How to Run Hunter: the Reckoning

By

Aaron Dembski-Bowden

Imagine there was a layer of reality that very few people had the ability to perceive. A reality where the souls of the dead cling tenaciously to their corpses in order to execute unfinished business. A reality where the addictive, mind-altering blood of vampires runs in the veins of police officers and politicians, while the vampires that control these people exist unchallenged in their evil. Imagine werewolves running in the wilderness outside cities, howling at the moon as they chase down their prey — a small band of camping guys who pitched their tents in the wrong territory.

Now imagine that the only people who can truly see this underlying reality are people just like you and me. The cute girl who works in the record store. The young man who installs your cable TV. The crotchety old lady who runs your school library.

That is the core of Hunter: the Reckoning. You play one of the few people who can see the hidden truths of the World of Darkness, and with your new knowledge, a few powers, and your wits, you get to try and make the world a better place. Lucky you.

The moment where hunters are suddenly confronted with the truth is usually an encounter with a creature of some form or another. The hunter reacts to the creature in some way, and triggers his new powers according to his actions. This scene is called an Imbuing, and the powers displayed are known as Edges. The actions at an Imbuing also decide a hunter’s Creed. A Creed is a basic set of morals, an ‘attitude’ towards the creatures of the night. A hunter who sees a walking corpse attacking a young woman in an alley might react immediately with violence, developing combat-related Edges, and becoming a member of the Avenger or Judge Creeds. If he acts solely to protect the woman, regardless of physical dangers, he might become one of the Defender or Martyr Creeds. If he reacted by confronting the corpse with demands for explanations, or otherwise examining the situation in depth before acting, he may become one of the more thoughtful Visionary Creed.

At the Imbuing, a hunter first hears or sees evidence of the Messengers, the mysterious presences that bestow supernatural abilities on the chosen humans. Many hunters hear a voice in their heads, either instructional or descriptive in nature, regarding the creature they are confronting. ‘IT DOES NOT LIVE’ might be the message when a hunter faces off against one of the walking dead. ‘END ITS SUFFERING’ might be the advice given to a hunter faced with a tortured ghost who haunts the site of its death. Other ways for the Messengers to contact a hunter are through visual aids. A man reading a newspaper in a café might suddenly read the text ‘IT HIDES ITS TRUE SHAPE’, as a werewolf in human form enters the room.

The main aspect of being Imbued is not the Edges it gives, however. The true gift of the Imbuing is the power of Second Sight. This is a hunter’s main weapon in his arsenal. With Second Sight active, a hunter can see through any supernatural illusions, deceptions or invisibility, and remains immune to mind-altering supernatural powers as long as his Second Sight is operating. Second Sight is what allows hunters to see the truth of the world. When it is not activated, hunters are as defenseless and blind as normal humans, not seeing either supernatural influence anywhere, nor receiving any protection against it.

A hunter needs allies, because The Hunt is also aptly known as the Most Dangerous Game, or ‘MDG.’ Survival chances are greatly improved if you tag along with a bunch of fellow Imbued. That way, there’s a combination of Edges and outlooks on the Hunt itself. The best place to meet allies, exchange information, or more likely, get into massive flame-wars, is Hunter-net, a large website and mailing list only accessible by the Imbued and their closest allies.

With Hunter-net, players can interact with others of their kind, trade information and offer advice to their fellows. Hunter-net is useful as a Storytelling device, because it offers many opportunities for plot hooks and NPC interaction. A hunter could ‘tip off’ the players about supernatural activity in their vicinity, or request assistance if they needed bailing out of trouble.

Players portraying Imbued characters create their own stories very easily, simply by virtue of who they are and the personality of their in-game alter ego. Each player will likely react to the occurring and reoccurring supernatural encounters in completely different ways, which generates a veritable wealth of storytelling and in-depth gaming immediately, with a minimum of Storyteller effort. Exploring the emotional fallout from the actions of the characters simply because of their differing reactions to the supernatural is a fantastic way to generate some intra-group tension (between characters, not players, obviously). There is also ample opportunity to offer ‘one on one’ sessions to players who wish to deal with supernatural entities in secret from the rest of the group. The hot headed and naïve Vision-driven Hunter might arrange to meet up with a vampire for the purposes of information exchange. Is it a trap? Do the others in the group have any idea about such a midnight rendezvous? How would they react if they did?

Hunter, more than most games, has the players actively and constantly inside the minds of their characters, dealing with the emotions of such a barrage of intense, emotive situations. The isolation of the Hunter setting and the relatively tight-knit, often forced friendships between the characters means that the level of both positive and negative feeling between the group members and the creatures they meet is often very, very high — more so than many other games. Sure, in other games you are all linked by the common ground of being dead, or undead, or a cyborg, or ninja assassins. In Hunter, you have the initial similarities of being one of the few people to see the real world in all of its horror, and form alliances with others who likewise see it all. Then, there are added layers of mistrust, doubt and fear from your own comrades, merely by dint of how they were exposed to the supernatural, and how they are coming to terms with it. There’s always the very real threat that one day, your allies might just drop you from the team because you are a burden to their way of thinking. The emotional intensity from hanging around with a bunch of people you hate just because you need them to survive should never be underestimated. It can make for some passionate role-playing.

Of course, where there’s a plus point, there’s also a down side. After all, the intense scenes of people unable to come to terms with their differences and angrily going their separate ways may be excellent on the cinema screen or on TV, but the last thing you want is the group firing a militant member because everyone else thinks the violent dude is pure evil, and they can’t stand his approach to the Hunt itself. A Hunter character’s ethics and outlook might not mesh well with that of his peer’s, and that’s fine. When the arguing starts to turn into regular fighting between characters and irreconcilable differences, then you have problems. Should you find your group reaching such an impasse, it might reach a point where a little out-of-character discussion becomes appropriate.

Another consideration for any Hunter players and Storytellers is the very fact that the protagonists are so vulnerable. There’s a reason most hunters band together into groups, and that’s because they have their work cut out for them at the best of times. A single hunter is no match, comparatively speaking, for any of the other starting-level creatures in the World of Darkness, or the antagonists the in back of the Hunter core rulebook.

Because Hunters are simply normal mortal men, women and children high mortality rates among characters can be a problem, even with the most careful and conservative of Storytellers. The character makes one stupid move in a fire fight, zigging when he should have zagged, and your NPC thug’s dice clatter out all 10’s, putting your player’s favorite character straight into a body bag. Of course, things like this happen in every role-playing game, and if the death lends drama and tension to the story, it may be received very well. Unfortunately, the inherent vulnerability of the characters in a Hunter game can mean that if you want to keep your PCs alive and kicking, you need to reassess the waves of undead you were planning to hurl at them, because Resident Evil this ain’t. Bear in mind also that most Hunter characters lack the supernatural healing powers common to many other comparable World of Darkness games. Even a few health levels of damage will plague your characters’ lives for weeks of game time.

Another place that problems can arise is when a Storyteller runs the Imbuing scene. A character confronted by a zombie savagely attacking an innocent bystander may feel they have no other choice than to attack the creature. Beware of placing your PCs in railroaded situations where they lack the options that should be available at such a key moment. Every Imbuing should present at least the potential opportunity for negotiation, tactics, violence or flight. Obviously, you don’t want a monster offering to order coffee and pick up the check as it talks things over once a hunter has confronted it, but even situations of tense action should have the possibility of a diplomatic or investigative solution, in case these are avenues the player wishes to explore.

The first time I ran Hunter, I had four players, each of whom were playing vastly different characters. I had a mix of gender, social background, careers, and outlooks on the Hunt. To start the game gently after the Imbuing, I ran a few sessions of Hunter-net communication, where the newly formed group surfed the information pages on the website and researched into some of the numerous ‘threats’ that were posted regarding their local area, which happened to be the city of London. I also concentrated on the PCs relationships with the co-workers, friends and family of their mortal lives. One player had to fight to keep her job as the stress of her first week as a hunter threatened to overtake her. Another character was arrested and brought up in court after the slightly less-than-legal events that took place in his Imbuing. He spent the first few sessions out on bail, while watching over his estranged wife and his young daughter, because he was certain that the monsters knew about his family and where they lived. This brought up problems with his daughter’s school, because the head teacher had little time for a 50-year-old man who watched the playground all day long.

After the first few sessions, it was clear everyone felt well grounded in their characters. Friendships were a little loose in places, but bonds were there. They took the initial clues and warnings I’d given them off Hunter-net, and carefully established patrols and limited surveillance of their own. Soon, they were tracking down and studying other supernatural creatures that they’d located through their own means. In some cases, they engaged the monsters and did their best to destroy the creatures they met. In other cases, they set up tentative communication with the creatures. In every case, of course, there was the requisite tension from each member of the group having a unique viewpoint on every creature.

The storyline progressed in sessions of stealthy investigation, punctuated by bursts of violence. After a while, the characters began to lose ties with their mortal lives, finding it harder and harder to maintain relationships with those who were hidden from the truth, and having difficulty balancing the Hunt with holding down a regular job. Law enforcement also began to become a problem, as every act of aggression against a monster was technically a crime in the eyes of society. Sure, they were killing an undead creature, but the authorities only found a dead body when they came to investigate. A dead body with injuries clearly caused by violence.

The chronicle came to an end when one of the characters was killed in a gunfight, and another was arrested by the police who arrived on the scene in response to the panicked calls of several people in nearby houses. The other two characters were both hospitalized from injuries sustained on the Hunt. At the end of the session, we unanimously decided to call it a day on that particular storyline. To this day though, it is still the chronicle we speak of most fondly, in regards to tense action sequences and some really in-depth role-playing of character interaction between PCs and between PCs and their respective NPC friends and family.

For me, Hunter: the Reckoning presents an intriguing atmosphere of true mystery in the World of Darkness, and a fresh angle to explore the dimly lit back alleys and corruption of that setting.

Want to learn more? Click here!

Hunter: The Reckoning and all associated terms are property of White Wolf Game Studio and this article is not intended as a challenge to these or any other copyrights.

Home Essays Pictures Personal Links Fiction Contact