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The Good: The emphasis on teamwork and organization is excellent, both conceptually and mechanically. Willpower risking and Tactics are useful and welcome mechanics that provide Hunters with a notable edge. The supernatural abilities and shadowy organizations are interesting and well written.
The Bad: Many Hunters sport as much or more occult power than the things they’re hunting, and some of the abilities available to Hunters cut against the mood of “humans fighting monsters.” Instead of having its own distinct outlook, Hunter tends towards being integrated into the rest of the World of Darkness. Characters tend to be “paper tigers” – they can dish out the damage but they can’t take it.
The Physical Thing
This 374 page black, white, and green hardcover showcases the same excellent production values found in other major White Wolf releases. Good editing, a useful index, and inspiring artwork come together to create a solid product.Under the Cover
If you’re approaching Hunter with the attitude that it’s about mortals desperately trying to push back the night you’re right, to an extent. The game’s theme and focus is definitely on small groups fighting monsters. However, they’re not all noble folk. Some are in it for the thrill. Some are in it for power. Many have just as much supernatural power as the creatures they hunt.Hunter opens with a nice, simple history of the hunt. Many historical epics are cited for examples of monster slaying and the book does a good job of building a feel for a never ending battle between humanity and the monsters. Today this battle tends to be secretive out of necessity. The monsters control a lot of the media, people aren’t prepared to believe in them, and hunters are organized to protect their members.
Individual hunters are organized into a cell, a small group of pseudo-anonymous folk that work together within a small region to take down the baddies. Some individual hunters (or cells) belong to Compacts, which are larger organizations of hunters with a similar worldview. Fewer hunters belong to Conspiracies, which are national or global organizations of hunters bearing immense resources and power.
The core villain group for Hunter is basically the entire World of Darkness. Vampires, Werewolves, and Mages along with cultists, serial killers, and anything else you can think of are all fair game. The book does include a nice, simple power system to enable the Storyteller to build an antagonist without access to any other book.
With so many dangerous foes hunters need every advantage they can get. Let’s examine the mechanical advantages granted to hunters. First and foremost, hunters are built just like regular mortals in the World of Darkness corebook. A character may have a four in one stat, but 2s and 3s rule the day. A hunter may be able to charge in with a shotgun and do some serious damage, but at the end of the day many of them are just as vulnerable to a vampire’s bite as anyone else. The focus is on planning and Tactics.
Tactics are a new addition to hunter, and a solidly implemented one. Entire cells learn Tactics by spending experience points and practicing the Tactic together. Mechanically each Tactic has set Attribute and Skill requirements to pull it off and a minimum number of people. For example, a Tactic that requires two people (a primary and a secondary) will necessitate that two characters do nothing but make that Tactic happen in a given round. Dice are rolled by the primary and if it’s successful then the Tactic’s effect comes into play.
Tactics can be very powerful. My favorite is a Tactic that sets an opponent on fire and then keeps them on fire. As long as the required characters use this Tactic every round the creature is unable to smother the flames, and even if they were the characters are assumed to reapply the fire. This can make short work of many monstrous foes, and it showcases how preparation and teamwork are the key to victory for hunters.
Hunters have a few more core edges, the biggest being Willpower Risking. A character can choose to Risk Willpower when they spend it on a roll. If they succeed they get it back and get an extra point. If they fail they fail dramatically. There are limitations, of course, such as restricting the option to once per scene. I think one of the core ideas is to make sure hunters have plenty of Willpower to burn. Risking on investigation scenes to build up for the big fight, for example, is probably a good idea and means that the hunter will have that much more of an edge when things becomes really serious. Hunters also receive additional experience points, called Practical Experience, when they encounter and deal with the supernatural. Practical Experience has some limitations, but by the book it appears to result in people quickly becoming stronger as they have to learn how to deal with new threats.
Another advantage is in their choice of Merits. Hunters have access to Professional Training, a new Merit that serves as the Contacts Merit within the hunter’s field of expertise and also provides a variety of small perks. It’s a worthwhile addition and, in my view, enables a hunter to more easily spent Merit points on character relevant perks. Of course, that’s nothing compared to where a few points in Status: (Compact or Conspiracy).
The special powers in Hunter are granted through Conspiracies, the really large hunter organizations. With a point in Status: (Conspiracy) a character can start buying Bestowments from whatever organization she belongs to. Sound interesting? They are. Let’s delve into the special organizations and their benefit plans.
Six Compacts, the mid-level organized group, are included. Compacts don’t offer any special powers and are excellent choices for Storytellers who want to keep Bestowments out of the game or who want organizations that showcase a certain human attitude towards the occult. Each one feels unique, well considered, and a little exotic. This is great because these groups can easily create situations where hunters will face hard choices.
Of the Compacts (Ashwood Abbey, Long Night, Loyalists of Thule, Network Zero, Null Mysteriis, and The Union) I really enjoy Network Zero the most. The question occasionally comes up in modern horror games “how can the monsters be hidden?” Network Zero knows the answer – that people don’t believe in them and monsters control the airwaves – but nevertheless makes strong use of social networking sites, YouTube, and other online resources to try and show people that the monsters are here and we can do something about them.
While Network Zero doesn’t provide any special powers, consider how useful Status: Network Zero is. At low levels you have access to Network Zero and can use it to disseminate information or get help in dealing with a problem (ie, posting “What is this?”) By level five your character is the go-to person and receives videos, letters, and other useful information. As long as you can keep that hidden from the monsters then you have an incredibly powerful resource at your disposal by being the hub of information for hunters the world over. That’s also an easy justification for buying Occult 5!
The Compacts are interesting and can work well on their own. The Conspiracies, however, really push a lot of my cool buttons. Let me reiterate, though, that the benefits of the Conspiracies may make other hunters want to kill your character. In play it quickly became apparent that the Lucifurge member was going to have to lay on the bullshit nice and thick to explain throwing hellfire and making use of prophecy. The hunters do hunt wizards, after all, and one of their number who throws magical fire around is going to be asked some hard questions.
The Conspiracies include: Aegis Kai Doru, Ascending Ones, Cheiron Group, Lucifuge, Malleus Maleficarum, and Task Force: VALKYRIE. Each group is international, extremely powerful, and able to arm characters with secrets and equipment capable of providing a notable edge against the enemy. For the sake of brevity I’m going to focus on three of the six groups, the three that we got to mess with in play.
Task Force: VALKYRIE is a United States government group that seems like a hybrid between the F.B.I. and Special Forces. They tend to be very focused in their endeavors and operate surgically to quickly neutralize any threat. I found them to be a very useful group in play as a go-to resource and for cleanup after a disaster. VALKYRIE provides players with access to Advanced Armory, a series of Merits that include slightly futuristic (but only slightly) weapons and weapons built to counteract certain mystical abilities. The gear is clever, fun and worked well in play. One character, for example, had a sniper rifle that could discern non-human entities (thanks to a special scope) and a magazine of Etheric Rounds. In play she could actually snipe dematerialized spirits from a safe distance, and did so to spectacular effect. Another character had access to Etheric Goggles, which enabled him to see clues and threats out of phase with this reality (in Twilight).
Each Conspiracy only gets a few pages of potential items/powers, which provides some variety but left me hungry for more. No character can afford everything, of course, but a third or half of the powers offered are certainly possibilities for characters depending on how the powers for a given group are purchased. Some are just bought as Merits on their own while others are received as part of the Status Merit. I don’t think the cost is always well balanced, especially considering the potency of some of the Lucifuge abilities, but one of the nice things about the different groups is that there isn’t too much overlap in abilities.
Let’s take a deeper look at a few of these groups and the gifts they bestow on their membership. The Cheiron Group, or The Company, is all about acquiring supernatural entities and adapting their unique properties for human benefit. The dark side of this is that The Company kidnaps and experiments on monsters, sometimes in gruesome fashion. Many hunters working for this conspiracy have monster parts implanted into their body. In play one character had the Bestowment: Regenerative Nodule, a 4 dot Merit that enabled her to fully regenerate health once a week as long as she had an enormous amount of food to eat and drink. These Bestowments are particularly fun to think about and it’s hard to imagine a character’s Morality (or general sanity) not suffering from them.
The Lucifuge is a Conspriacy composed of Satan’s actual descendents who have forsaken their heritage, at least in a not doing evil sense, and use the gifts of their blood to fight against evil. Their abilities are dark and magical, ranging from Familiars and Hellfire to Infernal Visions and Tongue of Babel. We played with all of these abilities, and they were very powerful. The Lucifuge member was able to communicate with everyone, foretell the future, deal aggravated damage to others (at a price), and scout out target locations exceptionally well. The abilities are very clearly magical and otherworldly. Our Lucifuge decided to use ‘magical relics’ to explain her power, which worked well. Just keep in mind that the Lucifuge is probably the most in danger of being taken down by other hunters, but it’s not the only group with magical powers.
Malleus Maleficarum are witch hunters, priests, and the hidden inquisition. They’re holy men and women who serve God by driving evil out of the world, often at the point of a sword. For their devotion they are granted Benedictions, some of which are extremely useful. Wrathful Sword allows a follower to turn a mundane object into an aggravated damage dealing holy weapon. The Hands allow a character to mystically heal another with just a touch. The Boon of Lazarus will return a recently fallen ally to life, though they do return mentally scarred from the ordeal. As you can imagine, magical healing and resurrection alone make this Conspiracy an extremely helpful one to belong to.
The nice thing about these and other organizations is that you certainly don’t have to use them. If you want to avoid magical powers and super technology in your hunter game then just don’t include the Conspiracies. The power level increase from the Conspiracy benefits is noticeable and provides the hunters with a major edge in their fights. They still won’t be wielding as much raw power as a vampire, werewolf, or mage, but they’ll have enough anti-monster tricks going on that even a bad investigation shouldn’t be the end. On the other hand, it’s worth noting that the Conspiracies and special powers do take up quite a bit of space. If you’re really not interested in including them then you may find that Hunter: The Vigil isn’t worth it when you already have the ability to run a mortals game with the core book.
That’s it for characters. The remainder of the book handles Equipment and Storyteller support. The Equipment is well done in that a variety of immediately useful recommendations are provided for stuff hunters would probably make use of. Luminol, for instance, didn’t spring to my mind before reading this section. The Storyteller support is good, especially in how it strives to provide tools for those who want to play Hunter but don’t own other products like Mage: The Awakening. A simple creation system is provided to help Storytellers create their own bad guys, and while it doesn’t cover every imagined possibility it does do a good job of hitting the highlights.
Other Storytelling support of note includes example monsters, complete with a history that can immediately be thrown into a game, suggestions on tweaking Morality, and a mini-setting in the form of Shadows of Philadelphia.
My Take
I think the highlight of this product is the use of Tactics and Willpower Risking, two concepts that I like a lot and that make sense. The option of playing hunters with some supernatural power behind them is also nice for those that want it, but I’m left with some thematic and balance concerns regarding some of those abilities. I also feel like this product is trying to be two different games at the same time and in doing so it doesn’t quite manage to do either one as well as it could. For supernaturally empowered humans I want more content, and for purely mortal hunters I can’t say I would include more than a few mechanics and organizations.That said, I think for most groups Hunter is going to be well received. It provides just enough of the supernatural to make the characters feel like badass heroes, and the emphasis on teamwork results in a fun game where everyone’s cheering as you take down the big bad.
