Cowboy Bebop — Transcription

Yep, in the in the nomenclature of the show.

They never get a windfall from like catching a genuine baddie who should not be out there in the world.

It's it's like one of those triangles, right?

We'll see.

Never mind, uh, this is screw ups chasing screw ups.

Yeah, when it does go wrong, it's always kind of like, it's ironic, right?

It's like it's it's tragic and it's bittersweet and it's ironic when it goes wrong.

There's no clean outcome ever.

And the music is a big part of what, like, cues us to what, what segment of the genre salad we're currently in, and that's those, you know, big twangs tell us that it's like, okay, this is a bit western-y, the, like, brass tells us that, okay, this is a bit noari or a bit jazzy, like,

Yeah, I think it's, I think the music is a huge part of it.

Um, somewhere in the law Bible, but yeah, the physics is an interesting one because there are also some bits where it is very hard and very realistic.

These explanations.

Whether like whether or not they are scientifically accurate.

like that's that is not what I'm saying.

I saying that they are internally consistent.

Yeah, I think that one's, I think that's interesting.

And I think it's a really great way to push the plot along in an interesting way.

So, what have we got?

Let's run through these pillars.

We have a crew of screw-ups whose job is to hunt down other screw-ups.

It's basically doing a job where you hunt down an individual.

These never go right, uh, and there is almost a like, if they go right for the characters, then it is like, or go right for the protagonist, then it is necessarily tragic for the, uh, the people who they've caught and vice versa.

If they, you know, deserve to be caught, then the players don't see anything out of it.

So it's always tragic for somebody.

It never ends well for either party in the bounty hunt.

everyone's running away from their past.

The protagonists are running away from their past on the macroscale and our bounties are running away from their past on an episode by episode scale.

Lots of backstory.

We don't see much of it.

Everyone's always broke.

We have functional prophecies and mysticism in the world that just seems to work and be there as an undercurrent and a provider of clues and plot.

So I've got 2 questions that I think are core 2 prepping this.

right?

How do we how do we do that micro per episode or per session conveniently?

They're all called sessions either way.

How do we do that micro per session structure of like hunting?

The other question, which I would really love.

I mean I'd really love to hear your thoughts on both of them.

How do you make a game fun about a show that is so sad?

How do we make being sad fun?

Not that Firefly is necessarily a happy girl like it, but it is essentially it's the fluffy popcorn version of this.

I think if for it to feel like cowboy bebop, it has to be sad, and that's my 2nd big question is the like the macro scale, I guess, plot of like, all of these people have their past catching up with them.

None of the, like all of these heroes are tragic.

All of these arcs end in the gutter.

Like, how do you make that a fun couple of hours at the table?

Yeah, I think that's good.

I think having those like proactive nodes or those kicks available to be like, oh, well, they've actually moved on now and they're in a different place.

Make it feel that way.

So if you didn't listen to whichever episode it was, or where we defined kicks.

It's this idea that in a, uh, if you're doing a mystery where you've got or a structure where you've got a couple of different nodes where the players are fundamentally choosing what path to take next, kicks are, things that you as the GM get to choose to introduce, um, and they are good for, we call them kicks because they kick the players in the pants and force them to make a decision, um, they are the things that you, that fundamentally they're a pacing tool to keep things moving.

But I think in this case it is essential to also make it feel like they are not just hunting down someone who is sitting there waiting to be found, they are hunting down a moving target.

If you look at the way the episodes are kind of structured.

A lot of the time that mystery bit doesn't last.

Sometimes it does.

Sometimes it's a long hunt and they catch them.

Sometimes that mystery is a 3rd half the episode.

And the 2nd half of the episode is a showdown, right?

Like it is a dog fight.

It is a duel, like a gun duel.

And I think that's also part of like this person is not just sitting there waiting to be caught.

When you catch up with them, they will fight back.

So I don't think that hunt necessarily has to be a super long complex mystery every time.

alive.

So, yeah, I think we also have these like set PC finishing encounters, which I think would be a really cool thing to prep and just like with any kind of set piece combat type encounter, you want to be making sure that you are setting that in an interesting environment like the inside of an asteroid mine or like a rooftop with lots of gantries.

like it's it's got to be a fun environment to have that big showdown fight in.

Ideally do some like shouting of, you know, catchphrasing things back and forth. I think that's the almost the 2nd half of what you need to prep is whatever happens in that last node where you are in the like, okay, it's time to either catch them or they get away.

You want to be prepping a nice big set piece fight again.

And I think you need to prep for that and make sure you're leaving space in your mystery for that.

Yeah, a twist, a, a, an about face, something to turn the whole situation on its head.

And then I think in terms of our final encounter, we're prepping, you know, some some cool chase obstacles, um, a nice actionable environment that we can have a chase through and then have an interesting sort of dynamic showdown at the at the end of that.

I like that a lot.

I think it ties in quite nicely with kind of the way that I had thought about approaching this, which is everybody on the crew was something else before.

And so, yeah, I want you to know who know what you were before you were here.

I think that is like, that is the question to ask people, is like, what did you do before you were a cowboy?

No one sets out to become a cowboy?

What did you do before you were a cowboy?

And there's 2 things that kind of branch off from that for me.

One is, what are you running from?

Like, what is the thing that caused you to not want to be that thing anymore because that, I think, over the broader arc of our season, if you like, that's the thing that comes back to haunt you?

And the 2nd thing is like, what still connects you to that, right?

And I think the ideal way to do that, like, I think the keepsake isn't neat, as a fun, like, metagamey way to be, like, like, bonus points for you, if you can drop your keepsake into into conversation.

I think the way to tie that into the actual plot is to have it come with a connection, right?

So the really obvious one here is Jet.

sometimes who are the plot.

So I think those connections and they, I think, I think the best kind of connections to have our characters are contacts, are human connections.

Who are you still tied to, who are you still in touch with from that past life?

And I think that is a really good way to make the past, not just like something that you're trying to, on a meta, sort of narrative-y level, bring in deliberately, but they also make it something that is useful for you to actually solve the mystery.

Because the number of times, again, the number of times that like Jets police contacts are one of the clues that lead them to the, you know, the bounty.

It makes them something useful, not just like a kind of a chore that you can do to get bonus points.

I never actually looked at what was on the shelves.

It could have been like a video store.

So how do we, over the course of six, 12, 24, like, a season?

But yeah, how do we shape that arc so that over the course of the campaign, for want of a better word, um, or the season so that everyone has their past catch up with them by the end and gets their sad ending?

Tragic ending, there we go.

It's it's tragic.

I think there's gonna be an element of putting it on the players to drive some of this.

Like, we don't realise it until like the end, but it turns out it was this guy all along.

That's kind of how these 2 threads of the plot have woven together.

So I think you as the GM have permission to explicitly, like, a couple of times in the season, reach into those player backstories and be like, actually, this week it's about you.

Um, and there's an element of like, and then that is an invitation kind of for that player to drive that and be more invested in, in finding the answers in that instance.

importantly, I think at no point, is it just one player playing, right?

Like, the whole crew does get dragged into these things.

Everyone is playing.

I was gonna say, that is a very like problem player.

It's like it is all in the structure and it is all in how you reach into player backstories and pull things out. and and if the the content that's in those players is appropriately tragic and sad.

Um, the, the, the bits that you pull out of it and bring into each week or each session's stories are going to be appropriately sad as well. So yeah, I think, I think we solve both of the big questions with this one kind of nested structure, which is not genuinely.

I wish I had planned that.

I wish that was the answer that I wanted us to come to.

I did not.

So my 2 thoughts are something forged in the dark or fate.

But there is a reason that we bring these 2 games up and it's not, like, this is not a bit.

It's not an inside joke.

not just being lazy.

I think it's a really important, like, compare and contrust exercise in, like, you can plunk down any system that and there are probably heaps.

In fact, there are heaps. I had a Google.

There are heaps of systems that claim to be able to do cowboy bebop, the tone.

If you are just plunking that down on the table, but then running it with your D&D hat on, it's still just gonna feel like every other role-playing game.

And the reverse is also true, right?

Like we can take these 2 structured but like fairly generic systems, but they give us a lot of tools to do the kinds of things that we're talking about, and we can think about how we deploy those tools to get the vibe that we want.

So there's a couple of things in each of these games that I really like.

I think the overall heist style structure of a forged in the dark game, they're like, the job and the downtime, like ebb and flow.

again, it's designed for this kind of story.

There's a lot of features in there that work really well.

So when we were talking about contacts before, that's a really, that's like a part of Blades in the Dark, it's a part of Scum villain.

like you have contacts from your past.

And all of the stuff around flashbacks works really well for.

Like, there's no rule that says you have to flash back to necessarily the start of the job.

You can flash back to your old life, right?

So we have this mechanism to bring the sad past into the game in a way that has mechanical effect and has rules for rules to like make it happen.

And so instead of flashing back to like, oh, but I rigged that thing to blow before we came in, it's like, I flash back to when I was a cop, and I remember this sad thing happened when I was a cop, and that has some like applicability to what's happening in the room right now.

To come back to like cliche number two.

I think fate also works.

I think having your past as one of your like big aspects on the character sheet works really well.

Again, it gives you a way to invoke your past for mechanical effect.

It also lets you put like connections with other players in those slots as well, connections with like other parts of the universe, um, and the GM also gets to invoke those 4 mechanical effects.

The GM gets to reach into your character sheet and compel you to do things based on your tragic past, which is like exactly the thing that we want.

And again, the overall, I think, the nature of fate, where you can write something down on an index card, plop it on the table, because it's convenient in that moment, but then it becomes an entrenched part of that setting, it's now like, you know, an a setting aspect or a scene aspect that is available.

I think that matches the stuff we were talking about earlier, the consistency, right?

Like there are, yes, there are obviously a lot of things in bebop that have been done for plot reasons, but they then, I guess, commit to that, right?

Like, yes, it's very free-wheeling.

It's very character and feeling is driven, but we do have that substrate of like, there is a sense that there is a consistent, coherent sort of world building and history and kind of physics that underlies the world and that we're only seeing a corner of that.

And I think being able to have aspects that you reveal, like, aspects of a setting that you reveal or add to as you go and that then are permanently available and always on and always available to invoke for effect, like, that is a way of creating that feeling of, like, yes, we have this very feelingsy plot week by week, but it's on this, like, interesting substrate of setting.

So I would pick one of those 2 games.

I would probably run it in either. Um, and I think each of them would run it really, really well with a small but deliberate amount of thought put to how you are hooking, all of these little like features that these games have, how you are hooking those into the tone that we are going for and the vibe that we are going.

for.

I'm sure there are also, as I said, I'm sure there are also some indie choices.

There's a temptation to run it in something super light, like lasers and feelings.

I don't think that can sustain the level of complexity that we need for a good, like, an interesting fight scene at the end on a sort of micro scale.

So it's not going to give us the like crunchy kind of, or a little bit crunchy, that we don't want it to be crunchy bit.

We want it to be like al dente, right?

Like, it's either going to give us that that chewy fight scene.

They're chewy.

That what they are.

It's not crunchy, it's not squishy, but it's like, we want like a chewy fight scene at the end.

We want it to feel a little bit tactical, but not, you know, we don't care about like half cover versus quarter cover, but we definitely want to be diving behind boxes.

you know?

And on a macro scale, I don't think it's going to give us the tools we need to reach into play a backstory.

and like pull out connections to the past that then becomes something that the GM has to try and like pull out of the player without any help from the system.

So like, while it is tempting to say, oh, something like super free wheeling and jazzy, right?

Like something super improvisational, like a lasers and feelings, like a one page RPG kind of thing, I actually don't think it's the best fit because, again, I don't know a lot about jazz.

I do know that it is still based on like rules of music and rhythm and structure and like the whole point is to push those rules, but you're not just getting up there and just like playing whatever note you want.

There are still melodies and harmonies and things, and yes, we're pushing the boundaries, but we're doing it all within like the structure of a time signature and the structure of like a key, right?

So I think going completely freewheeling is actually also not jazz.

There's no D20 modern these days.

Um, probably to broaden the question a little bit if I had players who wanted to do this but did not want to leave the fantasy box.

I would possibly have a play with the wild sea.

So it's not, um, it's still not 5E.

It's a bit different.

Um, but the wild sea is uh, steam punky, fantasy, uh, people on a ship doing jobs, but the ship is sailing across the canopy of a giant forest using chainsaws' engines.

So it's a similar like, it's a bit of a mishmash of like old and new or of like genre crossy like cyberpunky stuff.

I don't think it would necessarily be a 1st choice, but I think if you had a group for whom this was the right choice, it could be a fun one.

It's pushing them just enough to grow, but not enough to uh, challenge them, you know, seriously.

I don't, I don't think I would run it, not because I don't think it would be fun, not because I don't think there are systems out there that could support it, not even that I don't think my table could handle it.

I just like, I wouldn't be super like intrinsically motivated as a game master to sit down and like run a session of sadness and that's not to say that it's like ungamable.

It's not to say that it can't be done.

I just don't think this one is my.

also not to say that I didn't enjoy watching the show.

I love the show.

It was like it was, I think it's genuinely like fantastic television.

I really enjoyed watching it.

I just, I'm not a wallower.

That's Cowboy Bebop.

Thank you very much for sticking with us.

Very, like, fast and loose, very unedited.

Uh, but yeah, that's that's the last one for this year.

Um, in terms of genres and like, what a, what a genre.

We got one of everything.

It's a real, we got the Westerns, we got the cyberpunk.

We got the noir, we got the, it just feels like a great one to end on, you know?

It was all coming to this.

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