Re: Hunter: The Vigil
Hi guys, some of you might remember me, and I don't talk a lot but I feel I need to comment here. First, the old world. I find with increasing regularity that everything in the old world of darkness was done poorly. It was a cheesy setting where cheese won and creativity was crushed. Whether your individual gaming group was great or not doesn't have a bearing when the games themselves did not function. They just didn't. They were bad games that sold more on being rebellious and looking cool than they ever did on quality because, at the time, they weren't D&D. If you take this into account, Hunter The Reckoning also is a bad game in a line of bad games. Why do angels and divine powers have to imbue humans with supernatural power? Why do humans need supernatural powers that are innate at all? It's fundamentally redundant to have a human that just 'has powers'. Having powers makes that human not human. The best example of this is Blade the vampire hunter or his 1970's progenitor Captain Kronos from Hammer films. Touched by supernatural forces and enhanced mystically by the exposure they fundamentally cease to be human no matter what prefered philosophy they like to use to explain away their differences. These themes of unrealistic acceptance and superhuman power appear again and again because people like to think that people with power, specifically them if they were the lucky party, would do good things with it. It makes them comfortable to think that powerful people have their best interests at heart. What it isn't, in that social scheme, is Darkness. Its a world of migrane headaches and toothaches, not darkness.
In the new world the best metaphor that can be used draws on classical and rennisance themes of light and shadow. Humans exist in a showy world where a single pillar of light provides the illusion of safety. Some of these humans are touched by the dark but never leave the light, becoming Thaumaturges and Psychics (Second Sight). They aren't human anymore, but not knowing what they are they fumble about half blind. Some give in to temptation and fear and become the darkness itself (Vampires). As part of that in the shadows which they feared, they have nothing to fear anymore and exalt in the power. Some become so enraged at the threat of the darkness they transcend, becoming something more, but in doing so violate their own humanity (Werewolf), and so must commit themselves to a balancing act in order to remain thetical to their beliefs; a balancing act most fail. Some realize there is a light, and all its wondrous properties, and become part of that light making the world a greater place. (Mage) But once changed, they must wrestle with arrogance. Some go to close to the light, become burned, become maimed, and fall back to earth as broken but beautiful things. (Changeling) Still others were never part of the light to begin with and do not hide like the other darkness. They are unnatural bridges of light and shadow that everything rises up in revolt against. (Promethean) And then there are the torch-bearers. This is the crux of Hunter: The Vigil and the new world. Hunters are those humans who take a very small amount of that light, less than a magi but are not tainted like others, and pick their way through the darkness looking for a way out. As one falls, another takes its place, relying on the knowledge that has come before and an iron resolve to do what is right not because they particularly care for their fellow man although some certainly do but because if not them; then who? Hunters are not chosen by god or any other entity, and they never should have been as they were in Reckoning. Even if a Hunter calls upon ritual and prayer and calls it god he shouldn't have proof. Hunters are as much victims of their knowledge as they are its forebearers staving off the darkness. Yes, they use science in an inexact way, but what else can you trust against dread supernatural? Yes, they have magic, but its all stolen by the blood and sweat of generations from the enemy. In a world so dark and so entropic as that, such people have nothing but faith and determination in themselves to carry them forward and that is a more powerful mix of thematic images than any deus ex machina.