Hunter The Vigil [ハードカバー]

When Hunter: The Reckoning came out, I was overjoyed. As a Storyteller, I enjoy telling stories from the human's perspective more. I find their struggle against the odds more in line with my skills and intents for telling stories. What I got was a good book, but it kind of took the focus in a more action-oriented, "blockbuster" arena. I still used it, but I thought for all the cool skills and abilities, it was missing something. So, when Hunter: The Vigil came out, I had high hopes that it would reinvent the series in a fashion more appealing to the kinds of stories I wanted to tell. It does that and more.

Hunter: The Vigil is a nice sized guidebook with plenty of clarification and subtle tweaks to rules already established in the core WoD guide. One of the biggest changes comes to the ways in which players can get back Willpower. It's a slight tweak that allows Hunters to get much needed (and, now, used) Willpower back, allowing them to "risk Willpower" on a roll that is for The Vigil (think gambling that your character will make the roll).

But what is the Vigil? The best way to describe this new structure is to think of a Hunter as a candle, fighting back the darkness. Those called to The Vigil are each candles, forming cells and larger organizations throughout the world. This structure is very fluid, allowing Storytellers and players to play through the game from various perspectives.

It also provides some terrific factions (called Conspiracies) to place your character in (or not). You can easily have your players form a small cell that doesn't know a wider organization exists. Or you can have them formally enrolled in one of the factions. Each conspiracy also showcases a huge variety, from the Lucifuge who believe they are Satan's children and want to atone for their evil ways to The Long Night which mimics and draws from Evangelical christians to what I find as the most intriguing group, The Cheiron Group. What's also great about these factions is that there are ways of creating antagonists between each group, providing some variety. Each group approaches the hunt differently, and there are some terrific story points that can be created with the factions not always agreeing.

Of course, the guidebook wouldn't be much fun without providing some interesting ways to deck your characters out for the coming fights and The Endowments listed in the book are terrific. What I appreciate about the Endowments is, again, the flexibility. Depending on which conspiracy(s) you want to utilize in your game, you can make your Hunter group as supernatural or science-oriented as you choose. Some of the powers are pretty spectacular like one of the Benediction abilities that allow skilled Hunters to bring recently deceased people back to life (though they come back a little off), to the Lucifuge's ability to create fire. Other abilities are more equipment based.

One of the Endowments allows players to equip themselves with ancient weapons embued with magical properties while another Endowment allows players to utilize the top, new equipment. One such piece of equipment is The Bleeder that causes supernatural creatures to excrete blood, but doesn't work (very well, at least) on non-supernatural foes.

Then there's the one that combines magic with technology. This is the more macabre area with one such ability allowing users to take a piece of skin from a vampire and replace a part of their neck with it. Even more disturbing (but functional), the piece of skin will wiggle whenever vampires are near. Very cool.

The rest of the book plays out as you'd expect; it's a good guide and reminder of rules established in the core book, but it also tweaks some rules to help give Hunters a little more delineation from a normal human. Whether you want to have a story involving a Hunter cell that has to scrounge the local pawn shops for a means to defend themselves, or a more powerful/supernatural group, Hunter: The Vigil will fill that demand.

I debated from the beginning what the rating should be. But, as I was reading through the book and getting more excited about utilizing the groups, characters and skills, I realized just how much I could squeeze out of this guide. For that alone, it was worth receiving high marks. I was really impressed with this book and definitely recommend it to those who want to play from the human side of things.

Hunter is a very pro-active game. In a sense, it doesn't matter whether your mortal character is built according to the Hunter rules or not. Unless he goes out into the dark and tries to push the monsters back, he's not really a hunter. That's what makes Hunters different from ordinary mortals and why they have a full game line: their obsession drives them, pushing them to extremes that regular people can't match. That's true for their physical abilities and their ingenuity, but also in their morals and sanity. For example, with many players seeing The Dark Knight, Batman is often presented as a Hunter model. He's good, but to my mind, Heath Ledger's Joker is not just an awesome example of a slasher, but of a fallen Hunter too.

Some people have evidently been calling this a core content update for the World of Darkness mortal game. While White Wolf may not like that perspective, there is a huge amount of material that can be used in any mortal and perhaps any game. Chapters 2 and 4 are the Character Creation and Special Rules chapters. The main innovations here are Practical Experience, Tactics and the Professions. Tactics are, usually, tactical applications of teamwork to achieve some specific effect. The names pretty much sum those up, for example Controlled Immolation and Dentistry (that's not so much removing teeth as smashing the mouth). Practical Experience supplements normal experience to an extent, and is earned solely through hostile encounters with supernatural beings. Hunters can deal civilly with supernatural beings if they choose, but only taking risks gets them practical experience for it. Professions describe various character types and give some specific benefits for Hunters from their day jobs. The Professions are not based directly on job-defined definitions, but what your character regards himself as. A science writer for instance could be based on the Academic, Journalist, or Scientist professions, just as the obvious choices. There is also a big section on equipment, which both adds new items and expands on previous descriptions. For any game that involves a character trying to be a part of the mortal world, the new equipment and Profession descriptions are wonderful additions.

Chapter 3 features the sample Compacts and Conspiracies. The Compacts can be defined as groups that share a common obsession. The Conspiracies are a bit more my style, as they are defined by the obsessions of their founders, rather than a necessity for all members. I don't genuinely like any of these organisations, however. The writer's intent seems to have been to give a strong dark side to all of them, forcing the question of how to fight monsters without becoming monsters. A good idea, that would have benefited from more work in giving any good qualities other than monster hunting. Also, the organisations seem rather generic and reinforce negative stereotypes. The only organisation engaged in systematic criminal activity are the Muslim drug-runners. The sinister corporation comes from Europe. Finally, the write-ups are more about the history and nature of the groups, while knowledge of how they behave seems to be left to the many references to them throughout the rest of the book. The chapter also has the Endowments for the Conspiracies and rules for making new groups and Endowments. That includes an unexpected gem: three or four research groups or strategies for each Conspiracy. They are well written, imaginative, and for a research type like me are brimming with story ideas.

Chapter 1 belongs with Chapter 5 and the Appendices as part of the Storytelling and Antagonist sections. Chapter 1 has a history section and discussion of the philosopy of the hunt, but it also has a section on what Hunters know and believe about the supernatural. I actually prefer it to the rules-based section in Chapter 5. Chapter 5 provides neat categories for the 5 previous game lines, whereas Chapter 1 depicts Hunters evaluating a supernatural entity based on what they see it do, not what the rules say it is. The Dread Powers system is based on that, too. People wondered how White Wolf would represent their supernatural beings without reprinting all of their rules. The Dread Powers represent the physical or mental effect a Hunter sees or experiences. It's a simple system for creating direct physical opponents for Hunters to face. Apart from that, the Storytelling section has an emphasis on Hunter vs Hunter conflict. It's definitely an area that deserved exploration, but it's given too much prominence. The monster hunt should almost always be at the forefront of a Hunter story, and I would not enjoy a Chronicle that consisted primarily of political infighting within an organisation and/or combat with Hunters outside it. Having said that, cults also get a prominent mention. (I predict the sixth book will be about cults.) Cults make good enemies for Hunters in particular because they force Hunters to confront the ethics of dealing with humans in the service of the supernatural rather than just the monsters, and the question of how different Hunters really are from those cultists. A question the book specifies that Hunters don't think to ask very often.

I have to admit that I wasn't too thrilled to hear this was the next line from the New World of Darkness, but once the spoilers started coming on White Wolf's webpage I started to change my mind.

Then I got the book. It was sooooooo much better than I had anticipated.

The gist of it is this: you play a mortal, with no special powers, no special resistances, no special anything, really. Sure, you've got Endowments that the higher level Organizations--such as Task Force Valkyrie Advanced Armory, Aegis Kae Doru Relics and the Cheiron Group's Thaumatechnology--grant you, but at that level you lose a bit of personality as you become part of a group, a team that may, in the end, try and go beyond the scope of the lone group of hunters out scouring the world of creatures that should not be.

This book, along with the World of Darkness Core rulebook, has everything you need in it to set out against the denizens of the night. You don't even need the other five Core books--Vampire the Requiem, Werewolf the Forsaken, Mage the Awakening, Promethean the Created or Changeling the Lost--as there is a section in the book detailing a quick and easy assembly of monsters that your Hunter can face off against.

That isn't to say that HtV isn't as readily compatible with the other systems. Just that the game was designed so that the other books weren't necessarily needed in order to hunt vampires, werewolves or whatever. (A good thing, too, as that could deep into your pockets.)

I was never a big fan of Hunter the Reckoning, and actually like the new World of Darkness tons better than the old, but this game along and blew me away with its simple and practical approach to making a hunter that can make a stand against those things going bump in the night.