I picked up Beast Hunters because it seemed like it would be an excellent game to play with my wife; two-person, more or less competitive, and with a simple to pick up premise. After reading through the game, I must say that I'm impressed. It looks like exactly what I was expecting.

But... I was surprised to find that the rules included a way to play for more than two. In fact, there is at least one Beast that requires there be multiple hunter characters in play. Not that this is a bad thing, far from it; it's cool to see that the game is actually more useful than I had initially believed.

Anyway, I was wondering if anyone here has actually used the game in this way (i.e. with multiple hunters). If you did, how did it go? How does it compare to the two-player set-up?

I'll be eagerly awaiting the AP reports. Beast Hunters has a lot of potential, and I would love to see what other people have done with it.

This is an uninformed opinion, because I've never played 2-player Beast Hunters, but can't imagine it being better than the multiplayer version.

Here's why I think multiplayer rocks:

• You can be an audience. You get to make gruff barbarian noises when other people do cool stuff.
  
• You get an audience. People will make gruff barbarian noises when you do cool stuff. That is so rewarding!
  
• You get fuel for your own narrations from the stuff that other people narrate. I was stymied a couple times as the rotation round towards me, and then something would happen that totally lit my fuse -- like when (being careful with names now) Ryan put a sudden spirit-fueled rainstorm into the game. Suddenly I knew that I had to drown my opponent in some standing water. I think that riffs like that can really weld the game together into a unity.
  
• Teamwork, really really pays off. Playing one-on-one, it can take a long time to wear down a big baddie. But with a buddy at your side, you can commence with some serious hurting.
  
• You don't have to be "on" all the time, and you've got a nice thinking space between moves. I'm a better contemplator than an improviser, so this was helpful to me.
  

I second everything that John said. I'll add one criticism: at the end when it was the four of us versus one threat, I was more interested in helping John than doing something against the threat on my own, mainly because John was doing some awesome stuff and I didn't want to steal his thunder. I contemplated saying "pass" to get the action back to John, but I felt that would have robbed the game some and betrayed my character because she sure wouldn't stand around doing nothing.

But that's really the only criticism of multi-hunter. I think when I run it, I'll try allowing multiple aids, but with diminishing returns. That aside (and it was a really small issue), the game freakin' rocked.

I second everything that John said. I'll add one criticism: at the end when it was the four of us versus one threat, I was more interested in helping John than doing something against the threat on my own, mainly because John was doing some awesome stuff and I didn't want to steal his thunder.

Thanks, Ryan. :)

Something like that happened to me in T&T last night. When Clinton and John H. really got going, I shifted into audience mode. There was serious flow in that game, people were really achieving awesomeosis, and I didn't want to screw it up. I kicked in a vorpal spell to JH, and that was pretty much my contribution to the whole game, and yet I still had a bitchin' time.

I have a question for Matt -- in our Beast Hunters endgame, when you helped me in my last two or three actions, how satisfying was that? Did you get to have fun narration in there, or roll dice or anything? Or were you just gifting me your +3 for me to do stuff with? I can't remember really what happened.

The Beast Hunters multiplayer rules have an option for one Hunter to transfer advantage points to another Hunter, which requires either a convincing narration or a successful roll, but trait lending appears to just require that one player buy into another's action, no narration required.

but I wonder if that would make a group of Hunters far too effective.

Our setup didn't really have a big bad; we had four groups of bad guys to fight. I accrued a sizable advantage on a phalanx of soldiers while some enemy commandos were activating their traits. Then the commandos attacked, and I was too busy with them to do anything to the soldiers, but Matt took them on.. Matt hurt the soldiers pretty badly and stayed fresh while I took some hits against the commandos. Later, we both did a strike and then switched off, so I could finish off the weakened soldiers and he could bring his full wound track to bear against the commandos. After the soldiers were dead, we combined to finish off the commandos. At that point the outcome was not in doubt; it was just a matter of how it would be narrated.

For the GPNW players (or Christian, whoever really), how much over-the-top action/narration was there?

It was all pretty much over the top. My guy pushed a temple column down on the phalanx, scattering them badly and killing them. I narrated friendly fire kills, caught javelins out of the air and used them as bludgeons in one smooth, sweeping motion, ran on the butts of upended javelins that lay embedded in the ground while decapitating the enemy on both sides, threw myself backwards into an open cellar to try to crush the woman-commando clinging to my back, and decapitated a midget general who was riding in a cupola on a giant's shoulders.

As one of the players in the four player game with Ryan, John and Matt at Go Play, I have to agree that it was pretty cool. I think the multiplayer almost brought out a competitive spirit as the warriors tried to top each other's awesome combos and action descriptions. It was almost a little flustering for me as a newer player to these kinds of games, working with some masters. :-) It took some getting used to, but I think next time I would be disembowling the elite commandos with their own weapons with the rest of the guys instead of fighting a pack of dumb war dogs!!!

--Dan

I have a bunch of the games... just haven't played them... yet!

Posted By: MummyKittyI have a bunch of the games... just haven't played them... yet!

Dan, you local to Seattle? Maybe we can get some of those games played...Matt's just down the road, in Tacoma.

First of all let me say I'm really glad you're working on making the Demo public. Now that I've played through it I feel like I have a much firmer grasp on the rules.

I went through the PDF you've posted here and don't really see anything out of place. Looks fine to me. I'll try running it with some friends of mine when we have an off-night.

Best,
Colin

Ah yes, distribution of narration. I'll see if I can put some more about that in there. Thanks Matt :)