Re: Hunters and Supernatural Friends

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: : Eh, we didn't really need the Exposure background, anyway. : The canon rules are pretty much ignoring Exposure, yeah. Probably because people *drastically* overestimate how much exposure it allows. : Consider - even members of the Arcanum, SAD, and the Inquisition MAX out Exposure, and we all know how much they DON'T know. Exposure is a retro-active thing - it makes sense of mysterious happenings in the character's past. It doesn't offer concrete knowledge or personal connections. : : Personally, considering how overcrowded the World of Darkness is, I think it's the wrong way to go, an official change saying "You can't do that anymore." : It's not quite that bad; the limitation is mainly on pre-Imbuing history and mostly just clarifies how broad-reaching the existing prohibition is. It doesn't limit post-Imbuing relations. : The real problem, of course, is that *most* people handle friendly relations with Monsters poorly - mainly by being to "loose". I've very rarely seen monster connections handled well (IMO) - even the *best* handlings I've seen (Accord, Buffalo, San Fran) have made me flinch more than once. [Note also that this doesn't detract from the value of those posts as STORIES.] Frankly, I personally regard (almost universally) monster allies as a more subtle form of power-gaming. : The real problem with most power-gaming, of course, is that it makes the very rare common, and most people want to tell stories about "special" characters. This desire pushes the power-level up. And for Hunter, more than any other game I can think of, this is directly anti-thetical to the game's theme. : Underlying all of this is the problem is that the people *playing* Hunter are (for the most part) *not* the people the game is about - our peer groups and personal experiences aren't (for the most part) not directly corresponding to the realities of the game. To step back from the sweeping generalities - my cousin was a sniper in the US Ranger Battalion, one of my previous co-workers was an ex-SEAL, I've drunk beer with a Special Forces Master Sergeant, and I hold enough security clearances to need bigger pockets. Am I a normal person? Barring wise-ass comments, yes. Are the others I've listed? Yes. If I introduced *any* of them as a Hunter character, would I be accused of twinking? Probably. But for me, all of that is "normal" - it's plumbers, burger-flippers, and maids that are the "abnormal", brief intrusions into my life. I'd find it easier to play an ex-spy than a union carpenter, though being an ex-spy is a much *rarer* occupation than that of carpenter. : The point is, my peer group is *widely* divergent from normal, and while I don't pretend that it makes me in any away superior, it does pose a problem in Hunter. I don't know what the rest of the Hunter posters have as their peer groups, but I have noticed that almost all of us have at least some college, many have graduated, and I'm sure we've got a PhD or two. Compared to the rest of the population (even in the US) this is a highly "abnormal" sample. : And I've wandered far from "monster allies bad". Now, maybe the List's OOC backgrounds aren't as collectively skewed as I think, maybe I'm the outlier. It's certainly possible. But I don't think so. : : : What should be done is a nice, in-depth discussion of hows and whys, various possibilities that can be used to explain how these things might work, and how they shouldn't work. : Yah. And if people could read and follow those guidelines, they could read and follow the FAQ as well. In an ideal world, it'd work. (The rest of this is left as an exercise to the reader.) : : So far as I'm concerned, this issue should have probably been addressed in depth in the Storyteller's Handbook, and it'd be a mistake to just say no and restrict players and storytellers, rather than expanding the worldview beyond the "Monsters? Monsters bad! Grunt!" mentality that it would appear is the stereotype of Hunter players. : Actually, I *think* the problem is just the reverse - the average Hunter player leans farther to Mercy than is expected or desired, and the recent rule tightenings represent an effort to combat that tendency. Certainly, the RL List has *much* stronger Mercy leanings than the IC List.

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