Monster Hunter International
| Monster Hunter International | ||
|---|---|---|
| Role-playing game published by Hero Games, Gallant Knight Games |
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| Rule System | Hero System, Savage Worlds | |
| Authors | Larry Correia | |
| First Publication | 2013, 2018 | |
| Essential Books | The Monster Hunter International Employee Handbook and Roleplaying Game | |
"It turns out that monsters are real. All the things from myth, legend, and B-movies are out there, waiting in the shadows. Officially secret, some of them are evil, and some are just hungry. On the other side are the people who kill monsters for a living. Monster Hunter International is the premier eradication company in the business."
- – Back of the first book
In the world of Larry Correia's Monster Hunter International every supernatural monster (except possibly unicorns) exists, and most of them are hostile to humanity. These range from the well known (werewolf, vampire, zombie, Eldritch Abomination) to the obscure and bizarre (Things like Luska and Worm That Walks are just the start).
Countering these monsters are two types of organizations. The first are well funded government task forces for whom the Posse Comitatus Act is a mere appropriations issue. In the United States this role is filled by the Monster Control Bureau, a well meaning organization that unfortunately tends to be like Commissars when it comes to enforcing secrecy about the supernatural and be clogged down by bureaucracy. The second is private hunting organizations who are paid both by people who pay them to remove/keep monsters from their property and the PUFF (Perpetual Unearthly Forces Fund) bounty system setup by Theodore Roosevelt after encountering a few monsters himself. These organizations are slightly less well armed, restricted to small arms and unarmed support helicopters. The largest private organization, which the series centers on, is Monster Hunter International (formerly Bubba Shackleford’s Professional Monster Killers) a family owned business in Cazador, Alabama that has been exterminating monsters since 1895.
Compared to Hunter: The Reckoning and the rest of the World of Darkness, humanity is doing pretty for itself in this universe. Monsters don't secretly control the government (though they can be pretty high in influence), monsters generally die with application of sufficient Dakka (especially silver), and the masquerade only exists because the world governments believe (possibly wrongly, but not proven conclusively either way) the supernatural gets more powerful the more people know about it. The books put emphasis on that humanity wins through a combination of learning from their predecessors on how to deal with monsters, and through the power of modern technology, particularly firearms.
Not all monsters are inherently evil (though except for humanoids like Elves and Orcs the non-evil monsters are the exception to the norm) and some are evil yet sane enough to know working for the US government is better than having them try to kill you. For these monsters is a PUFF exemption system, generally earned by (the only known alternative is for those capable of scrying) serving in the shadowy "Special Task Force Unicorn" (the acronym is intentional and reflects its secrecy). Unicorn uses monsters as deniable, expendable spec ops soldiers against other supernatural threats or enemy nations.
The series biggest claim to fame is that, since Larry Correia has a history as a gun shop owner and competitive shooter, firearms are portrayed with heavy, accurate detail. Specialty ammunition fails to cycle self-loading firearms and Desert Eagles are derided as range toys for people with more money than sense. Each character's choice in firearm is used to characterize them, and it's rare any character uses a firearm that isn't elaborated on by name.
These books have been adapted as a pair of RPGs. The first was based on the Hero System. It was solid, but the complex options the system allows were wasted on player characters as they were generally mundane humans with guns and skills. The art was also inconsistent and often really terrible. Several books in the series later a second version, based on Savage Worlds, was published.