Hunter: The Reckoning vs Odd Hours

Compare Hunter: The Reckoning and Odd Hours side by side. See differences in complexity, dice, genre, cost, and more.

	Hunter: The Reckoning	Odd Hours
Genre	Horror, Modern	Horror, Modern
Tags	Investigation, Mystery, Character-Driven, Gritty, Deadly, Atmospheric, Social Combat, Strong GM Support, Lore-Heavy, Urban Fantasy	Fear & Stress Mechanics, Comedy, Gonzo, Weird, Rules-Light, Random Tables, One-Shot Friendly
Core Mechanic	Roll a pool of d10s, usually an Attribute plus a Skill. Each 6 or higher is a success. Meeting the Storyteller's Difficulty wins. Each pair of 10s counts as four successes. On tests within their creed's Field, Hunters may choose to add Desperation Dice equal to the cell's shared Desperation rating. A 1 on any Desperation Die turns a win into a choice: keep it and raise the cell's Danger, or fail and enter Despair. A failed test with a Desperation 1 always causes Despair.	Roll 2d6 plus one of three attributes (Wit, Grit, Strangeness) plus a relevant skill and try to meet or beat a Target Number. Combat is an opposed roll. Beat the defender by 5 or more for a critical hit and double damage. Two resources then shadow every shift: Sanity drops when the supernatural presses on your mind, and Absurdity climbs as you lean into it. You spend Absurdity to reroll a failure, shrug off a point of Sanity loss, or take the higher of two rolls.
Dice	d10 dice pool	2d6
Complexity	Medium	Low
Accessibility	Medium	Very High
Runnability	Very High	High
License	All Rights Reserved	Proprietary
Third-Party Publishing	Commercial publishing allowed — Storytellers Vault	Not yet researched
Summary only, not legal advice. Check current terms before publishing.
Cost	$$	Free
Publisher	Renegade Game Studios	Route 9 Games
Year	2022	2026
Languages	English, French, German, Italian, Spanish	English
Best For	Groups who want investigation-heavy modern horror in which a cell of ordinary people researches, plans, and confronts a monster at real personal risk.	Groups who want low-barrier horror with a comedic streak for one-shots or short campaigns at a single weird location. It suits players who improvise from atmospheric prompts and lean into absurd moments instead of optimizing their characters.
Highlights	Desperation rises after the cell's setbacks, so mounting trouble adds both dice and risk to later Field tests. Overreach lets a player keep a win by raising the cell's Danger, which escalates the quarry's response against the whole cell. Monsters have weaknesses Hunters can discover, so research pays off as concrete advantages in the final confrontation.	Sanity and Absurdity move in opposite directions, so the dark humor that raises Absurdity becomes a resource you spend to reroll failures or cancel Sanity loss. The Overnight Manager plays the gas station itself as the lead character, voicing its moods and the cryptic calls from its unseen Owners as a presence the table improvises around. Reaching 5 Absurdity unlocks Strange Abilities bought with advancement, once-per-session quirks the station leaves on you rather than powers you earn.
Considerations	Desperation Dice apply only to tests within a Hunter's creed Field, so a character's signature boost sits idle outside that specialty. The book recommends ending most conflicts after about three turns, which leaves little room for extended tactical combat. The content warning covers themes such as sexual violence and torture, so groups should calibrate boundaries before play.	The Overnight Manager sets every Target Number outside a few fixed tables and decides each Absurdity award, so difficulty and pacing rest on table judgment. Combat is deliberately thin: flat weapon damage, one primary and one minor action per turn, and only basic move-and-cover positioning rather than a tactical grid. Rituals, Strange Abilities, and backgrounds come as a handful of examples the book openly tells you to expand on yourself.