monsters
...and they need to be hunted down...
If you were to take the new Hunter game to a deserted island, the first question if you can only take three books is, what's core? Is the WoD rules core and the Hunter book a supplement? If I choose to include the Hunter book itself as a core book, this is my list.
- Mysterious Places -There are more interesting books in the new World of Darkness for doing things beyond the big lines like Vampire and Mage. I like that. This book is one of those I think you could use for many modern day games of creepy stories. The fact that it's name reminds me of the Ars Magica books Mythic Places doesn't hurt either. This is a book with some interesting locations, designed to be horrific, weird and creepy. I think they have succeeded quite well. All of them come with story suggestions and quite evocative descriptive text. I bet you could probably come up with this kind of stuff on your own, but I need to be kickstarted by a book like this.
- D6 Adventure Locations - I'm unsure if that D6 is part of the title or just telling us it's part of a game line. I guess you've noticed that I branched out. This is not a White Wolf book. In this book you will find maps of airports, conference centres, hotels ans other everyday locations. Add to that a paragraph of items commonly found at such a location, and you have some excellent help to make a fight scene in one of these places be just a bit more interesting, with some parts of the interior decoration to throw around. But, even though this is a very hand book, it looks bad. There are lots of clip art in it, which looks cheap. Then there's the cover illustration which I hate. What the heck is that woman wearing? It's wet suit for diving? So why does it look so flimsy over her breasts, suddenly clinging closely to the shape of them? Why does it look like it's metal polished to a high sheen, or is it just that it looks like a bad Photoshop colouring? I guess you get the point.
- Supressed Transmission - You know what this collection of articles is, right? I'll just summarize. Ken Hite. You need more? Ok, this is a book collecting Ken's columns from Pyramid Magazine (yet another game company, Steve Jackson Games). Here you can find lots of ideas for conspiracy and weirdness, which can conceal those you hunt, or give hints to where they have hidden throughout history. If nothing else, you'll have lots is fun reading and odd facts you can befuddle your players with, and amuse yourself with. There's even a second volume, but then this list would be too long.
As you can see my game of Hunter:The Vigil would encompass a lot. As far as I know there have not been much support material published for H:TV so why not look at other game lines for inspiration?
Would your list look different? Agree? Disagree? Feel free to say so.
For my next post in this series I'm tempted to try to limit D&D or Traveller down to three books. Can you do that to 35 years of supplements? Maybe.