Pacing the Hunt - Desperation & Danger Storyteller Tips for Hunter: the Reckoning 5th Edition

A set of four Hunter dice, two orange regular dice and two black Desperation dice, showing the range of results with standard d10s underneath showing equivalent rolls.

One of the most obvious things that distinguishes the 5th Edition World of is the shift from standard d10s to ten-sided dice with icons that correspond to: 

• 1-5 = Blank/Failure
• 5-9 = Success 
• 10 = Potential Critical Success.

The basic mechanic is that players roll a number of dice equal to the sum of an Attribute, like Wits, and a Skill, like Investigation. They hope to get a number of successes (6+ on a standard d10) to match or exceed a target difficulty. A pair of critical results (10s) makes a critical success and each of those counts as two successes, so that a roll of 10,10,9,3,2 would be 5 success, one for the 9, two each for the 10's.

Each game has a set of special dice, used for Hunger (Vampire), Rage (Werewolf) and Desperation (Hunter) that add additional complications. For Hunter, the Desperation Dice have what would be the "1" side result in Overreach or Despair, while Vampire and Werewolf have their own thematically appropriate complications on both successes and failures.

In Vampire and Werewolf, the Hunger and Rage dice track an individual PC's Hunger and Rage, replacing the old Blood/Hunger and Rage tracks from previous editions. They serve as a Push Your Luck kind of mechanic where a player can risk getting more Hunger or Rage to fuel their supernatural powers—a mechanic which I find to be an elegant replacement to the mere resource tracks of previous editions.

What sets the Hunter Desperation Dice apart from Hunger or Rage dice is that they are tied to a track shared by the entire Cell (Hunter party) and not any single PC. This ties into one of the two Trackers that are unique to Hunter in the 5th Edition World of Darkness games, Desperation and Danger. This means that instead of individual players managing their Hunger or Rage, it's the Storyteller of a Hunter game who handles these important mechanics.

For a Storyteller new to Hunter, this can be tricky, the core rulebook has only a couple of pages covering the mechanic without much advice at all on how best to use them. It took me several months of running Hunter before I realized that it's best to think of them as tools for Pacing the Hunt...

GM Tool - Dry Erase Crayons

So, last summer I discovered Dry Erase Crayons on clearance at a Target and thought, why not give those a try. Less than a month after trying them I bought a 96 pack and gave some away to all of my local GM friends as part of their Xmas gifts and I haven't used a dry erase marker myself since picking them up...

You might be thinking, well they're just crayons but...

• They don’t dry out. I used to grab two or three dry erase markers before I found one that left a nice clean line and I'd always have to be careful about putting the cap back on, but no more.
• They don’t smudge as easily and I no longer have fingers and hands stained black, blue and red the day after running a game.
• They're long lasting for DMs who are sketching a quick line drawn map. Some reviews say they don't last that long, but many of those reviews are about children using them roughly and no drawing implement lasts long under those conditions.
• They wipe easily with a microfiber cleaning cloth, even if some reviews imply otherwise, I've been able to clean all my dry erase surfaces quickly and easily with a microfiber cloth--even when I left the crayon drawing on a board for over a week as a test.
• You can get them really cheaply if you watch clearance sales at stores and online. My first set I found on clearance at Target, I was able to get a 96 pack for $25 on Amazon (currently up to $32 when this post was written, which is still 33¢ a crayon) and have found the Bright neon crayons on sale as well.
• You get the eight basic crayon colors in one pack, and after buying more than my fair share of dry erase and wet erase markers for games, it's great to know that you're going to get yellow, red, blue, green, brown, purple, orange and black. Plus, if you want more options you can get neon colors.

So far I've yet to find anything I did with dry erase markers that I can't do with these crayons and they have improved my GM game by letting me cut down time spent finding a working marker or hunting for a cap.

They look bigger in tiny hands... #teamtinyhands

I like BIG DICE...

and I cannot lie... (small dice for size)

Last year I discovered the joy of BIG DICE. Partly this was due to running 13th Age and needing a big d6 for the Escalation Die, but I've also found them to be great GM tools. What do I use BIG DICE for?

• Tracking enemy hit points. Perfect for bigger enemies with lots of HP.
• Keeping track of countdowns.
• 13th Age Escalation Die - Big wooden lawn dice work perfectly for this.
• Eyes of the Stone Thief Submergence Die.
• Terrifying players. Just set a die out and increase or decrease the number to your whim and watch players squirm.
• The pure satisfaction of rolling BIG DICE.

What's the advantage of using BIG DICE for these tasks?

• Easy to read at a glance.
• Harder to accidentally knock over. (I've found that metal dice are also good for this).
• Stand out from smaller dice. I only have a small number of BIG DICE so I'm not trying to remember if the wyvern hp total was on the sparkly black dice or the matte black with speckles dice.

Now I make sure I have my big dice handy for every game I run. You can find a set of your own at Dark Elf Dice, which is my favorite online dice store.

Consider this the first of what will hopefully be many short weekly GM tips as I continue to re-boot the blog.