#iHunt’s monster hunting gig economy stalks onto the screen

The millennial dread of trying to make ends meet — paying bills, having a roof over your head, healthcare — is succinctly reflected in #iHunt, a series of irreverent novels and a subsequent tabletop RPG about slaying monsters as part of the gig economy. Find monsters, kill them, clinch the coveted five-star rating, and earn your keep for the month. 

This year, #iHunt was adapted into a short film, hosted on Short of the Month’s October festival. The film centers on reluctant monster-slaying couple Maeve and Stefan. The duo juggles the pains of paying rent and hospital bills due to injuries incurred from their job with the existential need to stay on the grind. The cadence of the film turns out to be surprisingly faithful to the intricacies of the #iHunt RPG, flushed with references to the game’s collaborative storytelling, and with the short showcasing the precarities of being a modern gig worker. In addition, a new #iHunt edition is being worked on — one that will adhere to Machine Age Dreams designers’ punk sensibilities. 

To find out more about the trials and tribulations of translating the RPG onto the screen, Rascal reached out to co-creator and author Olivia Hill via email to discuss sharper politics, the labyrinthine nature of Hollywood, and #iHunt’s tabletop future. 

This interview has been lightly edited for clarity.

Chase Taylor-Carter: Would you mind breaking down your contributions to the original #iHunt RPG, both design and fiction?

Olivia Hill: The long and short of #iHunt is that it started as a novel. Technically it’s a sequel or spinoff of my first novel Blood Flow. But I was working full time as a teacher, part time evenings as a teacher, and trying to work on my art. One night, it was 1am, and I had to be up again at 5am, but I knew I needed to finish some art. That night, Donald Trump “won” his first term as president. I was thinking about how many working poor people destroy their bodies for meager wages and how the world repays us for carrying the economy on our disintegrating backs. I wrote the first chapter of #iHunt that night — it was a story where millennials go out hunting monsters on a gig app because a three-day notice is scarier than Dracula. 

Since I did a lot of work in the space of paranormal tabletop RPGs like the World of Darkness/Chronicles of Darkness, and had a history of my own horror games like Maschine Zeit, fans of the #iHunt books (there were three by then) asked when we’d do a RPG for it. So my partner and I built #iHunt as a Fate hack. We basically split the writing and game design bits and worked on whatever we could, and I did the graphic design for it. If I was going to build a Fate hack, I wanted it to look unlike any other RPG at the time. 

Currently, #iHunt has been translated into multiple languages, we have massive European LARPs run based on it, there’s a Brazilian Portuguese original comic book in development, we’re working on short films and other projects, and we’re preparing for the next iteration of the game. 

Taylor-Carter: Who are the other members of the short film team, and how did you all come together on this project?