Hunter Begins!

So excited! We actually got the first Hunter game done!

 

I had 3 players lined up. One couldn't make it; we discussed quickly and she would like to be involved but couldn't commit to that date. Knowing how games can be excessively delayed, I suggested the rest of us make a start and we can slide the third player in when she is free.

So, H & S came over for character generation and an intro. H has run a couple of D&D sessions but hasn't been a player, and they're using pre-genned characters so she hasn't had a go at character creation before - and of course, White Wolf works very differently to D&D!

H has put a lot of thought into her character. His name's Jim, he came to Aberrheidol 7 years ago to study Medieval Literature but dropped out and now works in a pub/nightclub (Samsons and The Villa; this is a location transplanted from our local area where, it turns out, we both worked, she starting shortly after I left!), with a second job at a bookshop (I need to talk with H about this, because I have a few ideas). He's got a few named friends: Anna, his co-worker crush, his best friend who is an Arabic history specialist (if I remember correctly), and his roommate works at the hospital.

S is playing a sort of New Age healer-type named Vasha, who lives in a mobile caravan and has a pet hedgehog, Gerald. She wears a lot of scarves and occult-esque jewellery, but is actually good at medicine, albeit from a more mystic stance. The character doesn't exactly fit the vibe I was intending for the game, but the game isn't just mine so I'm doing my best to roll with it.

I explained we were starting in Pier Pressure, a club on the Pier. I let them choose why they were there: Jim had been invited by Anna to hang out with her other friends, and Vasha was looking for Gerald who had gone missing and she'd found him there before. They individually spotted a man with a very drunk woman; Vasha spotted blood trickling down the woman's leg as she crawled looking for Gerald, while Jim was concerned by the guy's attitude towards the woman. Jim looked for a bouncer - there was one in the corner, but studying the ceiling and Jim couldn't get his attention. The players intervened, the man raced down the stairs out of the club, dragging the woman with him.

I did my best to build Pier Pressure from my vague memories of my one visit to the real world place that inspires it, the carpet that eats your shoes, the stench, the awful lighting - and the smashed mirrors on the stairs.

Vasha glimpsed the man as he ran down, and noticed that he didn't seem to have a reflection. She didn't get a good enough look to be sure, but already believed in vampires the way some people do in our reality. Jim, however, has no such predisposition and got a very clear view. He went white with shock, and told Anna he thought he was seeing things. They wondered if his drink had been spiked.

Vasha got out first, and saw her favourite scarf had got stuck on the woman's shoe as the man carried her away, so she gave chase. She was smaller than the injured woman (easily kidnappable), and more full of blood, so the vampire dropped its first victim and grabbed for her instead. Anna said she'd call the police, and Jim told her to also look after the first first victim while he ran after the vampire. He threw a punch, and in the tussle Vasha managed to get free and the two pinned the vampire down - there was no way they could mistake it for anything else this close. Jim saw that Vasha had a cross among her jewellery, and she spotted Gerald nearby. Jim shoved the cross into the vampire's mouth, and Vasha used one of Gerald's spines to pierce the heart. 

The corpse went stiff.

Jim returned to Anna, saying they had to run because he was worried he'd knocked the guy unconscious, and they went to hospital to make sure he hadn't had his drink spiked. Vasha took over looking after the injured woman, managing to stabilise her from where Anna hadn't known what she was doing. She used herbal poultices and a scarf as compress to stem the bleed, and legged it home to make sure Gerald was fed.

I let this work on the vampire although it isn't RAW, but I like the idea that Hunters aren't entirely human and things that wouldn't work if a normal human tried them will work for Hunters. They left a vampiric corpse on the seafront, along with an injured woman. Aberrheidol is a centre of weird, so I think there are people in authority engaging in a degree of cover up, but they will have questions about the strange method of dispatch, as well as where the vampire came from: it was already weak, I think recently roused from torpor. Someone unleashed it on Aberrheidol for a reason - I've got ideas what those may be...

A quick life update

I've got a date for Hunter character gen! Very excited: 2 weeks. I'll give more detail after. Am also really nervous, because it's new to me to be the one in charge...

Broke my finger. It hurts. Got caught in the fabric when I was doing a drop, and I didn't realise until it was too late. First confirmed broken bone of my life (hairline fracture on my ribs, and possible broken toe first week of uni, but this was far worse and impossible to ignore). During x-ray, I said "it hurts!" and the radiologist went "I can see why!" and with that acknowledgement that there was something real, the pain faded to a much more tolerable level. Physio tomorrow: as an aerialist and being hypermobile, it was really stressed to me that I must attend even if I feel ok.

I usually manage my fibro pain through exercise, so I'm not feeling great at the moment. I'm doing what I feel I can, but it's so much less than normal. I can just about straddle to the hoop on one arm, though, which took me by surprise.

Getting support to do the ADHD forms tomorrow. The more I've looked into it, the more I've realised it's the missing bit, part of the reason I could hide being autistic so well. It's helping me find ways to manage myself better, to be accepting and forgiving, which leads to less time spent feeling like a failure and more time spent trying. 

I'm still tied in knots of grief, and that's ok.

I'm still writing.

I'm still here.

Rambles

It feels strange to write here, like I have to pretend I'm not in mourning when I am, or like I have to pretend I'm so deep in mourning that nothing else exists.

And neither's true. Both are true. It's never as simple as black and white; when we think that way, we don't just miss the shades of grey, but a full spectrum of colour.

Going through this bereavement with an understanding that I am autistic and have ADHD helps me understand a lot more about how I have handled (and not handled) grief in the past. It's still a tangled mess in my head; I might find the words one day but at the moment I'm still getting the sense and shape of it.

And this isn't where I wanted to go with my writing here today.

I've been rediscovering my tactile creative side: Ziggy (who now prefers Zigzag as a nickname. He says Zigzag is his Blood Bowl name, and his real name has been relegated to his "other name") let me play with his air-dry clay and I can see that becoming a real hyperfixation if I let it. It was pleasurable to mold the clay, and the ways it shaped surprised me. Waiting for our projects to dry so we can decorate them.

The anthology I'm published in is out in paperback here. I don't get royalties or commission or anything, but I am excited to share it.

What did I want to talk about today? I want to share my joy in the Exalted I'm playing in. I'm back in Second Age Exalted as envisiged by Rich, playing Taji alongside Bells as her twin brother, Kito. I love the relationship between the twins - I really enjoy having a close relationship with another PC. And there's wonderful relationships with the NPC's too, and they are different for each twin. Kito is terrified of Taji's lunar mate, for instance, yet Taji is utterly and deeply in love with him. She knows he's dangerous, but sees him as guardian rather than threat. Then there's the Emissary, a character from the meta but taken into his own by our GM, a friend and mentor - even a father figure - for the twins, supporting them individually as well as guiding them together. I really enjoy the depth of character Rich has created for each of the major NPC's, whether entirely his creation, or inspired by characters named in the book. The love, the fear, the laughter. It's an important part of TTRPG campaigns for me: it's the relationships that keep bringing me back.

I want to offer that to my Hunter group, help them build the bonds between the PC's and give them friendships, meaningful relationships outside as well. I want to give them the ties to make them fight harder...

I'm not sure how to do this, and I won't know what I need to learn until I've tried.

First session hopefully in Feb. Got to confirm and finalise a date.

Wish me luck!

Hunter getting nearer...

I've got the eariest sketch of an idea for metaplot for the Hunter game I want to run. It's not going to be as incredible as the meetaplots my GM creates, but that's ok: I'm learning, my players are learning, and it doesn't need to be so beautifully detailed and twisting as that.

At least one of my players is aware of my blog, which makes me feel like I shouldn't talk about it here, but then again I like talking about it and I'm excited about it and a huge part of the purpose of this blog is to talk about things I find exciting (without having to see the look of glazed-eye boredom I'm normally faced with). So Sophie (or other players) if you're reading: you're welcome to continue, but I trust you not to metagame (which means to use out of game knowledge about the game in the game; like having a map for a maze that I'm asking you to ignore and enjoy the exploration instead).

This is probably inspired by playing in Scion, combined up with Husbit rewatching Supernatural and I'm watching Lucifer, but I think I'd like to slowly involve my players in a war between gods. I'm undecided whether it'll be a conflict within a pantheon, or involving multiple pantheons. It's set in Wales, so looking at Cletic, Roman and Christian mythology. I don't need to decide straigtaway because this is something to creep in, for them to slowly realise some of the messages are coming from gods (or their Scions), until eventually they realise they're pawns in someone else's war.

I'm really excited about this game. I've ordered dice for my players, because they're new, and I've picked up some cheap notebooks for them. It feels welcoming to me to do this: I want to bring new people into one of my favourite things and I want them to feel happy in it. I've got three people, all aerialists, tentatively lined up. I want to start in January, run a session maybe monthly and hopefully on Saturday evenings. It feels a bit stupid, but I almost don't want to tell them in case they don't actually want to play or they aren't free, and then my dream is burst. It's like with writing: part of what frightened me before was the sense that it couldn't work, so it was better to enjoy the dream than actually try. Because I have achieved something with writing, I'm trying to fight the fear of losing the dream and actually get my group together.

Writing that was enough of a prompt. I've set up a little chat with my prospective players. Am psyched!

Building My Hunter Setting

I'm really excited to run Hunter. I've got a few of my aerial friends interested now. I'm hoping we'll find an evening we're all free so we can play. I'm figuring to start early next year.

Here's an issue I have though, and a reason I've struggled with Hunter in the past: having played various of the WoD supernatural creatures, I have great sympathy with them that means it's hard for me to make them the bad guys. Especially werewolves. I really loved playing Werewolf.

My setting is my take on Aberrheidol, a dark version of my uni town and used in various games run by my friends from there. My version has a few places from my home town as well, the library I grew up with, the pub/club where I had one of my first jobs (and that was a significant place in the Buffy game I played in that was my very first exposure to TTRPG's), and probably the climbing centre that holds our aerial circus school. I might attach it to the swimming pool; I'm not likely to put it on campus.

I don't know what sort of characters I'll have among my players. I'm going to give them support and freedom; I'm excited about it. Also, my usual GM has agreed to show up occasionally. I will run it by him, but I'd like him to play an experienced Hunter who can sometimes drag them along when he needs backup, or something like that.

Among the major NPC's, I've a few ideas. I need to read the book in a bit more depth, though. 

For antagonists, I think they'll start with a degree of ghostbusting before we move onto more fearsome foes. I've been listening to The Witch Farm (and other Danny Robins ghostly podcasts), and this is giving me lots of inspiration.

I'd like some kind of metaplot/end game/bigger bad so that maybe they need to befriend or at least work with supernatural creatures from time to time, but I don't know what that could be yet, so maybe we'll just run monster of the week for a while until I have a better idea.

Wish me (and them!) luck!