Beast Hunters
Beast Hunters, designed by Christian and Lisa Griffen and published by Berengad Games, is a “Roleplaying Challenge Game” designed for two players. One player takes the role of the storyteller or Challenger, while the other takes on the role of a young warrior from the nomadic tribes that dwell on the Berengad Plains. These warriors, both for personal glory and for the future of their tribes, hunt the mythical beasts which inhabit the surrounding lands, bringing them back as prizes and marks of honor.
Beast Hunters is a competitive role-playing game, which means while both players are working to tell a compelling story, they also are working to defeat each other. This competitive element, coupled with an almost tribal and rigid set of rules governing how players in the game interact, can prove too confining or strange for more casual players. For those up to the challenge, however, Beast Hunters can provide a deep storytelling experience coupled with a fantastic setting and unique gameplay elements.
Beast Hunters uses a combination of narrative mechanics and dice pools to describe characters and challenges. Each Challenger is given a pool of dice from which to “fuel” different encounters. This pool of dice also determines the length of the game, with more dice meaning a longer story. The Challenger also has a Limit, which determines the maximum number of dice they can bring to bear during a challenge. Since there is a limited pool of dice to draw from, this both sets the length of the game and determines the difficulty.
Player characters are made up of traits, bits of descriptive prose representing skills, family ties and personality quirks. Traits can range from “My mother was a spear maiden” to “Fleet of foot” to “Survive at all costs.” Traits are considered Offensive or Defensive, and a character starts with six, two each in Mental, Physical and Social.
Hunters also have resources, which often are weapons but also can be items. A trophy might grant a Hunter increased status in Social conflicts, or something less physical like “Iron Will,” which would be a Defensive Mental resource.
Traits and resources allow hunters to roll dice against different challenges, and the more traits and resources you can bring to bear, the more dice you have to roll.
Encounters are conducted through Negotiations. The Challenger presents an encounter while the other player describes his warrior’s actions. Conflicts that cannot be resolved through negotiation are solved through the rolling of dice, and both players can set stakes for each encounter, such as “Escape the crevasse.” If the hunter wins, she moves on to the next encounter and the Challenger sets aside the dice used. If the Challenger wins, the hunter might find a trait reduced, say through an injury sustained while climbing out of the pit. Combat is handled in much the same way, by setting up an encounter, negotiating, bringing traits, resources and challenge dice to bear, then rolling for the narrative outcome.
One of the odd elements of Beast Hunters is how the players interact. At the beginning of the session, players “salute in,” meaning they shake hands (by grasping one anothers’ forearms), pledging to challenge one another throughout the game. If there is an in-game disagreement between players, they are expected to salute out, discuss and resolve the issue, then salute back in to continue.
Some players really chafe under this ritualistic mechanic, but it is one I rather enjoyed. The game feels like two members of a tribe telling an almost mystical story, and this salute mechanic really puts you in that frame of mind where honor and tradition are as much weapons as a wooden spear or stone knife.
The setting is one of the real high points of the game and is best described as “The Clan of the Cave Bear” as written by J.R.R. Tolkien. There is a sense of great history and tradition among the Cheláquri tribes, but also an alien quality that makes their rigid and war-like culture both barbaric and noble. The lands of the Berengad Plains are not described in great detail, but the open-ended nature of the game’s narration make it very easy to fill in details while creating a sense of wonder and the unknown
Many of the beasts hunted by the Chel’quri have quasi-mystical powers that make them truly dangerous to young hunters, and also make them desirable as prizes. Confronting a beast usually signals the endgame, though simply reaching the creature, let alone figuring out how to kill the damn thing, can be (and should be) a soul-testing experience for a hunter.
The game doesn’t really end when the beast is slain, however. The village elders can use the blood of the beasts to inscribe tattoos on the skin of the hunters, giving them a measure of the beast’s power. In game terms, each tattoo a hunter gains gives them an extra ability to use while on a hunt, which gives the game a nice amount of replay value as hunters become more experienced, more powerful, and chase larger and more dangerous prey.
The sample beasts given in the book for the most part are represented only by written descriptions and images of the tattoos that represent those beasts, a cool element which makes them seem even more dangerous and larger-than-life. Such beasts include the spider-like Thistra which burrows into tribesmen to control their actions, the panther-like Hazuma, the gigantic tentacled Vebluss, and the alien Qhurym which devours souls and must be hunted by multiple hunters for there to be any chance of it being slain.
Beast Hunters isn’t for everyone. Some players may find it too rigid and confining in its presentation, with saluting in and out of game and the use of challenge dice to set the level of encounters. Others might feel adrift in the narrative style with little clear direction. Beast Hunters is unique in that it gives you a tight structure to work within, but at the same time really leaves it up to the players as to what kinds of stories they want to tell. This is both a strength and weakness of the game. Either it is something you will like, or it is something you will hate.
It is worth the effort, though, regardless. Like I said, Beast Hunters is unique. You aren’t going to find another game quite like this one, and likely you will end up finding elements of the game you absolutely love, whether it is the mechanics, the formality or the setting. Beast Hunters is a challenging game, but likely will push players on to other games as they look to add elements of Beast Hunters to systems they are more familiar and comfortable with.
Beast Hunters isn’t a game I will bring to the table often, but it is one I look upon very fondly. The setting is excellent and really lends itself to some incredible stories, and using a dice pool to set the difficulty level and length of a game is a mechanic that really appeals to me. I picked up a copy of Beast Hunters several years ago at the Indie-Press Revolution booth at Origins Game Fair, and I find myself returning to it again and again, just reading, imagining and planning.
Christian Griffen also has continued to work on the game, and you can find more information on option rules and changes, what he calls “version 1.5” of Beast Hunters, at www.berengad.com.