Gateway to a World of Darkness - Hunter: the Reckoning 5th Edition Review

Full disclosure: I have been a paid contractor for Renegade Game studios working as a Test Reader on World of Darkness books that have included Hunter: The Reckoning 5th Edition products. I did not work on the corebook or any of the other products covered specifically in this review, nor was I paid for this review. This review is my personal opinion. That said, I am writing this review to help promote some upcoming Storyteller's Vault material I will be publishing for Hunter, so it is not entirely without Crassly Commercial motives. You can find my full list of RPG credits here.

TL;DR

I think Hunter: The Reckoning 5th Edition is a great introduction for new and returning players to the 5th Edition World of Darkness. It works well for both one-shots and longer chronicles, the rules are easy to explain and on the balance its strengths outweigh its weaknesses. I would recommend it to any Gamemaster or group interested in a modern day horror RPG focused on hunting the supernatural.

A Good Introduction in Rules & Setting

I think that the rules and setting changes introduced in the 5th Edition World of Darkness (WoD) lines has been good—over-all they have pruned away lots of the convoluted lore and implemented a fairly coherent set of mechanics that makes it easier to bring new players in—while still being satisfying twenty sessions into a Chronicle (aka Campaign).

I've now run over fifty sessions of Hunter: completing three Chronicles and working on wrapping up a fourth, making it one of the games I've run the most in the last two years. Of the seventeen players I've run for, more than half had no exposure to the World of Darkness before, while a few had extensive experience with previous editions. Almost uniformly, all of my players enjoyed the games and one of my groups was happy to return to their Hunter Cell as a break from a Shadowdark campaign.

Even with the change from standard d10s to the icon dice used in 5th Edition WoD, it was easy to explain the dice pool system of Attribute + Skill to players and setting Difficulty for rolls felt intuitive as a Storyteller.

Real People Fighting Monsters

An advantage that Hunter has over the other 5th Edition World of Darkness games of Vampire: the Masquerade and Werewolf: the Apocalypse is player characters are mortal humans who do not need any supernatural knowledge. While it still has a dual character dimension of Creed and Drive that somewhat mirror Clan and Sect or Tribe and Auspice, it's much simpler for a player to understand what a Hunter with the Martial Creed and Drive of Atonement would be good at or is defined by rather than trying to grasp the at what the same core motivation and talents of a Brujah Anarch or a Bone Gnawer Ahroun would be... Not to mention that a Hunter character gets to discover the supernatural setting of the World of Darkness as they play, making it easier for the player who does not need to know anything about Vampiric or Garou society that even new Cainites and Werewolves need to posses, if only so that a player can create a moderately effective character.

Hunter characters are simpler than other WoD characters, which is mostly a blessing, though larger groups might find their characters starting to overlap in Edges, the assets, aptitudes and endowments that separate Hunters from other mortals—especially if they stick to the twelve found in the Corebook. As a Storyteller, I also found a few Edges slightly challenging to handle in game: the Global Access Edge can allow the kind of cinematic hacking that is unrealistic even in movies, while Ordnance introduces lots of complications from explosives in a fairly realistic game and Beast Whisperer and Drone Jockey both feel just a little too convoluted and hard to justify in certain circumstances... NPCs should really ask just why a Hunter is bringing a dog into a library or why the drone clearly has a shotgun duct-taped to it...

Broadly though, even with the more preternatural Edges like Thwart the Unnatural, Hunter characters feel like real people, not like super-heroes—often extraordinary but on the order of a character out of Reacher rather than a MCU character. Going up against the supernatural Quarries, Hunter PCs feel like authentic underdogs which adds to the thrill of the story.

One place where Hunter suffers a little is in its use of Touchstones, which were first introduced, and best implemented, in Vampire: the Masquerade 5th Edition. Touchstones are those special NPCs unconnected to the Hunt that connect the player characters to the rest of the Mortal World and their community. In Hunter, a player character without any Touchstones left cannot regain Willpower, but there is not a real affirmative reason to interact with them. I found it best to narrate small scenes between PCs and their touchstones in between stories to have player characters reconnect with the 'real world' in between hunts, but that was something I had to decide to do for myself rather than anything recommended by the book.

Storytelling

I have honestly had a blast running my Hunter games, I find coming up with the plots intuitive in a way that brainstorming ideas for my Vampire: the Masquerade or Werewolf: the Apocalypse games are not. Don't get me wrong, I enjoy running and plotting those games as well, but Hunter offers a very straightforward story creation approach of going with a mystery to investigate or a Quarry (supernatural entity) to hunt or battle. 

It is easy to adapt previous Hunter or World of Darkness scenarios to the 5th Edition, or even to adapt scenarios from other games. Creating quarries and adversaries is a bit of a mixed bag, there's a few examples of each of the main 'types': Vampires, Werewolves, Magicians, Ghosts and Fae, but the corebook doesn't provide many clean 'basic' examples of quarries and lacks a good section on creating your own Quarry. The list of Monster Abilities and Weaknesses somewhat makes up for this, but it is still a little limited, even if just selecting the abilities and weaknesses that best match a Quarry you have in mind usually works okay.

The Rival Organizations presented in the Corebook are interesting and provide some good plot hooks, complications and other story ideas, though I am a little frustrated that the additional sourcebooks and chronicle books introduced more organizations instead of going back to them as much as I would have liked.

The Storyteller Advice and Advice for Considerate Play sections are solid but not groundbreaking, but for newer Storytellers there is enough there to be very useful reading even if more experienced Gamemasters find themselves skimming it. The corebook also lacks an introductory scenario, which is a shame, though an enterprising Storyteller can fairly easily adapt one of the sample Quarries.

Danger and Desperation

Vampire: the Masquerade 5th Edition introduced Hunger Dice which replaced a hunger track for a PC, Werewolf: the Apocalypse has Rage Dice which replaced a rage track for a PC—Hunter: the Reckoning has Desperation Dice. Unlike Hunger and Rage, Desperation applies to the Cell, the group of PCs, making it a group mechanic rather than an individual one. The Desperation increases or decreases for everyone, and each PC's Creed determines when those dice can be used. So a Hunter with the Inquisitiveness Creed can add the dice when attempting to gain information, a Hunter with the Martial Creed can add them during physical conflicts. Just like with Hunger and Rage dice, each Desperation Die has an one in ten chance of a potential complication, with a pair of Desperation results required to cause Overreach or Despair, which cause complications even if they don't always cause outright failure.

In practice, this means that Desperation is a very useful mechanic for players to help make their characters good at what they want to do even when they're starting out and for Storytellers to use as a pacing mechanism. The game pairs Desperation with Danger, a much more abstract mechanic that measures how aware or menacing the Quarry is. Expect an article about how better to use Danger and Desperation next week.

A Great Storyteller's Kit

If the Hunter: the Reckoning corebook is mixed to lackluster bag for Storytellers, the Storytellers Screen and Toolkit is excellent. The screen is well laid-out, easy to read and aside from the small Armor table—full of tables and summaries that I found myself referencing nearly every game as I ran my Hunter sessions.

Even better, the Storyteller Toolkit provides a ton of material and advice—suggestions of how to handle skills, an incredibly simple and useful rule for Preparedness to use when players inevitably ask if their character thought to bring a small tape recorder on a hunt... Additional rules for conflicts and combat that clarify and expand what was provided in the corebook.

The 50 Witnesses provides a great list of potential mortal NPCs with just enough detail to quickly work them into a game session off the cuff with Names, Who they are and most importantly: What they saw.

To cap it off, the scenario included in the kit, Whispers on the Wind: A Starter Story, is well-written, easy to prep and run at the table, with plenty of asides and bits of advice for a Storyteller who is new to GM'ing or new to Hunter: the Reckoning. It is exactly the kind of scenario I wish was in the Corebook. It provides an interesting take on a classic Quarry, gives several distinctive locations and still manages to be concise and to the point.

I would recommend that any Storyteller who intends to run more than one Hunter game invest in the Hunter: The Reckoning 5th Edition Roleplaying Game Storyteller Screen Kit.

Conclusion

Like I said in my TL;DR section at the start, Hunter: the Reckoning is solid, easy to run and play. It's a game that really scratches the itch of a modern Monster Hunting RPG. Even while running three Hunter chronicles at the same time I didn't tire of it and I know it will be a game I return to in future years for both one-shots and chronicles. While I really enjoy both playing and running Vampire: the Masquerade 5th Edition and Werewolf: the Apocalypse 5th Edition, Hunter is the easiest of the three to use to bring new players into the World of Darkness.

Hopefully this review whetted your appetite for more Hunter: the Reckoning as I have at least one more review planned, an article about Danger and Desperation and several Storyteller's Vault Hunter products in the works.