History TabletopGame / HunterTheReckoning

* LivingLieDetector - Both Judges and Waywards have Edges that make them this.

* HomemadeFlamethrower: In the character book, ''Hunter Book: Wayward''. Said book has a section on improvising weapons for use against supernatural foes. The example is a Hunter constructing a flamethrower out of equipment found in an auto mechanic's shop.

* CrossMeltingAura: We're repeatedly told that we shouldn't expect any Hunter powers, including stuff like the absolute immunities granted by Second Sight, to work on "truly ancient and powerful being" (like Antediluvian Vampires).

* HearingVoices: The Imbuing often starts with either this or with seeing messages in fiery letters in the air.

* HiddenInPlainSight - The [[ExactlyWhatItSaysOnTheTin Hide]] edge, which Innocents use to observe the supernatural without being identified as a threat.

* HumansAreSpecial: The implicit meaning of the Messengers' cryptic CatchPhrase "INHERIT THE EARTH". Many Hunters hold the ideology that ordinary humans were meant to be the rulers of the Earth, but that this rule was usurped by creatures who gained power by becoming something other than human, and the Time of Judgment will right this balance and put true humans back in charge. Opinions are divided on whether Hunters, who themselves are pretty clearly something other than human or becoming so, will [[NoPlaceForMeThere be excluded from this new utopia]] or, somewhat [[{{Hypocrite}} hypocritically]], will be its rulers. There's tantalizing hints that Hunters themselves are "what humans were originally meant to be", that the Imbuing was the beginning of unlocking humanity's true potential, and that a fully empowered Hunter -- an Extremist -- is the second coming of the [[TabletopGame/{{Exalted}} Solar Exalted]] or the [[TabletopGame/KindredOfTheEast wan xian]].

** Although the topic doesn't come up very often and therefore this isn't directly confirmed, it seems implied that the Hunter's absolute immunity to being "changed" also applies to Hunters ever leaving Earth and entering one of the many [[AnotherDimension other dimensions]] of the World of Darkness -- for instance, they not only can't become Wraiths but they can't physically enter TheUnderworld the way the Benandanti do (not that, [[AfterTheEnd after the Sixth Great Maelstrom]], you'd ever want to), and the Corrupt Extremist level-5 Edge Transport seems explicitly designed to enable "exceptions" to this rule. (There is an apparent other exception when two Tradition Mages confront [=Witness1=] directly in the Digital Web trying to break into hunter-net -- but this is probably the tropey way Mages experience {{Cyberspace}} as a literal dimension while [=Witness1=] experiences it as sending messages on a computer screen.)

* InMysteriousWays: The Messengers, ''and how''. The most anyone can say for sure about them is they definitely exist -- some conscious entity has to be behind the Imbuing and, if the Werewolves and Mages' perspective on it can be trusted, it must be a very powerful entity indeed. And yet what the Messengers actually ''want'' remains up in the air; the basic way the Imbuing works seems to indicate Hunters were intended as a weapon against monsters, especially the undead ([[TabletopGame/VampireTheMasquerade Cainites]], [[TabletopGame/KindredOfTheEast Kuei-Jin]] and [[TabletopGame/WraithTheOblivion Risen]]), but the Hunters haven't been given nearly enough power to actually win the war or even put up much of a fight. There are dark implications that the Messengers may be working at cross-purposes with each other, that the Red Lady (the Scarlet Empress) who sponsors the Zeal Creed wants the monsters exterminated but her opposite number the Black Snake (the Ebon Dragon) who sponsors the Mercy Creed does not, and so the Hunters are caught in the middle of a deadly compromise where they're being used as [[WeHaveReserves cannon fodder]] to hinder the monsters' domination of mankind but not stop it.

* ItsPersonal: A very common theme with Imbuing, which fairly often involves a monster victimizing someone who was close to Hunter in some way, but is ''particularly'' intense with the Avenger and Defender Creeds -- the latter of which is driven by keeping bad things from happening to a loved one and the former of which is driven by rage at already having failed to do so. Notably ''averted'' with the Wayward Creed -- whatever incident caused the Imbuing of a Wayward, Waywards are defined by ''not'' viewing the Hunt in any sort of personal light, instead coldly accepting the necessity of the destruction of all monsters as a basic fact about the world.

* JumpedAtTheCall - How the Imbued become so - TheMasquerade becomes [[BrokenMasquerade broken]] for them, and they choose to do something about the monster they now see in front of them. If they [[RefusalOfTheCall choose not to act]], they become Bystanders instead.

** ''Hunter: Holy War'' tells us that Muslim Hunters in the Middle East take their terminology from Literature/TheQuran, naming their primary supernatural enemies after the four pagan nations struck down by Allah with the coming of Islam, the Adites ([[TabletopGame/VampireTheMasquerade Vampires]]), the Amalikites ([[TabletopGame/WraithTheOblivion Wraiths]]), the Midianites ([[TabletopGame/WerewolfTheApocalypse Werewolves and other shapeshifters]]), and the Thalmudites ([[TabletopGame/WraithTheOblivion Risen]] and [[TabletopGame/KindredOfTheEast Kuei-jin]]). Note that in the case of the Adites this is AccidentallyCorrectWriting in-universe, possibly under influence of the Messengers -- the Adites building the great city of Ad and turning to the worship of the three idols therein eerily parallels the story of the First City of Enoch built by the Antediluvians, where the True Black Hand (the secret cabal ruling all vampires) worshipped the mysterious beings known as the Aralu (which is what led to the Sixth Great Maelstrom and the Imbuing).

* PretendToBeBrainwashed: One of the most important facts about Second Sight is not only that it makes you immune to all forms of supernatural control and alteration, but that the use of Second Sight is ''completely indetectable by other supernatural beings'' (or at least to all but the most powerful ones). This means that knowing when and how to ''pretend'' to be Dominated by a Vampire (or dazzled by their Presence, or fooled by Obfuscate, etc.) is a vital skill for a Hunter's survival, and a very potent strategy for infiltration and attack.

* RippedFromTheHeadlines: One of the UnintentionalPeriodPiece aspects of this setting is ''Hunter: Apocrypha'' naming as one of the five portents of the end-times the then-hot news story of the [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_F._Kennedy_Jr. death of JFK Jr.]], something that very few people now remember as one of the most "apocalyptic" things that happened at the TurnOfTheMillennium.

** This is to some degree addressed in-universe -- the Messengers who gave the Imbued their powers seem to be keeping them on a ''very'' tight leash, with hints that they're ''terrified'' of what might happen should they [[GrewBeyondTheirProgramming evolve beyond their limitations]]. If the Hunters really are the second coming of the [[TabletopGame/{{Exalted}} Solar Exalted]] and/or the [[TabletopGame/KindredOfTheEast wan xian]], this fear seems entirely appropriate.

** There is one major exception to the above rule -- the "true Demons" from ''TabletopGame/DemonTheFallen'', the sister gameline of ''Hunter: the Reckoning'', can possess Extremist Hunters (who have attained Level 5 in their primary Virtue, i.e. Hunters who've successfully reached the limits of their potential), and by so doing become extremely powerful. (In terms of the Demon gameline, the Imbued have the highest Faith rating a human host can have and therefore immediately give the Demon character a huge mana pool to draw from.) It's hinted that this is because the Messengers and the Demons are NotSoDifferent, and the Messengers' ''intended'' outcome for a Hunter -- a "Divine Extremist" -- is just allowing yourself to be possessed by unfallen angels the way becoming a Corrupt Extremist is allowing yourself to be possessed by a fallen one.

* ZeroPercentApprovalRating: Obviously, the "monsters" Hunters hunt don't appreciate their efforts very much, the ordinary mortal authorities tend to consider them deranged terrorists and murderers, and ''Hunter: First Contact'' even reveals that the other "monster hunter" organizations in the World of Darkness that should, theoretically, be their allies view them with great suspicion at best (since they are, despite their protests, obviously just another kind of supernatural being, and a particularly unpredictable and inexplicable one at that).

* ForumPeckingOrder: Hunter-net is very blatant about enforcing one -- everyone's username has a number on it that cannot be changed that tells everyone the order in which you joined the site, meaning anyone can tell at a glance who the "veterans" and the "newbies" are. That said, it's relatively rare for anyone to directly "pull rank" (since when you joined hunter-net is only loosely correlated with how long ago you were Imbued and not really correlated at all with how successful you are at the Hunt), except for [=Witness1=] himself making it very clear whenever he needs to that he's the unquestioned despot of the site.

* BlackAndWhiteInsanity: Waywards, and crazy imbued in general.

* BroughtDownToNormal: The fifth-level Martyr Edge Payback can do this to monsters, imparting to them all the weaknesses of a human being (but ''not'' removing the weaknesses imposed by being supernatural). The variant version of this Edge, Expiate, is a more powerful version of this -- it ''actually changes a monster's nature'', meaning undead creatures like vampires or zombies immediately achieve Final Death, while werewolves and mages become normal humans. This causes [[CastFromHitPoints tremendous backlash damage against the Martyr]] (akin to a Mage's Paradox), usually killing them.
** It's worth noting that this last power is something that the rules of Mage and Werewolf themselves consider BeyondTheImpossible, to the level of blasphemy -- and since Extremists with level-5 Edges are so rare and Expiate is used so rarely, there's no final word on whether they're actually capable of changing the fundamental nature of a being or simply suppressing it.

* MartyrWithoutACause: How some Martyrs end up.

* ShockAndAwe - The Blast edge, available to Defenders.
* SociopathicHero: A Wayward is at best a literal example.

* WriterOnBoard: The Hunter books mostly successfully stayed away from openly taking sides on the highly controversial political topics they touched on, but it's hard not to notice that ''Hunter: Holy War'', whose writers came from Saudi Arabia, is relatively positive about the Saudi government (and ''extremely'' negative about Iraq under Saddam Hussein) compared to other depictions from the time period. (This [[JustifiedTrope makes sense]] in-universe since the book is an in-universe FictionalDocument by [=Tarjiman220=], an AuthorAvatar, but even so it sticks out.)

* DependingOnTheWriter: One of the complaints about this game, which suffered from internal division over what the theme of the game was supposed to be from the very beginning. Major inconsistencies noted by the playerbase included the ongoing debate over how powerful Second Sight was supposed to be exactly, how easy it is for Hunters to recharge Conviction and advance in Virtues, and exactly to what degree Zealot characters like [=Crusader17=] were justified in their FantasticRacism beliefs and how effective they were in actually protecting innocents from harm. The disjunction between how powerful Hunter characters are by the rules as written and what they're capable of in the in-game fiction almost qualifies as CutscenePowerToTheMax; the debate over whether H:tR was supposed to be a self-righteous MonsterHunter PowerFantasy or a gloomy tragedy about {{Determined Defeatist}}s in a CrapsackWorld was, in fact, [[RunningTheAsylum coming from inside the house]].

* CryptidEpisode: ''Hunter: Urban Legends'' is about Hunters encountering the Jersey Devil, and discovering there's plenty of weirdness in this world that doesn't follow the typical rules about "monsters" that [[WasOnceAMan in some way are related to humanity or reflect humanity's flaws]].

* HolyGround: ''Hunter: Holy War'' reveals that despite the scoffing statements within ''TabletopGame/VampireTheMasquerade'' about how this generally doesn't work and most vampires can enter most churches just fine (to the point of the Lasombra Clan infiltrating most of the Catholic hierarchy) because of the lack of True Faith in the world, the rules are very different in the Holy Land itself. Whether it's a new phenomenon due to the Week of Nightmares and the Imbuing is unknown, but "holy sites" in the Levant really are no-go zones for supernatural beings in general, and the effect strengthens as you get closer to the holy cities of Mecca, Medina and Jerusalem, and even waxes and wanes with the coming and going of the "holy days" of the major Abrahamic faiths (Ramadan and Eid, Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur, Lent and Easter).

** Moreover, even though the daily bread and butter of most Hunters is [[VampireHunter hunting vampires]] and [[ZombieApocalypse the newly-ubiquitous zombies]], there ''are'' Hunters who specifically hate Mages, and who hate them ''a lot''. Signature Avenger character [=Memphis68=] states his theory in his [[ManifestoMakingMalcontent manifesto]] that "warlocks" were the ''first'' monsters to "sell out the human race for power" to demonic forces and therefore the progenitors of all other monsters, which, if you believe the self-aggrandizing metaplot of TabletopGame/MageTheAscension and do a PerspectiveFlip on it, may even be true.

* ImmuneToMindControl: See NoSell -- this is one of the most powerful and essential features of Second Sight. However, Hunter aren't ''constantly'' immune to mind control, only when they have their Second Sight active, and without it are as vulnerable as any other human -- [[BlessedWithSuck unless you're a Wayward]]. The ability to "react with Conviction" (to sense they're about to be mind controlled and activate Second Sight defensively) is a variant rule and one that requires a successful Willpower roll to pull off.

* StumbledIntoThePlot: A key theme of ''Hunter''; the Imbuing is almost always a seemingly random event that happens to bystanders who happen to be nearby when a supernatural conflict occurs, and the Imbued individual almost never has any direct connection to the supernatural world or anything particularly special about them before it takes place.

* VaguenessIsComing: Unlike [[TabletopGames/HunterTheVigil its successor]], about a long-term ColdWar and [[BalanceBetweenGoodAndEvil stable equilibrium]] between Hunters and monsters, ''Hunter: the Reckoning'' is deeply tied to the World of Darkness metaplot and the apocalyptic sense of a world coming apart at the seams, with the Imbuing as a sudden, recent event in response to the Sixth Great Maelstrom and Week of Nightmares. ''Time of Judgment'', as per this trope, gives us a lot of tantalizing details about the lead-up to the apocalypse but leaves what actually happens in the end up to the individual gaming group.