Reflections on the Hunter the Vigil

Recently, as those who read my blog may have seen I played in a very enjoyable Hunter the Vigil game run by my friend Barry, previous IC write-ups can be found here:

• Session 1 - http://wh40krpg.blogspot.co.uk/2013/07/hunter-vigil-session-write-up-agent.html
• Session 2 - http://wh40krpg.blogspot.co.uk/2013/07/hunter-vigil-session-write-up-2-agent.html
• Session 3 - http://wh40krpg.blogspot.co.uk/2013/08/hunter-vigil-session-write-up-2-agent.html
• Session 4 - http://wh40krpg.blogspot.co.uk/2013/09/hunter-vigil-session-write-up-4-agent.html
• Session 5 - http://wh40krpg.blogspot.co.uk/2013/09/hunter-vigil-session-write-up-5-agent.html

In the game myself and three other players portrayed mortal members of an elite government agency known as the Vanguard Serial Crime Unit or VASCU for short, a sort of paranormal FBI style organisation introduced in the nWoD Slashers book who investigate serial crimes; after a prelude case where we discovered a mad woman using corpses to fertilise strange red plants in her basement although we were swiftly moved off the case and told that it had now fallen under the remit of Project VALKYRIE, an elite military organisation. Realising that it stunk of a cover up we uncovered a related case in the town of Greenvale where the connection had seemingly been overlooked and were able to get ourselves assigned to it, this lead to us being plunged into a small town of strange cults, odd red sacrificial tree circles, captive spirits and an urban legend known as the raincoat killer who stalked the streets of the town murdering at will whenever a heavy rain fell.

Originally the game was supposed to be part of our one-off Wednesday style of games however it overran by quite a bit, wrapping up at session five, I think the GM would be the first to admit that the one-off approach isn't his preferred style and that (like most of us) he's more used to running slightly longer campaigns; however the game was still very enjoyable and we achieved our objective (sort of) even if it was only by gunning down the leader of the cult (the local Sheriff George Woodman) and one of the characters (Agent Brockhurst) sacrificing himself against the urban legend killer whilst the rest of us escaped to call in a Project VALKYRIE clean up team. This might have seemed like an unsatisfying ending for some, however, as a fan of Cthulhu-esque games where the characters generally either die, go insane or escape by the skin of their teeth I was quite happy with it and the GM did a lovely little epilogue section for the player character that had died as his spirit moved into the afterlife.

After the game had finished we all had a little discussion, as we often do, about what had happened within the game and, given that it was an investigation scenario, how we had done in terms of unravelling it all.

There were a few interesting points raised in the discussion:

• Certain parts of the plot were hinged around the players having access to certain powers/abilities when character sheets were altered late on in the character gen session so these abilities were no longer possessed it made the whole scenario a lot more difficult to unravel.
• A couple of longer pauses (due to players RL schedules) between games made it more likely that odd little facts would be missed or forgotten despite myself taking fairly copious notes during the game sessions.
• Some of the plot points were quite obvious to me on an OOC level, however, with my character not having the extensive knowledge of the world of darkness that I possess it was difficult to justify having certain knowledge IC or to make logical leaps without it seeming like OOC knowledge was being used.
• Our characters were designed as stereotypes to facilitate jumping straight into the game; this worked fine during the first session but, as the game went on, the characters started to seem less real and more one-dimensional.
• Because there was very little downtime, my own character (who had been severely injured at the end of session 3) was unable to participate to any great degree in the last two sessions.
• Several aspects of the plot had to be jettisoned in order to bring the game to a satisfactory conclusion by the end of session 5.

Overall the game was very enjoyable and I had a great time playing the grizzled, haunted ex-cop shtick although it did highlight the fact that perhaps certain types of game or scenario are not as suited for one-off games as others.