Genre Brainstorm: Hunters

[DrunkonDuty]

Oh yeah, some of the Franks will run for sure. In fact it'd be a classic background for a PC. Hunted disad. for them.

Sensible militaries (and in both fiction and the real world these can be rare) would just make sure the remuneration package is good. I feel cranial bombs would only be for those who have proven to be criminal or very unreliable. Mandatory psych evaluations for anyone long-term assigned to an Awakening project, and mental programming, er, I mean HR seminars, to increase the patriot to not patriot ratio.

I love the idea of live streaming gates. In fact, it's probably being done as a safety precaution. Like the fire danger level warnings we get here.

Yeah, influencers are, unfortunately, unavoidable. <sigh> Kicks me right in the Gen-X.

Spare time - I see some specialist clubs being a thing. Night clubs, but also things like golf (or whatever sport might interest super powered folks) clubs, and just club house style clubs where people can hang out and gossip. OH! Special VIP areas. "Ya gotta be this Awakened to enter."

How about an Awakened mafia? You gotta be Awakened to be a made man or woman. I realise this sounds like the Legion of Doom. But fewer silly costumes, more nice suits. And an actual desire to fly under the radar.

 

[Theory of Games]

I mean .... isn't this all just Rifts?

 

[jian]

I mean .... isn't this all just Rifts?

No, Rifts is post-apocalyptic and a heck of a lot more bizarre. There hasn’t been an end of the world in Hunters media, though it never seems far away.

What it does remind me of, now I think about it, is a setting which was brainstormed on rpg.net forums a decade or two ago - something about staircases that open in various places all over the world and which lead to D&D dungeons, the lower you go the worse it gets but also the better the loot and XP. There was a lot of discussion about how governments would react, especially if this happened during the Cold War. Maybe the USSR tried to nuke one of their staircases and made things worse? I wish I could remember the name now.

 

[jian]

Oh yeah, some of the Franks will run for sure. In fact it'd be a classic background for a PC. Hunted disad. for them.

How about an Awakened mafia? You gotta be Awakened to be a made man or woman. I realise this sounds like the Legion of Doom. But fewer silly costumes, more nice suits. And an actual desire to fly under the radar.

I can see this developing as some people who Awaken basically go, "nah, I'd rather use my powers for personal profit and in my current line of work, what kind of nutjob goes and fights acid-breathing dragons for their day job" initially. Then as the rules become clearer, and you even start getting governments press-ganging Awakened into fighting gates, because now you're a Hunter you're basically a national resource.

Then those people who really don't want to be Hunters go further underground, but they know they're never going to be that powerful unless they fight gates. Or other Hunters...

Then things get rough. A lot of Awakened mafia are just for mutual protection and make a little money while you're staying under the radar. And then you get the real psycho-Darwinians who kill other Hunters (sometimes for money) to get stronger. And you get the organisations who basically compromise with the status quo and do a bit of Hunting to keep the XP and loot flowing, and to keep governments off their backs. All these group are of course absolutely full of ex-Franks, many on the run from some pretty terrible governments.

 

[jian]

Oh, and just to clarify, rank (or class, or tier, or level, or whatever term Hunter media prefer to use) tends to go something like:

• F-rank: Lowest, the equivalent of 1st-3rd level in D&D.
• E-rank: maybe 4th-6th.
• D: maybe 7th-9th.
• C: maybe 10th-12th.
• B: maybe 13th-15th.
• A: The highest common rank; maybe 16th-18th.
• S: The best, maybe one in ten million have this potential. 19th+.
• SS: Shouldn't actually exist.

Hunter media vary on whether you immediately Awaken to your rank and stay there (though you still need to learn abilities and gain experience on how to use them), or whether you Awaken to a lower rank (such as F) but merely have the potential to go higher.

 

[TwoSix]

Just for edification, this type of story (Hunters/Portal Apocalpyse) is also pretty common on RoyalRoad and other sites that serialize litRPGs, and you can also find them on Kindle Unlimited.

A few I'm currently following:

Ether Atlas
Arcane Juggernaut
The Center for Dungeon Management

 

[jian]

Just for edification, this type of story (Hunters/Portal Apocalpyse) is also pretty common on RoyalRoad and other sites that serialize litRPGs, and you can also find them on Kindle Unlimited.

A few I'm currently following:

Ether Atlas
Arcane Juggernaut
The Center for Dungeon Management

Yup, litRPG media tends to be very much based on East Asian media (Japanese manga, Korean webtoons, Chinese manhua, light novels from everywhere) so there’s definitely a lot of Hunter stuff there. And there can be a lot of cross-pollination (using cultivation fantasy tropes from Chinese manhua, for instance).

 

[MarkB]

Oh, and just to clarify, rank (or class, or tier, or level, or whatever term Hunter media prefer to use) tends to go something like:

• F-rank: Lowest, the equivalent of 1st-3rd level in D&D.
• E-rank: maybe 4th-6th.
• D: maybe 7th-9th.
• C: maybe 10th-12th.
• B: maybe 13th-15th.
• A: The highest common rank; maybe 16th-18th.
• S: The best, maybe one in ten million have this potential. 19th+.
• SS: Shouldn't actually exist.

Hunter media vary on whether you immediately Awaken to your rank and stay there (though you still need to learn abilities and gain experience on how to use them), or whether you Awaken to a lower rank (such as F) but merely have the potential to go higher.

An interesting aspect in Solo Levelling specifically is that S rank is literally off the charts - it's when your power level is too high for conventional instruments to measure. As a result, there's no way to compare the relative power of any two S ranked characters except through observation, and those power levels can vary drastically.