Through Monday, November 2 we continue this year’s October Horrors sequence with the new Monster Hunters of the Week Bundle featuring the Monster of the Week Revised Edition game line from Evil Hat Productions. Most people don’t believe in monsters, but you know the truth. They’re real, and you must hunt them down: high-school beasties a la Buffy the Vampire Slayer, unnatural creatures like those in Supernatural, and aliens and occult menaces out of The X-Files. In each episodic game session, your team of hunters – the Chosen, the Professionals, Spell-Slingers, Action Scientists, Celebrities, Curse-Eaters, and any of dozens more archetypes – might tackle Bigfoot, collar a chupacabra, save the Mole King’s Brides, or drive away demons. And next week, you’ll do it again.
Originally published by Generic Games in 2012, reissued by Evil Hat in 2015 and lightly revised in 2023, Monster of the Week has long been one of the most popular standalone RPGs Powered by the Apocalypse. The episodic MotW format makes it a natural for streamers and podcasts. (Designer Michael Sands has indexed more than 60 Monster of the Week actual plays.) Successful BackerKit campaigns (Feb 2023, Oct 2024) have funded new hunter playbooks and new evil baddies. A generous third-party license attracts many small publishers. (We showed off a couple in our October 2022 Monster of the Week Quick Deal.)
Monster of the Week adopts all the core Apocalypse World concepts – well, at least the PG-rated versions: playbooks, Moves, agendas, 2D6 rolls, good results on a 10+, failing forward, holds, “to do something, do it,” and so on. Basic Moves include Investigate a Mystery, Kick Some Ass, and Use Magic. The 28 hunter playbooks (like The Pararomantic, The Snoop, The Covenant, The Flake) add special Moves like The Big Entrance, I Do My Own Stunts, Smash Cut, Jessica Jones Entry (fast-talk your way into a secure location), and We’ll Fix It in Post. Every hunter gets a Use Magic Move (keyed to the Weird attribute), but you can customize your Weird Move to something like Empath, Illuminated, Past Lives, Telekinesis, or Weird Science. Each hunter enters play with strong bonds and a history with each other hunter, and the Codex of Worlds expansion introduces Team meta-playbooks like Agents in Black, Mercenaries, Suburban Watch Group, Guardians of the Borderland, and Touring Band.
The implicit default setting is modern-day small-town America (rather, “TV Land”), but other settings support campaigns of medieval and Renaissance fantasy, Gothic grimdark, and Stone Age mammoth hunting. Monster of the Week combat isn’t unusually deadly by Apocalypse Engine standards, and certain Moves and Big Magic let you resurrect fallen hunters. Codex of Worlds adds Non-Lethal Play options for cartoonish mysteries a la Scooby-Doo.
This new Monster Hunters of the Week Bundle brings you the Monster of the Week core rulebook, recent expansions, and whole seasons of Mysteries and evil baddies for a price hardly more than a good sharp wooden stake. Pay just US$14.95 to get all three titles in our Hunter Collection (retail value $60) as DRM-free .PDF ebooks, including the complete Monster of the Week core rulebook, the Hunter’s Journal, and the Slayer’s Survival Kit.
And if you pay more than the threshold (average) price, which is set at $27.95 to start, you’ll level up and also get our entire Keeper Collection with five more Monster of the Week supplements worth an additional $67, including The Codex of Worlds, the Codex expansions Modern Haunts and Apocrypha, the overflow book Mystic Marginalia, and the Tome of Mysteries.
We’ve presented the 2012 and 2015 versions of the Monster of the Week core rulebook in several past offers; this is the debut of the 2023 version in the Bundle of Holding. Tome of Mysteries previously appeared in our October 2022 Monster of the Week Quick Deal. If you purchased one of our past offers that presented the Evil Hat edition of the Monster of the Week core rulebook – the Sept 2015 Apocalypse Engine Bundle or the Oct 2022 Quick Deal – check your Wizard’s Cabinet download page for the new 2023 version. When you buy a Bundle of Holding, you never worry about missing a title added (or updated) later.
We banish this new Monster (Hunters) of the Week offer Monday, November 2.
