The Reckoning

I always enjoyed a good Hunter game because players are in control of supernaturally imbued characters who are entirely clueless to the World of Darkness. Thankfully with the well written, and familiar, rules, you have the opportunity to fight back against the creatures who prey on humanity. This is not an investigate and run away game like Call of Cthulhu. With that said, a good game requires that the cluelessness is maintained to keep the level of excitement up. You can have players who know about the World of Darkness, but that information should not influencing their character's in-game decisions. A Hunter is not going to know a Brujah from a Gangrel or that a large man in a business suit is a Glasswalker. Overall, Hunter was my favorite of the "old-school" White Wolf/World of Darkness games/settings. The basic rules are consistent with the other titles in the line, with only a few variations. This made it easy to pick up and start playing on our first night with the rule book.

If you're interested in playing a vampire hunter, or werewolf hunter... this is a great game to do it based on a storytelling aspect rather than dice rolls.Also, it's set up to play as a kind of survival-horror game better than anything else; it doesn't have the dice rolling of the old Dark Conspiracy game, but you can definitely do the story well with the character outlines provided. The book is well layed out and easy (and fun) to read, with more than a few inspiring sections for a beginning gamemaster. I do recommend picking up the player's guide with it, though, especially if your players are veterans of other RPG's.

I've played Werewolf. Hell, I've dabbled in Vampire. Both are really great games if you want to play as something that's rediculously powerful and only have a real challenge if you're fighting an older Vampire or Werewolf (in either game). Hunter is different: instead of being this ungodly-powerful monster, you're this regular Joe with a neat trick, trying to fight the aforementioned monsters.It sounds unfair, I know, but that's what makes this game beautiful. You have extraordinary powers, but they're hardly enough to stop a charging Get of Fenris or Bruja in its tracks. You're alone, and if you don't find help, either you'll die, or you'll be driven insane. That, my friend, is true fear.Yes, the story aspect is my favorite part of this game, but let's discuss the gameplay. As in most White Wolf games, the gameplay takes a backseat for story, but there's a perfectly working game here, too. Each player creates a Hunter (someone trying to fight monsters that only they can see) and assigns him/her powers.

When this game came out, White Wolf's forums were...less than thrilled about this game. It's a shame that people judge this book before they read it, because it has amazing depth and humanity to it.You are the Imbued, regular blue- and white-collar citizens who one day get a big cosmic message from enigmatic beings (called the Heralds) waking you up to the fact that monsters not only exist in your world, but they have been there for a while and they've inserted themselves very neatly into law enforcement, politics, media, etc. Armed with "second sight" (the ability to spot these monsters out of a crowd) and "edges" (powers given to you by the Heralds to help you out in the hunt), Hunters can either strike at the darkness, search for redemption inside monsters, or merely try to learn more about them and figure out what went wrong. But as you begin to fight the good fight, you realize that you're outnumbered, outmanned, and underpowered. To top it all off, leading the crusade against darkness ultimately alienates you from your friends, family, and society. It's gritty, tragic, but ultimately hopeful. Despite it's bad rap as a twink game, Hunters are actually fragile, panicky creatures who bleed easy and go down fast. It's a welcome change from the usual White Wolf fare (if you haven't picked up a White Wolf game yet, I recommend this first before purchasing others...knowledge about the other games ruin the mystery of the monsters somewhat)

Hunter is my favorite RPG in the World of Darknes series. In this game, you do not play an all-powerful vampire, mage, or werewolf... but instead a vulnerable human with a few paltry powers (mostly revolving around detection and identification of the paranormals). I highly recommend the Hunter: the Reckoning for the following reasons: * The StortyTelling system from White Wolf has an excellent resolution engine for tasks and combat. * I enjoy the story line -- playing a vulnerable human hunting very powerful paranormals... trying to understand them, sometimes destroying the evil ones, sometimes befriending the good ones. All of these things combine to make this one of my favorite games to play... and I've been role-playing since the Summer of 1980. If you buy it, I'm sure that you'll enjoy it. There is a decent-sized community of online gamers that play Hunter via "WebRPG Online". Buy the game and join us. Have a great day!