Continuing our Chinese based review of the World of Darkness book line!
The Hunters Hunted
Hunters Hunted came out before Hunter: The Reckoning and deals with a different kind of Hunter. Hunter: The Reckoning details normal people who become gifted with supernatural power and become the Imbued. Hunters Hunted details normal people who are… normal people that hunt monsters. No fantastic supernatural powers here! Just guns, gear, and gumption.
Hunters Hunted details a couple different Men in Black (MIB) like organizations. I feel like these partially contradict other lore in the World of Darkness series. The government and any associated MIB organizations are controlled by the monsters. They wouldn’t be hunting the evil creatures of World of Darkness, they’d be helping them. And maybe that is the truth behind the truth?
Regardless there are lots of monsters hunting organizations offered. The players could belong to some of the more independent ones and occasionally work with the more government MIB style organizations. Lots of options for however the Storyteller wants to set up the campaign.
Regular humans are mechanically a little weaker than vampires and kuei-jin for their basic stats. There are a few Discipline-like powers, but most of them are extremely weak. Humans get very limited psychic powers or wizard spells while vampires easily get death magic. The most important power for humans is Faith. Faith is belief in anything that gives protection from monsters. As belief influences reality in the World of Darkness, the character’s belief in the power of their faith is reflected as actual power. The Faith power has 10 ranks instead of 5 like the other standard powers. At the weakest level it can repel monsters when you present a holy symbol like a cross. At the highest level Faith allows the character to turn monsters back into normal people. The highest level is basically the second coming of Jesus.
Hunters Hunted is a shorter book than the previous ones, coming in at less than 100 pages. It feels more useful than the other side books though. Plenty of rules for playing as normal humans and the book provides enough details to start playing as something like the Scooby gang from Buffy. Hunters Hunted lacks the inner personality conflicts that other World of Darkness games have. There’s no monster side fighting against the human side within a hunter’s personality. They’re all human and all business. So while Hunters Hunted delivers on its promise, it’s weaker than some of the other World of Darkness games because the promise is smaller in substance.
If you’re interested in The Hunters Hunted book you can check it out at DriveThruRPG: https://www.drivethrurpg.com/en/product/459/the-hunters-hunted-ww2205
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