Previous Hunter: the Vigil teasers have included sample Endowments and Professions as well as the Loyalists of Thule.

I don’t want to distract folks from the teasers that White Wolf has posted recently, namely A Game of Light in Shadows and What Hunter Is. Go read them when you get the chance, interesting stuff.

This week we are going to do something a little different…

I asked the authors of the Hunter: the Vigil core book to tell me a little something about working on the book. A few of them sent me some interesting stories…

UPDATE: White Wolf freelancer, Alex Greene, has sent me some of his thoughts on the new game. I’ve added them to this post.

Contested Ground Studios, the folks who brought us a|state and Cold City, have a new RPG hitting the shelves in 2008.

In October of 1962, the Cold War went hot. But the war was not just a nuclear apocalypse. Other technologies that had been hidden from the public gaze, technologies developed in Germany during the World War Two and hidden away by Britain, France, the USA and the USSR. These technologies were twisted and esoteric, fusing science, madness and the occult together. They ripped holes in reality, created horrific monsters, drove men and women beyond sanity and laid waste to continents.

Hot War is a game about the aftermath of this horror, about survivors, factions, hidden agendas, trust and betrayal. All of this takes place in the city of London, England in the freezing winter of 1963, one year after the war. Life has been altered forever. The population is massively reduced, essential services are virtually non-existent, food and other products are subject to draconian rationing measures and both inside and outside the borders of the city, horrible things still happen.

Previous Hunter topics include Light in Shadows, Professions and Endowments. Each of them explored just a bit more of the setting of the upcoming game.

We’ve talked briefly about the daily lives of the Hunters, made a small mention of compacts and conspiracies once or twice already. There has been a lot of speculation about each of these words (and their possible meaning) on forums and blogs.

Just to recap some of that text:

Hunter society is small and secretive, even in large cities like London or New York, but it is also vibrant and constantly in flux. Individual hunters band together to form cells, pooling their skills and resources to take on solitary monsters that threaten their communities. Sometimes these hunters become aware of other cells in their area and they form broader ties that grow into larger compacts, creating a network that spans entire cities or regions. In rare cases, hunter compacts grow so large that their resources and influence span entire countries.

We’ve talked about Light in Shadows as the theme of Hunter: the Vigil and we’ve looked at one of the Professions featured in the upcoming game.

Yet the question remains…how do they hunt the monsters of the World of Darkness?

Anyone can grab a gun and start blasting away, but is that enough to destroy a vampire or werewolf? What good are bullets against a ghost?

Last week I talked a bit about the theme of Hunter: the Vigil. The theme of the game is Light in Shadows and I talked about how Hunters team up to fight against the things that lurk in the shadows of the world.

I also mentioned that most Hunters have “day jobs” since nobody really gets paid to stake or shoot supernatural creatures. This week we’re going to take a closer look at the “day job” element of Hunter: the Vigil.

In Hunter: the Vigil these “day jobs” are called Professions. They seem to be the everyday “real” careers that “normal” people have in the world. The trick for a Hunter is balancing the demands of the hunt with the realities of the job.

When I interviewed Forgotten Realms author Paul S. Kemp recently he gave us the slightest tease regarding the upcoming Shadowrealm novel.

Now, he has offered up a snippet from the book for us to enjoy. Shadowrealm is book three of the Twilight War and is available for pre-order at Amazon.com.

The theme for White Wolf’s new game, Hunter: the Vigil is “Light in Shadows” and this theme is well presented in the advance materials I’ve seen already…

family, or those driven together by maddening circumstances. They protect
their stretch of forest, their city block, their network of women’s shelters. They don’t know the depth of what’s out there, they only have the meager light of their own candles to light the way.

Candles give way to torches, to cells who band together in localized compacts. They pool resources. They provide moral support. They present a more unified front against the denizens
of darkness.

And torches give way to raging bonfires as those compacts grow outward globally and backward through time. Ancient groups and modern conspiracies supply their hunters with potent weapons, some of which are so strange that those who use them can only wonder how long they can truly maintain their own humanity.

This theme continues throughout the text. Individual Hunters acting as a point of light, driving back the shadows. Together that light shines brighter, those shadows retreat or are destroyed outright by the fire. Still, those shadows never go quietly and there are always more of them creeping their way into the world.

The folks at White Wolf may be at GTS (GAMA Trade Show) but they still have a few surprises in store for the fans this week… The first one is the new logo for Hunter: The Vigil. Check it out -here-. While the logo is certainly interesting it was the flavor text that got me […]

Shadowmoor is the first set in a new block, a 301-card expansion with randomly inserted premium cards. It will be available in booster packs, tournament packs, theme decks and fat packs.

The Aurora has plunged Lorwyn into eternal night, transforming the once-idyllic plane into the eerie world of Shadowmoor. The gloom has transformed its denizens, too — creatures of fable have become monsters from dark fairytales. Races and characters introduced in Lorwyn are back, but with twisted allegiances and new powers.

Flames Rising is pleased to present two new Shadowmoor cards for Magic: the Gathering fans to preview!

The Ebonacht Trilogy by James Lowder.

Preview the cover (larger image below) with Art by Martin Hanford, and Pre-Order your copy of The Screaming Tower at the Elder Signs Press website.

Superstition shrouds the island of Thran and keeps the fear-plagued inhabitants subservient to the reclusive tyrant, Lord Ebonacht, and the denizens of the unseen Twilight Court. Only Janus, an orphan whose own mysterious past is discussed in frightened whispers, rails against the tales of the Strangerfolk and the other creatures that are rumored to stalk the night. His quest to prove the old stories false will bring him face to face with the prisoner of the Screaming Tower and reveal secrets about the world — and himself — far more terrible than those hinted at in the grimmest of legends.

Not only did she play Tara on the Buffy: the Vampire Slayer series, she has also directed, written and created a variety of other products that range from comic books to role-playing games.