So have been getting some wierd mixed info about HtR, are HtR hunters imbued by angels or what? Or is that pre v20 stuff?
Alright, so in 1992, White Wolf released a supplement/side game for Vampire: the Masquerade called The Hunters Hunted, covering the concept of mortal hunters as antagonists for your vampire games, and a perspective flip option where you play the hunters.
These (HH) hunters are more of a kit, with "mundane" guys with guns and stakes, or individuals with True Faith or magical powers. They also are largely based on normal governmental organizations - the NSA, an FBI department, the Center for Disease Control -and more wild ideals like the Arcanum (think Buffy's Watcher Council meets the Freemasons), the Inquisition's Society of Leopold, a gang called the Young Bloods, and the Children of Osiris, who are a vampire bloodline with a strong anti-Setite motive. HH has a sequel in the 20th Anniversary gameline, Hunters Hunted II.
In 1999, White Wolf had the Year of the Reckoning, a shitty version of the Year of Luigi, which saw the release of Hunter: the Reckoning. With HtR, you're no longer a mundane hunter, but one of the Imbued, in the long tradition of all WoD properties actually being called this other capitalized Thing.
The Imbued are individuals who witnessed some fucked up shit in the Wod, and received a kind of intervention from entities called the Messengers, imbuing them with supernatural senses and killin' powers. Those who heed the Messengers' call become the Imbued, the eponymous Hunters; those who fail become bystanders, who retain some awareness of the secret world; those who super-fail get vored by Black Spiral Dancers, Nagaraja, or Nephandi or...uh, the Dauntain? It's like a depressed changeling or something?
Now, the Messengers are deliberately left vague, but their name is a straight English translation of malachim and they have a rather angelic power set and show up "be not afraid"-ing people into killing evil creatures, so they're angels. And the Bell Curve Meme for the World of Darkness is: (low IQ) "The Bible is correct" -- (mid tier) "Reality is malleable and enforced by the Will of the Masses"/"Muh Triat" - (high IQ) "Cain literally killed Abel, was cursed by angels, and was taught by Lilith, Kabbalah accurately describes the dark underpinning of reality, the plagues of Egypt actually happened, Ibbur occurs; esoteric Judaism is objectively correct."
Also, the actual canon explanation in the Hunter Storytellers Companion is that the Messengers are servants of the Ministers, the Ebon Dragon and Scarlet Queen, an extremely stupid cross into Kindred of the East and Exalted that nobody liked nor made sense with anything in the lore.
And then in Demon they're the last shards of Elohim in Creation, so they're angels.
But woopsie poopsie, the Messengers were too little too late, and the World of Darkness ends. White Wolf launches the new World of Darkness, later called Chronicles of Darkness.
Hunters come back in Hunter: the Vigil in the Year of Our Lord 2008. This is a strong game with the superior mechanics of nWOD/COD 2nd edition, widely considered the sole reason that Chuck Wendig will be spared come the revolution. These hunters, however, are not given a Capitalized Real Name, and are generally more grounded, operating in Cells which belong to Compacts, a pretentious way of saying organization, and/or Conspiracies, which are your global sects.
Now, most people describing these books will tell you that "Imbued are the magical hunters, HtV hunters are more grounded and realistic" and this is because nobody actually reads these overpriced piles of shit, but instead get lost on the whitewolf.fandom wiki. Because goddamn, some of the Conspiracies can unlock some wild anime shit, particularly the Lucifuge, which gives you demonblooded Devil May Cry powers.
As usual with CoD games, they give you more tonal dials and levers than oWoD games do, so you can play a mundane Hunter in a working class Union cell butting heads with the Taskforce VALKYRIE conspiracy, or you can play neo-puritan fanatics of the Long Night who find out they're actually Lucifuge, who drive around hellfiring motherfuckers and stop paying taxes to the IRS (run by Ventrue). There's a lot of different game-types you can run here.
In 2022, we saw Hunter: the Reckoning 5th edition, which is actually the 2nd or 3rd edition of Hunter: the Reckoning game, depending on if you include Hunters Hunted as a 0th or 1st edition, but kind of works if you count HH, HtR, HtV, HtV 2nd ed, H5, but counting the CoD games would mean that V5 is actually the 7th Vampire edition so none of this fucking works.
H5's hunters aren't like the Imbued and there's nothing like Messengers. People on the internet say that they're actually more like the Vigil Hunters so it should be called Hunter: the Vigil 3, but Hunter5 are most like the Hunters Hunted Hunters but even less magical and poorly organized. So really the game should be called The Hunters Hunted III.
Not confusing at all.
