Page 273 - Hunter - The Vigil

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C CHAPTER FIVE: STORYTELLING

to risk the change or “weaken” themselves, after all. Vampires do this is to highlight the potential themes and moods that
suffer because of their inner demons and eternal hunger, but come with each tier.
they are immortal and possess great powers. When faced with A first-tier “cell-only” game is a game about hunters

the moment one has to surrender the blessings along with the surviving the night to night. Maybe it’s a couple of friends
curses, a creature might turn on those who sought to help it. who once made a pact with a demon and wriggled free to
(Not to mention that the vampire may, upon turning human, end it. Maybe it’s a support group of some folks who have
turn into a very human corpse and shrivel as if long dead and been touched by the paranormal and cannot shake free of its
long buried.) grasp. Could be some hunting buddies who were once happy
Of course, a monster that comes seeking redemption to shoot deer, but now have found more interesting and more
might, in truth, only be seeking a way to get safely within dangerous game.
claws’ reach of the characters. They are monsters, after all. The “cell-only” game is about the expressly local, about
hunters with minimal resources who struggle to keep their
The Tiers lives in check with the Vigil. Other cells might exist, but
none belongs to any larger groups. All are ragtag. Some might
The tiers are presented as separate enough that hunt-
ers from across the board need never meet, but also linked take the form of street gangs, carving out hunks of territory.
A second-tier “organization-only” game is still more local,
enough that some blending is possible if the Storyteller and but sees hunters with greater resources and alliances. It’s also a
the players are interested in such. Ultimately, most cities in- game that can become more political, as each group strives to

clude a strange and purposefully conflicted mix of hunters balance its own Vigil against the presence of the others. Even

from all tiers, from the lowly first-tier cell to the mid-range if you choose to use only a single hunter organization in the
second-tier organization to the larger, grander and stranger game, politics exist within the group, too. Haughty members
third-tier agencies. How will you deal with the tiers in your of Ashwood Abbey might work to make life rough for some
Vigil story?
novitiates, or a Union cell might get embroiled in a struggle
One Tier Only for the political leadership of their parent org. Keeping a game
Could be that you want a game comprising only hunters focused on this tier still ensures that hunters are universally

of a single tier, and that’s perfectly fine. One of the reasons to human and without any Endowments that smack of the su-
pernatural (of course, what some hunters — like those of the
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