I admit it; I had a shudder of delight pass through me when I first heard about First Contact. A hard-core fan of those monster-bashing groups that existed in the World of Darkness before Hunters came along, I had high hopes for this book. Having read it, I’m a bit perplexed as to how to describe my feelings for the book. The parts of the book that I had high hopes for, while well-written, covered areas I wasn’t interested in; conversely, sections of the book I was certain I would hate blew me away.
The first seventeen or so pages of First Contact are devoted to Doctor119 who, while having evaded supernatural investigations into his identity, has not been so lucky when it comes to mundane organizations interested in what he has been up to. This story is a wonderful read, but to go into any detail as to why I think so would spoil the fun for those who have yet to read it. By its end two long-standing questions in Hunter have been answered and the framework has been set for two potential big events in the Hunter universe. Also, the stage is set for one minor thing to occur that I hope the writers follow up on, just because I think it would add a brief moment of all-out laughter to Hunter.
Following this is the introduction, which explains that the purpose of First Contact is to introduce pre-existing groups in the World of Darkness to Hunters for the first time. There’s a mention of how the book is written as though a Storyteller’s troupe are the first Hunters ever to encounter the various groups detailed in First Contact, but throughout the book are little fiction bits detailing previously-established Hunters interacting with the various groups covered in this volume. I am really hoping that the writers for Hunter do not ignore what has been written in this book’s character fictions, as there are some really nice bits that are presented here, such as the late Cop90’s work with Arcanum members and (yes, it’s not over yet) the government’s interest in Ciudad Juarez, not to mention the can of worms opened by the book’s opening fiction.
Also in the introduction is a case presented as to why members of the groups detailed in First Contact can’t become imbued. It’s an okay argument, except the idea is again presented that pre-imbuing contact with the supernatural prohibits one from being a Hunter---I ask the author of this to reread the Exposure Background in the Hunter rulebook. Finally there’s a recommended viewing and reading list---I now believe that those responsible for the movie The Frighteners have bribed the White Wolf staff to mention the film whenever possible. On the other hand, I was impressed that the authors were familiar with The Russia House; between this and the mention of Game, Set, and Match in the Hunter Storyteller Handbook I have found my respect for the tastes of White Wolf authors has increased dramatically.
Chapter One covers the Inquisition, everyone’s favorite band of religious monster hunters, who have been a part of the World of Darkness since the first edition of Vampire. They had their own sourcebook, which I didn’t buy, my choice more influence by the layout of the book than the actual contents. Unfortunately in the case of First Contact’s coverage of them, my dislike comes both from layout and content.
This is one of my least-favorite portions of this book. The author does an excellent job with the fiction and background sections of the chapter, and I believe the first problem was totally out of his hands: the Inquisition is broken into several factions, and the descriptions of said factions are just thrown into little boxed sections that interrupt the flow of the rest of the text. I believe this was done so that after reading about various Inquisition members the reader would instantly know their viewpoints and motivations based upon the faction that they belonged to. A nice idea, but I think a separate section with all the factions detailed therein would have been better.
The other problems with this chapter involves omissions, rules, or a combination therefore. First, a subsection of one of the factions detailed, the Sect of Saint James, has no mention made of it at all. Members of this sect ritually kill themselves, after which they arrive in the Shadowlands, and using weapons enchanted in the living world go on killing sprees, exterminating as many ghosts as possible before being destroyed themselves. Given the ongoing events in the Shadowlands and how they relate to Hunter I was very surprised this group received no coverage whatsoever. Certainly this group is aware of what is going on (if only that something bad is going down) in the realm of the dead, and would alert the other factions, giving them a hint as to why zombies and the like are popping up like mushrooms after a spring rain. There’s also mention of blessed crosses and weapons, but no game stats are given for them; I had to hunt down some general rules on them in Hunter’s Hunted and Antagonists. For those lacking those two books, blessed items do aggravated damage to supernaturals, even when used by those who do not possess True Faith.
Speaking of True Faith, there’s a rule system for religious faith here that makes me queasy. I’m a proponent of True Faith (as detailed in Hunter’s Hunted, Project Twilight, and Ascension’s Right Hand, at least) and that Hunters should be able to use it, since I feel that the role-playing necessary to have such a religious characters prevents any sort of munchkinism. That said, I must say I don’t like the Faith system presented for the Inquisition in this book.
Faith is an attribute Inquisition members have from 1 through 10, costing either two Background points or seven Freebie Points at the time of character creation, with later advancement costing ten times the current level in experience points. However this is not the same thing as True Faith----an Inquisition member must have a Faith level of 10 to be considered to have True Faith. Despite the fact that level 10 of Faith is when an Inquisition member is considered to have True Faith (and thus, a link to their God, or a semi-awakened Avatar, depending on which White Wolf books you believe), they get all sorts of goodies at lower Faith levels. At level 4 of Faith an Inquisition member gains the ability to shrug off madness and cloudy memory that come from contact with the supernatural. At level 6 they gain the equivalent of Hunter Second Sight and the Radiate Edge. At levels 8 & 9 they gain the equivalent of Hunter protection from mind control and can perform some minor miracles, like healing others or blessing people and thus giving them a bonus Willpower point. Pretty sweet powers that can be gained by believing in the Almighty, yet not actually having a connection to him.
True Faith, as originally written, was much harder to obtain. It cost 5 or 7 Freebie Points initially (depending on what sourcebook you used) for every dot, with no option to use Background points to build it up. Increasing it with experience had a cost ranging from current level x 3 up to level 5, with 5x after level 5, your current level x 8, or no XP cost because the only way to increase it was with role-playing, again all dependent on what books you were using. It took three points of True Faith to gain resistance to supernatural madness, and no level of True Faith provided immunity to mind control. Admittedly levels 8 to 10 of True Faith could produce some potent miracles, but according to Hunters Hunted someone with True Faith could only produce one miracle per Story, at most; Faith users in the Inquisition, by contrast, have a Faith pool of points to spend to gain miracles each adventure. The new Faith system seems to be ripe for abuse the way most people seem to see the old True Faith system as vulnerable to be taken advantage of.
Theurgy, or religious magic, is also covered. It’s pretty good, though no mention is made of the rituals used by the Inquisition to render members immune to the vampiric powers of Presence and Dominate (something introduced in first edition Vampire). On the plus side we finally are told exactly how Hunters perceive True Faith and Thurgy bearers. Oh, yes, I almost forgot: one of the Inquisition’s factions can detect Hunters, though they appear to them the same way that possession victims do. Another nail into the Hunter Storytellers Handbook FAQ’s coffin...
Chapter Two is titled “Project Twilight,” and I’m torn with my opinion on it. I’d be lying if I said the author did a poor job on this chapter. Detailing how to construct a government agency for your campaign, the author covers pretty much everything you need to consider before introducing such a group into you game, and does so in an entertaining and intelligent matter. Those who never read the Project Twilight book for which this chapter is named won’t be able to find a single thing wrong with this chapter.
Those of you who have, however....
I’ll say right now that I’m heavily biased toward the Project Twilight sourcebook. Until Hunter came along it held the title of Best White Wolf Product Ever in my mind. It was brilliant in its writing, with enough story threads and ideas to keep a campaign going for years. I ran a one-shot Project Twilight game years ago, and had reintroduced the characters from that game into all of the Hunter chronicles I have run. I had hoped First Contact would update Project Twilight (which was the nickname SAD agents held for the group, and not a generic term as the First Contact author leads you to believe; either that or my memory is just fading even faster now), filling us in on what had occurred with the group in recent years. I was especially interested because one member of SAD might have been able to give the US government a glimpse of what was really going on in the Shadowlands, and I really wanted to see how that might affect its encounters with Hunters. Sadly, this chapter has the head of SAD pretty much saying “Keep an eye on imbued,” and that’s pretty much the extent of SAD coverage, along with some fiction revolving around a pair of SAD agents encountering a Hunter. I understand the reasoning behind not making this chapter a simple update of Project Twilight, but it doesn’t easy my disappointment. If anyone at White Wolf is listening: Project Twilight needs a second edition, updating SAD and everything else that was covered in the book.
Chapter three covers the Arcanum, a group devoted to studying all aspects of the supernatural. I used to have the Halls of the Arcanum sourcebook, with an emphasis on “had.” It was a boring book. Not bad, but boring. The book portrayed the Arcanum as a bunch of bookworm scholars who studied information on Kindred as intently as reports on the Loch Ness Monster or Mole People, and the bookworm element seemed to ooze forth and put me to sleep as I read through it.
Well, the Arcanum coverage in First Contact didn’t induce drowsiness, but it did induce many “huhs?” in my mind. There’s no mention of the Arcanum’s contact with a mummy that was in Hall of the Arcanum, which seemed odd, given Mummy: the Resurrection being out, and portions of this chapter seem more appropriate to a Call of Cthulhu book than Hunter, with tales of books and cryptic lore that drive people mad. And then there’s the secret truth about the Arcanum.
You see, before going totally mad, the founder of the Arcanum compiled what could be called “Ye Secret Repository of All That’s Supernatural and Bad in the World of Darkness,” and among said tidbits of knowledge was that the 21st Century is the end time of everything. Mind you, no other book previously published so much as hinted at that bit of information. Add to that the idea of Arcanum members becoming far more aggressive in their activities (doing everything from trying to subtly increase awareness in the supernatural to some even confronting supernatural entities themselves) and it’s a far cry from the “we just want to learn” attitude portrayed in Halls of the Arcanum. I’m uncertain of the reasoning behind these changes; it’s almost as though the author(s) wanted the Arcanum to be more receptive to working with Hunters, and felt the only way to do so was to give the Arcanum a little postcard saying “Hey, the Apocalypse is on its way.” There’s also an odd bit, where the author seems to believe that the Discern Edge works on non-supernaturals, just so long as they’ve been affected in some way by an encounter with the supernatural (not under the influence of mystical powers mind you, but just having their outlooks and mindset altered by encountering the magical), allowing Sherlock Holmes-like deductions based on the most minimal of evidence. If you can get past those facts, however, you should be able to enjoy this chapter and use it in your game.
Chapter four covers the Dauntain, a type of Nightmare that wars against its own kind. Almost a year to the day I bought First Contact I had in my possession a copy of The Autumn People, the Changeling sourcebook that originally covered the Dauntain. I had bought The Autumn People solely to resell it, knowing several people willing to pay large amounts of money for it to fill in the gap in their collection. While I had the book I read through it, and I found it hard to follow and uninteresting. Having read this chapter of First Contact, I am now ready to hunt down a copy of The Autumn People and the Changeling rulebook so I can run full-blown Dauntain in my game. This chapter was far easier to follow than the Autumn People, and I now understand both their motivations and their powers. My hat is off to the author of this chapter. My only complaint concerns a rules system for detecting some Dauntain, who are instinctively able to hide themselves from Second Sight. The way the rules are written in this book a player must declare his character is spending two points of Conviction, not just one, when using Second Sight. Mind you, the rules in all previous books have made no mention of “stacking” the spending of Conviction points in any way, shape, or form, and the only way a player would know to do so would be to have read the Storyteller section of the chapter (or this review). This seems like a hose job for the players: I would instead recommend that Hunters using Second Sight have to make some sort of Perception Awareness roll to get past the Dauntain’s natural camouflage. At the very least, it would encourage players to actually buy the Awareness attribute, something I’ve rarely seen happen.
Chapter five is devoted to three groups, beginning with the Orphic Circle. I was prepared to hate this portion of the chapter, after the information presented on them in The Walking Dead sourcebook for Hunter. To summarize for those who haven’t read The Walking Dead, in that book the Circle was made out to be a bunch of major servants of evil, and Hunters were led to believe the group might have been responsible for the influx of the undead into the world of the living. After going on and on about the vile nature of the group and how important it is to stop any plans they are involved in, Hunters were given clues to the location of the Circle’s former headquarters. Once you got to the Storyteller’s section of the book you learned that going to the headquarters was certain death for Hunters. I don’t mean “incredible odds against which Hunters had the slimmest of chances to triumph over,” I mean the book actually said that Hunters going there were totally unable to change or confront the horrible evil there, and the best they could hope for was destroying a bunch of mook monsters before dying. Pretty much the whole players section on the Circle seemed to be a Honey Pot of a trap to lure Hunters there so Storytellers could crush the characters mercilessly and laugh in their faces when they realized how futile their efforts were. Given that, I was expecting another major “Ka-Screw-U” section here in First Contact.
I was very pleased to find myself wrong.
One of the reasons I find Hunter more enjoyable than Call of Cthulhu is that it lacked the “humanity is doomed no matter what it does” message of CoC. Or, at least, it did until the Hunter Players Guide and Hunter Storytellers Handbook came along, where the idea that Hunters could save humanity from its monstrous oppressors was pretty much excremented upon: it’s a toss up as to whether this was done to attract CoC fans or because World of Darkness games are not allowed to have happy endings for their protagonists. Because of this I was ready to find in First Contact a description of the Circle’s latest world-threatening plot that Hunters had no chance of stopping. Instead we’re treated to something I would never have expected to see in a Hunter (or any WoD) product: a world-threatening group brought to its knees, with no real chance of regaining their former might. I really enjoyed this section, being the first time that I’ve seen any sort of evil group in the WoD brought low, with no real chance of regaining their former might. There’s enough here for a Storyteller to use the beaten-down Circle members in their Hunter chronicle, along with info from previous books the Circle appeared in, if you wish to use them pre-disaster.
The Benandanti are covered next, a dying breed of individuals who are able to send their spirits into the Shadowlands (though it’s not a healthy thing to do in recent years), and are capable of fashioning mystical artifacts which can allow them to view the realms of the dead and weapons which can destroy spirits, zombies, and even vampires (Storyteller permitting on the last one). As it stands the Benandanti are an interesting group that could be excellent allies for a band of Hunters. I am disturbed how members of the group show up to Hunter Second Sight. While their mystical artifacts show up as wrong, the Benandantis themselves appear normal to Second Sight except when using their magical trinkets. The argument for this limited ability to evade Second Sight focuses on how a Benandanti’s mystic talent is tied to his artifacts, and the loss of said artifacts results in the loss of all mystic might.
This argument doesn’t work for me. We’ve been led to believe (with two exceptions; one of which I believe was a mistake by a writer, and the second an attempt to cover for said mistake) that Second Sight doesn’t differentiate between the power level of a supernatural or how it uses them (True Faith and Theurgy notwithstanding): wrong is wrong to Second Sight. Heck, after reading this section I could see players of Hedge Magicians who make potions or magic talismans or mages who require foci to use their Spheres using the Benandantis as an example of why their characters should not show up to Second Sight. Perhaps a better argument could have been made that the Messengers intentionally shield the Benandanti from Second Sight, in hopes of preventing a blood bath between potential allies. I rather like that idea, though I view it from the perspective of the Messengers seeing the Benandantis as cannon fodder for use by Hunters.
There’s also a discussion of Hellstorms, where there is an odd mention of Second Sight, portraying it as being far less effective in terms of detecting supernaturals than it has been portrayed in all other Hunter books. Finally, those who read Holy War and were disturbed by the idea that the Edges introduced in that volume were available only to those Hunters from the Middle East will enjoy the unique use of one of those Edges in this chapter by the Hunter known as Lotus. All in all this is an excellent section.
First Contact ends with coverage of the NSA. It’s an interesting read---the government’s anti-ghost technology is fully explained, along with NSA concerns and procedures regarding the supernatural. I’m still enjoying the idea that it is mundane, non-Mage technology that is capable of vaporizing spirits. Hints given in the Wayward Creedbook are shown to be true in this section, as the Hunter Shophet reveals his true colors---a bit of continuity I like---and Soldier90 is also followed up on from Wayward, finally going off in search of long-missing Shaka74. The section concerning NSA operations outside the United States was a little disappointing. While just as well-written as the rest of the NSA section, a portion of it is written as though it were to explain one of the lingering plot points in The Walking Dead. While it does cover the matter to some extent, there’s enough of a discrepancy/lack of exact information that it raises more questions than it answers. Mayhaps the intent of the author is to reveal that the situation presented in The Walking Dead started out like the ones presented in First Contact, but got FUBAR’ed at some point. That could be a cool idea, but given the amount of time between the publication of The Walking Dead and when White Wolf started following up on major plot points from it, I wouldn’t be surprised if we have to wait until 2004 to see what happens next.
One last bit on the NSA: no mention is made of Bruce Higgins, Maurice Edwards, and Felicity Price. These three individuals were NSA agents touched by the supernatural in various ways who appeared in several White Wolf products, then seemed to suddenly vanish without explanation. I would have like to have finally seen some closure on this.
Finally, I must comment on the art of the book. Let me start with the cover art, which I seem to interpret differently every time I look at it. Since the first time I saw it in Previews the art has either been modified or cropped, as the two Men in Black in the background have disappeared in the published version. At any rate, looking at that shrunken preview of the art I took it to be a picture of a SAD agent taking on a redheaded Hunter, having stabbed her (hence the blood spurt coming from her armpit) while readying his trusty German Mauser. It was only as I sat down to write this review that I realized in fact it was the woman who was holding the knife. Then the snide comment came to mind that the redhead couldn’t possibly be a Hunter, as she’s in excellent shape and very attractive, and the White Wolf party line is that Hunters are all common folks, so an individual in such amazingly good health and possessing such attractive features could not be a Hunter. It was about ten seconds after that idea hit me that I realized it wasn’t blood on the cover near the woman’s armpit, but some sort of nimbus of energy around her hand, suggesting she is indeed not a Hunter but some sort of human-oppressing abomination.
The point of my ranting about this? There isn’t one, really. I just like talking about the cover, as I think it’s the best artwork to be found on the cover of any Hunter supplement to date, even exceeding the cover art of Holy War (the only good part of that book, IMUO). A Darwin Talon is credited with the cover art, and if he maintains this level of quality I’d love to see him be the ongoing cover artists for future Hunter products.
As for the interior art, while there’s one artist whose work in the book I found terrible, the rest of the artists have produced works that are worthy of publication, even those whose style is not my cup of tea. You can tell that a lot of work went into the illustrations, lacking that rushed and amatuerish look that is sometimes found in other Hunter products. There is one artist’s work in this book that confuses me---I can’t tell if he is intentionally using shading and dark tones to obscure images in his artwork, or if it is just a byproduct of White Wolf’s printing process that has left some of his pictures hard to make out.
So do I recommend First Contact? As long as you can accept that it’s not a simple update of previous WoD books, and ignore the problems I mentioned above, you should find it an enjoyable and worthwhile read.
Go to forum!
(Due to spamming, old forum discussions are no linked.)