Monday, January 28, 2013

Kickstarter: V20 Hunters Hunted

After successful campaigns to get the 20th edition of Vampire full support, White Wolf is throwing together a new Hunters Hunted.  The original was a core manual for playing with vampire antagonists, rather than protagonists.  This expands on the concept, bringing modern technology to the hunt, and bringing new hunting grounds -- in particular, the internet.

In the first edition of Vampire: the Masquerade, humans were largely overlooked as anything remotely significant -- merely pawns that help further a vampire's ends, whether that be as someone to look the other way when a crime is occurring, or as a bloody mary to sate an appetite.  Hunters Hunted changed this significantly.  It was the first time White Wolf described how people could fight back, once they knew enough to.  The Masquerade became more than a concept -- it became a necessity.  HH became a guide for two things -- first, playing a lowly mortal in the World of Darkness -- and secondly, for a Storyteller to gently (or not-so-gently) remind his players that there were consequences to their actions.  It became the basis for new organizations of humans that opposed each of the factions as the metaplot, starting with the remnant of the Inquisition, the Society of Leopold, and stretching to each of the WoD product lines shortly after in 1995, the Year of the Hunter.  Suddenly, there was one more balancing act on the table.
White Wolf is now revisiting this title, expanding technology and taking into account the new ways we interact.  It doesn't dwell much on the specific societies, but rather uses them as a way to frame a new generation of hunters interacting with the World of Darkness.  In addition to providing core rules for playing humans and re-visiting the Numina system (hedge magic), it spends about half the book helping players and storytellers flesh out hunters and hunter chronicles in a way that makes them seem like full-fledged humans, not simply leaving them as two-dimensional figures.

1 comment:

  1. Humans -are- insignificant.

    ... Where is my evil laugh sound file?

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