’s special. Of course, otherwise it would just be a supplement, not a core with five or six book run.

It is a departure in the sense that it’s a group thing and it’s not supernatural. Somebody who catches your cell using Moral Support isn’t going to freak out any more than they normally would hearing people preparing to fuck some shit up. Controlled Immolation is scary, violent, and illegal, to be sure, but nobody’s going to accuse you of being a witch or whatever because you lit some dude on fire.

I think this is a neat idea, and that’s all I have for now.

I only got a little ways into Midnight Roads, but I did finally finish reading the quickstart. Now I can comment on some of the stuff I talked about in my last post.

I’ll keep this free of any specifics that would constitute a spoiler vis a vis plot, but there are one or two comments I have about pacing that may spoil you if you want to keep yourself pure. I don’t think that applies to anyone reading this, but there you go.

The story itself is fairly short. I think it would make for a decent one-shot, depending on how into their characters the party gets. Actually that would be an interesting idea to explore: what happens to the duration of a session as the PCs get more and more in-character?

Digression: in-character arguments and discussion

There was one session in my Mage: the Awakening game where the PCs were discussing what to do with a young woman they’d found whom they suspected was a mage but possibly something else altogether. In simple terms, they connected this woman, Gloria, with some spontaneous fires through a combination of Matter and Time magic. (In other words, they ruled out mundane fire through material evidence and postcognition.)

The last hour or two of the session was purely in-character debate about what to do with her. Opinions ranged from studying her, leaving her alone, turning her over to more experienced mages, or teaching her to harness her power. The PCs had such a range of opinions that the result was a lot of argument.

I bring this up as an example of fun and interesting roleplaying. However, in retrospect, I do sort of wonder if I shouldn’t have done something to nudge it along sooner. As I think about it now, it might’ve been more interesting to let everyone stake out their positions, and then move the story on. This may just be a question of pacing.

What I’m trying to say is that these arguments are interesting, but I think I am more inclined to be somewhat ruthless about cutting off prolonged, in-character debate if I think it makes for a more interesting story. This is kind of a change for me, as I used to consider that sort of thing sacred. But now I feel that if you’ve reached that point, then cutting off discussion to keep the game moving could actually make the game more interesting.

Back on track

I was talking about the one-shot, though.

There are maybe a half a dozen scenes, and I noticed that they do actually do a good job of keeping the plot moving one way or another. At one point, they even deliberately introduce a point where the plot goes cold.

In terms of failing to find the clues, they do a good job of handling it. Instead of failing out-right, you typically dock them time or something along those lines for failure. It doesn’t ruin everything but it does make their job slightly harder. This starts off pretty light at the beginning, obviously.

I would say that, overall, it seems pretty simple to run.

Drifting, drifting

I mentioned drifting because reading a bit of Midnight Roads and this stoked my interest in the World of Darkness again.

What I also noticed is a little bit that may seem obvious. It’s the point that despite the vast difference in setting, there are structures you can use in any setting. Midnight Roads was particularly pertinent in this regard, as there are shades of that aesthetic in D&D 4th Edition’s default “points of light” setting: the roads are often very dangerous, and traveling may unexpectedly lead to bad things for characters but awesome things for roleplaying games.

I love books way too much

I bought Lords of Summer and The Silver Ladder. I am actually dangerously tempted by the latter. So far, I’ve really enjoyed all of the Mage splatbooks, and I don’t expect this to be an exception. I bought the Changeling book partly out of principle and partly because I will run a Changeling game someday.

But this isn’t why I’m posting.

Free!

I’m posting because I got the Hunter: the Vigil quickstart. Unlike the other quickstarts, this one is actually book sized. It turns out the size actually makes it feel more substantial, even though the other quickstarts, such as Gloria Mundi, were actually really good. (Well, really good to read, at any rate— I haven’t gotten around to running any of them. I may’ve mentioned this before, but it’s somewhat ironic that by this point I’ve run many more sessions of D&D than I have of all of the new World of Darkness games put together.)

Anyway, this quickstart is pretty awesome, and I kind of want to play or run it. This is partially because I really like lightweight, free stuff. It’s also a game I know very little about which is liberating in some ways.

Investigation

Another intriguing bit is the investigation aspect to it. I’ve got a few thoughts about investigation in RPGs after having read The Esoterrorists. In brief, I agree that the PCs should find what’s necessary to the plot. From there, you have some options if you want to bring dice into it. You can use success or failure to gate how much you tell the party; they essentially enhance success. Alternately, you can use them create failure that is interesting as opposed to game-stopping.

For instance, if you fail your extended roll to interrogate the witness, he still tells you what you need to know, but maybe he leaves out a few important details, like the fact that if they go to search his house, they’ll likely run into his neighbor, a paranoid and also armed drug dealer.

One way or the other, though, the plot needs to keep moving. D&D 4th Edition has a good phrase for this: “searching for the fun.” If you have a dungeon you’ve prepared for the PCs to explore, you probably shouldn’t map success on the roll to finding the dungeon. You want them to find the dungeon. Instead of not finding the dungeon, deplete resources on a failure (time, health via an ambush) or grant a benefit for good rolls (secret entrance, ambush the ambushers).

I bring this up mainly because I’m curious to see how this works out and what their strategy is with regard to PC failure. At first glance, it seems like the plot keeps moving regardless, and success or failure at various rolls has a fairly granular effect on the plot. Like, maybe you can find out clues X and Y, but maybe you’ll be piece Z, which could’ve been a bargaining chip or leverage when you confront an NPC in scene 3.

I’d actually have a hard time building this kind of structure in my own games, I’m sad to say. I’m having enough trouble trying to think of things people with varying skills could make checks to find out. I like it when there are DCs of varying difficulty, and that if you roll well, you get an edge.

What I’m not good at right now is coming up with ideas that have actual gameplay hooks rather than serve as additional flavor. After all, if I’m going to create flavor, why not just give it to them? And in general I would rather give people more clues than fewer clues. So what’s the right balance? What kind of clues, tasks, or knowledge do you make them roll for?

Obviously the mapping isn’t 1:1 because Hunter: the Vigil is a modern game. I’m currently running a D&D game. This stuff seems widely applicable enough, though, that I’m curious to see how they do this. Also, I really like examples.

If only!

If only I had some way of finding out more about this! If only I had the booklet right next to me. If only I could read!

However, the D&D monkey is on my back, and it must be satisfied by at least a couple more months of obsession. Maybe that’s not such a bad thing: by then, I believe Hunter will be out and I could perhaps maybe kind of possibly run it.