PC Groups and Hunteds

[assault]

I've been doing a bit of campaign designing and the question of Hunteds has come up. The problem is as follows.

 

You have three PCs: A, B and C.

 

A is hunted by DEMON on 14-

B is hunted by VIPER on 8-

C is hunted by VIPER on 11-

 

Because these characters all hang around together, all three of them are effectively being hunted by DEMON on 14-, and VIPER on... whatever. This potentially occurred irrespective of any considerations of character conception, and, of course, different characters received different amounts of points for these hunteds.

 

OK, so, the players get together, and all agree to take the same hunteds: VIPER 14-, and DEMON 14-.

 

Now, what is supposed to happen when the GM has to roll for these Hunteds to appear? Does he/she roll once for each Hunted, or three times? Either way, both Hunteds are likely to show up pretty nearly all the time. But what if they were taken on 8-? There is a considerable difference in the frequency with which they will appear, in this case.

 

And then there is the problem about what it does to the GM's campaign... If a character is Hunted on a 14-, the Hunter is clearly a major factor in the game. In fact, the game comes very close to being an all-out war between the PCs and the Hunter. This makes a drastic difference to the campaign - like the difference between a heavily themed setting like the X-Men, or a looser one like the Fantastic Four or the Avengers.

 

And then there are issues of genre simulation... Imagine for a moment, that each scenario you run is a single issue of a monthly comic title. Your group has its set of recurring villains - but how often would you expect them to show up in a single year? You can pad it out, of course, by having a lot of Hunters using proxies, or by having only marginal roles in the adventure, or even being complete red herrings (more on this later), but still, it seems that getting the balance right can involve a bit of thought.

 

Obviously a GM can massage their campaigns to their hearts content - if they don't want a Hunter to show up, they won't but it does seem a little pointless in treating Hunteds as disadvantages if they don't actually show up at something like the frequency they were paid for. Worse, in some cases Hunteds are actually a genuine part of a PCs character conception, rather then just a tradeoff made to allow Combat Wombat to wield the True Power Comic. Some players may actually be offended if their characters' Hunters don't show up, particularly if they would prefer to fight them then the opponents that are actually showing up.

 

So it seems that Hunters need to be chosen carefully. First of all, the GM should, of course, vet, and preferably pre-design all and any hunteds the players take. It's not always possible to pre-design them, unfortunately, since players will always insist on playing off-the-wall character conception with strange disadvantages, but if you take a bit of time to talk through the kind of game you are wanting to run with your players you should be able to get pretty close.

 

The other effect of that, of course, is that you probably want your players to talk to each other about their characters as well. This applies to other aspects of their characters besides Hunteds, of course, and actually points in the direction of group character design sessions. I haven't used these before, but they might be worth trying. Unfortunately, a lot of players are quite likely to have characters they have already designed tucked away, but at least a group session might allow them to balance their characters against each other. Or it may simply weed out problematic players.

 

Unfortunately, of course, a lot of the time players want to actually play, and not just spend an evening designing characters! So you have to manage your time very carefully, to ensure that there is some actual play time, particularly if the next session is likely to be a fair while in the future.

 

Anyway, I suspect that I might come up with a list of suggested Hunteds for my next game, which will also have a fairly narrow theme and focus, at least to start with. It won't just be an open slather "design any old character and jump on in", which is pretty much what a lot of the games I have played in (and run) in the past have been like.

 

Duplication of hunteds is difficult, as I suggested way back above, but sometimes it's appropriate. Let's look at the early Fantastic Four: because they were a group, they all effectively shared each others' Hunteds, but some of their Hunteds were definitely more closely associated with some of them than others. (List of examples deleted for brevity.)

 

Of course, each time a player selects a Hunter for their character, they are, in effect, saying: "I vote that our group fights this enemy a certain amount of the time". If your characters are selecting the same Hunteds, you should take notice of it. But make sure you don't overuse them.

 

One thing I have been considering was lower frequency Hunteds. That is, instead of taking Hunteds that appear on 14-, 11- or 8-, being able to take ones that appear on 7- or 6-. Those probabilities, incidentally, are roughly equivalent to 1/6 and 1/12 respectively, if my maths was correct a few weeks ago. (Using the "12 issue year" I suggested before, that's "about twice a year" and "about once a year" respectively, of course.)

 

So, how do you cost them out? Well, the simple answer is: you don't! It's not convenient to buy them under the current system. A better way of buying them is to amalgamate them, and buy a bunch of them for the same point cost as a conventional Hunted. It works like this:

 

Buy your hunted as a conventional 8-, 11- or 14- Hunted. Then, roll on a subtable to find out which Hunter actually appears!

 

In effect, you have just split the probabilities of each Hunted's appearance by the number of slots on your subtable. This gives you the option of having a large number of Hunteds that only turn up every once in a blue moon, having a couple that show up fairly frequently, if less so than on 8-, or any combination you want. And the sum of the probabilities still adds up to the original 8- or whatever, so the character isn't getting less hassle than they were given points for.

 

Like any variant, the GM should be wary of this being abused. Personally, I would feel a little nervous if a character took "Every character in CKC (except for the Really Big Masterminds) 3-". It's _meant_ for buying fairly coherent Rogues' Galleries, so that Batman, for example, could buy The Joker, The Penguin, The Riddler, Two-Face and Catwoman without them all showing up every week, day in, day out. So if anyone want to use a system like this, they should be hardnosed about it, and not let anything nasty get through. But that's just universal advice, isn't it?

 

OK, just a final thing: I mentioned Hunteds showing up as Red Herrings. Rumours are an old scam in RPGs. They allow the GM to leak selective and variably truthful information to the PCs. Having rumours turn up about PCs' Hunteds is a rather obvious way for them to "appear" in scenarios where you don't want them to make a physical appearance. The danger is, of course, that the players might get sidetracked by this, and start to hunt down the local VIPER nest, rather than attempting to thwart DEMON's plot to destroy the world. Clearly, you probably shouldn't allow DEMON to destroy the world, in this situation.

 

You have a couple of choices here - a few not-so-subtle hints (with brass bands and elephants) to point to the real culprits is an obvious starting point, but you can always go with the flow if it looks like your players either can't be brought back on track, or actually would rather not be.

 

So rumours, while a good idea in theory, can also be a bigger pain than they are worth. I guess you just have to train your players a bit, and learn to adapt to them as well.

 

Well, this ended up a bit longer than I anticipated. I was originally going to ask for other peoples' advice on how they handled Hunteds, and I ended up writing something like an essay on how to handle them! Oh well.

 

It's a bit unstructured, but everything here seems to refer to something real, so I'll just post it as is.

 

Everyone else should feel free to comment, or talk about their own experiences, techniques, daft ideas and mistakes. Or talk about other disads and similar stuff, too.

[Supreme Serpent]

Re: PC Groups and Hunteds

 

Hunteds can be a pain, but they can give you as a GM an easy scenario if you're stuck.

 

My old, old, long running game had had 4 out of 5 starting characters Hunted by Viper. One got his powers as an unwilling Viper test subject, another was even a repentant former Viper agent. Viper was going to be a big focus for this campaign. Over the years they had many many run-ins with V, eventually crippling it in the campaign's culmination. In between Viper encounters there were lots of other villains.

 

A hunted "appearance" doesn't have to be an attack. Especially groups with NCI can cause indirect problems easily. Hire another villain team to do something in the hero's area, knowing conflict is likely. Give someone else who hates them info on weaknesses, etc. Start handing out kryptonite blasters to the local street gangs. Use covert agents to give them bad press coverage. Leave a trail of "evidence" for their latest plot that leads them to attack a US army base.

 

If the characters have a reputation, especially if they have many public battles with the hunted, other groups could sidetrack them with things that appear to be "Viper" etc, but aren't.

 

If it's just one character that's Hunted, they should be more geared to handle him, even if he's with a group. So even if the team wins, that character should have a harder time of it.

 

Hunteds mutate. If they're all created by Viper, for example, maybe the scientists involve break away from Viper, form their own mad scientist cabal and want all their "children" back. Viper doesn't care as much, but this other new group takes over the hunter role.

 

In my new game, I'm using a version of the ideas you're talking about. I've restricted all hunteds to 8-. Hunteds are in categories (individual, group, organization) and get a "Rogues Gallery" bonus of +5 for two, +10 for 3-4, +15 for five or more. So Batman hunted by Joker, Two-face, Riddler, Penguin would take them all as one 8- hunted at +10pts. When the hunted is rolled, it may be any one of them, or occaisionally a combo.

[TheEmerged]

Re: PC Groups and Hunteds

 

#1> Make sure the players understand that a 14- hunter will be "showing up" almost every session. At that point you might as well make it an Anti-(name of hunter here) campaign. Even at 11- the Hunter will be "showing up" a little over half the time...

 

Personally I told the players to keep it to 8- unless they had a really good reason the hunter would spend half their life pestering them -- and that 14- was only valid for Watched.

 

#2> I give many perks to the players as a team. The flip side of that is that they have several Hunted's as a team as well -- Primus (on 8-) being the key example.

 

#3> "Showing Up" can take many forms. Perhaps VIPER drops some agents on you at an inconvenient time. Perhaps a VIPER agent makes things difficult for them in civilian identity (insert crack about anonymous calls to children services / health department here). Perhaps a VIPER agent is trolling for information about the PC and the PC may not even realize it without the proper skill rolls...

[Citizen Keen]

Re: PC Groups and Hunteds

 

I generally don't roll for Hunteds, I just use the numbers as a guide for how often they appear. But that's me.

 

I also subsitute 'presence' for 'appearance'. Just because a Hunter doesn't show up doesn't mean he can't affect the PCs. In a SciFi campaign, I had a mutant who was vulnerable to flame, and being hunted by a Bounty Hunter/Assasin's Guild he had dropped out of. The PCs were fighting a syndicate of drug smugglers, and when the PCs showed up, they all busted out flamethrowers - courtesy of the hunters.

 

I love the greedy midget villain in Star Hero - he'll hunt by destroying their credit rating. That's classy.

 

Great post.

[DocMan]

Re: PC Groups and Hunteds

 

Just don't forget the possibilities of having the players fight the villian of the week, and THEN have the Hunted folks show up, nice and fresh after the heros are spent from the fight.

 

Disads like Hunteds are GM tools. How the GM uses them is up to the GM.

 

Doc

[SleepyDrug]

Re: PC Groups and Hunteds

 

I've been doing a bit of campaign designing and the question of Hunteds has come up. The problem is as follows.

 

You have three PCs: A, B and C.

 

A is hunted by DEMON on 14-

B is hunted by VIPER on 8-

C is hunted by VIPER on 11-

 

Because these characters all hang around together, all three of them are effectively being hunted by DEMON on 14-, and VIPER on... whatever. This potentially occurred irrespective of any considerations of character conception, and, of course, different characters received different amounts of points for these hunteds.

 

This isn't true per se. Demon is only after "A" and even a 14- doesn't mean the whole group suffers. Nor does a 14- mean time consuming or blatantly overt action. All it means is that a demon agent shows and takes a pot shot at "A".

Now "B" and "C" are both on Viper's hit list, but "C" is obviously a higher priority target.

 

Now, what is supposed to happen when the GM has to roll for these Hunteds to appear? Does he/she roll once for each Hunted, or three times? Either way, both Hunteds are likely to show up pretty nearly all the time. But what if they were taken on 8-? There is a considerable difference in the frequency with which they will appear, in this case.

 

I usually don't roll for Hunteds, but use the occassional/frequent/very frequent terms as guidelines.

 

And then there is the problem about what it does to the GM's campaign... If a character is Hunted on a 14-, the Hunter is clearly a major factor in the game. In fact, the game comes very close to being an all-out war between the PCs and the Hunter. This makes a drastic difference to the campaign - like the difference between a heavily themed setting like the X-Men, or a looser one like the Fantastic Four or the Avengers.

 

GM: don't allow 14- Hunteds if you don't want that to be a major feature of your campaign.

 

Anyway, I suspect that I might come up with a list of suggested Hunteds for my next game, which will also have a fairly narrow theme and focus, at least to start with. It won't just be an open slather "design any old character and jump on in", which is pretty much what a lot of the games I have played in (and run) in the past have been like.

 

I always have my say as far as enemies or hunteds go. If I gotta run them, I gotta get in my words

 

Of course, each time a player selects a Hunter for their character, they are, in effect, saying: "I vote that our group fights this enemy a certain amount of the time". If your characters are selecting the same Hunteds, you should take notice of it. But make sure you don't overuse them.

 

I suggest you think of ideas to use Hunteds more creatively. How much damage does a Viper 5 team do with only one volley (shoot and run) while the heroes are fighting Mechanon?

[Agent X]

Re: PC Groups and Hunteds

 

Like everyone else, I have to say you need to use the hunteds as a guideline more than anything else. This is one of the biggest flaws, IMO, in the Hero System. Hunteds should be used as a tool for the GM to enhance the game. Frequency really shouldn't be fixed to a hard number.

 

If I was writing a 6th Edition of Hero, I would definitely consider a different point structure for hunteds AND dnpcs. A character's rogues gallery does so much to define them, it's painful to see how limiting character construction rules are in encouraging a player to build a large and rich supporting cast.

[assault]

Re: PC Groups and Hunteds

 

Well, of course I use Hunteds and other Disadvantages as guidelines, but I also use them as key elements in my scenario design process.

 

In particular, if none of my PCs are hunted by Mechanon, Mechanon is only going to turn up very rarely, if at all. Hunteds are the recurring villains - the Lex Luthors, Jokers, Doctor Dooms and Magnetos of the campaign - everyone else are the one-shots.

 

In my games, of course. YMMV.

 

I like to preserve the numbers for a bunch of reasons, of which one of the most important is that I occasionally play solo games. It's nice to have a plot generator that will churn out a villain, a Master Plan, how the hero gets involved, and some plot complications, like what strange transformation Assault's Pal Ollie Jameson experiences this week, and whether or not Assault's Girlfriend Louise Long is going to be trying to work out his secret identity. Or something like that.

 

At the very least such things are fun.

 

And you can, incidentally, use them to produce some quite interesting Silver Age style "plots".

 

Anyway, I forgot a couple of points in my original 1500 word epic (I copied them into Word and used the word count function).

 

When a specific PC's Hunted turns up, the GM may decide that there are implications for the amount of "spotlight time" each PC has. While no PC should ever be overlooked, there is probably a bit of wriggle room for focussing more or less on a particular character in a particular session. A Hunter turning up may tend to focus attention on a particular character, increasing their spotlight time, or it may actually reduce it, if the character is taken out by the Hunter early in the session! It might be worth alternating the two, just to keep all the players happy. Just remember to remind them that sooner or later it will happen to _their_ characters too.

 

Another thing you should definitely consider is to establish relationships between the Hunters. That way, if, say, Lex Luthor and the Mob both show up in a Superman game, the gangsters might be using gear sold to them by Lexcorp. Similarly, if both the Mob and Intergang show up, they are likely to fight, since Intergang is trying to take over the underworld. If Intergang and Lex Luthor show, Intergang might be trying to lift some Lexcorp gear. If Lex, the Mob and Intergang all show, the Mob might be using Lexcorp technology to retaliate against Intergang's attempts to muscle in on their turf.

 

In this case, then, Lex (Lexcorp) and the Mob are somewhat friendly business partners (or rather, Lex actually runs the underworld just like he runs everything else in Metropolis), while Intergang are bitter enemies of the old Mobs who they are trying to either take over or eliminate. Similarly, Lex and Intergang aren't exactly the best of friends... And so on.

 

This helps clarify the situation when multiple Hunters show up. It also allows you to add layers of conspiracy to the game.

 

If you are lucky, too, it may help take the edge off some of the issues of particular Hunteds showing up too often.

 

Just to finish, here is a bit of an example of what I am considering for my Kirby/New Gods Homage game. I'm using the original source names here, since I haven't finished the "fliling off the serial numbers" process. They are grouped into two basic factions:

 

Faction One

Corrupt Businessman #1 ("Lex Luthor")

Organised Crime Faction #1 ("The old mobs")

 

Faction Two

Corrupt Businessman #2 ("Morgan Edge")

Organised Crime Faction #2 ("Intergang")

Criminal Genetic Engineering Program ("The Evil Factory")

Secret Mastermind ("Darkseid")

 

In addition to these factions, there may be individual supervillains, roughly grouped into Mad Scientists, Theme Villains, and Rampagers. Only the latter are "true" superbeings - the other two are "normals" with training and "stuff". Some of these may be affiliated with the factions, while others won't be, at least initially.

 

Of course, each of the "leaders" will have lackeys and other resources.

 

In other words, I will have a fairly strict framework which Hunteds will be required to fit into.

 

On the other hand, my solo game has a light scattering of Mad Scientists, Theme Villains, Rampagers and Alien Invaders, who appear more or less whenever I roll them up on my "plot generator" tables.

 

I really must finish writing them up, and post them. I think they're kind of amusing. I still need a few more entries on my Strange Transformation Table, aka "the Jimmy Olsen Table", though.