Greetings all! I have returned with a game of Hunter: the Vigil (from the nWoD line of games).

If you are interested in staking some vampires, excorcising some demons, or just blasting your way through this week's monster, this is a game for you!

If you are familiar with HtV, this is a Tier 1 game. If you are not familiar with it, Tier 1 basically means that you're on your own; there is no larger company or conspiracy backing you up, you are not part of some high-secretive task force, and you are not some sort of Chosen.

The theme of the game is "Protect the Neighborhood at all cost." That should raise a question: How far are you willing to go to protect your friends and family in the neighborhood? Are you willing to kill? Risk your own sanity? Risk the lives of your teammates? Sacrifice a friend for the good of the many? Will you cause pain to others to protect that which you hold dear? Protecting the neighborhood is not always that simple.

Family, home, faith, revenge, violence. These are the moods of the game, meaning they are like themes within the theme. The neighborhood is your home, your neighbors are your family. When your family is hurt, the wrongdoers must pay. When demons attack, will you have faith to force them back? Are you willing to get violent to protect your family?
Characters should be built with these moods in mind, but Players are also encouraged to suggest moods they would like to include (and build their characters around).

This game will have some combat-hacks, such as increase in firearm lethality, headshots, and more. Complete list will be in the Q&A thread once it gets up and running.

And here's a little joyous gift for you: All characters are expected to be seasoned Hunters, and so they all begin with 35xp.

Now for the basic plot: As the title suggests, you are Hunters who protect a specific neighborhood. This neighborhood, located in the fictional city of Newport, is in the bad side of town. You started small, getting rid of the punks and drugdealers, and were joined together by a common sense of what is right and knowing that the law would only leave things half finished. You needed to take action, and that earned you the respect of your neighbors. But when the obvious was removed, the fine details appeared. You started paying attention to the little things, which turned out to be even bigger than you imagined. Vampires, werewolves, ghosts, and even demons roam this city, and you are fine with it, as long as they don't mess with your part of town.

I am looking for up to 4 or 5 players, willing to join the Neighborhood Watch. If recruitment goes well, the game can start as soon as this weekend.

Any questions? Ramblings? Pointless babble? Interest, perhaps?

Hell, sounds like a hell of a game, but I'm unfamilier with the system. If you don't mind PM me the details and you have your first player. If not, then im ok with sitting this one out.

Since others might be wondering about the system as well, I'm just going to post a description here.

Hunter: the Vigil is a sort of a sub-game within the World of Darkness (frequently known as the new World of Darkness or nWoD). It uses the same mechanics but with some minor addons.

World of Darkness is a d10 system (aka Storyteller system) that counts successes. That means it rolls X number of dice and each die showing 8 or more counts as a success. The more successes, the better the... uhm, success.

nWoD uses also a point-buy based character creation, as opposed to the D&D classical level based. Each character gets so and so many points to use in this or that group, and XP is used to "buy" more points. Let's take the Skill Firearms as an example: Firearms is in the Physical Skills group, which gets (say) 7 points. Firearms by itself gets 3 points. When Firearms gets an upgrade later on, the player spends XP to buy the 4th point.

A simple way of thinking about it is to say that each point equals one die which is rolled when the Skill is used. When making a roll, it always uses two traits, usually Attribute + Attribute or Attribute + Skill.

That is the short version. I could go into a lot more detail, but I tend to be less understandible when I do.

I currently do not have my nWOD core book, nor do I own Hunter, but this sounds fun. Perhaps I'll have to try to find a cheap used copy or hunt down the friend who has my core book.. Next game hopefully.

I have not got any books or anything, could you send some form of info on creating a character (Maybe an unfinshed sheet) or instructions (just enough to get me by) im sure i could get along fine... Otherwise, im sure Google will come up with something

Edit : World of darkness right?
Edit Edit : Got the WoD Core book, Hopefully will get hold of a copy of Hunter: The vigil within the hour

got both the Core book and Hunter: the Vigil so i'll read through and get a nice sheet sent to you, if you want it so early?

There is no need to make a character until I know if there are enough players to get this game started (at least 3 are needed). At that time, I will post a character sheet for you to use.

Also, these are the books I recommend for this game:
-World of Darkness (core)
-Hunter: the Vigil
-Armory
-Armory Reloaded

Other books may be recommended based on character concepts, such as Tales from 13th Precinct for police-type characters.

It sounds pretty intresting, and I would like to join. I'll have to look up the rules online, but then I'll have a character ready to go.

Yay, i was almost ready to declare this game dead ^_^ Looks like its back on track, Good thing too as i'm liking the look of this system

This system seems really cool, and I like it alot.

I'm thinking of making a detective character who uses his sword, pistol, martial arts, and willpower to take on all kinds of nasties. I'm not quite done with making my character yet, but I've got most of the details down.

I just have one question about the system, it seems like guns really aren't any better than the melee weapons when it comes to a fight(like they would be in a real fight), and it seems to me that most fights simply can't be won in one round no matter how skilled you are with a certain weapon because of how high you have to roll on the d10 just to get a single hit. I was just curious if this was normal for the rules and I wasn't misreading anything.

Mr.Conquest I have my character idea mostly ready but I want to know about some of the details we'll need to work collabrotivly on.

First and foremost is the safehouse. I read a pdf of Hunter: The vigil (I'll try to get an actual book soon), and it stressed alot of importance on the supplies a Hunter has to draw upon. Seeing as I have most of my merits already down and still have 5-6 spare merits to spend I was thinking of putting that down towards the safehouse. I wanted to know how much you would put foreward for the safehouse (if you have any spare merits) so we can decide how many points we can put in what. I was thinking of having a 3-4 dots in security, hopefully 5 dots in the cache so we have a lot of gear and reasources to draw upon (and one part of that gear would be an armoured truck that can hold all are gear quickly and easily in case the safehouse is compromised, if the Skari-dono allows) and 2-3 dots in size as we probably aren't going to need a huge base of opperations. The variables for the numbers represent how much you contribute to the safehouse though they can be changed further. When some other players at the inn join and they help with the safehouse as well we could have some of the dots bumped up 1 or two and a second, less secure, less fancy "spare safehouse is made in case of destruction, or compromise of the first safehouse. These are just ideas I'm throwing out there, if you have anything better, please tell me.

The other part of my question to you is our backstories, and how we would have meet. I have an idea and you can tell me if you like it. I'm unsure what your character's backstory is, but maybe this addition will fit smoothly. My character, who is a detective was on the trail of a case that he belived to involve the paranormal. He was getting close to the end and then he found you when you first were fighting the darkness. In you he saw that glimmer of the Vigil. He went to your aid and helped you take down the creature(s) of the darkness that you were facing (for this part to make it still sound like a tough and dangerous first fight with the creatures from dark you can either double the number of enemies or if it's one guy, just give him alot of mooks for me to fight). After that and seeing how well you handeld yourself (plus that glimmer of the Vigil) my guy invites your character to help him protect the neighbor hood and either gives him directions to the safehouse if you don't have many merits to spare or if you do contribute alot that can represent an upgrade in safehouse size and/or the safehouse cache.

This is all assuming that you fought a creature of the dark as your first real exposure to the Vigil. If you didn't then we can try to come up with something else.

First, the bad news: The recruitment has been going on now for over a week and we only have 2 players. Because of that, I'm not going to be running the game as I had originally planned because, well, two players are just not enough. I'm actually starting the game as a table-top and we're meeting today to discuss characters.

And now, the good news: Since you are so enthusiastic about this, I'm going to aim for a smaller kind of Hunter game
If someone else wants to join, great! But we're going to get this game started with the two players already recruited. The game won't be exactly how I imagined it but it probably will be a bit like what I described in the intro. For example, I think I won't be 'hacking' the game with new rules or anything. Vanilla Hunter, if you will.

And now for me to start answering questions.

Guns are in fact more effective in this system than in, say, d20 where you don't add Dexterity to damage rolls. It is also more effective than unarmed attacks or attacks with swords. Why? Brawl and Weaponry attacks (fists and swords) suffer a penalty equal to the target's Defense and Armor (if he has armor), but Firearms attacks (guns) only suffer penalty equal to the target's Armor. So if two characters, one with Weaponry dice pool of 6 and the other with Firearms dice pool of 6, attack the same target, the one with the gun have a better chance of doing more damage because the other suffers a penalty.

Natuarally, other penalties might apply, such as bad sight, bad weather, range, and so on, but in optimal conditions the gun will be your better friend.

You should also note that combat is often resolved fast. Each success on your roll (that is, any die that shows 8 or more) counts as a damage. Average mortal has 7 health boxes, so if an attack rolls 4 successes, that mortal has only 3 left. Mortals are also prone to being unconscious after a beating or being shot, and then you can perform a coup de grace.

I think you misunderstood the use of Cache in the Safehouse Merit. Cache does not give you more or better equipment, it gives you a place to store your equipment if you have any. My rule for equipment is pretty simple: You can start with any equipment you have Resources for, unless that weapon requires special permission to use (such as military grade weapons like a bazooka or assault rifles). If you do not have the dots in Resources to afford that sweet looking hand-cannon, you can't have it. As a general guideline for other special weapons, Status or Allies equal to half the Resources value in the propper group for firearms, Status or Allies equal to the Resources value for explosives.

Naturally, if you can afford an armored truck, you can have one

As for backstories, ideally you would have met originally while protecting the neighborhood (referred hereafter as simply the Hood) from mundane threats, such as drug-dealers and small time criminals, perhaps even big time criminals. Once the bond was forged, you stuck together, and once the shadows were clear, you noticed that things hid in the deep dark.
It is very unlikely (but not impossible) that your characters' first bump with the supernatural was an actual combat with the supernatural. It is possible that you began noticing how people were being manipulated or even possessed.

Anyway, this is enough discussion in the recruitment thread. I'll be starting a Q&A thread shortly (today, ideally) and I will discuss character creation with you guys there

To be perfectly honest, i haven't really taken time tolook at charcter creation just yet as i acctually didn't hold much hope for it kicking off, But im glad to see that 2 is enough ^^.

I'll read the books now, and get somthing wiped up if i can. Speed, i like the idea, ill get my charcter done, then contribute what i can to a safehouse, as it does sound important. Forgie me, it might take a while to get somthing together so i can understand it.

Which means that since I'm unfamiliar with game mechanics I'll either be a refreshing supply of "so can I..." or I'll be a lot of face smacks, but this game sounds neat and I wanted to see if I can join. I have a character concept in mind but it only works if there is a class that manipulates supernatural energies. You know kinda a mage character. Someone who's studied up on the supernatural for oh say ten exuberant years and picked up a trick or two. (maybe learned how to magically protect a house from certain demonic influences.) So is there a class like that?