About The Campaign System
One-off games of Urban Manhunt are a blast. But each game is completely on its own island with no ramifications for the games that follow. For those looking for a more immersive experience wherein you play out the career of your hunters, we offer you the campaign system.
In the campaign system, you take on the role of a manager on the indie circuit. That’s right—a manager. You will acquire a stable of hunters and guide them to the pros and onward from there to fame and fortune. Hopefully, one of them will one day make it to the Great Hunt and emerge a champion! Or maybe they’ll fall flat on their proverbial faces. Such uncertainties make campaign games enthralling.
The campaign rules work best if you have at least four players, though you can get by with as few as two.
The Three Stages
There are three stages to the campaign system:
Stage One: Preparation
Before the campaign begins, you and the other players must sit down and work out some details.
The first part of this involves creating game stats for each player’s manager. Like hunters, managers have Attributes (Negotiation, Connections, Training and Marketing), Special Rules and Momentum Options. As a beginning manager, the stats will be modest at this point, but they will improve over time as you get more experience under your belt.
Next up, you and the other players will have to create a pool of hunters. By default, hunters are created randomly, though there is an optional system for creating them in a similar fashion to how they are created in the standard game.
With the hunter pool created, you and the other players are ready to start drafting them into your stables. This means negotiating with the hunters you want and trying to outbid other players for their services.
Once each player has three hunters in their respective stables, you’re ready to move on to Stage Two.
Stage Two: The Indie Circuit
During this stage, the hunters will play a series of matches against each other in an attempt to make money, improve their abilities and attract the attention of the NUML. You will keep track of each hunter’s individual scores from their matches, as well as their combined totals. At the end of the season, the highest-scoring hunter of each stable will be accepted into the NUML… but there’s one final match between those hunters. How well the hunters do in this match will determine the perks they receive going into the big leagues.
Between each of the indie matches, managers will potentially have a random event affect them. Perhaps a nasty rumor causes them some trouble, one of their hunters hurts their ankle while working out, a respected coach offers to help train their hunters, a bit of extra cash comes their way or a gear manufacturer offers a great deal on a new weapon.
Furthermore, each manager and hunter will be allowed to engage in a “Between Match Activity”. Managers might try to gain a sponsor, negotiate for more money, make connections, or even sabotage other managers or hunters. Meanwhile, hunters might hit the gym, pass out flyers for their next match, spend time partying or do an autograph signing.
Stage Three: The NUML
Upon reaching the NUML, the hunters will receive upgrades to their stats and gear before embarking on their pro careers. The competition here is a bit stiffer at this point and the iconic hunters are thrown into the mix.
The overall play structure remains the same as in the indie circuit for the most part. That is, the hunters play a match, engage in activities and then play another match… and so on. New options will be available to reflect that they are no longer small-time hunters playing for peanuts.
Later in the season, though, things start to diverge from what the managers and hunters have experienced thus far in their careers. If the players’ hunters scored high enough during the season, they will find themselves in the hunt-offs (a series of four 1-on-1 matches), in which the four winners take part in the biggest match of the year: the Great Hunt! The hunter who wins it is the champion for that season. It’s entirely possible that only some or even none of the players’ hunters make it to the hunt-offs… and that’s okay. There’s always next season!
Speaking of the next season, you can keep going in Stage Three as long as you and your players wish, playing out multiple seasons.