Hunter Playtest!

[Darinas]

IMO, the problem with the Code as it is presented in the system is that it falls to the same pit as the former Morality system in the old one- it tried to establish an objective "right" vs "wrong". It says that, objectively, the lives of a monster means less than that of a human in the eyes of every hunter in the face of earth. It says that there is, essential, only one right way to uphold the Vigil, and that any hunter who disagree with it is, objectively, hunts "wrong"- and that while, in the same breath, saying that hunters argue about the right interpretation of the Code. Instead of treating it as a way to measure the mental health of the hunter, it becomes a way to measure if the hunter is a "real hunter". What that makes it even weirder is the fact that the original, 1e Code was all about adjusting a uniformed "karma state" into a personal way of life, which showed how the hunter's mentality evolve under the pressure of the Vigil. The way that the Code is presented instead takes away that personal view and replace it with a uniform change which all hunters go through no matter the details of their hunt. From one side, the Code is described as something the hunter swears to herself following her meeting with the monsters in the dark- but it feels like something which someone, or something, force upon her.

Now, I'm not saying that the Breaking Points themselves are out of place- putting the lives of a monster above a person is a sign that the boundaries between a human and a monster becomes blurry, and the hunter can't anymore understand the difference. After all, if a monster becomes a person, people can become monsters- and from there the way for Slasherhood is open. However, the original Code was flexible- that was what made it special. It meant that the hunters controlled their own minds to that extant that they could shrug off things which would have made others go mad. The new Code, however, seems to be described as flexible, while in fact turning the hunter's Integrity into even more rigid and objective. The way I see it, the Code needs either to change to truly become as flexible as it claims to be, putting emphasis around personal interpretations and experiences of the hunter, or it needs to be refluffed into actually measuring the sanity of the hunter under the pressure of the Vigil- but then, it won't be the Code anymore.

Just my two cents about the subject.

This. Thank you, LostLight. That's pretty much my problem with the Code overall.

They're stewing in it.

Baseline Integrity dissolves over time with prolonged exposure to the supernatural. A substantial chunk of the basis of Beast being crossover-friendly is that monsters have needs that are incompatible with universal human autonomy to the point that the best you can hope for is a widespread network of unquestioning assistants two degrees removed from traumatizing magical accidents. Feral states are endemic to monsters, as are pretensions of consciousness from hungers made flesh — to say nothing of incurable pathogens and implacable curses.

Hunters become hunters from encounters with the supernatural and have the easiest time keeping their Integrity high and stable when the monsters are thin on the ground and their circle of vulnerabilities has gone unthreatened long enough to reconnect with the mortal sphere. They're not made for hunting monsters, but they are made from people who inhabit a world where monstrosity is willfully ignored and supernatural predation is a fact of life. You don't start hunting bears with live shot because you want to help bears, particularly when nobody wants to acknowledge the bears and the bears regularly twist your town toward their own agenda.

The supernatural is contagious and taboo. "I want to keep me and mine safe from them and theirs" is not a moral basis unique to hunters.

True. But then tell me, why does this exposure to the supernatural have a different effect on these hunters than, say, any non-hunter mortal ? Why does it causes a mundane mortal's Integrity to gradually decay right away, while the ones who become hunters all somehow shift their Integrity meter to follow a Code they never received from anyone and yet somehow happen to start out exactly the same for everyone, even though as LostLight established, it's a big part of the Chronicles of Darknes that morality is relative?

I should have made myself clearer, and not say "supernatural influence". I meant that for, say, Vampires, Mages Werewolves, as I mentioned in a previous post, they have a supernatural force transform them and completely shift their sense, their mind, the way they perceive the world. Which justifies the complete change of Karma Meter. Hunters have no such metamorphosis; true, discovering the supernatural and deciding to fight it DOES warp their morality, but they still perceive the world like a human would. Unless you intend to make it so that ALL humans who find out about the supernatural become hunters, there is no reason for their Integrity to work differently than for mundane mortals after this.

It does give them -3 to breaking points, though you have to actually have a breaking point for that to take effect. I guess I misunderstood you there (Your wording was "Inflict a breaking point", which it does not do), it looks like you have to take the action with the monster rather than "If you are helping a monster at all then you get the penalty." For example, a Yuri's group cell who is currently providing therapy to a Vampire would not get the penalty if they kill an unrelated vampire without the first vampire's input.

No, I was the one who made the mistake on that one actually; I did think helping a supernatural inflicted you breaking point no matter the context. My bad. Thanks for clarifying it

[Satchel]

True. But then tell me, why does this exposure to the supernatural have a different effect on these hunters than, say, any non-hunter mortal?

Because "actively stop the supernatural long-term" is more involved and stressful than "limit your contact with the supernatural and don't give it an excuse to escalate" and most people put more priority on having a normal life and surviving to live it. Monster hunters are not common because most people do not look at monster-hunting as a desirable profession in a world where monsters are hidden and deliberately not-spoken-of.

Why does it causes a mundane mortal's Integrity to gradually decay right away, while the ones who become hunters all somehow shift their Integrity meter to follow a Code they never received from anyone and yet somehow happen to start out exactly the same for everyone, even though as LostLight established, it's a big part of the Chronicles of Darknes that morality is relative?

Because in-group prioritization is a simple basis for someone to fall back on and the impetus for deciding to kill/bind/drive off monsters is generally brought about by the revelation of a harmful aspect.

The universal aspects of the Code are "don't hurt people who aren't monsters in the course of hunting monsters, don't let monsters hurt people, and don't help monsters hurt people." Those things and some of the bits from conventional Integrity are the consistent elements Hunters fall back on — limit harm and suffering, preferably without dividing yourself from the people you're limiting the harm and suffering of or the people who are doing the same as you.

This isn't the old Morality quibbles of whether theft is worse than assault, this is a very simple framework for how mortal characters who have hardened themselves to handle regular contact with hostile supernatural forces approach their altered worldview. The only sense in which the Code remotely says a given hunter is "doing it wrong" is if they have thrown in their lot with monsters against humanity wholesale, which I should imagine is not a controversial thing to describe as a fail-state for a monster hunter.

Unless you intend to make it so that ALL humans who find out about the supernatural become hunters, there is no reason for their Integrity to work differently than for mundane mortals after this.

Hunters — even organized hunters — still risk Integrity from torturing people. They still have their worldview shaken by suffering substantial loss. They still have personalized breaking points that can't be papered over by devotion to the cause. They are still people who have willingly decided to throw themselves at the supernatural on a recurring basis rather than paper over the cracks and give the haunted wishing well a wide berth. They are people who are trying to make their Integrity do something it is not supposed to do and having middling success in that regard.

[The Kings Raven]

Because in-group prioritization is a simple basis for someone to fall back on and the impetus for deciding to kill/bind/drive off monsters is generally brought about by the revelation of a harmful aspect.

And what about the Hunters who have a non-harmful interaction with the supernatural and decide "I've got to get me some of that?". The Promethian Brotherhood for example, though a better example would be a hypothetical Tier 1 group who perform occult rituals to try and trigger an Awakening.

I agree that generally hunters start with a harmful encounter with the supernatural. And I agree that in-group thinking is a natural human response.

What I don't see is why Hunter should replace a general system that was able to handle both the general cases and edge cases with a specific system that can't handle the edge cases.

The universal aspects of the Code are "don't hurt people who aren't monsters in the course of hunting monsters, don't let monsters hurt people, and don't help monsters hurt people."

Not according to the Call a Spade a Spade sidebar. That sidebar says that "monsters do not deserve to exist on this Earth". Regardless of what the actual mechanics of the code say, that's a pretty extreme position, and it doesn't make sense to portray it as some universal thing that all Hunters will ascribe too.

I mean just look at this line: "He might want to view the cooperative vampire as a person, but in his heart he knows that letting such a creature roam free puts all of humanity at the mercy of a danger it doesn’t understand." Why should a role playing game rulebook tell me what my charachter feels in his heart?

Now, I'm not saying that the Breaking Points themselves are out of place- putting the lives of a monster above a person is a sign that the boundaries between a human and a monster becomes blurry, and the hunter can't anymore understand the difference. After all, if a monster becomes a person, people can become monsters- and from there the way for Slasherhood is open.

I can see where you're coming from here. If you use the Code to become able to kill monsters without a breaking point. And then you also blurr the lines between mosnters and humans. That is a risky combination.

But what about a Hunter who's personal code doesn't remove Breaking points from murdering monsters? A VASCU hunter who arrests most of his targets, but suffers breaking point when he's forced to kill regardless of whether it's a mortal serial killer, a Slasher, or a Vampire they kill?

Or a Les Mysterys Hunter who's Code says it's perfectly ok to kill Werewolves, but only Werewolves. This Hunter might regularly put the Loa above a human but so long as they can't kill a human without suffering a Breaking Point I don't think they'll become a Slasher.

[Darinas]

Because "actively stop the supernatural long-term" is more involved and stressful than "limit your contact with the supernatural and don't give it an excuse to escalate" and most people put more priority on having a normal life and surviving to live it. Monster hunters are not common because most people do not look at monster-hunting as a desirable profession in a world where monsters are hidden and deliberately not-spoken-of.

Now, we are getting somewhere.

But some people don't fit in any of these two categories. What about those who find out about the supernatural and decide to study it, try making profit from it or bargain with it, without becoming supernatural beings themselves? Do they not count as hunters (and does that mean groups like Null Mysterii the Cheiron Group or the Hototogisu no longer qualify as hunters) ? Should their Karma meter shift into a third different way because it's more stressful for completely different reason?

Admit it, these are genuinely interesting and important questions here. Overall, while I do not deny such a big change in life would drastically change someone's morality system, I do feel it should less uniform than the drastic metamorphosis supernatural beings endure. There is a huge difference between "starting to get insane from stress" and "going through a complete metamorphosis that completely change your way to think". But I admit that specific part is just my opinion.

Because in-group prioritization is a simple basis for someone to fall back on and the impetus for deciding to kill/bind/drive off monsters is generally brought about by the revelation of a harmful aspect.

The universal aspects of the Code are "don't hurt people who aren't monsters in the course of hunting monsters, don't let monsters hurt people, and don't help monsters hurt people." Those things and some of the bits from conventional Integrity are the consistent elements Hunters fall back on — limit harm and suffering, preferably without dividing yourself from the people you're limiting the harm and suffering of or the people who are doing the same as you.

This isn't the old Morality quibbles of whether theft is worse than assault, this is a very simple framework for how mortal characters who have hardened themselves to handle regular contact with hostile supernatural forces approach their altered worldview. The only sense in which the Code remotely says a given hunter is "doing it wrong" is if they have thrown in their lot with monsters against humanity wholesale, which I should imagine is not a controversial thing to describe as a fail-state for a monster hunter.

I'll give you that, it's considerably simplier and more open-minded than the old morality system, and in a way it's preferrable to it. And the way you summarize it, it might work a bit better. But as noted by Raven above, that's not the feeling you get.

Hunters — even organized hunters — still risk Integrity from torturing people. They still have their worldview shaken by suffering substantial loss. They still have personalized breaking points that can't be papered over by devotion to the cause. They are still people who have willingly decided to throw themselves at the supernatural on a recurring basis rather than paper over the cracks and give the haunted wishing well a wide berth. They are people who are trying to make their Integrity do something it is not supposed to do and having middling success in that regard.

Then why add more potential breaking points when they already have plenty of these?

[Satchel]

And what about the Hunters who have a non-harmful interaction with the supernatural and decide "I've got to get me some of that?".

What about them?

I'm being completely serious here, what about regular jealousy of sanity-melting occult power makes sense as an impetus for taking up a pursuit called the Vigil? Why should a character of a type whose default unit of dealing with the supernatural is at least a couple of like-minded persons not have trouble operating from a basis of "I personally want magic powers" without the pursuit of that goal fucking them up as badly as a regular mortal who thinks becoming a supernatural being is more important than keeping their life and loved ones safe from the supernatural? What about the supernatural being a source of breaking points for regular Integrity gives you cause to believe "a non-harmful interaction with the supernatural" is common enough to justify inclusion in a game about monster hunters?

Not according to the Call a Spade a Spade sidebar. That sidebar says that "monsters do not deserve to exist on this Earth". Regardless of what the actual mechanics of the code say, that's a pretty extreme position, and it doesn't make sense to portray it as some universal thing that all Hunters will ascribe too.

"When the chips are down, a human being belongs on Earth and a vampire doesn't, period." It reads as an extreme position because it is a description of how the priorities fall at the extreme end of things. It is difficult to argue that a hunter will view vampires as having a more intrinsic right to be unliving and active in the world than humans given what vampires often do and how many of them are the product of exceptional circumstances. The thing that it inherently hurts to confront does not appeal to the lizard-brain processes in the same way as the foundations of your worldview as a human being.

I mean just look at this line: "He might want to view the cooperative vampire as a person, but in his heart he knows that letting such a creature roam free puts all of humanity at the mercy of a danger it doesn’t understand." Why should a role playing game rulebook tell me what my charachter feels in his heart?

Because what your character feels in his heart as someone who is the sort of person to decide to become a monster-hunter is not an intellectual exercise of equivocating so much as an instinctive response that they may or may not struggle with when handed an edge case.

This is a set of gut-feelings applied to regular Integrity to scarify it into something that can resist prolonged contact with monsters as a human. You might as well ask why a role-playing game rulebook tells you that your Vampire character has instincts toward feeding their hunger and securing their territory.

But some people don't fit in any of these two categories. What about those who find out about the supernatural and decide to study it, try making profit from it or bargain with it, without becoming supernatural beings themselves? Do they not count as hunters (and does that mean groups like Null Mysterii the Cheiron Group or the Hototogisu no longer qualify as hunters) ? Should their Karma meter shift into a third different way because it's more stressful for completely different reason?

"You have something I want" is not meaningfully different at a base level from "You need to stay away from my shit." Wanting to exploit monsters for human benefit is still prioritizing humans over monsters at the foundational level.

Admit it, these are genuinely interesting and important questions here. Overall, while I do not deny such a big change in life would drastically change someone's morality system, I do feel it should less uniform than the drastic metamorphosis supernatural beings endure. There is a huge difference between "starting to get insane from stress" and "going through a complete metamorphosis that completely change your way to think". But I admit that specific part is just my opinion.

Again: The healthiest thing for a hunter's Integrity is getting a reprieve from the supernatural and a chance to talk about the fucked-up stuff that they've had to deal with while hunting monsters. Devoting yourself to the kind of recurring dives into darkness that regular people avoid on instinct is going to change you regardless of whether you ever hold the knife or pull the trigger — it's separated off from "this is how the world is and I just have to keep my head down and deal with that" by the drive to actively interfere with the activities of supernatural creatures, and the Chronicles of Darkness describe a setting where the laws of sympathy — like attracts like — are real and pervasive. Dealing with monsters on a regular basis requires you to be able to think like a monster, and the simplest way to do that is to tap into the bits of human nature that are most aligned with monsters.

Then why add more potential breaking points when they already have plenty of these?

Because hunting things that hurt your mind to confront is a stressful thing to deal with in the long term and you need people you can trust to help with that. Even regular mortals are occasionally compelled to tell someone about their encounter with a monster — that's one way Guilty can manifest — and hunters have most of their altered Integrity track built around that management of vulnerability in a way that necessitates those vulnerabilities continue to exist. If your fellow hunters mean nothing to you and vice versa, there is little to keep the archetype of the unhinged solo hunter from being an aberrant circumstance — a gregarious hunter can ground their paranoia through the existence of a stable group of like-minded fellows, but extending the consequences of breaking that trust further than the personal and the purely narrative allows the system to hang incentives off of committing to your cell and your beat and your Vigil.

[Darinas]

Again: The healthiest thing for a hunter's Integrity is getting a reprieve from the supernatural and a chance to talk about the fucked-up stuff that they've had to deal with while hunting monsters. Devoting yourself to the kind of recurring dives into darkness that regular people avoid on instinct is going to change you regardless of whether you ever hold the knife or pull the trigger — it's separated off from "this is how the world is and I just have to keep my head down and deal with that" by the drive to actively interfere with the activities of supernatural creatures, and the Chronicles of Darkness describe a setting where the laws of sympathy — like attracts like — are real and pervasive. Dealing with monsters on a regular basis requires you to be able to think like a monster, and the simplest way to do that is to tap into the bits of human nature that are most aligned with monsters.

.... Sorry, I sincerely don't understand how this answers or even relates to my question. I am saying this with no aggressivity, I genuinely don't understand.

[Satchel]

.... Sorry, I sincerely don't understand how this answers or even relates to my question. I am saying this with no aggressivity, I genuinely don't understand.

The part I was quoting in that section wasn't a question, but: What you're describing as "a complete metamorphosis that changes your way of thinking" is a core-emotional-comfort foundation that already exists in people being given higher priority and used as the basis for the kind of drastic shift to Integrity that enables a mortal to deal with monsters on a regular basis; it does this in a way that happens to facilitate them potentially acting a lot like monsters when they spend more of their time dealing with monsters and other hunters than the normal people they're invested in.

Comparing the Code to the wholesale replacement of Integrity by monster-splats requires acknowledgement that choosing to immerse yourself in the supernatural without the protections of being a supernatural creature is going to make a Hunter's Integrity work a little more like a supernatural being's equivalent track with less short-term operating functionality and fewer permanent consequences beyond having altered their Integrity to work in that fashion.

Normal mortals who're stuck in a supernatural situation cope how they can and extricate themselves from that setting or put up the necessary walls to keep going while monster activity carries on out of sight, and go back to their lives once a threat is no longer actively questing for their dreams, relationships, and/or bodily contents. Notional potential for picking up another template notwithstanding, taking up the Vigil is a bell you can't un-ring; much like hitting Satiety 10 doesn't make your Beast character stop being a predatory idea in human skin, getting back up to Integrity 7+ doesn't stop your Hunter character from being someone who is obsesses over the supernatural and is affected by its causing harm in their vicinity.

A hunter might "retire," but they never stop being a hunter, mechanically speaking. They might move up the ladder to a desk job that lets them maintain their Integrity better than field work does, they might secure a tidy little severance package if they're really lucky, but if it all breaks bad they're going to be just as prone to vengefulness and paranoia as their early days in the Vigil — probably moreso. A mortal "investigator" can patch up their wounded psyche and drink to forget, but a hunter is in it for the long haul, occupational hazards be damned.

[LostLight]

I can see where you're coming from here. If you use the Code to become able to kill monsters without a breaking point. And then you also blurr the lines between mosnters and humans. That is a risky combination.

But what about a Hunter who's personal code doesn't remove Breaking points from murdering monsters? A VASCU hunter who arrests most of his targets, but suffers breaking point when he's forced to kill regardless of whether it's a mortal serial killer, a Slasher, or a Vampire they kill?

Or a Les Mysterys Hunter who's Code says it's perfectly ok to kill Werewolves, but only Werewolves. This Hunter might regularly put the Loa above a human but so long as they can't kill a human without suffering a Breaking Point I don't think they'll become a Slasher.

Oh, when I have mentioned this Breaking Point, I have meant that it would make sense if the Code were to revised so it would actually mean a way to measure to mental stability of the hunter as an outcome of the Vigil- that is, throwing away all the talks about "oath to oneself" and the importance of interpretations of the Code, something which effectively make the Code stop being "the Code". I mean, you don't hear about vampires who argue about Humanity, Changelings who have different views for Clarity or humans who each hold a different hold about Integrity (except of psychologists, but we are talking about the vast majority in here). Masquerade, which had a more flexible view of "morality" and had emphasis on personal interpretation of what it means to be a vamp[ire, did it in the form of the Paths of Enlightenment, and if the Code wish to be flexible, it also needs to create a system which supports it. If it doesn't, it needs to stop saying it is. Either it is an objective measurement of the sanity of anyone who is exposed to the supernatural through the Vigil, or it is a representation of how the hunter's mind survive the meeting with the darkness and adapt to it. It can't be both- even though that now, it tries to, and that is what makes it weird.

[wyrdhamster]

I only want to say that I'm all in to leave the general Code as it is now - only to let Hunters to change number of Breaking Points ( for example, up to 5 ) to those defined by them for -1 cumulative penalty to interactions with other hunters, not sharing new Breaking Point. In this way we have general hunters population that goes for the killing monsters - but could easily have edge cases, or even particular organisations - that follows more non-violent ways of dealing with supernatural. It also be 'canon' to what was shown in Supernatural TV show, where most hunters ( even Dean ) looks on Sam and his attempts to save the monsters as something 'weird' - but not the thing that makes him into Slasher-dom just because he thinks it's good and reattempts it more than 10 times.

[The Kings Raven]

I'm being completely serious here, what about regular jealousy of sanity-melting occult power makes sense as an impetus for taking up a pursuit called the Vigil?

Tell that to the writers of the first edition. The Promethian Brotherhood already exist. One of the secrets in Compacts and Conspiracies for the Agis Kai Doru is

"But what the higher-ups in this sub-conspiracy aren’t telling everybody is the true purpose behind all of this: they want their magic back. They were kicked out of paradise. They were forced to forget their magic. They want it back. Relics are all well and good, but they want the real deal, and they’ll stop at nothing in reclaiming it."

So don't try and say it goes against the theme of the game to create a Hunter who's goal is to gain magic powers when those hunters cannonically exist. Playing a member of the Promethian Brotherhood is fully supported, so's playing a Status 5 member of the AKD. By extension I could create a Tier 1 Hunter who shared the desire for magic but had a less evil method like trying to track down enough tomes to learn Thamaturgy.

Why should a character of a type whose default unit of dealing with the supernatural is at least a couple of like-minded persons not have trouble operating from a basis of "I personally want magic powers" without the pursuit of that goal fucking them up as badly as a regular mortal who thinks becoming a supernatural being is more important than keeping their life and loved ones safe from the supernatural?

For the exact same reason as a Hunter who decides to give their best try at committing genocide on Werewolves should be less fucked up than a regular mortal who goes on a killing spree.

That reason is that frequent Integrity Breaking Points for acting in the way your charachter is supposed to act is a bad mechanic to represent being a screwed up charachter. In 1E the primary risk for loosing Morality was aquiring a Derangement. Hunters who adopted a Code automatically acquired a Tell, which was pretty much a Hunter themed Derangement. In 2E this idea has been spread out, e.g. Vampire's Banes.

Les Mysterys practice escatic traditions and use altered states of consciousness to allow Spirits to possess them. And they worship those spirits. It's completely appropriate for the average man to think they're utterly crazy. But something like Tells or Banes is a far better way of mechanically representing it than calling for an Breaking Point every time they act like a shamen and follow the Spirit's guidance.

(And there's no way they'd think Spirits do not deserve to exist)

What about the supernatural being a source of breaking points for regular Integrity gives you cause to believe "a non-harmful interaction with the supernatural" is common enough to justify inclusion in a game about monster hunters?

The fact that there's plenty of examples of Hunters in 1E who's intial interaction with the supernatural was not harmful is, all by itself, enough to justify their inclusion in a game about monster hunters in my book. Casey Howard for example. The encounter that turned her into a Hunter was a positive interaction with an Angel.

[Darinas]

The part I was quoting in that section wasn't a question, but: What you're describing as "a complete metamorphosis that changes your way of thinking" is a core-emotional-comfort foundation that already exists in people being given higher priority and used as the basis for the kind of drastic shift to Integrity that enables a mortal to deal with monsters on a regular basis; it does this in a way that happens to facilitate them potentially acting a lot like monsters when they spend more of their time dealing with monsters and other hunters than the normal people they're invested in.

Comparing the Code to the wholesale replacement of Integrity by monster-splats requires acknowledgement that choosing to immerse yourself in the supernatural without the protections of being a supernatural creature is going to make a Hunter's Integrity work a little more like a supernatural being's equivalent track with less short-term operating functionality and fewer permanent consequences beyond having altered their Integrity to work in that fashion.

Normal mortals who're stuck in a supernatural situation cope how they can and extricate themselves from that setting or put up the necessary walls to keep going while monster activity carries on out of sight, and go back to their lives once a threat is no longer actively questing for their dreams, relationships, and/or bodily contents. Notional potential for picking up another template notwithstanding, taking up the Vigil is a bell you can't un-ring; much like hitting Satiety 10 doesn't make your Beast character stop being a predatory idea in human skin, getting back up to Integrity 7+ doesn't stop your Hunter character from being someone who is obsesses over the supernatural and is affected by its causing harm in their vicinity.

A hunter might "retire," but they never stop being a hunter, mechanically speaking. They might move up the ladder to a desk job that lets them maintain their Integrity better than field work does, they might secure a tidy little severance package if they're really lucky, but if it all breaks bad they're going to be just as prone to vengefulness and paranoia as their early days in the Vigil — probably moreso. A mortal "investigator" can patch up their wounded psyche and drink to forget, but a hunter is in it for the long haul, occupational hazards be damned.

Sooo, basically you are arguing the shift of Integrity provoked by the trauma of discovering the supernatural and deciding to do something about it has roughly the same impact than the full-blown metamorphosis supernaturals go through? Just to make sure. Because if so, I strongly disagree, but I would like to make sure that really is what you mean, before going on a rant.

I only want to say that I'm all in to leave the general Code as it is now - only to let Hunters to change number of Breaking Points ( for example, up to 5 ) to those defined by them for -1 cumulative penalty to interactions with other hunters, not sharing new Breaking Point. In this way we have general hunters population that goes for the killing monsters - but could easily have edge cases, or even particular organisations - that follows more non-violent ways of dealing with supernatural. It also be 'canon' to what was shown in Supernatural TV show, where most hunters ( even Dean ) looks on Sam and his attempts to save the monsters as something 'weird' - but not the thing that makes him into Slasher-dom just because he thinks it's good and reattempts it more than 10 times.

Seems like a fairly reasonable compromise to me.

[The Kings Raven]

Seems like a fairly reasonable compromise to me.

If you allow Tier 1 Hunters to change their code too I could see it working.

But you'd have to also make it a bit more explicitly out of universe. Say that the code is game mechanic, and not an in-universe phenomina where all Hunters have the same universal starting point.

P.S. I'm heading abraod soon, so if I stop replying that's why.

[Darinas]

But you'd have to also make it a bit more explicitly out of universe. Say that the code is game mechanic, and not an in-universe phenomina where all Hunters have the same universal starting point.

Agreed.

Also, regarding your post above... yeah, that's what I have been arguing. What I feel Satchel doesn't seem to understand (no offense intended Satchel) is that, again, diversity was one of the strongest point of Hunter in 1E. The theme that there are many different ways or reasons to do the Vigil, to "hunt" Monsters.

Yes, there are hunters who hunt monsters by fighting and killing them to defend humanity. There are also hunters who hunt them out of jealousy (the higher in the AKD), because they want to steal their powers (the Promethean Conspiracy) or harvest something from supernatural being (the Cherion Group). There are hunters who hunt them not by explicitly fighting them, but by trying to catch them on cameras so they can show their existence to everyone (Network 0) or by studying them as scientists so they can figure out what they are (Null Mysterii) - And before you start to protest, yes, I know all these groups still end up fighting or harming monsters every now and then, but that doesn't change anything to the fact it's not the main point in what they do. And there are even some groups who hunt supernaturals because they are doing it to help another type of supernatural who they think are good guys (the Knights of Saint Adrian and Les Mystères).

I know I am repeating myself at this point, but that's just because I don't feel like people get my point; "the Vigil"and "hunters" are particularly broad terms in this game, and come in many form. That's one of the strength of the game: the fact it gives you a wide variety of hunter groups with completely different motivations and methods to pick from. Trying to boil down these concepts to just "hunters are humans who fight the supernatural to protect Humanity" kinda makes you lose that aspect.

[mlvalentine]

Really great to see the enthusiasm and passionate discussions about the new rules. I sincerely hope you get a chance to play our structured scenes for this Tier 3 playtest; we're keen on seeing how the dice roll and how these rules work in practice at your table.

After reading this thread, I'd like to politely remind everyone that The Code was introduced in the Hunter: The Vigil 1st Edition corebook on pp. 325-329. I will do a post about The Code, but I need to focus on this playtest and moving the project along to second drafts. Soon, though!

One type of discussion stood out to me, though. I'm not sure you realize this, but when you're discussing what the first edition writers did/did not intend, that creates a rift between 1st Ed and 2nd Ed. Behind the scenes, there are Hunter 1e writers on my team (including myself), who have worked on the line at various points. We don't have an antagonistic relationship, and we are working very hard to make the best 2nd Edition game possible. Thanks.

[Darinas]

After reading this thread, I'd like to politely remind everyone that The Code was introduced in the Hunter: The Vigil 1st Edition corebook on pp. 325-329. I will do a post about The Code, but I need to focus on this playtest and moving the project along to second drafts. Soon, though!

Thank you Can't wait. And don't worry, we do realize the Code existed before. We are talking about this version because we are concerned it might be too restrictive compared to the old version.

One type of discussion stood out to me, though. I'm not sure you realize this, but when you're discussing what the first edition writers did/did not intend, that creates a rift between 1st Ed and 2nd Ed. Behind the scenes, there are Hunter 1e writers on my team (including myself), who have worked on the line at various points. We don't have an antagonistic relationship, and we are working very hard to make the best 2nd Edition game possible. Thanks.

Sorry if that gives this impression! Personally I have liked all the 2E books so far, including the more controversial ones like Beasts, and considered them improvement overall. I admit that part about the Code being too restrictive kinda worries me, but I am honestly willing to trust you with doing a great 2E book. This is just a playtest, after all^^