Customer Reviews

Hunter Book: Hermit (Hunter Roleplaying Game)

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Hermit is a unique class of Hunter, very insightfull yet due to their "curse" they have trouble even being near other Hunters. I wouldn't reccomend as a player character, but for the storyteller, an excellent source for assisting their troupe.

This book provides information about one of the many flavors of Hunters, average blokes who have been "imbued" or "chosen" by mysterious celestial powers to fight the things that go bump in the night. Hermits are not like the other Hunters--they don't get much in the way of special abilities that would allow them to go into direct combat with the assorted vampires, ghouls, and zombies. Rather, they are in direct and constant contact with the Messengers, but the human mind is too feeble to hear the Voice of Heaven (or whatever is behind the creation of the Hunters) and so the Hermits for the most part just get a skull full of static and the periodic cryptic phrase.

Once imbued, Hermits find being around anyone is literally painful, and they feel especially ill when they are in proximity to other Hunters or the various children of the night that are their enemies. Fortunately, most Hermits are already predisposed to be anti-social, and the nature of their powers actually slaps at least one mental derangement upon them, so they end up either paranoid ("The mailman may be one of Them"), megalomaniac ("If only the human cattle would acknowledge my greatness!"), or otherwise mentally unwell.

The upside is that Hermits get psychic-type spying powers, so they can more or less astrally project themselves into somebody's heavily guarded fortress, assess strengths and weaknesses, figure out the security codes, and so forth.

Really, Hermits would be extremely difficult to include in a gaming group as player-characters. They are best suited to be NPCs through which the Storyteller can funnel valuable information.

The bulk of the book is made up of three parallel narratives: psychiatric interviews of Pamela Drummond, an Australian Hermit who gets institutionalized right after her imbuing and who doesn't really know what the Messengers want her to be doing; a haughty lecture on the abilities and purpose of Hermits by the uber-elitist William Hannon, aka Violin99 on hunter-net; and a journal by Wayne Berg, a pragmatic Hermit who takes his new role pretty much in stride and who provides a new perspective on the infamous Ciudad Juarez incident. The Drummond and Hannon material could've been excised without much loss.

The remainder of the book discusses the actual game mechanics for Hermits, going through the character creation process and explaining their powers and edges and virtures and what-not. There are several templates to provide examples.

Altogether, not really a great book for players, but a fair one for Storytellers who need mystery NPCs to provide the PCs with critical data when they get themselves bogged down.

So, what happens when you play an Imbued that can't really come close to another Imbued, or a monster, without getting a debilitating headache due to sensory overload? You get a Hermit.

Hunter-Book: Hermit details the first of the two "lost" or "damaged" creeds, and it does explain a lot about these particular Hunters. Of course, there's a real challenge involved for both player and Storyteller with even considering using one of these, as playing one "correctly" would mean minimal contact with most of the rest of a game troupe. A truly experienced or mature player could no doubt pull it off, but this is merely a warning from me to you for those considering playing one of these. The experience will no doubt be worth it, and it can be fun, but also a real stretch in creativity as a roleplayer.

Still, this book offers good insight into a group of damaged people, and even offers what appeared to be (to me) a sneak preview of the upcoming Demon: The Fallen in a section describing one Hermit's encounter with women who were a little too perfect.