Night of the Hunt (bloodborne RPG)

Starting with the stuff I finished writing out after the last thread () hit autosage.

-Your character has 3 Nature scores, and each has a linked Derangment score.
--Bestial is linked to Bloodlust.
--Mundane is linked to Obsession.
--Cosmic is linked to Mania.

-Starting Nature scores would be, oh, 3, 2, and 1 (you choose which is which), with the linked Derangement for your strongest Nature starting at 1 while the others start at 0.

-The sum of all your Nature scores is your Mettle. The sum of all your Derangement scores is your Madness.
--Your Mettle can't go above 12; at that point, you must decrease one of your Nature scores to increase another.
--When your Madness goes up, choose a derangement that's less than its linked Nature score and increase it by 1.
--If your Madness exceeds your Mettle, then your character has lost control and by extension so have you. The GM can now decide their actions, and is free to declare that they've gone past the point of no return.

-Any time your Nature score adds to the number of dice you can roll, you can choose not use some or all of those dice. This is because they can come with a potential drawback- any nature die result that fails to exceed the linked Derangement score grants a point of Frenzy.
--Example: Say a hunter has 4 Bestial, 2 Bloodlust, and 3 Stalk. They get 3 regular dice and up to 4 nature dice when rolling to sneak up on a target. Any nature die rolls (including rerolls when you get a 10) that come up as 2 or less give them a point of Frenzy.

-Frenzy points denote the level of strain being placed upon the fraying nerves of your character's mind. If your total Frenzy points reach a threshold of (5*(current Madness+1)), reset them to 0 and increase one of your Derangement scores by 1. You can't select a Derangement whose score already meets or exceeds that of the linked Nature.

Something that would happen on a fairly regular basis is that characters would encounter Lures- haven't worked out exactly how they'd crop up, but I'm thinking both GM and the character's player should have the option to declare that something is a Lure to the PC(s).

Bestial Lures: Chances for carnage and bloodshed. Unaware prey with their back to you.

Mundane Lures: Chance for a moment's respite in a place of safety, or decent conversation with sane people. A really sick trick weapon.

Cosmic Lures: Chances to study strange paranormal phenomena, to become closer to higher powers or learn their secrets.

When your PC faces a Lure, they can choose to Resist it. Make an opposed check, rolling your other 2 Nature scores against a dice pool equal to your relevant Attribute + Madness scores.

-If they indulge the Lure or fail to resist it, the PC gains a point of Fervor (see below) and must pursue that Lure as best they're able for at least the current scene.
-Resisting a Lure earns XP equal to the size of the lure's die pool (or proportional to that, anyway)


Fervor is a consumable resource, more like action points than anything. Once per scene, you can spend a point of Fervor and choose a Derangement; for the rest of the scene, you add that Derangement to the effective value of its linked Nature.

The Fervor state grants an additional benefit in combat scenes: Each time you get a Stamina die result that doesn't exceed the chosen Derangement, you may immediately return that die to the Stamina pool. However, at the end of any turn where you attacked something, the Fervor state ends unless you A: regained at least 2 Stamina while making attack rolls or B: spend another point of Fervor to keep the state going.

bump for interest

I'm confused, how does the mundane lure work with the other two? I'd think ignoring a moment of respite to pursue the quest sounds far more like obsession than giving in.

Still waiting to see more. No name, but know that I'm here. I'm waiting. Just finished my first Bloodborne playthrough today, so I'm hyped as fuck for anything to do with it.

Yeah, fair point, after I posted I was thinking similar. Consciously chosen goals (or a character's "quest", as you nicely put it) are a better fit for Mundane as well as its derangement- after all, the two hunters I'd cite as references for a high-level hunter PC emphasizing Mundane are Eileen and Djura, both of whom have focused on their chosen missions with stubborn dedication.

Could have starting characters pick a goal/quest or 3... "protect my block", "avenge my family", hell "make it through the night". You pick/update your goals at the start of the Night, and with GM approval can change them during the night to reflect a new mission/purpose your character has chosen to shoulder.

Some relevant quotes on the topic I shared last thread:
MUNDANE
"This too is hunter's work, but it bears no honor. A burden you may choose to carry. The decision is yours alone."
-Eileen the Crow (good route)

"But you did all ya could, and so many owe you so much. Amazing, really. Not 'cause you're a hunter, but because you're you."
-Chapel Dweller

OBSESSION
"A strong will produces thick blood. Doubtless, the product of obsession, a potent source of human strength."
-Thick Coldblood description.

"Sometimes, when hunters burn beasts, they appear intoxicated by the euphoria of purification."
-Oil Urn description

"All hunters must die!"
-Eileen the Crow, last words (bad route)

SPECIFIC STUFF I COULD USE HELP WITH (Once I've gotten things a bit more sorted out): If anyone's interested in helping me put together a .pdf doc with playtest rules and/or can assist in making character sheets, that'd be ace. Two good ways to reach me are brooks.dagda on Skype or Dagdammit#0612 on Discord; failing that, my gmail is brooks.dagdamor.

And of course, once THAT's done playtesters will be invaluable.

Quick summation of current Madness/frenzy mechanics:

MADNESS
-Subdivides into Bloodlust, Obsession and Mania, each associated with one of the system's three "ability score" equivalents. This has mechanical consequences but also provides RP guide for what variety of unhinged maniac you're becoming.
-Madness score starts at 1, maybe 2. Threshold at which you character is lost is their Mettle, which starts at 6 and caps out at 12.
-Madness score increases when Frenzy buildup accumulates high enough, and also probably gets a straight +1 if your PC dies. (Yharnam blood can return you to life in a matter of hours, but the experience of violent death isn't great for one's mental stability.)
-At the moment, the only way Madness can mechanically dictate PC behavior is through Lures, which madness makes more difficult to resist. This comes with a benefit: fervor points, which grant boosts to ability scores & stamina regain proportional to derangement strength.

FRENZY
-Points that accumulate over time. If you hit 5*(current Madness +1), cash those frenzy points in and get +1 Madness.
-Currently two ways to accumulate it:
--Stuff that gives Frenzy in video game gives it here too, inflicting points on a round-by-round basis.
--Inbuilt frenzy generation mechanic in core dice system- dice the core ability scores contribute carry inherent risk of generating frenzy on a low roll. Risk increases as ability score's linked Derangement goes up. (If I have Obsession 4, all Mundane nature dice have a 44% chance to generate 1 point of frenzy when I roll them.)

Biggest question on my mind right now: Should it be possible to reduce Frenzy points and/or Madness? If so, how?

I'm also curious what people think of how this contrasts with a Call of Cthulhu-style Sanity system:
-Frenzy+Madness doesn't build up through seeing scary or traumatic things, like a church official turning into a Cleric Beast; the effects of those experiences are left to rp. Instead it builds up when you push yourself, or when you die, or rarely because the specific hazard you're facing has the special property of fucking with human minds.

-You can avoid Madness buildup by holding back, i.e. not rolling all the dice your ability scores give you.

-Mechanics never say you acquire specific mental disorders like OCD, split identies or Tourette's. The only mechanically dictated effect on character behavior is to screw with their priorities, with Lures compelling PCs to prioritize bloodshed/their mission/cosmic inquiry above all else for a time.

Is that enough? Or would people want to roll on tables to see what specific quirks their player is given?

Right now I think I like the current setup; guys like Alfred don't have obvious issues or tics, so it seems to fit the setting pretty well.

>Should it be possible to reduce Frenzy points and/or Madness?

If Frenzy can be inflicted by enemies and hazards, then there should be a way to reduce Frenzy. I dunno, maybe -1 point per 6-12 hours.

As for Madness, yes, but it should be VERY difficult to reduce. Rare items or costly rituals that might necessiate a small quest.

Check out the RPG "Don't Rest Your Head" if you haven't already; it might give you some ideas about ways to manage Madness.

So what is exactly the dice rolling mechanic here?

Enemies and hazards that inflict it are *rare* in the video game- there's like five total, the first of which shows up halfway through the game (so basically mid-level). I think they'll mostly be a reasonably fair way for the GM to mess with players who're behind the curve on

Also Bloodborne takes place during an endless night wherein time and space get real fucked, so not tying anything to the in-game passage of time.

Innnnteresting, been a long time since I went over that system. The hope and despair coins give food for thought.


My current thinking is this:
-I'm still favoring the idea that advancement comes in two forms: Spending XP and leveling up.
-You earn XP through a variety of moment to moment things, and can spend it during Moments of Respite (this game's equivalent of downtime). XP is used to by specific things like skill increases, feats and gear.
-You level up when you take down a boss. (Just whatever the GM designates as a boss battle.) Leveling up is what lets you increase your Health, Stamina, and Nature scores.

Given the above...
-Players can spend XP to reduce accumulated Frenzy. This can't reduce their current Madness. There may be die rolls involved- if so, it'll probably be to raise a limit on how much Frenzy can be soothed, and the ones who make the rolls will be fellow party members with lower Madness scores than you.

-When they level up, players can choose to reduce their highest Derangement by 1 instead of increasing one of their Nature scores. Doing so also reduces their Frenzy by 10 and drains away all accumulated Fervor.

-Daybreak reduces all your Derangements by 1... IF such an event ever comes to pass in your game. The game makes it clear that some Nights of the Hunt last far longer than others; if dawn comes after a single adventure, you should consider your GM generous and not assume the next Night of the Hunt will end so easily.

Currently World of Darkness dice pools. All d10s, 8+ is a success, 10s explode. Will probably be abilities that alter TN or explosion range in specific cases.

Things are shaping up to have smaller dice pools than in WoD, so I may end up making 7+ the default TN instead. If not, I'll probably tone down the number of successes needed for various levels of difficulty.

Thoughts on Gear:

Your character has an Arsenal and an Inventory. The former is what XP buys you, the latter is the stuff you actually possess at this current time.

To give an example, let's say I spend XP to give my Arsenal "3 Molotov Cocktails." This doesn't mean I literally have 3 Molotovs at all times; it means during Moments of Respite, I will typically have an easy time scrounging or making enough Molotovs to increase my total inventory count to 3. (Giving molotovs to other party members is considered a "loan", i.e. those molotovs still count towards my Arsenal tally until they're used.)

As a side note, my Pyrotechnics skill is both the skill I roll to scavenge/fashion Molotovs and the main prerequisite to have X Molotovs as part of my default Arsenal. Everything else in your arsenal would be similarly covered by a handful of Mundane and Cosmic skills.

Items in your inventory that AREN'T covered by your Arsenal are assumed to be ones you aren't accustomed to maintaining and using. GM is free to pounce when dice rolls involving said items result in one or more natural 1s, allowing mishaps such as fumbled attacks, weapon jams, or equipment getting damaged, broken, dropped, or just plain lost. Generally speaking, GMs should give players a few scenes (and at least one chance to spend their XP on adding the item to their Arsenal) before these troubles start to crop up.

So yeah, that's where most of your kit would come from: skills rolls made during Moments of Respite to scrounge & craft the gear you need.

How about these for mundane lures?
>mundane vices(smoking, drinking, collecting rare trinkets or jewels, etc)
>An elaborate trick weapon or workshop tool that requires indepth study to utilize

I think you should limit explanations for Fervor here. Just state that it can also be used in Combat (See Fervor section in Combat).

>Should it be possible to reduce Frenzy points and/or Madness? If so, how?
one set of ways should be tied to Nature.
>Bestial: Doing an action for sentimental reasons, helping an innocent or protecting a keepsake.
WARNING: failure at such a task is not good for mental health.
>Mundane: Just taking a moment to relax and talk to someone sane.
WARNING: Boredom can have the opposite effect.
>Cosmic: Reading academic papers on cosmic entities without actually interacting with said entities.
WARNING: Reading the ravings of the mentally unsound can achieve more harm than good.

Another is closer to attempting to "let go", sacrificing part of yourself and dissociating with the Frenzy to forcefully calm down.
>Give up XP or reduce a Nature by letting your skills dull(with time or drink or drugs)
WARNING: Can lead to loss of sense of self-preservation, whether through self-harm or muted response to danger.

I think alot of this is actually covered directly by the current draft of mechanics. Resisting Lures is done using dice from the other two natures, all of which carry the risk of increasing frenzy (representing the mental strain from stress of internal conflicts) as well as the chance to reduce it if successful (by earning XP for resisting the lure, and

Common consequences of indulging or succumbing to a lure...

-Bestial: Time to kill as many beasts as you can. Rip and tear, until they're all dead. There's no such thing as a valid reason to back down from a fight.
-Obsession: Pursue your goals in a drastic and uncompromising fashion. Moderation is cowardice. You HAVE to do this, there's no other options.
-Cosmic: You have so many questions. It is essential that any chance to obtain answers not be wasted. Texts must be preserved, specimens should be studied or preserved, notes must be documented, and opportunities for experimentation should be seized.

> (by earning XP for resisting the lure, and
...then spending it to reduce Frenzy, is how that sentence should have ended.

I suppose, if you abstract the process of reducing Frenzy points.

Not *entirely*- you can have specific in-game factors and actions make the process more effective. Decent conversation with sane people seems like one good example.

bump again

>dash
>dash
>hit and run
>stagg then pierce through the body of the post

bump

Holy shit, Dagda, you're alive!

I need to time to read and react to all of this, so get bumped.

I actually really like that gear system. Its surprisingly simple.

You haven't updated your blogspot since 2014. Are you going to upload this somewhere permanent or what?

...

Any ideas for the different types of Hunter?
>Workshop
>Powderkeggers
>Church
>Cainhurst

You could have different tiers of factions as well, since each faction you named has a more 'advanced' version in the game.
Workshop could upgrade to Old Hunters
Powder Kegs could upgrade to Oto's Workshop
Healing Church could upgrade to Choir
Cainhurst Knights could upgrade to Vilebloods

I could dig that, I'd set it up as you advance based on some sort of achievement not just experience or anything.
>Worskshop-Make your own unigue weapon/ X time on the hunt
>Cainhurst-Complete a quest for the Queen
>Powderkeggers-KA-BOOM!

Etc.

I see.
I saw the grid-based stuff, and my eyes glazed over though. Trying to replicate reflex and timing-based game mechanics in a dice-based system is a bad idea; all you'll get is "sort of similar to the video game, but slower and more cumbersome".
Besides, if it was just those mechanics style that made the game famous this could be a Dragon's Dogma game and it wouldn't be all that different.
The Souls games and Bloodbourne weren't JUST famous for their mechanics and difficulty, but their thematic feeling and heavy atmosphere.

That said, grid mechanics aside, I REALLY like your whole madness and stat-based stuff, because it is thematically extremely appropriate.

Legends of the Wulin has a great system for managing characters developing mental abnormalities. You're given a list of behaviors that you're supposed to indulge or avoid, like "adheres to dogma" or "passionately expresses emotion," and get bonuses on your rolls when you do and penalties when you don't. This way the players are incentivized to play out their character's madness, but can choose not to if they're willing to accept a disadvantage.

In this case, the magnitude of the bonus or penalty could be tied to the character's relevant Madness score, so the stronger a Madness gets the more heavily a player is incentivized to play along with it, because past a certain point resisting a powerful madness is basically suicide while indulging it is a serious benefit.

With regards to atmosphere, there should be some kind of system for tracking the degeneration of the city. Based on 1) how severe you've decided the campaign will be and 2) how well the players did during the last Night of the Hunt, the next Hunt could come earlier or be worse, and obstacles would start to stack up. As civic order slowly breaks down, players could start taking penalties to their Arsenal rolls as critical supplies grow scarce, safe zones and sanctuaries could become unavailable, recurring NPCs could have to roll against a chance to descend into beasthood or meet some other horrible fate. The players wouldn't be warned of all of this directly, so each new Hunt would have new and unpleasant surprises waiting, and it would introduce a sense of growing tension: When we show up to Oedon Chapel, will everyone we arranged to shelter there have actually made it? Will it even still be a sanctuary, or did it run out of beast-repelling incense at the worst possible time, leaving the returning NPCs vulnerable and us without a place to have a Moment of Respite we were counting on?

What if the Hunters actually had to hunt the boss monster of each Hunt? Build the bosses so that they're brutally advantaged over the PCs and then give them one or two exploitable weaknesses that the Hunters spent the Night trying to suss out. By finding and examining the beast's spoor, the remains of its victims, witnesses to its attacks, and so on, they are given vague clues and get to make a skill check to turn those clues into specific pieces of information. After escorting the shaken survivor of a Darkbeast's attack to safety, he describes the way the beast moved about the town square as it annihilated a group of militiamen. If the players pass their skill check, or one of them is clever and attentive enough and goes back and compares the report against the geography of the square, they realize that the beast assiduously avoided the fountain in the center of the square and deduce that it is harmed or hampered by contact with water. This will give them a fair chance to fight it.

>Each hunt focus' on one particular powerful beast
I like this idea, gives it more of a feel of being an actual hunt.

It would be interesting to see a more narrative focused investigation/mystery style campaign set more between Hunts than solely on them (though including them when they happen)/before everything got completely terrible.

I imagine that before the night where everything fell apart, that was how it worked; Hunters heard about some Beast that was tearing shit up and they got together to put it down.

And spent the night hoping that when it came time to kill the thing it was no one they recognized.

That is a terrible example, mostly because normal players would believe the fountain was physically in the way.

I'd like too see what happens just before the hunts desu.
Just imagine what's goes through a Hunters heads when he realizes the hunt will begining soon and imagine the common people of Yarnam as they get ready to whether the storm.

Only because I wanted to be incredibly brief. The full witness' report would recount the beast leaping about the square with supernatural agility, easily clearing fifteen feet vertically from a standstill, and smashing through brick and mortar storefronts as it attacked. Yet, the players could notice (the witness would not explicitly point it out, having not made the connection himself) that the beast always goes around the fountain, never through or over even though it should be able to smash through the stone or clear the entire basin with a good leap.

Of course, the real point of the example was to get across my intention, which I think I succeeded at the first time.

Oh man tons of good replies, awesome. Lotta comments from me, will probably do a couple per post.

Before anything else, I gotta give props to for just being a really succinct and well-written bit of feedback- and in hindsight, the origin of the phrase "moments of respite", which was damn useful.

Oh god my poor blog >_>

If/when there's a finished rules writeup I know I'll post that much there, but till then idk. Veeky Forums's blocked blogspot links for years now, I'd want to post it somewhere that people can find via google & also post direct links to on this board.

I was actually thinking that you could do something thematically related with origins.
-Outsiders start with 1 Bestial and 0 Bloodlust. They're novice users of blood and unfamiliar with the scourge of the beast.
-Yharnamites start with 1 Cosmic and 0 Mania. They've got bigger concerns than ravings and superstition.
-Cathedral Ward types start with 1 Mundane and 0 Obsession. They're part of a super-wealthy institution that worships blood, purges beasts, and whose upstanding members cultivate Insight.

Powder Kegs are hunters with a clear Mundane focus, and among the "regular" hunter types Church Hunters are the ones with high Cosmic focus. Regular hunters skew more towards Bestial.

Should that be Yharnamites start with 1 Mundane 0 Obsession, Cathedral Ward types start with 1 Cosmic 0 Mania?

>I saw the grid-based stuff, and my eyes glazed over though.
You might have done so prematurely- "grid" was in hindsight a total misnomer for what I have in mind, a better label would be "zones". You aren't tracking anyone's exact position in the world- instead you just track their general region of the map they're in, and know how how quickly you can get to them from wherever you are.

>Trying to replicate reflex and timing-based game mechanics in a dice-based system is a bad idea; all you'll get is "sort of similar to the video game, but slower and more cumbersome".
Oh I'm not trying to replicate bloodborne combat- I'm trying to translate it. If that distinction is just semantics to your point, then my response is instead something like "only if I do a bad job."

Don't get me wrong, translating action vidya gameplay to tabletop is hard, but I've hit the point where it's the kind of challenge I really enjoy sinking my teeth into. The key in my mind is to sound out the "beating heart" of that gameplay experience and try to build the tabletop mechanics that capture it. When I did a Mass Effect system, that beating heart was that core moment-to-moment dilemma of the cover shooter player: Do I keep on shooting for a few more seconds, or duck back down now?

In Bloodborne, the thing I want to capture is a similar dilemma: How greedy do I want to be, in terms of inflicting damage? Do I settle for 1-2 hits and disengage? Do I try to stagger them and leave enough stamina for some dodges? Or do I go for broke and keep slashing until my stamina's completely spent? That's the element I want preserve in a fairly similar form.

I'll have to check out the behaviors, and/or see if I can come up with ones I like for bloodborne.

As it stands, the more I talk this out with people, the more I find myself liking the current setup, where your madness dictates priorities rather than behavioral tics & characterization.

It's like the distinction between character & characterization- our fictional character's morning routine, the clothes he puts on for his job, the car he drives, the stuff he listens to on the radio, that's all characterization. His *character* is what he does upon encountering a burning bus on the side of the road that's full of terrified children.

Father Gascoigne, upon encountering such a scenario, would immediately spring from his Lexus to attack the scourge beast that was blocking the way to the emergency exit of the bus. He would slay it in bloody fashion, look around for more beasts, and upon seeing none would *probaby* remember to help the surviving children get out of that bus. Right after he chops this beast's corpse a few more times for good measure, to get a little more blood out of it.

(I think one really interesting point of reference is that when Gascoigne turns and sees us, he doesn't go "more blood, I need more blood" or something. He *rationalizes* his desire to attack us. He justifies the thing he wants to do, which in this case is to violently attack and murder us.)

1 is the lowest value an attribute can have. Yharnamites would have 2s or 3s in Mundane and Bestial, Catherdral Ward types would have 2s or 3s in Cosmic and Bestial.

You can also see it with Maria, where her madness dictates that she needs to prevent anyone from seeing the horror that was wrought in the Fishing Hamlet, or even Simon the Harrowed. Rather than acting insane, they just focus themselves on singular missions.

The more I look back on the NPCs in the game the more I think the decision to have madness influence priorities rather than penalizing the player by forcibly defining their character for them is pretty inspired.

Ghascoine's rationality seemed to be; "Everyone in the city seems to have turned into a Beast, therefore killing you is just me pre-emotively solving the problem."

>"Beasts..all over the shop. You'll be one of them, sooner or later...."

>Don't get me wrong, translating action vidya gameplay to tabletop is hard, but I've hit the point where it's the kind of challenge I really enjoy sinking my teeth into.

That's fair.
It doesn't actually make me more interested in playing this game, but it's still fair.

Anyone know what the hell he means by "all over the shop", anyway? Like, the Hunter's Workshop? Church Workshop?

Possibly, but that's also actually U.K. slang for "everywhere and out of control", so they might have just been using a very odd colloquialism.

I think rolling to restock during Moments of Respite will just get bonuses based on what'd be available in the pacified areas you have access to. If you want to get your hands on a new trick weapon, being in the Nightmare Frontier or the wilderness would give +0 bonus. Being in Central Yharnam would give like +1 if you're hiding from the militia in some secluded back alleys, or +3 if the central streets are safe for you to walk and the militia's supplies are available to you (whether it's because you're a part of the militia or you just finished killing them all.) Meanwhile, if you have access to a proper hunter's workshop that's still stocked, that's like +5. (Another reason why it's a significant power boost if PCs are bound to the hunter's dream)

And that's also fair. =P

Will be interested to see if that holds true for finished product- though the whole core bit's untested, so at present I have no actual idea if it's fun.

Huh! That would actually fit bloodborne quite alot- Djura uses another UK colloquialism I'd never heard when he calls you "half-cut with" blood, which means rather drunk. I think you're right.

Hunter of hunter
Spark hunters (unnoficial)
Yarghul hunters (hunts humans)
Mensis or choir hunters
Nightmare hunters (blooddrunk from ngithmare)
Yharnam hunters( civilians with trick weapons in yharnam hunter set)
Tomb prospectors( chalice spelunkers)

I think Yahar'Gul hunters would be a subset of Mensis Scholars and Tomb Prospectors are an offshoot of Church Hunters.

>Huh! That would actually fit bloodborne quite alot- Djura uses another UK colloquialism I'd never heard when he calls you "half-cut with" blood, which means rather drunk. I think you're right.

I picked up on that as well.
Yharnam seems very British by way of deranged Edgar Allan Poe in character.

>(Another reason why it's a significant power boost if PCs are bound to the hunter's dream)

As if the whole "can't properly be killed" thing wasn't useful enough eh?

>Will be interested to see if that holds true for finished product- though the whole core bit's untested, so at present I have no actual idea if it's fun.

It's a practical consideration on my part.
My entire group is composed of grown adults who work their asses off just to afford basic necessities, so the more extra learning of fiddly bits in a new game and the longer time it takes between LEARNING to play and actually PLAYING the more likely we are to write it off due to how rarely our collective responsibilities even allow us to meet up.
New systems that are simple and require absolutely no learning period work for us, but the longer it take the less time we have to actually play, and just like everything else in our lives we have to squeeze as much out of it as we can while we have the time at all.

All hunters are derived from tomb prospectors. A portion of the Byrgenwerth student body and/or staff handled the dungeon-delving task. The founders of the healing church were the students whose adventuring party retrieved the "holy medium" (the chalice and/or the strain of Old Blood the church used) from the labyrinth in the first place.

Further, the vast majority of hunter factions were active in separate eras. The powder kegs are gone; the Oto workshop preceded them; the church hunters were the first instance of hunters recruited from the general populace, and were a necessary measure because by then the old hunters had all literally disappeared, apparently snatched up into the hunter's nightmare.

There's interesting details in the writing, various tells it has. Patches' dialogue when he gives you the tonsil stone demonstrates at least one: That they'll sometimes use obscure words to make key plot bits subtler. His summary of your terrible plight ends with "and the blood imbibes you", when he could have just said "drinks" instead.

Oh that's everyone, I think- this is the one bit of my own lore interpretations that won't really be optional in Night of the Hunt. All who've ever taken blood, including all beasts, are being invigorated to the point that they cannot stay dead. The advantage Hunters get is that they *despawn* upon death, so they won't revive to find themselves lashed to a burning cross.

That's actually the watered down version of what I genuinely think the dev's canon is: That this revival effect extends to those who were dead long before the current Night of the Hunt began. It accounts for practically half of the environmental objects in the game, and implies that Central Yharnam & especially Hemwick have their immediate situation far more under control than it seems.

It's hard for a couple reasons. I'm trying to leave personal lore conclusions out of this where possible, but I'm strongly inclined to believe that... well, if the Blood gave you strength by giving you muscles, the PC and Yharnam militia would all look like space marines. That's clearly not what's happening. The blood is giving you life and strength literally out of thin air, we're talking direct violations of the laws of thermodynamics. Look at the drowned beasts in the sewers- part of their forearm is nothing but bones, and yet the hand at the end of that forearm STILL WORKS. They're using it to attack you and drag themselves forwards.

Sooooo I'm pretty sure muscle isn't the primary factor determining physical potency during the time-space phenomenon that Yharnamites call the Night of the Hunt. And I'm pretty sure clarity, acuity, and functional accuracy of thought is not going to be the same during Nights of the Hunt either. In fact, honestly I'm not even sure hunters who're still bound to the dream EXIST in between Nights of the Hunt. How much time passed before you woke up on that clinic bed?

So in short: This project is called Night of the Hunt because that's what its systems are made to represent. Scenes outside the Night of the Hunt follow whatever lore interpretation the GM chooses (I expect I'll suggest a few options), and will probably not involve die rolls.

Sure they operated in different time periods, but their secrets and techniques still exist. They're still relevant as factions, even though they might not be properly organized anymore. Progressing through factional tiers could easily just be shown as dedication towards a way of doing things, and finding the long-forgotten lore of those who did things the same way before you

I'm reminded of a thing from D&D.

There was actually a RAW trick called "nanobots" or "nanomachines". Wizard creates hundreds of miniscule animated objects infusing them with magic. One of the variants used blood (though this was not strictly RAW if I remember).

After objects are animated and work user ingests them, infuses his own bloodstream or just plain attaches them to his body. "Nanobots" are then ordered to use 'Aid Another' action on all of his actions. Which gives a big boost on most d20 rolls. +50-100 was not a problem.

which is fitting since Gascoigne is a foreigner

don't forget the Executioners, Ludwig's Holy Blades, and the Knights of Cainhurst

I always figured some of the apparent inconsistencies that were in the non-Dream/Nightmare parts of the game was due to those areas all beginning to fall into the Dream/Nightmare(much like the Lecture Hall already has), with some areas having progressed further than others(Old Yharnam and Cainhurst have especially fallen quite far)

>Bump

bump

↓ ↘→ + P >HADOKEN
Pm'ub

What do you mean by "half the environmental objects" and "Hemwick and Yharnam have their situation way more under control than it seems." I'm curious about your interpretations of events.

Apparent inconsistencies? Like what?

Am sick at present, so may not have much new design output for a day or two. Expect a response to later today, though.

Do you have a google drive or pdf of the draft?

I think he means the seeming-convergence event of half-melted petrified bodies throughout Yahar'gul, the mysterious nightmare stones throughout lower cathedral ward, or the bizarre profusion of anarchic, twsited figure statues throughout the bridge area in Central Yarnham.

There is something *wrong* in this town, and it's apparent from the moment you head downstairs.