Review of The Hunt Begins

The Hunt Begins

Margaret Weis Productions

Written by Jamie Chambers, based on the television series by Eric Kripke.

35 page PDF, available free from www.rpgnow.com and elsewhere.

The Hunt Begins is an introductory kit for the Supernatural RPG from Margaret Weis Productions, which also holds the license for the Serenity RPG. Margaret Weis is a longstanding and well-respected name in the industry (dating back to the Dragonlance series of games and books) and it will be interesting to see whether this business model proves successful – there are numerous games which could be used to recreate a Supernatural-like game and one wonders who will is intended to be the target market for this system. Presumably it will be fans of the Supernatural TV show who might be lured into RPG playing through seeing the opportunity of playing their heroes (or playing with them, in the case of some fanfic writers). This poses something of a conundrum for writers and game designers who wish to hold the interest of the more serious gamer by providing a full range of 21st century RPG design technology while not putting off the newcomer with jargon and complexity. I hope it all works out for them (I collect my salary for teaching business so of course I hope everyone is successful, preferably after an extensive and expensive education).

Many people will be familiar with the Supernatural show, which at the time of writing is just entering into its fifth and presumably final series. It focuses on two young men, brothers, named Sam and Dean Winchester who follow their father into the family business of ending the existence of all kinds of monsters, beasties and ghoulies that litter mainland USA (Dean has a fear of flying and the show makes much use of the iconic car in which the brothers customarily travel). As the show has progressed, Sam and Dean have leveled up and found themselves able to kill increasingly powerful creatures, including a variety of demons. As the fifth series begins, they are set to confront Lucifer, who has risen from his ancient prison largely because the boys screwed up their previous campaign. The early shows had a fairly formulaic but successful format reminiscent of early X-Files before all that silly alien abduction stuff took over. In this format, the attention of the brothers would be drawn to the manifestation of a supernatural creature and they drive to the nearby town in the car, a 1967 Impala for those who care about such things, all the while pumping out at loud volume selections from Dean’s execrable music taste, as inherited from his father (Carry on, my wayward son indeed). Once in the town, they do a bit of ‘research,’ masquerade as FBI agents, priests or some other trusted individuals until such time as they are ready to confront the ghost, ghoul or werewolf, which they then use violence or occult knowledge or both to destroy. All the while, they stay in a succession of fairly grim motels and try to enliven their lives with junk food and possibly exploitative relationships with young women more or less desperate to escape the dreary mundane misery of small town America. So, a few jokes, some recurring minor characters, a lot of creative destruction and the progress towards the boss monster at the end of the level/series and there you are. This format continued until the fourth series, when the overarching Lucifer plot took centre stage (although there was still space for some jokey standalone episodes to be slipped in to the schedule, which is something quite impossible for British programs which have much shorter runs and aim, not always successfully, to make every minute count). No doubt Wikipedia or some such similar site has a list of all the episodes and events for players who need more information or inspiration.