BasicRules

Moves

Hunters make moves to find the monster, and to defeat it. Moves are moments of danger and uncertainty. You never know quite how they’ll turn out. Your hunter’s moves cover all the things you can do where the game’s rules get involved in the story. Most of the time, you’ll be describing what your hunter says, where they go, or what they do without activating a move. That goes for everything that a normal person could do, in situations where failure would not be interesting and where there’s no particular danger. In circumstances where a normal person couldn’t do what you want to do, or the drama of the story requires it, or it’s dangerous, that’s when the moves come in and control how well you do.

A key element of the use of moves is “You have to make the move.” This means that if you want to (for instance) manipulate someone in the game, you need to describe your hunter doing that. How do you ask? What do you offer, to make them do what you want? Why would they believe your offer is genuine? It works the other way too—if you are describing what you are doing, someone might notice that you are making one of the moves. In that case, go ahead and roll the dice to see what happens. 

Rolling the Dice 

Often the rules for a move will tell you to roll, say, +Cool. This means you should grab two everyday six-sided dice, roll them, add them together and then add whatever number is written down for your hunter’s Cool. If it says something else instead of Cool (usually another rating), then add that number instead. So, if you are told to roll +Weird, roll two dice and add your Weird rating. If you are told to roll +Tough, roll two dice and add your Tough rating. If you have a negative rating, like -1, then you subtract one from your total instead. The move description will say what the different results mean. Usually, 7 or higher is good, and 10 or higher is really good. A result of 6 or lower is a miss, which means the Keeper will have an opportunity to screw your hunter over. 

Bonuses and Holds

Sometimes a move will give you a bonus to future dice rolls: you get to take the bonus “forward” or “ongoing.” Sometimes a move will give you a “hold.” 

Forward: If you get +1 forward, you get +1 on your very next roll only. 

Ongoing: If you get +1 ongoing, you get +1 to every roll you make until the situation no longer applies. 

Hold: When you get a hold, you’ll get a number of points. Each point can be spent one-for-one to get a specific effect. The move will list the effects you can spend your hold on.

Fights 

Here are some things to remember when you get down to the slaying. Don’t always go right to rolling dice for kick some ass. That move puts you in danger of harm as well as your enemy. If you can find a way to attack without putting yourself in danger, then you can inflict harm on the enemy without suffering any yourself (and without needing to succeed on a roll). Remember you can try to protect someone whenever they are threatened with harm. Think about who needs protecting, and where everyone is in relation to each other. If you set things up right, you might even be able to save a teammate from the harm they’re going to suffer if they miss a roll. Remember that you can help another hunter to give them +1 on a roll. This can sometimes be the difference between life and death, plus if you help in a fight the Keeper might say you can add the harm from your attack to the attack of the hunter you’re helping—so you can take a monster down faster.