Posted: Tue Jun 03, 2008 6:39 pm
Is Hunter going to be as bad as it was in oWod???
What Hunter Is
The themes and moods of Hunter: The Vigil
Posted: 2008-06-02
In last month's eQuarterly, Chuck Wendig, the developer at the helm of Hunter: The Vigil, gave the NDA Enforcement Dobermans the slip long enough to reveal what Hunter is not. Now that the spoilers are officially under way, we can finally reveal what Hunter is.
Theme
The theme here is “light in shadows,” with hunters being a reckoning force that takes action against the darkness. But we’ve covered that already.
The game has a minor theme, too: humankind is both powerful and fragile. He is fragile when he is alone and ignorant, but he is powerful when he gathers his resources and finds knowledge. Hunters must work together to accomplish their goals, but even then, a cell, compact or conspiracy is only as strong as the weakest within — one traitorous worm boring to the heart of the apple or one rogue ant that leads the trail astray has the potential to destroy the rest. And the pressures of the Vigil, the sacrifices inherent, can drive even a hunter of the strongest heart to such disunity and disarray.
Mood
The prevailing mood is horror and mystery: these two elements work in tandem to drive unaware humans to take up the Vigil as hunters. Horror explodes before their eyes: families dead on a blood-slick floor or some awful gibbering thing crawling free from a bus crash. Mystery dangles like a hangnail that one cannot help but pick — a tattooed cipher on a dead man’s arm, a book written in a language that cannot be human, a box on a doorstep filled with dry leaves and bundles of human hair, all bound together in ribbons of taut skin.
Other moods pervade, too: the Vigil is grim, brutal, insane. But it can also be hopeful and heroic. This is a desperate struggle, but it is not impossible. And it may lead the protagonists on mad adventures, indeed.
Humanity’s Hidden Power
For every hunter, a different Vigil.
This book aims to supply players and Storytellers with all the resources necessary to craft a monster-hunting story of their design. Hunters are brought into the World of Darkness in various ways — how does your character have the scales torn from his eyes? Does he watch something gut his wife and harvest her heart? Is he courted by one of the ancient hunter conspiracies because it believes he has certain skills and “moral flexibilities” that will suit its needs? Has he always known of the supernatural, having been born into a family with a diseased and infernal bloodline?
Your hunter — and your Hunter: The Vigil story — have the potential to be nearly anything and assume any face you desire. Want an ass-kicking, take-no-prisoners game, with your hunters grabbing monsters by the throat and taking the city back block by bloody block? That’s perfectly viable. Or do you instead want a game devoted to studying the maddening mysteries of the World of Darkness, where every pulled thread threatens to unravel the entire fabric of one’s carefully crafted theories and, worse, one’s cautiously cultivated sanity? No problem.
Hunters are that candle in the darkness, performing a seemingly endless duty. They’re about taking back the night, about putting humanity back in control. But the road is long and home to many crossroads. Which road will your characters take? Down what path will the story of your tireless hunters travel? You’ll find no wrong turns in the following pages.