I wasn't expecting much from Moonstruck, the shapeshifter sourcebook for Hunter. After the problems I had with the Nocturnal sourcebook I was in no hurry to buy Moonstruck. I now have to admit after reading it that Moonstruck is a book I can recommend to others, despite a handful of flaws that made me want to shake the authors involved and scream "What were you thinking!"
Prologue I'm afraid the start of the book was a waste of time for me, more for the star of the tale than with any problem with the author's work on it. The story focuses on Ticket, first introduced in the Innocent Creedbook. As a friend of mine put it, "Ticket never learned that with great power comes great responsibility," instead viewing the duties of the imbued as something to do when she has some spare time.
In this tale Ticket goes on vacation, only to wander into a dispute between shapeshifters. Told as it is with Ticket's "I'm so stupid I should stick my head in a garbage disposal" attitude, I found myself wishing the story was over before it really had begun. It also didn't help that it was done in first-person narration---see my rpg.net review of Nocturnal if you care to know why it bugged me.
The direct narration actually showed the only problem I had with the author's work on the tale. Ticket interjects totally random (and idiotic) comments in the midst of her wondering if she'll live or die; the character suddenly saying she got a dirt cheap flight and that she rules because of it really spoiled the mood of the tale.
Another problem is that the author tries to explain Ticket's survival (yes, she lives: we could never be that lucky) by the use of a power introduced in the Innocent Creedbook, namely Fool's Luck. It would have made more sense given the circumstances of the story that she had used the Hide Edge to survive. Fool's Luck is the most argued-about Edge when it comes to how it works and how effective it is, and if felt like it was used here just to prove it's a worthwhile ability.
Finally, this tale has the only mention/use of werewolves' animal attraction ability in the entire book. For those unfamiliar with Werewolf, all werewolves have a special power which (if they roll well enough) allows them to force people to have sex with them---basically a supernatural date rape drug. The fact that shapeshifters see nothing wrong with raping to continue their race (and when this power is used it's rape---don't fucking tell me otherwise) always made me uncomfortable with playing Werewolf, and I'm sure this tidbit of knowledge would do much for Hunters and their players to recognize shapeshifters are not their friends, yet NOTHING is said about it in the rest of the book, though mention is made of normal (no magic use) rapes by lycanthropes.
Introduction As you can expect, it gives an overview of what to expect in the book, plus some text that was accidentally dropped from the Wayward Creedbook.
Chapter1 & Chapter 4 I'm not sure why these two chapters are not one long chapter. Unlike other similar break-ups of a story in a Hunter book there's no change in perspective that warrants it being split into separate chapters---perhaps White Wolf thinks its readers have short attention spans, and wouldn't have read straight through it if was one long chapter. Whatever the reason, I'll review the pair of chapters together.
This tale is told in a series of entries typed into a laptop computer by a hunter after a plane crash. One of the passengers is a lycanthrope, and as they try to get back to civilization the hunter tries to figure out who the beast is. While 90% good, the remaining 10% of the chapter is of the "What the Hell! Did you ever read a Hunter or Werewolf book before you wrote this?" variety. Despite that fact, I found myself enjoying the tale immensely.
I'll start with the good: This tale is well-written, and the characters are believable Even though I figured out the identity of the werewolf within twenty seconds of reading the story (and the secret behind a pair of other characters in another 10), on occasion I was almost tempted to change my guess because of the facts presented; that's not something that happens to a stubborn lad like me very often. There are no gigantic leaps of logic as found in a later portion of this book that make you lose interest or say "what the heck?" It was nice.
As for the bad, there are two non-spoliery things that gave me problems. First the entire story is remarkably similar to an issue of the Elementals comic. It felt odd to be reading another "plane goes down in the northern wilderness due to a werewolf, and the survivors of the crash have to both survive the environment & discover who the monster in their midst is" story. Because of this a lot of the novelty of the story was lost for me.
Second, the ending of the story is ambiguous, and it's possible that the young child in the tale survives. Why is this bad? Because this is the second Hunter book I've read in a row (the first was Fall from Grace) where a child (or children) survive for a happy ending that involves werewolves in some way. We keep hearing about Hunter being a realistic-tone game, but the continued survival of "innocent" children makes it have the feel of a Afterschool Special or sappy family movie. I want to see a higher kill count when children encounter monsters in Hunter products, even if it means importing a Baby Grinder from Hong Kong.
Okay, the rest of my problems with these chapters are SPOILER-FILLED. Since my attempts to make the following text "invisible" unless highlighted have failed for some reason, those uninterested in spoilers should just skim down to the next bit of bold text.
Okay, the problems, by the numbers:
1. A physical injury can inhibit the use of Edges, powers sent from above by cosmic beings? I say to you "What the Fuck?" I mean, it's been shown that the Edge Discern can let people see even if they have no eyeballs, and Rejuvenate allows a Hunter to regenerate damage to the body; how can a bump on the noggin' inhibit powers that can work even when a Hunter doesn't have the body parts normally associated with them? In the various Hunter books a lot of powers go off when a Hunter goes to Incapacitated health status, but that's like being unconscious or being too busy holding your intestines so they don't fall out to summon up the power. This just came off as a crappy excuse for the writer to say the Hunter couldn't use Second Sight so he could present his little murder mystery. I didn't like that at all.
2. The werewolf on the plane tells the Hunter she crashed the plane to meet the werewolves that lived in the area. Yes, that's the best way to meet a band of (apparent) Red Talons--smash a giant machine that could explode into a giant fireball into their unspoiled part of nature!
3. The hunter figures out the werewolf's identity by the way she has no bug bites on her, because she regenerates the damage from them. However, the werewolf is noted as having an injury after the plane crash, one that she says "isn't as bad as she first thought," obviously to explain away her having partially healed it. Now, my understanding is that only the worst kinds of injuries (fire, toxic waste, etc.) leave permanent scars on a werewolf. So that leg wound should have healed up in a short time without a scratch, and since the wound was visible to everybody someone should have noticed that. I think I'd noticed a serious leg injury vanishing before I noticed a lack of bug bites on a person.
Chapters 2 & 5 Again, I don't know why this wasn't put together as one big chapter. Several established Hunters show up, along with a few lesser ones, to discuss and deal with the lycanthropes of Europe.
I was very pleased with these chapters, primarily because the hunters are not portrayed as stupid, as they have been in some Hunter books. Here the imbued collect the data they have and make informed, intelligent deductions that are closer to the truth about lycanthropes than I thought White Wolf would allow in a Hunter book. They make stupid conclusions as well, but they make sense in the context of what they know. There's also a brief glimpse of how Hunters deal with/perceive Wyrm activity. All in all these are an excellent pair of chapters.
Chapter 3 I'll be honest, I was prepared to hate this chapter. While skimming through this book I opened to the SAD letterhead on page 40, and it quickly became apparent there was no continuity between the note and SAD's appearance in First Contact. Seeing as Project: Twilight (where SAD was fleshed out) is my all-time favorite non-Hunter WW book I was saddened by this, and even the (perhaps unintentional) humor of the last name of a long established SAD character and the fact that the info in this chapter is told in the format of audio tapes didn't give me much hope for the chapter.
How glad I was to be wrong.
I've only one complaint about the chapter, and that's that the Hunter protagonist makes one of the worst mistakes a Hunter can make, one that I've never seen any player ever do. Of course, without that mistake we couldn't have this story. Aside from that, I've got nothing else to gripe about in this chapter.
The chapter covers the research & field activity of two werewolf hunters. It's well-written, and the coverage of historical lycanthropes legends & myths is well-researched and concise. But the best part of this chapter is the amount of WOD-specific information referenced here.
The lack of willingness by WW to have crossovers among its game lines in recent years has saddened me. I've also been befuddled several times as epic, world-altering (and highly visible/public) events have occurred in a book for one game, with no repercussions or even mention of it in books for other game lines. Therefore, I was truly impressed by this chapter, as during the course of the characters' investigations references are made to events & characters from Werewolf books. It's only a few paragraphs, written so that those unfamiliar with the books referenced can easily follow along, but it still brought a smile to my face of this long-time WW reader. It was wonderful to see that WW is sometimes still willing to have cross-line continuity.
Chapter 6 continues chapter 3, with the hunter finally realizing her mistake. This chapter shines for two reasons. First, it continues chapter 3's nod to what has come before, having a link to the Munchkin himself, Samuel Haight. I'd heard WW shied away from mentioning Sammy and his escapades as of late, but here the Skinner's legacy lives on. I'm a bit confused by this, as there was no mention of Sammy sharing his "knowledge" with other kinfolk about Skindancing, but it's a bit of retconning I can deal with.
The other great thing about this chapter is the way shapeshifters misunderstand the imbued. As often as hunters misinterpret facts about the supernatural due to their personal viewpoints it was a real treat to see supernatural entities being just as mistaken regarding Hunters. Their reasoning is valid, though those unfamiliar with Werewolf may not enjoy it as much as I did.
I only had two problems with this chapter. At one point a hunter is talking to a skindancer when she pulls this deduction out of her ass regarding the skindancers' motivation for some of their activities. I think the writer wanted said deduction to be correct, but based on what was said before the deduction is spoken it makes no sense for the character to come to the conclusion she did.
The other problem revolves around the end of a chapter with a kinfolk who can't seem to be malevolent or benevolent as she speaks to a Hunter, flipping from one end of the spectrum to the other for no good reason.
Chapter 7 is the rules portion of the book, and for the most part does an admirable job of presenting an expanded rules system for Storytellers to use. There are certain changes in rules from Werewolf that may seem odd to some, but 99% of the alterations are understandable. I'm still sad that Hunter hasn't included the rules from Werewolf that high-Willpower humans can comprehend lycanthropes without going nuts.
Among my few complaints is that one of the Hunter-specific rules regarding Werewolves is changed. In the Avengers Creedbook it was made to sound as though weapons mixed with silver worked fine against werewolves; now it seems only pure silver will do. Also, the Transcend Edge from the Hermit Creedbook is hinted as being a way to access the Umbra, something its write-up in the Hermit book made NO mention of. I also have some problems with the write-ups for the non-werewolf shapeshifters, but that shouldn't be a problem for those unfamiliar with the Werewolf books related to them.
As for the non-rules portion of this chapter... it's pretty good. I was disappointed that for the second time the concept of how werewolves view hunters is covered; while at least mentioning the concept that werewolves might mistake hunters for mages, it still seems as though shifters have a large pile of stupid in place of their brains when it comes to understanding hunters. I also had problems with the section on werewolves' relation to kinfolk (it seems to be totally the opposite of every Werewolf book & novel I've read) and another involving werewolf genetics, though that involves some old Mage books, and may have been retconned in recent years.
One problem that is found throughout this book is that almost every Hunter is able to use Second Sight to determine exactly what type of supernatural a creature is by looking at it. Either the writers didn't understand that all monsters look plain old wrong to Second Sight without distinguishing exactly what kind they are, or nearly every freakin' Hunter in this book has the Discern Edge, which just seems plain old odd to me.
Oh, another nice touch about this book is that it finally clears up how kinfolk look to Second Sight, being oh-so-wrong, just like any other critter that is supernatural. After the contradictions about this in some early Hunter books I was glad to have it clarified.
As for the art of the book--the cover sucks. The Conan-esque sword bugged me along with the style of the art, and the fact the girl on the cover is reminiscent of an ex-coworker who stalked me for nearly a year really didn't help. The interior art is pretty good, which surprised me. One of the artists who worked on Moonstruck is a person who produced some pretty crappy work in earlier Hunter releases, and I had trouble believing it was the same person who did the art. Ron Spencer's work also surprised me, as in previous works the normal humans in his drawings looked as disfigured and unclean as the monsters he draws. In Moonstruck he actually depicts humans as humans. I hope it lasts.
All in all I recommend Moonstruck for anyone interested in Hunter. I'm even going to give this one a 4 for Style, despite the horrible bits that occurred in chapter 1 & 3. It was just that engrossing for me, though I hope never to see those kinds of gaffes in a Hunter book again.
Now if someone would just explain why in a Hunter sourcebook on werewolves there's a two-page ad for Vampire products...
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