Scurvy_Platypus
Explorer
Well, in the interest of putting something a little different out there, I figured I'd detail out a bit of my experience so far with Witch Hunter: Invisible World. Which, at this point is all of one session so far.
It's not really a "review", nor is it really an "Actual Play". It's kind of a blend of bits, as well as an open invitation for suggestions, questions, or other whatnot bits.
Game Background:
It's 1689, and there's some bad stuff that needs killing. Characters are "Witch Hunters", seeking out and destroying allies and servants of The Adversary.
Religion/Faith plays a serious role in the game. The world is mostly ours, with some differences here and there. Mainly to avoid upsetting modern-day sensibilities (which I'm glad they did).
It's intended to be a blend of Horror, and Swashbuckling action. Obviously you can tune this around some, taking it into more of an investigative direction if you want, but those are the two core forces pushing the game.
You can read more about it here:
Website: http://www.paradigmconcepts.com/witch_hunter/
Campaign/Support Website: http://darkprovidence.net/
Yahoo Group: http://games.groups.yahoo.com/group/whdp_campaign/
There seems to be a strong focus on the Organized Play aspect of the game. I'm not familiar with the company, but I guess the Arcanis stuff was popular enough. I get the impression that it's at least a partial motivation for them to be doing the Organized Play with Witch Hunter.
I've casually cruised the Yahoo group, and the Organized Play is what I saw dominating the conversation. It's not really a bad thing, as I'm sure there's rules questions/bits that are answered in there. But there's a _lot_ of messages in there, and I haven't been able to find the time to sort through all of it.
Dark Providence offers up all the scenarios that they're doing for the O.P. and I gotta say, "Bravo, and thank you." It's nice to be one of those people that's _never_ attended a single convention, but I can still be able to be "involved" with the game and benefit from this support material, instead of feeling like I'm relegated to some dirty "home player only" outsider's land.
The system:
I saw a number of people say that the system is "similar" to the old World of Darkness system. I've played WW games a grand total of 3 times. All 3 of 'em were using the new WoD system.
So I'm basically going into this thing "cold" so to speak. Out of the 3 expected (a 4th unexpectedly joined) players, 2 of them had played the OWoD before, and both of 'em like NWoD well enough. In fact, one of the guys is a WoD/D&D player only. He agreed to try out Witch Hunter because I said it was "basically like OWoD, but with some differences". We've just finished off an almost-year long game of Everstone, which I explained as "Basically d20, but with some differences that make it a bit simpler for me and more actiony and cool for the players." He seemed to enjoy himself, so I guess he's willing to give me another shot and see if this delivers too.
Basically, the system is a dice pool system using d10s. It's Stat+Skill, with a TN of 7. Meaning 7+ is a success. If you roll a 10, it counts as a success and re-rolls.
As near as I can tell, coming up with a 1 doesn't mean anything special, although I'm not sure about that. I'll come back to this in a minute.
The pitch:
Heh. To be honest, I didn't really "pitch" the game. I said, "Look, I'm kinda done with running a D&D fantasy-type game for a while. I'm willing to go ahead and give something else a try, but since it boils down to WW/D&D only, there's not much option. However.... I do have one thing I think sounds cool, and there's some pre-gen scenarios we can try out. There's also pre-gen characters, so if folks don't feel like taking the time to make a character, we can simply grab-n-go."
They mulled it over for a minute and said, "Well, what exactly are we talking about?"
"Ok, here's the basics then. The system is basically like OWoD, but with some differences. I mean, let's be honest, Stat+Skill and a d10 dice-pool isn't a hard thing to come up with.
Anyway, you all are Witch Hunters. It's the year 1689, and there's some monster ass that needs to be kicked. Witch Hunters are people that have stared into the face of darkness, and while it was staring back at them... they punched it.
It's a blend of Horror and Swashbuckling action. I'm going to push the Swashbuckling a bit harder, since I think Horror is fine and all, but part of horror is being a chump and while you can certainly get your ass kicked in Witch Hunter, you're not exactly chumps here.
There's a strong element of religion and faith, but I don't expect people to really be all into it. It's the character's faith that allows them to do what they do. So yeah, since it's 1689 there's a strong focus on Christianity within the game, but they've also got Native Americans in there, and it's perfectly fine for them to go with the whole 'Animus' or 'All-father' thing. So if you want to be a Buddhist Monk or something, we should be able to work something out.
There's not a whole lot of armor stuff going on in the game. Weapons are mainly swords, blunderbusses and flintlock weapons. You'll kick ass, but it's going to be up close and personal.
Basically think of that new Musketeer movie, and kinda blend it with Brotherhood of the Wolf. Stir in a bit of 13th Warrior, and you're pretty much there. I guess you could include Van Helsing, but more for the overall actiony stuff. You're not going to be doing James-Bond-hunts-monsters. You're going to be all down-n-dirty and crusing the New World."
I dunno, maybe that is a "pitch" but I tend to think of a "pitch" as an active, "OMG!!! This is cool, you gotta try it!!1!1" Whereas I was going more for the "This is the game, and what you can expect to get out of it if I run it."
In an effort to avoid the "wall of text" syndrome and because I have to get back to work, I'll post more about character creation and other stuff later tonight.
It's not really a "review", nor is it really an "Actual Play". It's kind of a blend of bits, as well as an open invitation for suggestions, questions, or other whatnot bits.
Game Background:
It's 1689, and there's some bad stuff that needs killing. Characters are "Witch Hunters", seeking out and destroying allies and servants of The Adversary.
Religion/Faith plays a serious role in the game. The world is mostly ours, with some differences here and there. Mainly to avoid upsetting modern-day sensibilities (which I'm glad they did).
It's intended to be a blend of Horror, and Swashbuckling action. Obviously you can tune this around some, taking it into more of an investigative direction if you want, but those are the two core forces pushing the game.
You can read more about it here:
Website: http://www.paradigmconcepts.com/witch_hunter/
Campaign/Support Website: http://darkprovidence.net/
Yahoo Group: http://games.groups.yahoo.com/group/whdp_campaign/
There seems to be a strong focus on the Organized Play aspect of the game. I'm not familiar with the company, but I guess the Arcanis stuff was popular enough. I get the impression that it's at least a partial motivation for them to be doing the Organized Play with Witch Hunter.
I've casually cruised the Yahoo group, and the Organized Play is what I saw dominating the conversation. It's not really a bad thing, as I'm sure there's rules questions/bits that are answered in there. But there's a _lot_ of messages in there, and I haven't been able to find the time to sort through all of it.
Dark Providence offers up all the scenarios that they're doing for the O.P. and I gotta say, "Bravo, and thank you." It's nice to be one of those people that's _never_ attended a single convention, but I can still be able to be "involved" with the game and benefit from this support material, instead of feeling like I'm relegated to some dirty "home player only" outsider's land.
The system:
I saw a number of people say that the system is "similar" to the old World of Darkness system. I've played WW games a grand total of 3 times. All 3 of 'em were using the new WoD system.
So I'm basically going into this thing "cold" so to speak. Out of the 3 expected (a 4th unexpectedly joined) players, 2 of them had played the OWoD before, and both of 'em like NWoD well enough. In fact, one of the guys is a WoD/D&D player only. He agreed to try out Witch Hunter because I said it was "basically like OWoD, but with some differences". We've just finished off an almost-year long game of Everstone, which I explained as "Basically d20, but with some differences that make it a bit simpler for me and more actiony and cool for the players." He seemed to enjoy himself, so I guess he's willing to give me another shot and see if this delivers too.
Basically, the system is a dice pool system using d10s. It's Stat+Skill, with a TN of 7. Meaning 7+ is a success. If you roll a 10, it counts as a success and re-rolls.
As near as I can tell, coming up with a 1 doesn't mean anything special, although I'm not sure about that. I'll come back to this in a minute.
The pitch:
Heh. To be honest, I didn't really "pitch" the game. I said, "Look, I'm kinda done with running a D&D fantasy-type game for a while. I'm willing to go ahead and give something else a try, but since it boils down to WW/D&D only, there's not much option. However.... I do have one thing I think sounds cool, and there's some pre-gen scenarios we can try out. There's also pre-gen characters, so if folks don't feel like taking the time to make a character, we can simply grab-n-go."
They mulled it over for a minute and said, "Well, what exactly are we talking about?"
"Ok, here's the basics then. The system is basically like OWoD, but with some differences. I mean, let's be honest, Stat+Skill and a d10 dice-pool isn't a hard thing to come up with.
Anyway, you all are Witch Hunters. It's the year 1689, and there's some monster ass that needs to be kicked. Witch Hunters are people that have stared into the face of darkness, and while it was staring back at them... they punched it.
It's a blend of Horror and Swashbuckling action. I'm going to push the Swashbuckling a bit harder, since I think Horror is fine and all, but part of horror is being a chump and while you can certainly get your ass kicked in Witch Hunter, you're not exactly chumps here.
There's a strong element of religion and faith, but I don't expect people to really be all into it. It's the character's faith that allows them to do what they do. So yeah, since it's 1689 there's a strong focus on Christianity within the game, but they've also got Native Americans in there, and it's perfectly fine for them to go with the whole 'Animus' or 'All-father' thing. So if you want to be a Buddhist Monk or something, we should be able to work something out.
There's not a whole lot of armor stuff going on in the game. Weapons are mainly swords, blunderbusses and flintlock weapons. You'll kick ass, but it's going to be up close and personal.
Basically think of that new Musketeer movie, and kinda blend it with Brotherhood of the Wolf. Stir in a bit of 13th Warrior, and you're pretty much there. I guess you could include Van Helsing, but more for the overall actiony stuff. You're not going to be doing James-Bond-hunts-monsters. You're going to be all down-n-dirty and crusing the New World."
I dunno, maybe that is a "pitch" but I tend to think of a "pitch" as an active, "OMG!!! This is cool, you gotta try it!!1!1" Whereas I was going more for the "This is the game, and what you can expect to get out of it if I run it."
In an effort to avoid the "wall of text" syndrome and because I have to get back to work, I'll post more about character creation and other stuff later tonight.
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