#RPGaday2017, Day 17: Which RPG have you owned the longest, but not played?

Oh wow, I guess I can do these on the actual day, huh?

Damn.

All right! Let's blog, homies.

#RPGaday2017, Day 17: Which RPG have you owned the longest, but not played?

So, as has probably come up by now, either in the archive or in conversation, I came into the hobby in the early aughts, via White Wolf LARPS. An acting student who had very little interest in D&D¹, I was actually tricked into my first gaming sessions as a way to work on my improv skills. Once I got over the initial strangeness, 20-year-old me thought that dressing up and engaging in collaborative, semi-structured improve was just the coolest effin' thing ever, and I loved WW's Angsty Edgelord games.

Years have passed. And you know what? That was really cool. Not even in an ironic, "I love it because it's so dumb" kind of way, but there's some good stuff there. Judge me, but I like it.

Anyway. That's subtext. Here's an answer.

So hot, the book itself is on LITERAL (not literal) FIRE.

Hunter: The Reckoning

God damn, did I think this was cool. I didn't even realize that Hunter was a White Wolf property, watching my homie play the Xbox game; that is, until he rolled up on a Lasombra from V:tM. Man, that was validating; I felt cool for liking White Wolf games. It was nice.

Also, Hunter was slick as hell. Action hero Van Helsings in the objectively terrible World of Darkness? I was so very, very sold. I knew exactly the sorts of terrible people who inhabited that setting; I played with them - hell, I was some of them - and humanity needed protectors. I wanted to play this game so badly. I bought a copy as soon as I realized it existed, so this would be sometime in 2002. 

I've owned several copies since then. 15 years, and I've never played it once. 

I tried to run a game once, but everybody wanted to play Vampires, so things changed quite a bit by the time the game started. Nothing wrong with that; me and the ladies involved (and eventually, a few boyfriends brought along) had a grand time, but it sure as hell wasn't a Reckoning. The video game's sequels would prove to be the closest I ever got to playing. 

I Reckon the Moment's Passed me By

It's just not the same.

Nowadays, the chances of me getting my Hunter on are so laughably low that I won't waste numbers on them. This sort of thing has been relegated to the world of Katanas & Trenchcoats²-type satire games. And while Onyx Path's 20th Anniversary Kickstarter Machine might come around next year, I somehow doubt it - this game just didn't seem to capture people's imagination in the same way.

Good! Also not the same.

And in fairness, it's not hard to see why. If you're a fan of WW games, you probably have some strong positive associations with some of the presumed primary antagonists of Hunter; who wants to play a game about destroying all the interesting, flawed, beautiful immortals that you love so much? The idea of taking a flamethrower to these critters couldn't have been less appealing to my gaming group, and I bet that's not a unique experience. Never mind that it tried to place itself in a pocket universe, where you're not actually using the other WW critter types as antagonists; that's how people used the game, and that's kind of what it became in people's minds. 

Modern games like the excellent Monster of the Week fill the niche to a degree, letting people get their Buffy/Supernatural on, and I've really enjoyed my experiences with that system. 

But its success makes me just the tiniest bit sad. The game is good enough that anyone looking for something in that space will look no further. Meanwhile, it's been so long since I cracked open my copy of Hunter, that I barely remember its contents. Doubtless, 2017 Killstring would be frustrated by its mechanics, and immediately try to port the thing to Gehenna or something. There's no way it matches up to the grandeur in my head.

So I imagine it'll sit on my shelf, burning in perpetuity, forever alone³. 

~Killstring

* * *

1 - And a family that was convinced it was somehow satanic, which had left a weird, unearned taste in my mouth. 

2 - Which is awesome, let's be clear on that. #YOLF

3 - Which is kind of fitting for a White Wolf game, now that I think about it. Have some angst, little book! :D