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It had one.
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Mar 4, 2022 01:45
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was it early 2020? Between my heart surgery and covid furlough, I could see not backing it, but otherwise what the gently caress past me? \/\/\/\/cool, that explains it. Soonmot fucked around with this message at 04:14 on Mar 4, 2022 |
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Mar 4, 2022 02:22
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Soonmot posted:was it early 2020? Between my heart surgery and covid furlough, I could see not backing it, but otherwise what the gently caress past me? Sometime in 2020, looks like.
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Mar 4, 2022 03:11
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LOL, The Horror Recognition Guide magically pops into existence on my bookshelf making me wonder how I can play Hunter again, and a week later 2E is released? You better believe I'm buying that tonight.
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Mar 4, 2022 06:32
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My entire library of WoD books has perished. Fortunately, I took to keeping my work on the cloud.
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Mar 4, 2022 07:16
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Loomer posted:My entire library of WoD books has perished. Aw that sucks. At least they are replaceable.
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Mar 4, 2022 07:34
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Loomer posted:My entire library of WoD books has perished. Fortunately, I took to keeping my work on the cloud. holy poo poo that's terrible. I'm so glad you got out okay though.
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Mar 4, 2022 16:07
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Glad to hear you're okay, Loomer.
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Mar 4, 2022 16:30
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Loomer posted:My entire library of WoD books has perished. Fortunately, I took to keeping my work on the cloud. I'm glad you're ok, but I'm really sorry to hear about your library.
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Mar 4, 2022 20:06
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As excited as we get about The Project, I'm above all concerned that you're clear of the danger and able to get a stable roof over your head. Stay safe, Loomer.
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Mar 4, 2022 21:18
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Now taking bets on which ancient, supernatural conspiracy is trying to prevent the release of The Project. Glad you're ok, Loomer.
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Mar 6, 2022 06:16
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So I'm reading my Hunter 2e pdf, I'm not nearly done yet but it's giving me the itch to already start creating horror concepts for new hunters to face. The group that I might eventually pull into playing this with me all have extensive D&D experience, but no nWoD experience. However, they are all genre savvy nerds and I want to play with that by creating monster concepts that appear to be something recognizable to your typical American civilian, but that recognition and familiarity is dangerous because it will cause them to make presumptions that are untrue. For example, I was thinking about the introduction consisting of having a cell form in response to a series of strange murders that are actually the work of a "Vampire". The murders would be strange because the victims' blood is congealed in strange ways and their backs are perforated with small holes all the way down the spinal column. It's a creature in the form of a man that fits the mold of a Vampire, but it does not drink blood but instead spinal fluid, however this fact would not be immediately evident to the cell. Much like a traditional vampire, it keeps ghouls in it's service and feeds them blood tainted with its own spinal fluid, and it has the supernatural abilities that come with your typical Vampire. It is fully aware of the pop culture concept of Vampires and plays that to it's advantage. The big difference will be that it cannot be killed with a stake to the heart or taking significant bodily damage, but instead only when it's spinal column is broken and its fluids drained will it's truly be destroyed. I can see Hunters who think they know what a Vampire is making lots of mistakes if they make assumptions on how to kill it or fight it. Another one that came to me are Servants of the Black Heart. These re-animated corpses will appear as Zombies, but instead of being re-animated by dark magic, or Hell filling up, instead they are the result of a contagion of unknown origin that appears to be a black oily fluid that infects and colonizes the victims heart eventually killing the host, but bringing the body back as something...else...with inscrutable goals and desires. At first these corpses can walk around in society (but cannot talk or carry out very complicated tasks), but eventually will degrade enough to reach a stage where they are frenzied beasts, which attack & kill nearby humans. Black blood oozes through these bodies and can be transferred to new victims through bites, scratches, or even careless examinations of their bodies. Like your pop-culture "zombie" their bodies are dead and can never heal injuries they accrue, but also like those zombie they can take a poo poo ton of damage and keep coming. Where things will gently caress with hunters' assumptions is that destroying their brains does nothing! The only way to kill them is to destroy the heart, causing black blood to gush out of the wound and ending the re-animation. I can see a cocky player thinking that head-shotting one of these will take it down, and ending up with a nasty surprise for their presumptions. Those are just two ideas. The point is not to gently caress over the players, but instead to make them carefully examine the situations they are being thrown into. There would be hints that these horrors are not following the rules they presume, but if they rush ahead with bias they will get into big trouble. I think it's a nice way to deal with players who will be playing characters that exist in a world where monster movies, and fantasy media has been around their whole lives. Then again, it's been ages since I've played a nWoD game so I might be talking out of my rear end. Does anyone have any other "pop-culture monsters w/ a twist" ideas?
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Mar 6, 2022 11:25
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Well, the easy way is to crib from non-western mythology. Throw a Pontianak or Kuntilanak at them. Or a Penanggalan. Otherwise, crib from other RPGs that have already done the work. GURPS had some great sourcebooks. Blood Types will give you some ideas. Turn the pc power level way down and leave them in the dark completely, and GURPS Black Ops is a fantastic Hunter setting. Conspiracy X 1e had some great supernatural and cryptozoology stuff. Go steal some ideas from random Palladium books. Rifts, Splicers, Beyond the Supernatural…. Call of Cthulhu or Delta Green.
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Mar 6, 2022 16:39
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HORROR. RECOGNITION. GUIDE. There's even a pdf bundle with actual info for the storyteller about what the Monsters in the book actually are mechanically. https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/61520/Collection-of-Horrors-BUNDLE And as lame as it might sound, creepy pasta and SCP poo poo might be handy for some creature ideas. Also don't just limit yourself to stuff the players can stab or shoot. Throw some weird hosed up thing at them like a normal looking house that is wrong on the inside. Or places where things just appear or disappear without any rational explanation. It's a big old world(of Darkness  ) out there. And as suggested above, dig through other table top books, look at myth and legends from around the world, then put all that poo poo in a blender and see what creepy poo poo you come up with.
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Mar 6, 2022 17:08
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Anonymous Zebra posted:Much like a traditional vampire, it keeps ghouls in it's service and feeds them blood tainted with its own spinal fluid, It's a spinal fluid vampire, so why is blood even involved in this process? I'd suggest this is a cool opportunity to add more weird telltale signs that don't add up. Say the vampire has some kind of spinal stinger that it has to "merge" with a person's spine to initially ghoul them or something. Something body horror-ish that leaves prominent back scars that differ from the pockmarks left in its feeding victims, physically branding the ghouls in a way the hunters could discover. Maybe some kind of tumorous growth forms on the servitor's spine. Black Heart feels too much like a traditional zombie (28 Days Later style infection) for the "twist" to make sense and not just feel like a gotcha. Go with cordyceps vibes merged with grey goo or the Slavic vampires who constitute themselves from coagulated blood jelly. The black oil is the monster, and the walking corpse is just a solid framework it's able to use to walk around and damage prey to digest. Injuring or dismembering the corpse expels the oil, but the oil remains alive and either flees or seeks to infect the wounded (with some ability for antibiotics and medical care to treat a minor oil infection so that it's not a gotcha death). Opens room up for the oil to animate unexpected things (animal corpses, heaps of multiple bodies, living humans who remain conscious and horrified by what their body is being made to do). It won't quite deliver that "we finally blow its head up and it keeps coming" moment, but the goal of subverting expectations shouldn't be to trick the players into making mistakes, but to deliver the fear of the unknown and just generally make for a memorable and creative monster. I Am Just a Box fucked around with this message at 18:18 on Mar 6, 2022 |
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Mar 6, 2022 18:15
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Well, never expected to see the Hide Behind appear as a Hunter antagonist.
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Mar 6, 2022 19:40
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joylessdivision posted:HORROR. Yup, already read it. Rediscovering that book in the bottom of bookshelf after over a decade is what is making me re-discover Hunter. Thanks for the link to that bundle, though, it should be very helpful. I Am Just a Box posted:It's a spinal fluid vampire, so why is blood even involved in this process? I'd suggest this is a cool opportunity to add more weird telltale signs that don't add up. Say the vampire has some kind of spinal stinger that it has to "merge" with a person's spine to initially ghoul them or something. Something body horror-ish that leaves prominent back scars that differ from the pockmarks left in its feeding victims, physically branding the ghouls in a way the hunters could discover. Maybe some kind of tumorous growth forms on the servitor's spine. Thank you for this, especially the suggestion on the black oil! That's an infinitely more interesting idea. I think my general game-plan is to have the "scales" removed from the players' eyes with the Vampire story, with the players initially tracking the killings to a rich LA business man that has moved into the Inland Empire recently. I might make him own a dance club/bar he recently opened, not sure yet. They might believe the killings are a result of him, but he is just a servant of the Vampire and is one of several in the region collecting "tribute" for it. What they do about him will decide whether they can track him in a manner that reveals the other ghouls or whether they draw attention to themselves from forces they don't understand. I think the basic background will be that the Vampire normally spends several decades at a time in a single place, forming a circle of ghouls that it uses to hide it's presence and receive tributes of food. This is why it has not been discovered up till now. It's appearance in the Inland Empire (a relative poo poo-hole of CA) and the fact that bodies are turning up without being covered for is because it and it's ghouls were just recently forced out of LA due to a Cheiron Group Retrieval Team coming incredibly close to capturing it. It's on the run, but cannot move from place to place quickly and doesn't have the layers of protection it normally would surround itself with. Depending on how subtle the players are, they might manage to cause enough of an incident that the Retrieval Team catches wind and a timer starts for them arriving to capture the Vampire themselves. I'm thinking the Vampire might be disguised as a tattoo artist who has the cover of being a man that likes to travel from place to place instead of settling down. I might include specific tattoos on him that a savvy hunter would recognize as belonging to societies or things that are far older than him, but I'm not sure yet.
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Mar 7, 2022 01:02
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TheCenturion posted:Well, the easy way is to crib from non-western mythology. I did this when I ran a Hunter game many many years ago--I went with a monster from Lakota mythology, something grounded in the setting of the game but which I was reasonably sure none of my players would immediately recognize out-of-character. The first goddamn investigation scene I presented them their first significant lead, and one of my players goes "wait a minute! I recognize this, this is the Unhcegila!" Turns out his mom was an anthropology professor specializing in pre-Columbian North America, and had actually written a children's book about the legend.
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Mar 7, 2022 09:26
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GimpInBlack posted:I did this when I ran a Hunter game many many years ago--I went with a monster from Lakota mythology, something grounded in the setting of the game but which I was reasonably sure none of my players would immediately recognize out-of-character. When I ran Monster of the Week, I did a lost in time and lonely wood spirit thing from pre-Columbian times that was killing people and needed Indigenous-centered friendship/peace offerings to pacify it. Tried really hard to be respectful, one of my players turned out to be Indigenous and went "uh the sacred plants you're mentioning are all weird" "i am very sorry i did bad research I guess" e: and to be very clear by bad research I mean I tried looking up specifically local practices and plants in our area since the game was set in our city, I just zigged on one when I should have zagged.
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Mar 7, 2022 14:17
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As an aside, I was talking with some friends about the general RPG scene and the question came to me. What are games that compete with WoD/CoD in the RPG market? Like do they even have in genre competitors?
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Mar 7, 2022 14:40
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In the broad "horror game" genre, Chtulhu of course and also Pelgrane games like Fear Itself. In the "urban fantasy" subgenre, Unknown Armies is kind of in the same ballpark as Mage I think, and on the indie front there are a couple of PbtA games like Urban Shadows and Monster of the Week. Edit: Is the Dresden Files RPG still in print? It's old and busted as far as Fate games go, but it's in the genre. Edit edit: Fun fact the old-rear end horror game Chill still sees print in Swedish under the title Chock. Edit3: Boo I forgot Monsterhearts. Siivola fucked around with this message at 09:29 on Mar 8, 2022 |
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Mar 8, 2022 09:15
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The new Hunter preview is up and is apparently pretty close to dropping and I find as problematic as the Imbued were in hindsight there was still something at their core that I think was still useable and I'll miss them.
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Mar 8, 2022 15:32
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Dawgstar posted:The new Hunter preview is up and is apparently pretty close to dropping and I find as problematic as the Imbued were in hindsight there was still something at their core that I think was still useable and I'll miss them. Who says you can't bring that aspect back? There's a video from the Renegade con this weekend where Achilli was talking about the new hunter and mentioned that while the Imbued weren't the focus, if you wanted that you could bring it back. https://youtu.be/RbpMTJbH7Ew Which makes sense considering he posted on Twitter last week about how players are encouraged to mix and match from the various editions of Vampire for their games.
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Mar 8, 2022 15:55
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joylessdivision posted:Which makes sense considering he posted on Twitter last week about how players are encouraged to mix and match from the various editions of Vampire for their games. excellent, i'm going to take a bunch of high-concept larpers and make them play diablerie: mexico
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Mar 8, 2022 16:02
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Siivola posted:
I have a lot of fond memories of the DFRPG because it was basically what if someone looked at a WoD campaign and decided that SuperVamps was actually the best part of playing the game, and redesigned everything to make it as easy as possible to get into supervamp bullshit
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Mar 8, 2022 16:22
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Unrelated to this discussion I just discovered that a series of rambling, weird as gently caress setting ideas I posted to /tg/ like a decade ago got picked up by someone and turned into a CYOA. My off-the-wall ideas involving hobos seeking the Green Glass Grail and wall street bankers vying for the untapped leylines of Arcane America got turned into something. Nifty.Dawgstar posted:The new Hunter preview is up and is apparently pretty close to dropping and I find as problematic as the Imbued were in hindsight there was still something at their core that I think was still useable and I'll miss them. What were problematic about them exactly? I never touched the game line except when I brushed up against it on New Bremen, although the ST for my upcoming V5 game is apparently cribbing heavily from them as an unknown factor to compliment the SI trying to get us.
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Mar 8, 2022 16:55
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citybeatnik posted:What were problematic about them exactly? I never touched the game line except when I brushed up against it on New Bremen, although the ST for my upcoming V5 game is apparently cribbing heavily from them as an unknown factor to compliment the SI trying to get us. The mental illness aspect as they leveled up in their powers, mainly. That's never been something WoD's been able to shake, though.
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Mar 8, 2022 17:05
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Siivola posted:Edit: Is the Dresden Files RPG still in print? It's old and busted as far as Fate games go, but it's in the genre. Use Dresden Files Accelerated instead if kitchen-sink Fate urban fantasy is what you want.
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Mar 8, 2022 17:08
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citybeatnik posted:What were problematic about them exactly? I never touched the game line except when I brushed up against it on New Bremen, although the ST for my upcoming V5 game is apparently cribbing heavily from them as an unknown factor to compliment the SI trying to get us. There's the aforementioned mental health issues, and I've seen discussion elsewhere about how the Imbued's concept and execution have uncomfortable associations with right-wing militas that's only gotten stronger with things like Qanon. All that aside, though, I feel like the Imbued's days were numbered as a protagonist splat anyways since 1. Their existence is based around WoD's metaplot approaching endgame, which no longer applies and 2. Assuming that some aspect of Ericsson's "Back to the First Edition Spirit" (whether or not you'd consider it that is up to you) thematic focus is still in play, it makes perfect sense to focus on the types of characters from Hunters Hunted while using the brand name that's been on video games. I do hope there's some mechanical leeway for making an Imbued somewhere in H5, though. I've always liked the idea of the Imbued as an exploration of an urban fantasy version of the Paladin, and what that means when it's thrust on ordinary people. Which, I suppose, I could just get with Exalted, but I've always preferred modern/realistic historical/science fiction settings. I've got them in the V5 game I'm running as well, in a similar role where a dwindling Imbued population isn't sure whether to see the Second Inquisition as the cavalry coming or the start of something darker. I'm gonna read the H5 book and see how it approaches things before I decide on how that'll play out in my game (unless my players force my hand, which, you know, always count that happening).
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Mar 8, 2022 18:22
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I think there are good ideas there, it's trying to play up a core narrative of sacrificing one's humanity and losing sight of what it was you originally sought to protect: the book mentions, as an example, a high-Virtue Imbued who decided that the only way to root out the vampires in a city was to eliminate their food source. It's just a pity that the only way they could imagine of becoming the monster is developing chronic mental illness spontaneously and piecemeal which A) is not how that works and B) is conflating it with the kind of moral/philosophical erosion and desperation it's trying to portray as the ultimate fate of all Hunters, and in doing so implicitly codifies the stigma of mental illness as evil or criminal. It also doesn't help that the mental illness section is treated with all the care and detail of the "these are the dice penalties for using various drugs" section directly across from it.
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Mar 8, 2022 18:47
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Free Cog posted:There's the aforementioned mental health issues, and I've seen discussion elsewhere about how the Imbued's concept and execution have uncomfortable associations with right-wing militas that's only gotten stronger with things like Qanon. That's sort of a fundamental problem with a Hunters game, though. Unless you go with a "Sponsored" Hunter group (like the Vampire$ team, funded by the Catholic Church, or VASCU, the Special Affairs Division [both FBI, different WW games]), a Hunters group is fundamentally a vigilante group that claims to have the hidden truth about the true evil/monsters hidden in our mist. Are they right, or are they crazy?
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Mar 8, 2022 20:09
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https://twitter.com/pugsteady/status/1501217073674043396 Funny ol' world.
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Mar 8, 2022 20:11
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The imbued were originally the return of the exalts, but they dropped that idea pretty drat quick.
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Mar 8, 2022 20:14
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TheCenturion posted:The imbued were originally the return of the exalts, but they dropped that idea pretty drat quick. Although if you want more of that, Exalted versus World of Darkness is the full-on return of the Exalts and looks really slick: https://holdenshearer.files.wordpress.com/2019/01/Exalted-Versus-World-of-Darkness.pdf
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Mar 8, 2022 20:21
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I think you want the revised version of EXVSWOD if you want "looking slick", not to be vain.
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Mar 9, 2022 01:00
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TheCenturion posted:The imbued were originally the return of the exalts, but they dropped that idea pretty drat quick. They were written before the Exalts though.
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Mar 9, 2022 04:31
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TheCenturion posted:The imbued were originally the return of the exalts, but they dropped that idea pretty drat quick. Not really. Days of Fire (which admittedly was a Demon book) linked Imbued, Kuei-Jin and the Fallen together in a short span and they had hints to it in other books, not unlike Shadowrun/Earthdawn, but unlike those two WW was never really interested in explaining it.
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Mar 9, 2022 05:28
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Old hunter lies on a bad spot because they want to make "humans who fight back" but trapped themselves into a conceptual corner, imho Personally I would have gone all in with some sort of explicitly heavenly/celestial device (since they are, well, Imbued) that makes it clear that Hunters are long-past-due cosmic retribution. Make it the sole counterpoint to the apocalyptic millenarianism of every other setting: Hunters appearing means that that the great principle of things is loving tired of every drat critter's poo poo. The August Personage of Jade trolled everyone and is back, selecting tools of vengeance among the people, because They like subtlety. (if it isn't clear I always thought oWoD absolutely needed a thematic counterpoint for maximum effect of tone back then)
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Mar 9, 2022 15:54
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dead gay comedy forums posted:Old hunter lies on a bad spot because they want to make "humans who fight back" but trapped themselves into a conceptual corner, imho The rumored "The Imbued are actually Exalts" idea sounds like the thought process you described. Then they threw that idea out the window. I never got around to finishing the Hunter core because it's so all over the place with how it's trying to present itself. The art is all "GUNS BLAZING gently caress YOU DRACULA!" While the text is actively yelling at you for considering playing the game as anything but "Qanon: The Isloation" and taking this whole thing deathly serious and how you're going to either die horribly or turn into a monster yourself. The anthology "Inherit the Earth" is pretty good, except for the story about a Hunter who knows a Metis which is so heavy handed in its "Maybe the Monsters aren't so different from us" that my eyes about rolled out of my head by the end of it.
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Mar 9, 2022 16:05
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joylessdivision posted:I never got around to finishing the Hunter core because it's so all over the place with how it's trying to present itself. The art is all "GUNS BLAZING gently caress YOU DRACULA!" While the text is actively yelling at you for considering playing the game as anything but "Qanon: The Isloation" and taking this whole thing deathly serious and how you're going to either die horribly or turn into a monster yourself. Although in hindsight one wonders what they expected when they ask for Ron Spencer to do his thing, when his thing is impossibly shredded people looking vaguely feral. (And I love him for it, make no mistake.) In seriousness (ish), the art direction is one of the biggest problems people have with the core book - it did get better later - alongside a lot of the powers are just kinda bad. Which is partially why I'd really like an actual Hunter 2E as they could really use some cleaning up.
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Mar 9, 2022 17:04
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