Edo Jidai Hunter Compacts and Conspiracies for Dark Eras

Hunter: The Vigil, Open Development

Hey all,

I’m currently wrapping up the Edo Period for Dark Eras. First off, I just want to say holy shit, I could easily write an entire book on this topic. Getting a coherent, rich setting into that word count was super difficult. But I think we managed pretty damned well.

I have about a week before I get in the final drafts to turn in, so I figured I’d share some stuff, get a comment here or there, and maybe polish a thing or two.

The thing is, Hunter… is hard to do in:

a) A time period where pretty much none of the core book Compacts existed.

b) In a region where almost none of the core book Conspiracies could exist.

So we had to offer a bunch of them, in order to give player choice. Fortunately, I’m of a mind that things like Compacts and Conspiracies are a great, word count dense way to offer a lot of implied setting, and give readers the tools to really dig in and make their own world. These had to be super tight, but I think we’ve got some great foundation that’ll make people want to read more on these topics.

We also added a tiny bit to add some core book Conspiracies, if you’re so inclined. There’s a small handful of Aegis Kai Doru and Ascending Ones in Japan at this time, and one or two Lucifuge and Malleus Maleficarum. I figured that pushed the boundaries a little for western influence in the period, but it’s an easy way to expand play opportunities with just a few words. When you’re working with such small space, you’ve got to finagle what you can.

Also, because of fan requests, we added one more from the last time I discussed this. Before, we had:

Ama-San: Pearl divers who battle ickiness in the deeps.

Bijin: Entertainers, artisans, performers who ferret out monsters preying on their audiences.

Gimu: Samurai trying to root out corruption in the courts, while remaining unnoticed.

Hototogisu: A mercantile network who steals supernatural powers from monsters.

Otodo: Oni-blooded hunters who seek to find a balance in the world.

I previously shared the Otodo, because they have the biggest Endowment of the groups. I took some of the commentary to heart, and made some tweaks and revisions. They’re included in this document. But, across the various feeds, the most common request was for a group of Miko. I personally think Miko are awesome. So, I found space to add one.

The Azusa-Miko: A group of maidens, banished from their temples, wielding and playing sacred bows to deal with and fight back the other world.

I think we’ve given players at LEAST a chronicle’s worth of content here. Here’s the draft version. Don’t mind the formatting; there’s some weird stuff, like sidebars bleed into text sometimes, and that flows weird. Also, don’t mind things like typos; this hasn’t been through an editor yet. I’m curious how they feel, and if there’s any minor stuff you want touched on. I’m working on limited time here, so I can’t do any massive rewrites. This is second draft material, not first. But, if there’s something that doesn’t make sense, feel free to let me know. I’ll start a forum thread for it here.

Here’s the draft.