Pyramid #3/73: Monster Hunters II

[Kromm]

Where Evil hunts Man
We few use wits and weapons
The hunter, our prey

— A big guy in a trench coat

GURPS Monster Hunters is great fun, but it's also somewhat generic – you can use it to set up a monster-hunting campaign anywhere in the modern world, and focus on anything from just one kind of monster to an entire bestiary. It's even more fun with specifics: Who do we work for, who do we work against, what weapons will serve us best, and how does that change if we're not gaming in the modern world? Pyramid #3/73: Monster Hunters II aims to please:

• While monster hunters are sometimes cinematic gunslingers, Hans-Christian Vortisch knows that plenty of gaming groups want to keep the shooting realistic . . . even if the targets aren't. The three new styles of Tactical Shooting: Monster Hunters give gunmen simple ways to specialize in killing vampires, lycanthropes, or zombies. Whether the foes you face come from GURPS Horror, GURPS Monster Hunters, or GURPS Zombies, the information here may just be what keeps you alive.
  
  
• Most people in the U.S. government know nothing about the existence of monsters, and The Department of Occult Defense makes sure they don't need to know. In this fully fleshed-out campaign setting, Christopher Rice provides details on the history, mission, and resources of the DOD (and its inhuman subgroup, the H.P. Lovecraft Directive), as well as on competing groups such as the Gladius Dei, Fellowship of Wadjet, Thule Society, and Venatori. New monsters and new abilities for fighting them round out this offering.
  
  
• Of course, not all monster-hunting groups are Good Guys. In this month's Eidetic Memory, David Pulver presents Venatio, an organization run by sociopaths, opportunists, and the obsessed. Sure, they'll save your life – for the right price. But what they do with the monsters may make you wish they hadn't gotten involved. Drop this organization into your game as a rival, an enemy, or even a Patron, and watch the players untangle their secrets.
  
  
• Monsters aren't going away anytime soon. The not-so-distant future of GURPS Cyberworld still needs champions! Monster Hunters 2043: Agents of ORCID describes the titular government agency in detail, including lenses and cyberware suggestions for templates from Champions and Sidekicks. Alternatively, use these rules to "chrome up" your modern monster-hunting agency, throwing the rest of the world into stark relief as your TL9-equipped cyber-hunters fight in our TL8 world.
  
  
• "The creepier the better" is a good guideline for choosing monsters, and The Flock of the Above has creepiness covered in spades. A strange force moves from town to town, infecting the bodies and minds of the people below. As they rip out their hair and teeth, invisible appendages give them dangerous power, but the true threat are those remaining back at the nest . . . preparing for the next phase. Just don't touch their eggs.
  
  
• And our usual features will haunt your nightmares, including a Random Thought Table on how to vary the threats your team will face, and Odds and Ends that enhance the shooting styles and shed more light on the Venatio.

— PK & Kromm

[PK]

I hate to fish, but I have to ask -- did anyone have any opinions about this month's issue? This is the first time I've ever seen a Pyramid announcement thread with zero replies a week after the release.

So that this isn't just a bump, I'll point out that Christopher Rice put up some interesting designers notes on his blog and posted about it on the GURPS Monster Hunters Facebook page. If you liked his article (or just want some bonus MH crunch and adventure ideas), it's well worth the read.

[DouglasCole]

Originally Posted by PK

I hate to fish, but I have to ask -- did anyone have any opinions about this month's issue? This is the first time I've ever seen a Pyramid announcement thread with zero replies a week after the release.

So that this isn't just a bump, I'll point out that Christopher Rice put up some interesting designers notes on his blog and posted about it on the GURPS Monster Hunters Facebook page. If you liked his article (or just want some bonus MH crunch and adventure ideas), it's well worth the read.

I'm editing an interview with HANS, but you'll get an article-by-article review on this one, since the overall concept of Monster Hunting is one of my favorite genres.

[shadowjack]

Originally Posted by PK

I hate to fish, but I have to ask -- did anyone have any opinions about this month's issue? This is the first time I've ever seen a Pyramid announcement thread with zero replies a week after the release.

Well, I'd been wondering, "Gee, why hasn't there been a release announcement thread? It came out days ago," until I saw this, so maybe I wasn't the only one who missed it? :)

The modern-day monster hunter is not quite my gaming genre, I think, but:

• Very amused at the audacity of just outright making Lovecraft the head of the BPRD. None of this, "Some have noticed the similarity with the stories by certain writers of weird fiction" dancing and winking, instead, boom, HP Lovecraft and J. Edgar Hoover had each other on Rolodex, and could have called each other up to worry about that Hellboy character and his allegiances. (I mean, he is awfully red…) I kind of wonder if this is the zenith or the nadir of our hobby's Yog-Sothothery.

• Venatio are a great little bunch of villains, good in their genre, and good inspiration for others. We often get focused on the big fish of setting, but nasty medium-sized fish like these really flesh it out. I'd gleefully use something like them in a cyberpunk game, or Earthdawn-style fantasy, or other places.

• Kind of skimmed past ORCID, sorry, because it's guidelines for using a genre book I don't use in a campaign setting I don't have. (I prefer to roll-my-own when it comes to cyberpunk anyway.) I may reapproach it later, but for now, not of immediate interest.

• I regretted reading The Flock just before bedtime, which speaks well for its quality of creeping horror.

[GodBeastX]

Originally Posted by PK

I hate to fish, but I have to ask -- did anyone have any opinions about this month's issue? This is the first time I've ever seen a Pyramid announcement thread with zero replies a week after the release.

Personally I have been distracted with the work load of the season, and that was coupled with the fact I don't tend to play Monster Hunter campaigns at all.

I decided to grab a copy and peek through it though just to see if I couldn't offer some sort of viewpoint from my own limited scope of Monster Hunter.

From my browsing I feel it's quite niche to people who are involved in that subset of campaigns. I was drawn to the RPM section (As usual due to my interest in RPM) and was particularly drawn to the words under the Ritual Resistance perk:

The GM should list rituals that are “common” for the campaign.

It might just be me, but I find the idea of "Common" rituals a hard thing to grasp in RPM system. Considering the whole idea of it is "I can pull whatever ritual I invent into the game" and there is no penalty to using something "Common" versus "Unique", I found the perk almost to be not worth even the one point it cost. Or maybe it's a lack of understanding on my part what a "Specific Ritual" is.

Breaking that down to mathematics, if you have a virtually unlimited set of rituals that can be used against you, there is a 1/n chance that the point will become useful. n being the possible number of rituals. If n is something around 30 then it is worth the point. If n is something around 1000 or more, how can you validate spending it? I suppose a GM can make that ritual happen just because you put the point in it so it doesn't "Feel" wasted, but that seem counter productive.

... this might be the first time I discussed a perk so much, but I think the lack of penalty in RPM for "Common" versus "Unique" is sort of my only dislike of RPM. I feel there should be incentives for using "Tried and true" rituals as opposed to others.

[Kuroshima]

Originally Posted by shadowjack

Well, I'd been wondering, "Gee, why hasn't there been a release announcement thread? It came out days ago," until I saw this, so maybe I wasn't the only one who missed it? :).

You certainly were not. I also missed it.

I am biased, but I consider Christopher R Rice's article to be the best of an already awesome issue. Of course I had a hand in its writing, by the way of throwing suggestions at Christopher back when he first wrote it. It's exactly the kind of setting I would love to see supported.

[Mailanka]

I flipped through this one, nothing leaped out at me as "YOU MUST RUN THIS NOW!" and since I've been tinkering with some Monster Hunter ideas, I've filed it away for future study in case I get around to that campaign.

[shadowjack]

Originally Posted by GodBeastX

... this might be the first time I discussed a perk so much, but I think the lack of penalty in RPM for "Common" versus "Unique" is sort of my only dislike of RPM. I feel there should be incentives for using "Tried and true" rituals as opposed to others.

I'll second this. At risk of thread digression…

In general, RPM feels to me like the sort of magic system where there aren't established rituals, any more then there would be for martial arts, surgery, or computer programming; there may be specific kata, code elements, or the like, that the Ritual Adept weaves into any particular spell, but they're below the resolution of the system. Each spell is unique to circumstances, even if it does the same thing you used a spell for yesterday. I have tried to tinker up some sort of quick-and-useful method of establishing whether or not a particular spell combination is known to a character and well-practiced, or entirely new ground, so that scavenging other people's grimoires becomes useful in hopes that they can cut your research time.

The most straightforward I could come up with was placing a Requires Skill Roll limitation on Magery or Ritual Adept, i.e. before you cast your spell, you make a Thaumatology or Hidden Lore: Whizbang Spells roll to determine if you know this spell. If you fail, then your abilities are limited, because you're having to hex up the spell from scratch elements. Admittedly, this can break suspension of disbelief on common spells without some clever on-the-fly thaumobabble. ("Zero, you had no problem casting Ignite Fire yesterday!" "Yesterday, Mars was in ascension, and the building we were in was filled with pyromantic essence! Today is all watery, and I have to build an entire essence-conversion-subroutine into the spell or the whole thing will fizzle.")

But this would make it rather useful to have a couple of points in Perks to be able to skip this roll for certain commonly-used spells ("I know the Sending of Minds, forwards and backwards. Fear not, I shall be able to cast it on the appointed day.") or to schlep a few spellbooks around and have them open during castings for a tool bonus to the "do I know this spell?" roll.

[RyanW]

The only article I was really interested in was the Tactical Shooting one, which left me just a little disappointed. It was good enough, but it's three styles were nearly identical.

It also might work fine in a monster hunters game, but doesn't give a lot of detail on using it in a Monster Hunters game, if you get me.

[J. Edward Tremlett]

Originally Posted by shadowjack

• I regretted reading The Flock just before bedtime, which speaks well for its quality of creeping horror.

Mine is an evil laugh.