Original Hunter

A campaign of Hunter: The Reckoning, first edition, so-called to distinguish it from the many other Hunter campaigns that would come after it. Still first in my heart, after all these years. Set in Minneapolis, it incorporated a large amount of unique homebrewed lore about hunters and their origins, since it predated the publication of most of the system's sourcebooks.

Original Hunter ran from October 2001 through March 2003, with a hiatus during the summer of 2002. The GM was Tankman.

Player Characters

 * Arie Madison, Martyr drug dealer
 * Charlotte Bishop, Visionary psychology professor
 * Marta Calderón, Innocent high school exchange student
 * Melba Starling, Defender convenience store clerk/waitress/reformed gang member
 * Randy Johnson (but he just went by Randy), Redeemer gentleman of leisure
 * Will Duane, Judge plumber/electrician

Allied NPCs

 * Charlie Sorroro, a Toreador vampire and Randy's best friend. He and Charlotte fell in love.
 * Chet Lyssis, the Scorpio Guardian of Passion and an ally to all hunters. Saria's romantic partner.
 * Darla, a teenage changeling (pooka) and Paladin's ward. Died tragically.
 * The Guardian Babies, six infants who were the reincarnations of fallen Guardians. Adopted by Randy and raised communally by the cell and their allies.
 * Hakim il-Batin, a mage who repeatedly came in clutch with teleportation and time travel skills when the hunters needed such things (as you do).
 * Jonas Winters, Charlotte's Visionary hunter mentor and a fellow professor.
 * Kai Starling, Melba's older brother, a Bystander and an active gang member.
 * Leslie Charleston, an Innocent college student and Randy's eventual girlfriend.
 * Lisa Robinson, a somewhat bloodthirsty Judge and occasional begrudging ally to the PCs.
 * Paladin Williams, an experienced Defender who managed an apartment building set up as a hunter sanctuary. He and Melba fell in love.
 * Saria Lyssis, the Virgo Guardian of Order and an ally to all hunters. Chet's romantic partner. She had issues.
 * Shirley, a Guardian (Libra I think?) who led a cell based in north Minneapolis. Mother to Kirby, ex-wife of Kurt.
 * Twitcher, the secret identity of Geraal, the God of Zeal.
 * Witness1 (Kim Sun), the Visionary founder of Hunter-Net. Diverges extensively from the canon character.

Antagonists

 * Cameron, a corrupted Guardian.
 * Haji, a vampire who was Mr. Saigow's "nephew." Despised humans and viewed them as cattle. An all-time great RPG villain and the absolute epitome of this fucking guy, he spent most of the campaign menacing the PCs with sympathetic magic, gunslinging ghouls, explosives, and attempted vehicular manslaughter until they finally got the upper hand in Powderhorn Park and torpored him.
 * James aka Temple, a vampire who Charlotte wanted to kill due to his involvement in her backstory (he ripped her arm off). He was being manipulated and controlled by Haji. When he popped up again, the Mercy creeds won the day and he was redeemed.
 * Kurt Bennen, a powerful and insane Visionary based in North Dakota whose vision involved torturing and vivisecting supernatural creatures to study them. Kind of a frenemy, and definitely someone to be handled with care.
 * Mr. Saigow, a high-ranking vampire whose actions caused the PCs to become imbued. His evil was considerably more lawful than Haji's, and for a long time the PCs maintained a pact of mutual non-aggression with him (which was often strained).
 * The whole damn Technocracy including Adam Carlson and Charles Carlson (no relation to each other! or to the same-named characters who later showed up in Cabal of Good Intentions! Make it stop).
 * Tsao Lo, Haji's lieutenant.
 * The Zodiac Crysalis Guardians, a group of 12 reincarnated guardian spirits who had collaborated with the ancient predecessors of imbued hunters. Each was associated with a zodiac sign and could shapeshift into a corresponding battle form. The Technocracy had identified nine of them in the present day and confined them to a compound since childhood where they were subjected to spooky experiments; three others had reincarnated outside of their sphere of influence. Many of the guardians fell under Cameron's sway and became obsessed with wiping out hunters instead of protecting them. The corrupt guardians were killed (and then reborn as the guardian babies) at the culmination of an extremely dramatic series of sessions that also killed off half the player characters.

Plot Summaries
See Original Hunter/Plot Summaries

Quotes
See Original Hunter/Quotes

Soundtrack
See Original Hunter/Soundtrack

Memorable Moments

 * This campaign rose out of the ashes of a Mage campaign with which the GM and some of the players had become dissatisfied (some had quit, others like Beth stuck it out until the end against their better judgment). Not wanting to continue with that group but still wanting to stay connected to the people he had met through it, the GM handpicked a few of us to try out a different game.
 * The dynamics of this group worked way better than they had any right to, and I'm still not entirely sure why. Three of the four players took everything about the campaign incredibly seriously and personally, while the fourth (Arie) was a total loose cannon. It was never clear to use whether he would even show up for our sessions, or how long he'd stay, or how drunk and/or stoned he would be when he put in an appearance, or what he would do while he was there. Some of this probably comes through in the summaries - know that anytime Arie acted as an agent of chaos, we had exactly as much warning about it as our characters did. I think it worked as well as it did because it was pretty clear to all of us that this was just how the player was and not something he was doing maliciously. His more unpredictable and mercurial nature added an element of surprise when things started to drag, and also kept the rest of us from taking ourselves too seriously.
 * This campaign was incredibly intense, in a way that only RPGs played by people who live in the same college dorm and are willing to blow off other responsibilities for the sake of gaming can be. A couple of these plot lines (the first incursion into the compound, and the Charlotte vs. Temple confrontation) involved us gaming for something like 18 hours in a 24-hour period in order to wrap them up before a school break forced a hiatus.
 * Haji's ultimate fate was addressed in a short-run (3ish sessions) campaign we called Future Hunter, set 50 years after the event of this campaign, in which the descendants of the Original Hunter PCs defeated Haji for good when he tried to rise again. Those characters were:
 * Clyde, a guardian who was Chet's reincarnation (he was banned from the video store in both his human and guardian forms - "BLADE, PLEASE.")
 * Hope, a dhampir and the daughter of Charlie and Charlotte
 * Remy, a half-guardian (like Kirby) who was Melba and Paladin's granddaughter
 * More to come as I think of it