Witch Hunter 2e - the free adventure downloads

Emirikol · Nov 2, 2014

I'm planning on running Witch Hunter: The Invisible World's free downloads at GhengisCon 2015 here in Denver, CO. They're for the Revelations campaign (pregens or campaign-based).

I'm also very new to the system. To any of you who have played or run it, what are your thoughts on it?

All I have is the outstanding review..and hence why I chose to run it: http://www.enworld.org/forum/content.php?1896-Witch-Hunter-The-Invisible-World-Will-You-Dare-to-Battle-Satans-Minions-in-this-Renaissance-Historical-Fantasy-RPG#.VFZsNjTF9VU

Here's another set of reviews from rpg.net (from the 1e).
http://www.rpg.net/reviews/search-review.phtml

..

BluSponge · Nov 3, 2014

I've been running it on a regular basis for my group for a shade over a year now. What would you like to know? Our group has been enjoying it. The game does horror fantastically, but we found it a bit gritty for a swashbuckling game. If you want to be effective in a skill, you definitely want a dice pool of around 6 or 7 dice. The system is a pretty simple workhorse, and once you get comfortable with it, you can really experiment with skill/ability combos to get the most out of it.

Anyway, if you have any specific questions, let em rip.

Tom

biotech66 · Nov 3, 2014

I like the system, but its theme can turn some people away. My wife is a pagan, so she wasn't too keen on playing after seeing the theme played out.

I did a review of the game here http://throatpunchgames.com/2014/02...w-of-witch-hunter-the-invisible-world-2nd-ed/

As a quick summary: It reminds me of Shadowrun, but with a Gothic theme.

BluSponge · Nov 3, 2014

biotech66 said:
I like the system, but its theme can turn some people away. My wife is a pagan, so she wasn't too keen on playing after seeing the theme played out.

I can see that. If you read the different Orders carefully, there are plenty of outs for playing non-religious or pagan characters:
• The Stalkers of the Unseen Hunt are just as often pagan as from one of the more mainstream religions (Christian, Judaism, or Muslim).
• The Lightbringers can just as easily be deists or from many "avant-garde" alternative sects (like the US Founding Fathers).

Also, remember that ALL of the Orders are pretty much considered apocryphal and heretical at best. The only common "religious" component is that all of them believe in a higher benign power (the counter to the Adversary).

In my group, only one of the characters (a priest) is at all overtly religious. And more than one of the characters have None in the religion slot on their character sheet.

Tom

Emirikol · Nov 4, 2014

Cool beans Blu. Any little tidbits about running it are good for me.

What's hard to learn? What would I need to focus on for a bunch of new players at a convention game?

Any bumps in the road in regards to rules or house rules that you prefer?

Historical fantasy, like the new Manifest Destiny comic book, intrigues the heck out of me though as there is simply so much to work with for background!

jh

BluSponge · Nov 4, 2014

As

Emirikol said:
What's hard to learn? What would I need to focus on for a bunch of new players at a convention game?

Not hard at at. Convention game with pregens? Next to nothing. The core system is very similar to WoD, so ask around the table to see who is familiar with that one. 90% of our issues in play came from character generation, and those from how specializations are recorded. Pregens will eliminate that complication entirely.

Any bumps in the road in regards to rules or house rules that you prefer?

We played for the better part of the year with no house rules and it worked just fine. We added a Talent and a skill (streetwise), but that was it. I wanted to get comfortable with the system before cracking open the engine. Like I said up thread, we found the rules leaned more towards gritty horror than "I swing from a chandelier and kick the demon in the face" and did that very well.

One bit of confusion came from the Skill Summary table. All skills have a base associated ability, but some have specific areas that are based on different abilities from the base (man, that already sounds confusing). So I rebuilt the table and problem solved. And, again, this was more of an issue in character creation.

Another tip to speed up play: make sure all your players note their total base attack dice pool next to each weapon. This is skill+ability-weapon complication. Then all they have to figure in are any situational mods and roll.

Historical fantasy, like the Destiny comic book, intrigues the heck out of me though as there is simply so much to work with for background!

Destiny comic? I'll have to check it out. But yeah, there is a ton to work with. Right now, the kick off to the War of Grand Alliances is serving as the backdrop of our adventures.

Here's a link to a whole bunch of play aids I build for our game. You'll probably catch our additions to the skill system if you look closely.

Anything else? Happy to help.

Tom

BluSponge · Nov 10, 2014

Hey, to anyone who downloaded any of the WH2 game aids on my blog page, I discovered I'd screwed up the link to both of the player and GM reference sheet collections. I've fixed the links, so now all the reference pages should be included. The player reference was missing a lot of stuff on combat and weapon tricks, both of which have been extremely helpful in my game.

Tom

Emirikol · Dec 7, 2014

I'm working on a random character generator to help me learn the game. Here is version 1.0 (just starting)
https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u...y-to-Play Random Character Generator 1.0.xlsx

BluSponge · Dec 8, 2014

Cool! Looking forward to checking it out once I finish some tech jujitsu on the ole Mac (short story full of profanity-dont ask).

Does your sheet just randomly generate stats (abilities? Skills?) or does it generate a full character (flaws, talents, gear)?

Emirikol · Dec 8, 2014

This will be my 5th character generator (others being for: WFRP3, D&D5, Colonial Gothic, CoC7), so I always start them out very basic and add as I go.

I do plan to do Flaws, Talents and Gear, but those will probably be last on the list.

Right now, it's generating ability scores, background, catalyst, order and calculates defenses.

Next on the list are:
* Generate background dependent on required ability score minimums
* Origin (from each of the backgrounds)
* Naming (probably just import the names list from my Colonial Gothic version)
* Skill totaling (right now, it is set up to read the skills and list each from background, catalyist and order)
* 300 point buy

The equipment was easy for D&D and WFRP as they already have suggested lists.

All in good time

jh