White Wolf has the tradition of presenting their World of Darkness games in three main books: the "core" rulebook, which is meant for both players and Storyteller, a Players Guide and a Storytellers Handbook. I always wondered what kind of information could be found in the latter two. In my eyes, the core rulebook was all one really needed. Then again, I played a campaign for more than a year under a DM whose only help was the AD&D 2nd Edition Player's Handbook, and he did an admirable job, so I'm a little biased. As it turns out, you can easily do without Hunter's Players Guide, but it certainly helps.
The presentation
The art direction of Hunter's core rulebook has always been a sore spot with me. The game was about normal people, suddenly confronted with the fact that monsters exist and prey on humanity. So why did I get all these pictures about people killing monsters with guns blazing and 3 bandoleers of ammunition slung around their broad chests? Yuck. Not that the artists are bad — they are good, although not always as splendid as in Vampire or Wraith, to name some of my favourites. I hoped the subject matter was a mistake, but the Players Guide proves me wrong. Again, we see lots of guns, axes, bandoleers and guns. It gets better at the end of the book, though, with art actually depicting normal people. As a positive point, the illustrations often depict something that's described in the text.
The artist that worked on this book are: Jason Alexander, Andrew Bates, Maria Cabardo, Steve Ellis, Larry MacDougal, Rik Martin and Brad Rigney, while Glenn Fabry made the full-colour cover. I can't really discuss the separate artists, as the pictures are not properly credited, and the signatures are often hard to read or completely missing. The art is pretty good overall, and while the drawing styles vary wildly this doesn't hurt as the different artists each have their own section of the book to illustrate. I noticed this trend first in Vampire's revised Clanbooks, and I really applaud it: we still see different perspectives and different styles, but this doesn't result in a jumble.
The most notable thing about the art is the amount of it: compared to other White Wolf books (the Hunter core rulebook for instance), there is relatively little of it. Some more facts: the layout is in the traditional two-column, black-and-white format, in an easy-to-read font. The many headers are relatively small, not wasting much space. As this hardcover book has 216 pages, this results in a lot of text.
The contents
The book opens with a piece of fiction called Lonely Home. It's rather good in establishing the gut-wrenching mood of Hunter: normal people dedicated to the hunt, but having to sacrifice a lot for this. The three pages thereafter are the Introduction, complete with a 'How to use this book'. Brief and to the point, this wastes almost no time to get to the first real chapter.
'Real chapter' is actually a misnomer: we first get descriptions of the two 'lost' creeds (the general directions hunters are divided in), Hermit and Wayward. These are followers of the Virtue Vision, introduced here and are given a write-up much as in the core rulebook. The creeds have so few followers, that everyone first saw the hunters belonging to this creeds as extreme members of the other, established creeds. So extreme, actually, that it takes a good roleplayer with dedication to play these people. Hermits hear voices all the time when in contact with other imbued, and start the game with a social derangement. Waywards also start the game with a derangement, and have permanent second sight. I'm not thrilled by the addition of these creeds. I can see why they were left out of the core rulebook, as they are very hard to play and not something you should make available to a starting player. What I don't get is the fact that while we do get the descriptions, we don't get their edges — we'll have to buy their Hunter Books for that. Bad form.
The first really 'real' chapter is named
Bystanders and covers them in great detail. This section makes bystanders a playable character class, complete with a new form of character creation where the Virtues Courage, Reason and Self-Control replace the usual Virtues. Also interesting is the fact that a bystander's Conviction can only be restored by trading in a point of Virtue for Conviction: "Essentially, your character loses a part of his better nature in the face of mounting desperation and fear." Bystanders, by extension, fight a losing battle, and their Conviction will dwindle, much like the Sanity rating in
Call of Cthulhu. The chapter also covers a lot of (mostly good) fiction, specific Merits and Flaws, special abilities, reasons why I would want to play a bystander, a bystander's role in hunter groups, 5 character templates and notable bystanders. To be brief: this section is actually a small
Hunter Book: Bystander and I think it's excellent.
Chapter 2: Rules of Engagement provides new rules for character creation. As with most new rules in the book, these are all optional and are not part of the Hunter canon. The chapter isn't very surprising and the new rules are solid, but not awe-inspiring. One option, for example, is for you to cash in all your character creation points for their respective worth (essentially, making them all freebie points) and then buy the Attributes, Abilities and Advantages you want. This system gives you more freedom in character creation and lets you built, for example, a character with relatively more Abilities than Attributes. This is just one example, but it gives you an idea — you could probably come up with some of these rules yourself. As with all optional rules, you don't need these and this chapter can, in this light, be seen as a total waste. However, they offer a little more stuff to work with and it helps the less creative players. What does make this chapter more worthwhile are the four pages discussing True Faith in Hunter — why the authors are against it, and what they offer instead.
By now, we are about halfway through the book and come to Chapter Three: New Traits. Hunter's core rulebook, unlike Vampire's, lacked any Merits and Flaws. The Players Guide provides lots and lots of them however, neatly divided in different categories.
The other part of the chapter examines Backgrounds: what do they cover, what role do they have in play and what are the most common ways to gain and lose them. I always thought that Backgrounds could do with some more coverage, and this section provides this in abundance. Thumbs up for this chapter.
The following chapter, The Measure of Humanity, starts with a discussion on changing creeds in a game: why a character may want to, how it to handle it rules-wise and how members of the different creeds tend to look upon it. This discussion is very detailed, a bit too detailed to my liking. What follows is a discussion of triggers: reasons for using them, or not using them, different types of triggers and ways of changing them. The third section of this chapter is called "Normal people in an abnormal situation". It talks about how to create a normal person as a character, how to play one and how to maintain your drive in playing one. The whole section is solid roleplaying advice, some of which you may have already heard one time or another, but for new players this should be very helpful. Interesting enough, the last part talks about method acting in quite some detail.
The last part of the chapter talks about "A Hunter's Life": what aspects of a person's life change when imbued, what are different approaches to deal with the changes. While it certainly helps to think about these things, I thought that you should consider these problems when they arise, not in advance.
Make Your Own Fate is the final chapter in the book and is again divided in several parts. Two sections discuss on how to approach the hunt: solo or in groups, reasons for doing so and the (dis)advantages of the approach. You can also find a section about the legal system in this chapter. This is very valuable, even though its focus is on the United States, as hunters are bound to run into the law sooner or later. Following this, the book ponders on how and why the various creeds relate to monsters. Again, a good topic that stresses the fact that not every hunter kills every monster at first sight.
Rounding out the book is a section that considers children as hunters. Again: why, how, (dis)advantages. Solid advice.
Writing style
As many as 11 authors contributed to the Hunter Players Guide and as a result of this, there is not one style of writing. Much like the illustrations, the different sections are not credited and I can't discuss them properly. I'll give some general observations, though.
The writing in the book is often good to read, although it can be a bit dry and overly long at times. There are plenty of pieces of fiction presented in the various sections, nicely introducing some questions and complementing the discussions.
The book sometimes gives advice on roleplaying as if there is only one true way to do so, and the council is sometimes more than a suggestion as in the following sentence: "Feel free to use this article as inspiration for making your character's edges a foundation of his identity as a person and one of the imbued".
The book is essentially a collection of various articles on many subjects by many different authors. This sometimes results in overlap, and certain pieces of advice are repeated just a few times to often. If I read one more time that optional rules are optional, and can be ignored at will, I'll begin screaming. Extra editing could have taken care of these problems.
What also bugged me was the large amount of references to other books. I suppose this is unavoidable with elaborate game lines, but this gets at me every time. What bothered me even more was the reference to the discussion of True Faith in The Hunters Hunted and The Inquisition: why talk about True Faith at length, and then refer to some long out-of-print supplements from other game-lines?
Conclusion
So what is verdict? First, the presentation. It's not always in the way I would have liked. Among my problems are the bad subject matter of the illustrations and there are some cracks showing, probably results of the use of so many authors. On the other hand, the layout is very good — style rates, therefore, three out of five.
New players will appreciate the contents more than long-time roleplayers, and some of the advice will be seen as old news. Nevertheless, veteran players will probably be able to find quite a few nuggets of gold here, such as the coverage of Backgrounds. The amount of advice, and the thoroughness in which the items are presented, make sure of this. As the book itself stresses: you can ignore any part of the book at will, and none of the rules (which are sometimes rather pedestrian) are essential. Not a must-have, this 'core' book, but still very useful. This results in a substance rating of four.
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