Hunter, Mortal+ -- fuck the supers?
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Would such a game work?
I don't mind the supers, don't get me wrong, but the paranoid and insular spheres for some reason just rub me the wrong way these days. I just don't like them. On TR, it makes me want to play Geist and CB, and Mortal+. I don't want to bow to a Consilium, a Prince, a pack.
I like the World of Darkness, but a bit more lower key level where the World is not full of world-spanning superpowers controlling everything.
I sort of want to play a game which is closer to Supernatural (the show, y'know), where its people who are more or less people against monsters and weirdness and people who are a little less people, but the question of people is still interesting.
I'm thinking a game with Hunter, culled a bit of the more completely aggressive elements that see anything at all not purely human as bad, and add in 'hedge witches' a la Gutter Magic from Witch Finders, all settled into a GMC foundation. Boost Hunters slightly (I have some ideas on how), and tweak things so that people on the mortal+ path don't obviously identify each-other as enemies, because wow, there's some crazy shit going on out there that needs solving.
Add in psychics, somehow. (GMC, tweaked Second Sight, using Gutter Magic's Gifted merit, dunno)
And maybe other things, small variations, minor templates -- but without the big bads.
I don't mean a game just that focuses on mortal+, but where the big bads simply don't exist. There is no Vampire world order, no clans, no Werewolves tracing themselves back to Father Wolf, etc. Maybe there's a dozen kinds of things that kinda suck blood -- or sex, or psychic energy, or anger, or fear, or just in some way feed on people. Maybe there's things that change their shape and all of that, through lots of weird and unique paths.
Most of those all are bad, the NPCs, but maybe we can include some other forms of minor templates, templates that are meant to balance with mortals -- giving certain advantages or abilities, sure, but nothing as overpowering and overriding as you experience in the main games of WoD. Maybe a werewolf isn't a giant monster killing machine but someone who turns into a wolf, with wolf-like stats that are, perhaps, only slightly augmented. Not that I'm suggesting this as a real thing, just an example!
Would anyone play such a game? I've been working on a game for awhile and keep sorta being indifferent on what its theme/makeup is, but stepping back away from the 'spheres' of NWOD has been really appealing for the last couple months.
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Sooooo. You want to just use elements of WoD but not actually do WoD? Why not just make your own game using elements you want over claiming it WoD?
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On the contrary! Use World of Darkness.
The core rules, all the supplements that talk of weirdness and things-- ghosts, spirits, weirder.
Use those humans who are fighting against the crazy-- hunters.
Use the magic from Witch Finders to define hedge witches because its a nice and flexible system without giving godlike reality-bending power.
Its still the World of Darkness. In particular, its the basic world-lore and game systems.
Its just not using the major spheres. Its human focused, instead of vampires, mages, werewolves, oh my.
Nothing in the World of Darkness corebook demands there need to be major templates as lords and masters and ultimate powers over the whole world, but that's kinda how the game always ends up working out when you add the major templates in.
I'm talking about using the WoD at its core to make a human-focused game, with a world full of all manner of dark elements without the higher order mega-powers of the major spheres.
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I get what you are saying, at least I think I do. You want to have all the major spheres, but have them as the NPC baddies that get taken out, right?
There are bound to be people that will play that. I prefer mortal/mortal+ on WoD games. I know there are others too. Really, there is one way to find out - build it.
In my experience, it really isn't so much the theme of the game, but the staffers that run it. If you have power mongers, no one is going to have fun. So I'd start with finding really good staffers and then go from there. Good luck.
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If the game I am developing takes off, one of the ideas I had was to offer people a "spin-off" in another location that is Hunter/Mortal only where the supernaturals are all NPCs to be hunted or dealt with. I think this is in fact the ONLY way to run Hunter on a MU* successfully.
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I ran a mu* similar to this premise once - an oWoD game called Wicked Purity that was strictly Mortal/Mortal+ and all the supers were monsters/NPC antagonists. The player base never got to be huge, but there was a lot of good storytelling to be had in that sort of a setting.
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If you used GMC and the GMC supernatural merits for psychics, I would play. I might even play if you used GMC tweaked hunter, though I think some hunter powers are ridic ar least vs the supernat merits in GMC.
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I think I would enjoy the most a game where everyone is a Hunter of some sort, but there is a dearth of useful supernatural things available to them. Psychic powers tend to be low-key and not too useful, but in general when I think 'Hunter game' I think 'normal people out to fight the supernatural'. So in general I tend to ignore Lucifuge and others with supernatural powers of their own.
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Yes. As a Supernaturals addict, I approve.
Wasn't there a hunter mortal game a while back set in the Victorian era?
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@Catsmeow said:
I get what you are saying, at least I think I do. You want to have all the major spheres, but have them as the NPC baddies that get taken out, right?
Yes and no.
I want a World of Darkness where the world is full of -- things. Some things you may look at and say "vampire", some you may look at and say "werewolf", because pop culture makes you say that.
But those things don't have major power stats, they aren't giant conspiracies, they aren't all concrete things. Maybe there's two things that you look at and say "vampire", one this ugly vicious sewer dweller-- a Nosferatu!-- one a beautiful Lestat wannabe. Maybe you as a person see these as the same, but maybe they aren't. Maybe one drinks blood, the other drinks emotion.
I'm saying the Major Templates don't exist, as written; instead, almost any variation of NPC versions exist instead.
Maybe one kind of vampire can't exist in the light, and one kind spar--- AUGH, no. There will be no sparkles.
My thought is the World of Darkness isn't a thing about this major splats, but about the people, the regular humans and near-humans who find themselves caught up in the story of something mysterious and horrible.
All the PC's are human or near-human (psychic, witch, hunter, ..etc?), and these things are -- varied and weird. They all lack a cohesive greater society. Oh, a guy may say he's a descendant of an ancient vampire line dating to Caine, but there's no power behind it. These /things/ are more rare and far between and closer to humanity (for all their horrors) then the regular major splats are.
In the major splats, you're comfortable being non-human. You have power behind you, history, culture. In a smaller, more local World of Darkness, there's nothing so big -- maybe you don't kill everything you see. Maybe you come across this thing that needs blood but lives off pigs blood and you don't see it as a monster. That decision, that question, human or not, is a bigger question when you don't have the bigger splats.
But this other blood drinker, he transforms into bats and kills on the new moon (neither of which have anything to do with the first: are they the same? Similar? Who knows? Find out. The question is open) that you judge a monster and put down.
Its a more visceral World of Darkness, more human focused.
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For what it is worth I really like the idea
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@Cobaltasaurus said:
If you used GMC and the GMC supernatural merits for psychics, I would play. I might even play if you used GMC tweaked hunter, though I think some hunter powers are ridic ar least vs the supernat merits in GMC.
I'm still thinking about psychics. I think they need some tweaks to fit in, a bit of a boost really, but the GMC Psychic merits would be a start.
Hunter would get a big overhaul of course. Their latest book (I can't remember its name now) included some notes to detail its hunter / GMC crossover issues. Also, those Hunter groups which are purely antagonistic to anything not purely human would be npc only. My idea for a game is with psychics and witches a gray area, not something you just kill, so some compacts/conspiracies are just not suitable.
I'm totally only interested in a GMC game, no matter how much work it takes to tweak, but there's questions on what that means because obviously outside of the basic merits Onyx Path are focused on converting the major splats.
The key detail for me is, its a game about humans. Everyone fundamentally who is a PC, is a human. Human in the World of Darkness, a world which is vaster and stranger then we think of in terms of WOD, because the whole story isn't told by these monolithic histories of five races.
Its not a story about vampires, werweolves, mages, oh my; but about humans surviving and challenging against hauntings and possessions and rakshasa and vampyr and skinwalkers and wendigo and .. and and and and.
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I would do away with the compacts and conspiracies and then let storytellers make NPC monsters with the Dread Powers from "Mortal Remains" (which is the book you were referencing). Let each individual hunter decide what their moral compass is regarding killing and not killing monsters.
"Excuse the hell out of you. He's a bag of dicks. I'm a carefully curated box of cocks." -- to @GirlCalledBlu upon being misrepresented.
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@Coin said:
I would do away with the compacts and conspiracies and then let storytellers make NPC monsters with the Dread Powers from "Mortal Remains" (which is the book you were referencing). Let each individual hunter decide what their moral compass is regarding killing and not killing monsters.
This little compact blurb is a great idea and a fantastic suggestion. Keeps the Killin' The Monstarrrs thing, but also keeps the pathos mentioned in some of the splats.
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I too would love a mortal-focused place with the supers as NPC antagonists.
I really enjoy non-masque breaking RP, especially as a mortal, but I've given up on the idea that most people like that as well or want to do it. It's just fun for me in the way that knowing the ending to The Sixth Sense before seeing the movie made me enjoy it probably 10 times as much as I would have otherwise. What can I say, I'm strange that way.
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I would play the hell out of a mortal / psychic themed place where the supers were the antagonists. I've been wishing for a while for an all-hunter MUSH.
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I'd be willing to help with getting a Hunter-focused game up and running. I'm pretty well acquainted with the splat.
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@Admiral Telekinetics can fly under their own power, or count me out.
I had this pipe dream last year, with all the new documentaries, and mockumentaries and such using 'super heroes', as in, people who dress up and roam the streets of their city, say Seattle and Portland. That the Mortal/+ Splats should enable us to make Super Heroes.
I want to be Zany the Lightning Boy able to fly with my Telekinesis.
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This should happen. Please don't tease us.
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I would also be down for an all hunter game, especially one where your end game is your PC dies. Period. They get hit by a bus, they get the dropsy, they get all the blood sucked out of them by a vampire, they have a heart attack from too many cheeseburgers. They die. The funnest games I've been in have been when its understood from the outset that rocks will fall and you will die.
