At 01:05 PM 12/14/99 +0100, sender unknown wrote:
At 04:31 14.12.99 +0800, you wrote:
Unfortunately. I got tipped off when I noticed a large group of 'hunters'
on this list that reacted to their Imbuing by pulling out enchanted
weaponry they seem to have acquired from thin air.
Uuuuh.... when did this occur? I missed that part. I never received any
such mail *shrug*
Well, I was moved to write this because of a post from some guy who claimed
he had a silver katana and a cold-iron wakizashi. And a splinter-firing
airgun. That was the last straw.
Besides, silver is too soft and bends too easily to be used as a weapon in
its purest state, unless you've bound a war-spirit into it. And cold iron
is too brittle to be used for anything but chains and shackles (which you
may find in sidhe dungeons, actually). Heck, even nails aren't made of cold
iron. Cold iron, for those in the not-know, is iron extracted from ore but
unrefined, making it brittle and difficult and impractical to forge into
weaponry.
And NO, cold iron bullets would never survive being fired out of a gun.
Just so you know.
And wood does not send a vampire into torpor unless it gets stuck in its
heart. Even then, a pneumatic-driven toothpick is not going to make it in
one piece through vampire flesh unaided. Talk to the Tremere, they know all
about staking their fellow vampires through sneaky means. :P
The sad part about this whole thing is that the typical twink reaction is
going to be something like this:
"Nyaah! You're just jealous because you didn't think of it first! *phhbblt*"
*sigh*
<snip>
I am an experienced WOD storyteller, myself. My players (and there are
many) will vouch for that fact that I am quite unforgiving of the
powergamer type. I will place twinks in situations they cannot use their
Kindred Sphere Lycanthropic Glamourous Pathos, situations that require REAL
roleplaying, and watch them suffer.
Why do you allow it in the first place???
Of course I don't allow it. :P I was just exaggerating to prove a point. I
do, however, deal with people who think they can get away with min-maxing
in the manner I described.
<snip>
Have you
ever argued at the top of your lungs and fought tooth and nail with someone
in character and laughed about it after the session was over?
all the time. Every session.
Yeah. Intercharacter conflict is a great part of roleplaying, as long as
the players know the difference between IC and OOC. Some of the best
dialogue comes from these conflicts.
My players
have, as have I.
:) Sounds VERY good to me. Great to know there are sensible gamers out
there. VERY reassuring.
And it's very reassuring to get this response as well. :)
<snip>
A lot of the best games I've ever played in or run involve really
low-powered protagonists.
Same here. Our long-running Project Twilight campaign is the best campaign
I ever played in. 'Course, now my character suddenly Awakened (it came as
as much a shock to me as the character, I assure you!), so now the game
took to greater heights, as my chrtr tries to figure out what the hell
happened to him, what is going on, and how he can keep it secret from the
others in the group (who doesn't know OOC either. I suspect they think he
has Turned...)
Yeah. The game I'm most known for running thus far is a Mage game where I
stuck the PC's in the middle of a deep and complex conflict (so complex I
can't recap it here) armed with only their wits and their measly two dots
of Arete. Oh, and no quintessence. But they impressed me by managing to
survive and thrive, and we weaved a particularly entertaining story in the
process. Oh, and that so far was my longest running game, twice to thrice a
week sessions for a period of nearly two years. It ended in an amazing
climax only months ago. I may put the story up on a page sometime.
This is what appeals to me about Hunter:TR.
Humans - mortals! - waging a war against superior and more numerous
opponents. The acts of heroism that could come from such a story! Heroism
isn't killing the Antediluvian with your enchanted Silver Two-Handed Katana
Gunblade +5 and your True Faith of 10. It's working together to achieve an
almost impossible goal. If it takes martyrdom, so be it.
Yep. Agreed :)
However, my IC character here, does NOT agree. He doesn't agree to killing
everything that moves either, however, nor does he possess any kewl
weaponry. He fights alone, and uses his head. He's through talkin, and he
finds others a hinder. *Shrug*
*nods* I understand. In my case, my character is stuck in a vampire
factional war without much of a clue, or even much of a fighting chance. I
have to depend on his more combat-oriented buddies to keep his back covered
while I uncover more info about the enemy. I was wondering if anyone read
the Wayfarer Journals. ^^;
Also, the things Hunters hunt aren't two-dimensional bogeymen -- they have
their own motivations, their own fears, their own agendas in mind. Do you
think all they think about is making the human race suffer? No! Of course
not!
Um... does any of the other games do that? Certainly not Mage, where the
goal, apart from Ascension, IS saving Humanity! And both Kindred and Garou
are dependant on humans to survive
Yeah. As far as I can tell, most Garou wouldn't want humanity to suffer -
breeding stock. Just the Red Talons. ^^; And Vampires, while they DO feed
on human blood, and while the Sabbat itself is all for enslaving humanity,
the Camarilla, on the other hand, maintains the Masquerade to protect both
themselves and the blissfully ignorant human populace. Changelings,
meanwhile, need human dreamers to provide them with the Glamor they need.
Ditto Wraiths and Pathos.
Oh, and Mage is my favorite WOD game.
That's the tragedy of Hunter:TR; the more we know about our targets,
the harder it becomes to want to kill them.
yes. that's why it's dumb to post things like "Well, I had a biccie and a
cupper with the friendly neighborhood vampire and werewolf, and they told
me aaaaaaaaaaaaaaall about their factions, that is clans and tribes, and
everything else they couldn't really know about but miraculously did.
Here's my report! Now, since they're actually nice, we can't kill 'em, so
let's just stop playing Hunter and hold hands and sing We Are The World
instead, and let all the idiots who talk about killing monsters just be so
dumb, for THEY haven't figured out what this game is about, HAVE they. No,
it's not about saving humanity by killing monsters, even though that's what
the underlying principle of Hunter is (and no, we haven't thought about why
it's called Hunter, but that doesn't matter, it's much cooler being
buddy-buddy with the monsters than hunting them!), it's about being friends
with those who abuse us! C'mon, hold mah hand, and praise the Lord!"
ROTFL!
That's why Conviction is such
an important trait to Hunters. We all know that not all of them are evil,
but those so-called exceptions to the rule are unfortunate caualties in the
war to free us from their oppression.
Yep
Ideally, I would say, come back to this list when you've gone through that
and until then play AD&D or something, but unfortunately, not everyone has
a Storyteller friend handy. All I can say, then, is for newbies to read the
list, learn to seperate the chaff from the grain, pick out posts from
experienced players and Storytellers, study them, and act accordingly. Then
just maybe a great epic can come from this little list of ours.
Yep
<snip>
Great post, Wayfarer, I thoroughly enjoyed it.
Any time, operative20. At any rate, if you ever need a Hunter who can't
hunt worth a damn but can track with the best of them, just give a call.
Just... don't expect me to crack open MECHA with my Pentium-S 166. At
least, not in one night. :P
operative20
Don't believe everything you write.
-- Wayfarer 12/14/1999
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Indeed, it seems to me, one of the most vital qualities for a writer to
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everything that happens.
- Dwight Swain