Hunter Agenda | Moves | Hunter Moves | Ratings | Rolling the Dice | Ongoing | Hold | Luck | Forward | History

When you’re playing your hunter:

• Act like you’re the hero in this story (because you are).
• Make your own destiny.
• Find the damn monsters and stop them.
• Play your hunter like they’re a real person.

Think like your hunter would think. Do what your hunter would do. Remember that you’re a badass: extremely dangerous, and good at what you do.

When you get into a fight, you might take a lot of harm, but hunters are lucky and heal quickly. Use Luck to avoid harm if you need to. Alternatively, you can hold on until the end of the fight and then take a break to rest up and heal. For the full harm and healing rules see page 110.

You need to work out what’s behind each situation. Then work out how to find it and what its weaknesses are. Then kill it.

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Moves cover situations when the game rules step in to help you determine what happens. If your hunter wants to do something that any normal person can do, then it just happens. Moves are used to determine what happens in cases where your hunter tries to do:

• something normal people can’t do, such as casting a magic spell
• something dangerous, such as getting into a fight with a monster
• something that’s more exciting if we don’t just decide the outcome on our own. For example, seeing if your hunter’s lie to a monster-attack victim has any repercussions.

Each move is triggered when a particular situation happens in the game.

Look at when the move says it happens, and follow the instructions when you do it.

For example, you need to use the move protect someone to save another hunter from a bone puppet’s attack. The move says when you protect someone from harm, roll +Cool, so you roll the dice and get a two and a five. That’s seven, plus your hunter has Cool +1 for a total of eight. The move’s instructions say that on a 7-9, you protect the target okay but you may suffer some or all of the harm instead.

After you’ve recognised the move’s trigger, it will tell you want to do next. Moves can:

• ask you to roll the dice, with the results of the roll determining what happens next
• grant you a special ability that you can use whenever you want
• give you a bonus to certain rolls
• give you extra options to use in certain situations.

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All the hunters have a set of moves that allow them to investigate and deal with monsters. These are called the “basic moves” (page 101).

There are eight basic moves:

• Act Under Pressure, used for any difficult or dangerous action that isn’t covered by another move.
• Help Out, used to help another hunter do something. If you succeed, you’ll give them a bonus on their task.
• Investigate a Mystery, used to work out what kind of monster you are dealing with, what it can do, and what it’s planning.
• Kick Some Ass, used for fighting. Fighting monsters, mainly.
• Manipulate Someone, used to try and get someone to do something for you, after you give them some kind of reason.
• Protect Someone, used to save someone from danger.
• Read a Bad Situation, used to work out what dangers are immediately threatening you. For instance, if you think you are walking into a trap, or want to do some tactical analysis.
• Use Magic, used to cast magic spells or use enchanted items.

In addition, each hunter playbook has its own set of moves. These are called “playbook moves.”

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Your hunter has ratings that describe how good they are in certain areas that are important when hunting monsters. The ratings add to (or subtract from) your dice total when you roll for a move.

• Cool is how calm and collected you are. It is added to your die roll for the act under pressure and help out basic moves.
• Tough is how strong and mean you are in a fight. It is added to your die roll for the kick some ass and protect someone basic moves.
• Charm is how pleasant and persuasive you are. It is added to your die roll for the manipulate someone basic move.
• Sharp is how observant you are. It is added to your die roll for the investigate a mystery and read a bad situation basic moves.
• Weird is how attuned to the supernatural you are. It is added to your die roll for the use magic basic move.

The ratings range from -1 to +3.

• -1 is bad
• 0 is average
• +1 is good
• +2 is really good
• +3 is phenomenal

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Often the rules for a move will tell you to roll, say, +Cool. This means you should grab two everyday six-sided dice, roll them, add them together and then add whatever number is written down for your hunter’s Cool.

If it says something else instead of Cool (usually another rating), then add that number instead. So, if you are told to roll +Weird, roll two dice and add your Weird rating. If you are told to roll +Tough, roll two dice and add your Tough rating. If you have a negative rating, like -1, then you subtract one from your total instead.

The move description will say what the different results mean. Usually, 7 or higher is good, and 10 or higher is really good. A result of 6 or lower is a miss, which means the Keeper will have an opportunity to screw your hunter over.

Example:
I need to roll “manipulate someone.” That’s a +Charm roll, and my Charm is +1. I roll the dice and get a 2 and a 5. My total is 1 + 2 + 5 = 9.
That’s a partial success for manipulate someone.

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If you get +1 forward, you get +1 on your very next roll only.

For example: Another hunter can give you a bonus of +1 forward as the result of a move. The next thing that happens is that you charge in to attack a monster. You get +1 on your kick some ass roll. If you had decided to use magic instead, to cast a protection spell, then you would have gained the +1 on that roll. Once you have used the bonus, it’s gone.

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If you get +1 ongoing, you get +1 to every roll you make until the situation no longer applies.

For example: If you read a bad situation, you might be awarded +1 ongoing while using an escape route you spotted. You get +1 on all rolls while escaping via that route, but nothing more once you have escaped. You also get no bonus if you don’t try to escape via the way you spotted.

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When you get a hold, you’ll get a number of points. Each point can be spent one-for-one to get a specific effect. The move will list the effects you can spend your hold on.

For example, you are interviewing the witnesses to a monster attack and you make an investigate a mystery roll. Your result gives you 3 hold. You can spend your hold to ask the Keeper questions from the list in the investigate a mystery move.

You ask a witness, “Did you see where the attacker went?” and spend one hold. (“Where did it go?” is one of the questions.) The Keeper says (as Mrs Henderson, the witness), “It scurried over there, and pulled up that grating and went into the sewers.”

As the conversation with the witnesses continues, you spend the next hold to ask the Keeper about the monster’s powers. “Hey, from all the things they’ve told me, can I work out any powers?” (“What can it do?” is another question.) The Keeper replies, “The witness descriptions don’t agree at all. It must be able to change shape or maybe change memories.” Later the last hold goes to ask the Keeper about whether a witness is hiding something. That exhausts your hold, so you don’t get any more questions for now.

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Every hunter has a certain amount of Luck they can call on in emergencies.

When you mark off a point of Luck, you can choose one of the following lucky breaks:

• Decrease a wound you just suffered to 0-harm.
• After you roll, retroactively change the result to a 12. Your playbook has a Luck counter that keeps track of how much is left. You only get a limited supply. Make it count.

When You Run Out Of Luck
When you have marked off all your Luck, the Keeper is allowed to hit you with more bad stuff. Fate will be looking for some payback. If your playbook includes fate-related stuff (such as the Chosen’s fate or the Spooky’s dark side), running out of Luck means all that bad stuff is going to start happening

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Once each character is introduced in #player-characters you’ll each pick histories.
That’s the significant shared memories, or relationships, between the hunters.
Each playbook has a list to choose from.
The Keeper or the other hunters might ask questions here as well. Answer these, too.
Each other hunter will pick a history option for you, so in the end each pair of hunters will have two history choices defining their backstory.
Take a few moments to work out what the history choices imply about how and why the team came to work together. Tie this in to your team concept, or use it to build a team concept if you didn’t pick one already

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