Hunting the Most Dangerous Game in Tabletop Games.
- Dungeons & Dragons:
- Downplayed with gray dragons, who strongly favor sapient humanoids as prey; they can eat animals fine, but prefer their food to be intelligent enough provide at least some semblance of a contest in finding or in killing. They still favor targets that they overpower, however, and will quickly turn tail and run from persistent opposition.
- Forgotten Realms: The Priests of Malar, the god of wild beasts and the hunt, have an annual ritual called the High Hunt, which involves capturing a sapient being and releasing them into the wilderness to be hunted for sport. Should the quarry survive, they are allowed to go free and are granted a boon.
- Hunter Planet: Players take on the role of alien hunters, enjoying the dangers and delights encountered hunting on a newly discovered hunter planet, called Dirt by its local semi-intelligent inhabitants.
- Magic: The Gathering: Garruk Wildspeaker started out as an ordinary, if powerful, hunter but after being driven mad by Liliana's curse he turned his attention toward hunting other planeswalkers (tremendously powerful, dimension-traveling mages).
- Necromunda: One of the factions are the Spyrers, small groups of rich teenagers who don high-tech battlesuits and come down to the lower levels of the Hive City in order to hunt the violent gangs that inhabit the area. For the underhive denizens, Spyrers are terrifying boogeymen and figures of legend. The hunters themselves either view the activity as sport ("No-one hunts like House Ty!") or as a Rite of Passage (sometimes even objecting that the poor victims would dare fight back against their aristocratic betters).
- Pathfinder: Taldor has a tradition called a "peasant hunt" where a convict is released into a hunting preserve dressed in an animal costume for partying aristocrats to pursue. If the peasant stays uncaptured for a full day, they get a pardon. Less malevolent than most examples because, at least in theory, the hunters are only allowed to use nonlethal means to bring down their quarry. The PCs have an opportunity to take part in one in part 2 of the War for the Crown campaign, but one of their rivals rigs the draw of hunting grounds to assign them to a territory he knows is inhabited by a powerful manticore, hoping it will kill them.
- Rifts: The Splugorth keep a large tract of Atlantis as a wild hunting preserve chiefly to hunt down sapient humanoids, including humans alongside orcs, ogres, goblins, wolfen and failed experiments in altering slaves into more useful forms. These aren't typically given greater chances at survival than game in orchestrated safaris or fox hunts, but some hunters prefer to go after warriors, mages and people who have already fought off or killed previous hunters in order to enjoy greater challenges.
- Sentinels of the Multiverse: The villain Ambuscade spends his time trying to hunt immortal Maori superhero Haka. Haka himself seems more bemused by this than anything else, at one point foiling Ambuscade through wacky hijinks without even realising he was there.
- Shadowrun 1st Edition supplement Sprawl Sites. One of the "Rich Folks Encounters" is a wealthy big game hunter who's bored with hunting animals and has decided to hunt human beings in the Seattle Sprawl. If not stopped he will kill the PC he has targeted.
- The Splinter: It's not uncommon for players to be ordered to stalk and kill other players. Keep in mind, if you die in the game, you die in real life.
- Traveller. Journal of the Travellers' Aid Society #19 Amber Zone "Pride of the Lion". An anti-alien bigot captures a group of Aslan and organizes a hunt, with the Aslan as the quarry.
- Trinity Universe (White Wolf): The present-day setting of the reboot has an entire villainous organization, the Society of Minos, who revolve around this trope: they're a secret society of aristocrats, wealthy businessmen, and others of excessive privilege devoted to proving their superiority by the hunting and killing of human beings. They're most vehemently opposed by the Theseus Club, outraged hunters, police officials and others who seek to hunt down and kill the Minoans due to their sense of outrage. In a blatant Shout-Out, the events of "The Most Dangerous Game" literally happened in this universe; General Zaroff was a Minoan, and Rainsford founded the Theseus Club after killing him and finding out about the Society whilst rifling through Zaroff's belongings.
- Urban Manhunt from Spectrum Games is all about this. Meant to emulate the dark future movies of the 80's (The Running Man, Escape from New York, etc). By 2049, Urban Manhunt has become the world's most popular sport. Players take the role of larger than life Hunters, heavily armed mercenaries who compete for points by hunting and killing criminals in the walled off prison cities.
- Warhammer: Age of Sigmar: The Glaivewraith Stalkers of the Nighthaunt faction enjoyed this in life. As punishment, they are set to eternally hunt the enemies of Nagash, while gaining no joy from it. They're some of the few Nighthaunt who actually deserve their punishment.
- The World of Darkness:
- Hunter: The Vigil:
- This is the major shtick of the Hunt Club. They're made up of a bunch of aristocrats who got tired of fox hunting and decided to try their hand at...different game. As they're a bunch of wealthy, well-connected individuals living in the World of Darkness, they also have the resources to make sure they never get caught.
- The members of the Ashwood Abbey are of a similar make-up, only they do it using supernatural creatures (such as werewolves and vampires) and only after making sure they've "had their fun" with the critters first. The Hunt Club thinks they're pussies.
- The Bear Lodge works similarly, but is an actual hunting lodge with its crosshairs on the supernatural, especially werewolves. Its members seek to prove themselves superior to the fiercest beasts that nature can generate. Having long since mastered mundane prey such as bears and mountain lions, they set their sights on werewolves, beasts as cunning as any human and more powerful than any natural animal, which they consider to be the most dangerous prey in the world.
- Hunter: The Vigil:
