Minireview: Night Stalkers (Hunter: the Vigil)
Night Stalkers is the second expansion book to White Wolf’s “Hunter: the Vigil”, and it deals with vampires – or more exactly, vampires as antagonists for vampire hunters. If you want to play vampires, you’ll want the full Vampire: the Requiem game. Just judging by this book it’s a bit unclear whether “Night Stalkers” refers to vampires or the the people who hunt them, but judging by the other books in the line (Witch Finders, Spirit Slayers) it’s clear that the reference is to the hunters themselves.
What I’ve read of Hunter so far has been very good, and this book does not disappoint either. While here the “targets” are much more clearly “hostiles” than in the mage book (Witch Finders), there is still some room given to scenarios where the hunters might cooperate with a blood-sucker (at least for a while) before they go all Buffy on them. This is presented as a very risky option, of course, and so it should be – these are not Twilight-style glow-in-the-dark angsty animal-eating teenagers. These are monsters, usually in the classic sense of the word. It’s not that they’ll just kill you if you threaten them; they’ll also often have the capability (and lack of human morals) to also kill your family and other loved ones, while (potentially) leaving you alive with a ruined life. With ages-old power networks at their disposal, they can make sure that you’re suddenly out of a job, branded a pedophile, homeless, and/or lots of other fun stuff. It’s like fighting entrenched organized crime (and often, in the WoD, there is heavy overlap anyway)… the leaders won’t fight you directly. They’ll just send endless disposable minions after you and everyone you care about, while using their contacts to make your life hell. That’s the real danger of hunting vampires, and the book goes to great lengths to make sure that you use a vampire antagonist in a smart way. Only very young or foolish vampires will look for a head-on fight with a gang of hunters.
The book organization mimics Witch Finders. First we have a ton of historical vampire myths, with different sorts of vampires. While you can use the Vampire: the Requiem model for what a vampire is like, you don’t have to. Having your vampires be something quite unexpected will be a fun and nasty curveball for your players. Lots of suggestions and ideas are presented here; some of them creepy, some a bit silly, and some just weird.
Next up is a overview of how the various Compacts and Conspiracies regard and hunt vampires. Nothing too surprising here, though some of the detail is fun. Then we get some new Compacts and a new Conspiracy; the Compacts aren’t anything all that special, really (one is clandestine political group, one is a college sorority of sorts, and one a street gang)… but the Conspiracy is very cool. It’s the “Cainite Heresy”, and it consists of fanatical vampire hunters who hunt vampires using supernatural methods which they learn from… someone. Or something. It’s quite creepy, and has lots of story possibilities.
The last sections of the book contain some new Tactics, a bunch of “Dread Powers” for Vampires to use if you don’t want to use or don’t have Vampire: the Requiem, and a storyteller section with tips and ideas for running vampires as antagonists in a chronicle.
It’s a very solid book. Sure, the Compacts are a bit mundane, but they’re not bad by any means. The Cainite Heresy rocks, and the rest of the book is crammed full of useful ideas. Like with the other Hunter books I’ve read, the writing style here is relaxed and fun to read.
Wed, 03 Feb 2010 11:32 Posted in Books, Games
Tags hunter, hunter the vigil, vampire, white wolf
