Boogie Woogie Feng Shui - The Newbie Bounty Hunters
This week we follow the three Qis in Boogie Woogie Feng Shui.
We discuss the heavenly anime known as Cowboy Bebop, we dive into earthly game mechanics of Bebop Tabletop, and we hear our magnetic new-to-tabletop friends in our latest playtest!
Special thanks to Patty, Steph, Kizer, and Ariel for play-testing this week's game!
This week we introduce Three (3) New Mechanics:
- Injuries
- Distance
- Last Gasp Gambits
Interested in listening to the full play session? Leave us a Podchaser comment or a review to let us know!
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Review: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/bebop-tabletop-designing-a-cowboy-bebop-rpg/id1590847013
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Theme and Music by @wufire
Additional Music by orzalaga and Trygve_Larsen from Pixabay
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Transcript
Three, two, one.
Andrew:This is Bebop Tabletop, the podcast that's turning each episode of Cowboy Bebop into a tabletop RPG.
Andrew:I'm Andrew Wu.
Lijo:I'm Lijo John.
Andrew:And together we're remixing the characters, music, and themes into a game you can play.
Together:Let's jam.
Andrew:What's up, fairy godparents and evil stepsisters? This is session 22 of Bebop Tabletop.
Andrew:Boogie Woogie Fung Shui.
Andrew:Yeah.
Andrew:Boogie Woogie Fung Shui rhymes with flung clay Lijo.
Andrew:How's it going today? I'm doing great.
Lijo:It's been a long night, and we have worked on mechanics more than we normally do.
Lijo:It's true.
Andrew:It's like we're actual game designers today.
Andrew:Yeah.
Lijo:It's one of those things where we do work on this when we're not recording the podcast.
Lijo:And honestly, we should be recording that, too.
Lijo:But who would listen to that? You don't want to hear our unhinged Ramblings for 2 hours.
Andrew:I mean, if you do want to listen to our unhinged Ramblings for 2 hours, leave us a comment or review on podcast or Apple podcasts.
Andrew:See, I'm doing the plug thing.
Andrew:I'm practicing plugging right now.
Lijo:We did it.
Lijo:We're professionals.
Andrew:This week we're talking about Boogie Boogie Feng Shui.
Andrew:It is the 21st episode of Cowboy Bebop this week.
Andrew:Lijo.
Andrew:I'm starting to feel like we're heading towards the end of this thing.
Andrew:There's not a whole lot of runway left for us.
Andrew:No.
Lij:We're down to a handful of episodes in a movie and maybe the Netflix adaptation.
Lij:We need to finish up.
Lij:The end line is in sight.
Lij:We really need to cross the finish line with flying colors.
Lij:The end goal is in sight.
Andrew:We got to stick the landing.
Lijo:Yes.
Andrew:We've got to eat the swordfish.
Andrew:We've got to gamble the money.
Andrew:I don't know what works in the Cowboy.
Andrew:Bebop universe.
Lijo:What's the phrase? Regardless, we're approaching the end, and hopefully when all is said and done, we've got the right product for everybody.
Andrew:Yeah, I'm hopeful.
Andrew:Are we ready for a summary? Let's do it.
Andrew:Jet receives a mysterious email from an old acquaintance, but by the time he arrives, he only finds a grave.
Andrew:At the Cemetery, he meets Meifa, his friend's daughter.
Andrew:They are attacked by the Blue Snake Syndicate, but with the help of Meifa's Fung Shui, the two manage to escape.
Andrew:While the crew speculate on their relationship, Jet and Mefa investigate the mystery email and embark on a quest for the Sun Stone.
Andrew:They follow the signs and find a black rock in the mouth of a statue.
Andrew:The two of them ambush the Syndicate goons, who admit they're searching for Meifa's father in the Bebop's new nonsmoking zone, Ayn brings the stone to Meifa's Lopan, which points the way to Hyperspace.
Andrew:Jet explains Pao's criminal connections and how he left to protect his family.
Andrew:Then, while Spike and Faye fight off a fleet of robot ships, Ed discovers that shooting the Sun Stone will open a portal to Pao's hiding place.
Andrew:There, they discover Pao while he's running out of air and Pao and Meifa say goodbye one last time.
Andrew:I thought this episode was interesting.
Andrew:Like the introduction here of a kind of like a new young character.
Andrew:It's kind of like Jet's alternate universe daughter, right.
Andrew:It's kind of that feeling of like, this is what it would be like if Jet had a kid.
Andrew:This is the kind of father he would be.
Andrew:This is kind of the guidance he would give to somebody.
Lijo:He struggles a lot with the idea of possibly being a father through the entire episode, whether he can't figure out what to be called.
Lijo:And at one point he does refer to himself as a boyfriend figure.
Lijo:And that was a little rough.
Andrew:But anyway, that's what the whole crew is implying that whole time too.
Andrew:It's just like, well, does he just have a thing for young women? Like, is that because he's an old man? Right.
Lijo:Normal.
Lijo:Well, the 90s.
Lijo:It was a different time back then.
Andrew:Was it? Was it really? Not really.
Lijo:I always love the trope of the guy who sacrifices himself by not telling his family what he's doing and then he disappears and it almost always across the board.
Lijo:Would have been better for him to tell his daughter or his wife.
Lijo:Like, hey, this is what's up.
Lijo:I'm going to go disappear now.
Lijo:But they don't do it, right? Yeah.
Andrew:So this is the WB problem as well.
Andrew:Like, every show on the WB has a love triangle that's almost entirely predicated on the characters not talking to each other, right? It's like, hey, you're kind of flirting with me.
Andrew:I'm kind of flirting with you.
Andrew:But we can't be together and I can never tell you why, but really, I could just tell you.
Andrew:Oh, yeah, no, I'm a zombie.
Andrew:I should just tell you that so that we know what's going on and can figure it out together, right? No, I'm Superman.
Andrew:So that's why we can't be together.
Andrew:It's like just communicate.
Andrew:If you just tell people what's going on, it's probably going to work out better.
Lijo:That sit comes to a T, right? It's always a comedy of misunderstanding.
Andrew:In this case, Pao decides I'm going to run into space to avoid being shot at by the Syndicate.
Andrew:Right.
Andrew:But he's still such a bad plan, right.
Andrew:Because he still gets Jet and his daughter to find him and they're still followed by the Syndicate, right.
Lijo:It's not a great plan.
Lijo:And also he ends up dying in hyperspace, like in a weird portal.
Andrew:What was the plan here? What if it didn't work out? I guess that's the whole thing.
Andrew:It's the whole thing about him being a Feng Shui master, that he set up the whole universe so that this exact moment would happen in this exact way.
Lijo:continuing our series, we ended up doing another play test for this episode loosely based on the events that happened here.
Lijo:Again, Wu was the game maestro.
Lijo:We played this session with a bunch of newbies to the RPG setting.
Lijo:Yeah.
Andrew:Including our logo artist, Stephanie.
Andrew:So thanks to her and all the rest of our playtesters that were willing to go along with our crazy idea.
Andrew:Right.
Lijo:I think that is a big ask.
Lijo:Right.
Andrew:I think this should not be understated that if you're somebody that's never really played an RPG and somebody just asks you, hey, want to come play my game and spend 4 hours on a thing that might not be fun and you might hate.
Andrew:I think we do need to thank Patty, who has been on the show, Steph, Kizer, and Ariel, just for being around and playing our game.
Lijo:Absolutely.
Lijo:I don't think most people would readily agree to play a random make believe game with people who are making it as they play it.
Andrew:They're braver than we are, is what we're trying to say.
Lijo:Yeah, it's true.
Lijo:So as you were running this session, were there any specific challenges or anything you wanted to test for this one? I didn't want to complicate things too much knowing that we were going to be running this for newer people.
Andrew:So I kept it loose knowing that a couple of things, actually.
Andrew:One, I actually put in more structure for me up front just because normally I leave things a little bit too open and I still feel like in this case, it was probably a little bit too open for new people at the top.
Andrew:On the other hand, too, though, with newer players, I like seeing them go about things in a different direction than seasoned RPG players would do it.
Andrew:I think that was a nice change of pace.
Andrew:It was fun to flex like those improv muscles as well, just because it's like, oh, I think Ariel at one point came up with some location, a boutique somewhere on Mars.
Andrew:And then I was like, well, I've got to integrate that now just because why not?
Ariel:Can we go shopping? Actually, I know that there's this one boutique in Mars that is kind of shady.
Ariel:I know, but as long as you have a Pinky and then your middle toe, you should be able to have free entrance in there.
Andrew:Or like, Steph had her duck.
Andrew:No, it was a goose and a Crow and just having to deal with now I'm the voice of a goose for the entire game.
Lijo:Something like that happens just because the rules are being made up as we go, right? You got to adapt, right? You got to roll with the punches.
Steph:My goose is amazing at the stress.
Lijo:Madam Avery, I asked you to place the goose in your room.
Andrew:You see the goose dragging some sort of, like, slices of cheese back to the rooms.
Steph:All right, goose.
Steph:I guess you're not involved in this one, my buddy.
Andrew:Yeah.
Lijo:So I played a robot.
Lijo:I called Marco, mostly because again, I wanted to bypass the problem I had with being a cat with that, I couldn't talk.
Lijo:So this time Marco could talk.
Lijo:I also tried not to mention too much because I did not want to direct the play too much because again, we are the play testers and they're our test subjects.
Andrew:Right.
Lijo:I hate that I said that.
Lijo:But the problem with Newbies is that they are a little bit overwhelmed with what they can do.
Lijo:And once they get an idea of what they want to do, they get a little bit wild.
Lijo:The boutique where they went to go shop for dresses got a little bit nutty and they did kind of assault a shop owner.
Lijo:So that was interesting.
Andrew:I mean, they made up for it in the end.
Andrew:I think they really didn't.
Andrew:Yeah.
Lijo:But that's also part of the RPG life, right? Just a little bit of nonsense.
Lijo:Oh, yeah.
Andrew:The attendant at the boutique looks you up and down and says, wearing last year's fashions.
Patty:I say, yeah.
Patty:So I don't know if you've heard, but like, time progresses linearly.
Patty:So, yeah, I can't be wearing like, the future, and that's why we're in here now.
Patty:Thanks so much.
Patty:So maybe you want to, like, show us around instead of talking down to us as though you could afford to shop where you work.
Patty:Thanks.
Patty:Yeah.
Lijo:But overall, I think that, again, the role play aspect of our game is working pretty well, and I think that is accommodated by our character builder.
Lijo:Once you know what you want in a character, it's easier to role play.
Lijo:I think.
Lijo:I think that was a big point here where again, they're all good sports and like to play along.
Andrew:But having never role played before, having never built a character before, something I noticed was that I do feel that this was a lot easier than trying to build a character for, say, Dungeons and Dragons, where by breaking down the character into basically, I think the biggest difference between our characters and Dungeons and Dragons characters are that our mechanical considerations are very different.
Andrew:Whereas in a class based system, you're trying to decide, oh, I'm going to play this type of character and they do these kind of actions.
Andrew:Right.
Andrew:Or this kind of character does, I'm going to play a Paladin so that they have to take damage upfront or do a lot of damage.
Andrew:Right.
Andrew:Things like that.
Andrew:Whereas in our system, on the one hand, we don't have such defined roles at all and on the other hand, we don't want to.
Andrew:Right.
Andrew:Every character in Cowboy Bebop can kind of do what any other character can do, just the different degrees of success.
Andrew:So when building the characters here, I think our players were more able to think in terms of like, well, who are they as a person? First, we broke down into the pillars of past, present and future, and by doing it that way, it's more like an acting exercise.
Andrew:Right.
Andrew:You're trying to create a person that you can inhabit for the next couple of hours while you play.
Andrew:I think that was a little easier for newer players.
Andrew:Maybe there's too much choice still.
Andrew:I think selecting skills, things like that are a little bit unguided at this point.
Andrew:And always we get questions about style.
Andrew:Right.
Andrew:I think our style is still the vague notion for our characters.
Lijo:Then I guess going into that, do you want to remove it or do you want to just change what it's called? Maybe that's what it's causing so much confusion.
Andrew:I think maybe, yes, just a clearer definition will help.
Andrew:I definitely do not want to remove it.
Andrew:It is the coolest factor.
Andrew:When the style comes into play.
Lijo:It is always excellent.
Andrew:But yeah, I think just defining what it is upfront will be will make it a little easier.
Lijo:The other thing I was thinking about is maybe just make it a one word thing because some of our players have made it into full phrases and I think that is not what we're looking for.
Lijo:I think we're just looking for a straight adjective that we can use in multiple situations.
Andrew:Maybe.
Andrew:I think a phrase is okay as long as it's still not a very specific.
Lijo:Yeah.
Andrew:You don't want something that's just like my style is.
Andrew:I hang out on that street at this time of day.
Andrew:Like that's not going to be very useful, but something that is a couple of words I think could still work.
Andrew:I guess I could talk about what I adapted for this one.
Andrew:Sure.
Andrew:Mostly for this adventure.
Andrew:I was looking for this adventure.
Andrew:Something I tried that was different than before was that I actually read the players back stories and wanted to integrate them in some way.
Andrew:So I took Kizer's character Jiin, and I looked for or I found a hook in there of her grandfather being an artist and her grandfather's art being worth a lot of money and her grandfather also being deceased in the past of this gameplay session.
Andrew:So all of that, I turned into kind of the Pao role from this episode where he's still alive somewhere and kind of sending maybe it's him, maybe it's somebody else, but like sending secret messages to the crew like, hey, come find me, come see where I'm at.
Andrew:I also tie that in with the Syndicate looking for this person.
Andrew:And that's really the main conflict of this episode.
Andrew:Right.
Andrew:The crew was fighting the Syndicate because the Syndicate is also looking for Jiin's grandfather, for this artist.
Andrew:And then just kind of as a final like, nod, I named the art piece the Boogie Woogie Feng Shui just because, hey, why not? Let's just go all in on that.
Lijo:Sure.
Lijo:I think the funny thing is that while you had all this lower and backstory planned, the session itself kind of went sideways where everybody else did something totally unexpected and we ended up doing like four different things at once and none of them were progressing the story, which again is not a bad thing, but it can be hard when you have all this juicy story planned.
Andrew:I don't hold that stuff too precious.
Andrew:Like, I like having them just kind of as like a guide post.
Andrew:I know which direction the story is going.
Andrew:I know the general shape of where this could go and if all the things lined up just right, there was a chance that the crew could have met Jim's grandfather this episode, if things happened just right.
Lijo:But they didn't.
Andrew:So they didn't meet him.
Andrew:That's not the story that ended up being told today, but it is something that was hinted at and can be held onto for something in the future.
Andrew:There was still an ending to the story they got.
Andrew:So I think that worked out.
Andrew:I hope.
Lijo:We were also 4 hours and so we needed to wrap it up neatly and quickly.
Lijo:So yeah, I'm sure we could do more in the next round, but we got what we got and it was fine.
Lijo:So shifting gears a little bit, we're always scrutinizing our encounter system because that is probably our most unique aspect.
Lijo:What did you think of our encounter this time? This one was interesting, right? We didn't make too many huge changes.
Andrew:Most notably, the thing that we added on was to the end, right where we discussed last week about the last gasp when we were talking with Colin and Matt.
Andrew:Something at the end, like something that your meter is full and maybe that the opposing force has some sort of way to counter or to come back or to stave off the ending.
Andrew:For this session, we decided to implement that right where in this case, again, the party won pretty handily.
Andrew:And what happened was that at the end of their meter being full.
Andrew:So I as the game.
Andrew:Maestro allowed each person of the party to take one final action to do one thing.
Andrew:I actually also had the bounty or the targets in this case roll against them as their last gas.
Andrew:Like that was mechanically what was supposed to happen, but just from a numbers perspective, it was impossible.
Andrew:There was no way that they were actually going to roll higher than the party.
Andrew:So realizing this, I still allowed the party to have their last actions and it turned into this fun little moment of like, hey, we won.
Andrew:Everybody take like a little victory lap, do a thing that feels in character to what you do, and kind of wraps up what happens here, right? So I like that Ariel's character totally whiffed on her victory pose and once again just kind of tried to play it off like, no, it's fine, it's cool.
Ariel:So I will use my jump kick, leg, spiral down, knock her out, do the weird little that I go, yeah, spray cans.
Andrew:Okay.
Andrew:Roll for that makes her unconscious.
Andrew:Okay, so this is not the third time that you get to do your cool victory pose with your spray cans, but you're helping.
Andrew:The important thing is you're helping.
Lijo:I think that all that she spent narrating, like a second ago, like when she was narrating her move.
Lijo:That's what she thinks is happening in her head.
Lijo:But we see the truth.
Andrew:Some of the players.
Andrew:I think Avery, I think Steph character was able to do something practical, right.
Andrew:It was able to take down one of the Syndicate members.
Andrew:We got this little variation on how to wrap up the encounter to really put a bow on it.
Andrew:I think with a little bit of tweaking that could be done in a way that feels more intentional, that feels more purposefully.
Andrew:Like, hey, yeah, here's a little victory lap.
Andrew:Here's a little winning thing you can do.
Andrew:Or I guess that would only cover, like, the party winning.
Andrew:Yeah.
Andrew:The other thing we did this session was we decided to use scaled bars.
Andrew:So I think the math we used was something like 15 times the number of characters plus five, something like that.
Andrew:So I think our party ended up at something like 75 was their bar with their Bebop bar, whereas the Syndicate members, there were two of them.
Andrew:So I think they had a bar of 30.
Andrew:Something like that still remains to be seen.
Andrew:I think we just need to do tons and tons of tests on just bars.
Andrew:Right.
Lijo:But again, the party decimated them.
Andrew:I think the Syndicate members only got about half way by the time the party was complete.
Lijo:It felt better, definitely, than the second play test where the Bounty had almost nothing.
Lijo:Like, I rolled two one in that route, and that was all the Bounty was able to do.
Lijo:Again.
Lijo:However, in this situation, the party kept rolling incredibly well.
Lijo:They powered through three rounds of combat, I think.
Andrew:Three rounds, yeah.
Lijo:And it was all but settled.
Lijo:So we definitely need to kind of look at that and see where we want to go with that, because not every encounter will be like this.
Lijo:They won't always roll so well.
Lijo:So I don't know if I want to change the little formula we have just yet, but we're going to need to definitely try a few more rounds.
Andrew:Right.
Andrew:I think that is the nature of play testing.
Andrew:Right.
Andrew:I think it is just we just got to keep trying it and see if it works or not.
Andrew:In aggregate, the problem with dealing with dice.
Andrew:Right.
Andrew:Is that they are random, so we don't know how they're going to go until we tried a billion times.
Andrew:The other thing I noticed during the encounter system was a little bit of confusion over how much you could do in one round and just the judgment of distances.
Lijo:So in D and D, a single round of combat is technically 6 seconds.
Lijo:So you should try to consider how much you can do in that time frame.
Lijo:Now, often you will see people have full on conversations in a round of D and D, which should not be possible, but I think we kind of hand wave that away because that's part of role playing in the same sense.
Lijo:I don't want players doing a thousand different things in one round.
Lijo:I don't want to hard code 6 seconds per round like D and D does.
Lijo:But I do want the idea that you can't do a ton.
Lijo:You can only do what is the highest priority thing for you right now.
Lijo:And as far as distances go, we don't want to be a war game.
Lijo:We don't want a map necessarily, but we do need to kind of sharpen our definitions of what you can do in certain ranges.
Andrew:Right.
Andrew:That kind of happened naturally in the session as well.
Andrew:Right.
Andrew:The final conflict was in the room.
Andrew:Room, right.
Andrew:And it was like, essentially like I treated it like a tube, like a long room where there were enemies on one end and then a door on the opposite end.
Andrew:And I just described to the party like what percentage of the way through the room everybody was at any point in time.
Andrew:And that was how we dealt with distance this time around.
Andrew:Right.
Andrew:That seemed to work pretty well, but it was very loose and it was something that came up in the moment.
Andrew:Right.
Lijo:It wasn't something we had planned ahead, all in all for a play test with people who are completely inexperienced.
Lijo:I think it went pretty well.
Lijo:Would you say? I hope so.
Andrew:I hope they play again.
Lijo:That's the true test.
Andrew:I will note that they all still speak to me.
Lijo:So that's a good sign, right? That is the best play testing sign that people still want to talk to you after your game.
Lijo:Yeah.
Andrew:So we mentioned at the top of this show that we are actual game designers this week.
Andrew:So Lio, you and I met today before we started recording, just to discuss some like the next steps of our game design evolution.
Andrew:Right.
Andrew:So what we wanted to look at are the things that we saw are either poorly defined or need to be defined pieces that we think are missing from our game so far.
Andrew:Specifically, the things we're going to look at today are injuries, distance.
Andrew:And finally, we're going to tackle our last gasp gambit situation.
Andrew:Would you like to introduce injuries to our world Lijo? I wouldn't, but it is part of the Bebop world.
Lijo:So let's talk about it.
Lijo:In each of our plate tests, we actually had almost no injuries because no one was using weapons.
Lijo:They were all using various other powers and whatnot.
Lijo:Or they used a Taser.
Lijo:But in the Cowboy Bebop anime, guns are a predominant source of damage.
Lijo:Yeah.
Lijo:Spike is covered in bandages and on the bed like every other week here what we want to do is we want to make sure that when you are in danger, there is actual danger involved.
Lijo:You're not going to just get a flesh wound and you're going to act like nothing has happened.
Lijo:So when somebody wishes to attack another, we will set the DC like any sort of GM would.
Lijo:And if you succeed, we're going to have a little chart like a D6 chart.
Lijo:So you roll a D6 and it will tell you what part of the body you've hit.
Lijo:Now, depending on how well your dice roll goes, that will determine how severe the wound is, the status of the wound.
Lijo:So if you just barely make the dice check that they wanted you to have, it'll be a slight wound, no major inconvenience.
Lijo:It hurts.
Lijo:Of course, you can continue to do what you need to do.
Lijo:The biggest issue is that it may escalate if you continue to get these slight wounds.
Lijo:Obviously, getting multiple bullet holes in you is not a great time.
Lijo:The next step up would be moderate wounds.
Lijo:A moderate wound is one that you don't necessarily need to treat right away.
Lijo:But if you don't, it's going to be an issue.
Lijo:And this issue is that if you try to do anything with this moderate wound, you're going to have to take that role at disadvantage.
Lijo:So maybe you are a great shooter and you have a D8 in shooting projectile weapons, but you've got a hole in your leg so you can't make the appropriate stance.
Lijo:So you shoot at a disadvantage.
Lijo:You're only going to shoot at a D6.
Lijo:Obviously, you could try to doctor yourself.
Lijo:You could try to plug the hole or remove the bullet or whatever what have you.
Lijo:The next level would be a serious wound.
Lijo:This is so bad that you can't even bother to attack.
Lijo:To run.
Lijo:To shoot, you need to deal with this wound that you have.
Lijo:And at this point, if you're so seriously injured, all you can do is try to help yourself.
Lijo:And so any of those doctor skills, field medicine, triage, et cetera, or if you need to give yourself drugs, pharmacology or whatnot, and you need to succeed to bring down the level of your wound.
Lijo:If somehow you get hit with an extremely high roll, you will be in what the final status, which is a critical wound.
Lijo:At this point, you're basically on deaths door.
Lijo:You can only treat yourself.
Lijo:And even when you try to treat yourself with one of these doctor skills, it is at a disadvantage.
Lijo:Basically, you don't want a critical hit.
Andrew:No, please, no.
Lijo:We still have a little bit of Tweaking to do.
Lijo:But for the most part, when you do those doctoring skills, the field, medicine, triage, whatever minor successes should drop it down one rung of the wound status ladder.
Lijo:A major success might just remove the wound altogether, at least for the encounter.
Lijo:You'll still have to deal with it afterwards, but that's for future you to deal with.
Andrew:My favorite example that we came up with was, yes, we can solve these bullet wounds by taking a bunch of red eye, but tomorrow that's not going to be a healthy problem to have.
Lijo:When you come down, there will be hell to pay.
Lijo:Yeah, no, I do like that.
Lijo:This will introduce some danger aspect to this.
Lijo:We haven't tried this out yet.
Andrew:So again, we just came up with this before this session today.
Andrew:We do have a couple of play tests coming up and are going to be using our new wound system just to see how that changes the flavor of it.
Lijo:And of course, we don't actually want our players to die, but bottoming out or gaining an injury is always a more fulfilling narrative kind of tool.
Lijo:So everybody wants an eyepatch, whether they admit it or not.
Andrew:It's so cool looking.
Andrew:So the next point we wanted to talk about is distance.
Andrew:I alluded to it in our discussion on this week's playtest session where a note I got from our players was that it was difficult to keep in mind where things were positioned, where things are happening.
Andrew:A common question that comes up and has come up, I think in every play session so far is, well, can I do this thing? Where are they located? Relative to me? Can I reach out and punch him? Can I shoot him? Is he far right? These kind of questions come up very frequently when we're using theater of the mind to figure out where things are placed.
Lijo:Right.
Andrew:So as a solution to this problem and kind of something that adds more texture to the way our skills work, we want to introduce something called the distance.
Andrew:In our case, it's very simple, right.
Andrew:We have three kind of distances to account for.
Andrew:We've got close distance, medium distance, and far distance.
Andrew:And this covers just the concept of close distance is something like, hey, I can reach out and grab them, I can touch them.
Andrew:Medium distance is, oh, I can see them.
Andrew:I can get to them very quickly within a turn, let's say.
Andrew:And a far distance is something like, oh, they are either really far away or it will take some time to get to them.
Andrew:They're not immediately next to me.
Andrew:The way we're thinking of handling distance now is that we change from our first play test session to our second play test session.
Andrew:Something we carried forward was this idea that movement becomes free.
Andrew:We didn't like how in our first play test that a lot of actions were being burned on movement.
Andrew:It doesn't feel very good.
Andrew:It's not very satisfying.
Andrew:It kind of makes you feel like you're wasting a turn just because, like, oh, the target is far away.
Andrew:So I need to run.
Andrew:That didn't feel very good.
Andrew:It feels like, am I helping? Right.
Andrew:So we made movement free.
Andrew:One of the things that then happened in this last play session was like, well, can I just.
Andrew:I think at some point, Marco was up on the roof or had just come down from the roof and had parked a spaceship and now needed to run into the hotel, into the Rum room to attack a target.
Andrew:Right.
Andrew:It's like, well, that's definitely too far to run in one turn.
Andrew:We didn't have a concept for that at the time, so we just kind of hand waved it and said, yeah, okay, it'll take two turns for you to get there.
Andrew:So this distance concept is now more formalizing.
Andrew:That it's like, okay, you're definitely at a far distance.
Andrew:And maybe there might even be, like, an extra far if you're across the city.
Andrew:Right.
Andrew:Like, you're not even in discussion at that point.
Andrew:Right.
Andrew:But at a far distance, what you can do is say, hey, you still get that free movement, but your far can only become medium.
Andrew:You can only move closer by one distance.
Andrew:And then the next turn, you can then say, okay, I want to move from a medium to a close.
Andrew:Right.
Andrew:It takes some time, it takes some actions to do this now.
Andrew:So we still want to keep the concept that moving is free.
Andrew:But something we also wanted to account for was this idea that, hey, can I move and also take an action? We discussed the idea of running and shooting.
Andrew:Yeah.
Andrew:That's something that happens.
Andrew:It's something you should be able to accomplish.
Andrew:But we do feel like it should come with a price.
Andrew:And to us, that price is a disadvantage.
Andrew:So you are allowed to say, hey, I want to move from far to medium.
Andrew:And normally you can do that for free.
Andrew:But if you also want to take an aggressive action, like a shoot projectile weapons, well, we're going to make it hard, right? So instead of rolling at, let's say, your normal D6, if you're somewhat talented at it now, it's at a disadvantage.
Andrew:So you can still accomplish this, but it will be harder.
Andrew:Something else we wanted to incorporate with distances is that now we can associate certain skills with certain distances, and we can also associate things like items and weapons with distances.
Andrew:So, for example, a handgun at a medium distance is probably going to work just fine.
Andrew:But at a close distance should come with some sort of disadvantage.
Andrew:Unless you're specialized in some way or skilled in some other way.
Andrew:Right.
Andrew:A handgun at close distance is more a liability.
Andrew:Similarly, if you were to purchase, like, a sniper rifle, that gun is really only going to work at a far distance.
Andrew:It won't work close distance at all.
Andrew:And maybe a medium distance would still just be too close.
Andrew:I don't think it would work as expected.
Lijo:Or at the very least, you would have to use it in an unorthodox way because you're not going to be able to look at a scope when somebody's bearing down on you, right?
Andrew:Not according to my Red Dead Redemption playthroughs. No.
Lijo:Again, we will try to put this in the manual, but some of this may just have to be played by ear and go by what the GM's discretion is.
Andrew:Yeah, I will say that as a GM it was very useful as a tool to keep in mind where things are located, keep in mind what players could do at any point in time.
Andrew:Right.
Andrew:It was again something that I just came up with on the fly during the game.
Andrew:But codifying this out, like actually explicitly describing distance, I think that will be a huge advantage.
Andrew:I think it will help people on both sides of the table here.
Lijo:Battle maps are great, like in D and D and other systems where you can physically say, hey, I'm here, the bad guys over there.
Lijo:I need to do this to do this.
Lijo:But one of the most kind of annoying parts are really unsatisfying parts is when you're just a little too far away.
Lijo:So your dash action or your move action is not enough to reach to bridge that gap.
Lijo:So with this system, hopefully we kinda to move away from exact amounts we are able to say, okay, you went from here and now you're closer.
Lijo:You may not be in punching distance, but you definitely can do something now.
Andrew:Yeah, I feel like the vagueness of it is the feature.
Andrew:I think that makes it feel a lot more palatable.
Lijo:There's a lot of freedom, but just enough crunch where you can kind of physically see where you are in that mental image you have.
Andrew:I think one of the other aspects that we've been working on is flight, and this will also play into that system.
Andrew:The idea of distance will affect how your spacecraft will work.
Lijo:Yes.
Lijo:So in a fight in the sky, you might not necessarily want to be super close, but you can't also be a mile away because you're not going to be able to do anything.
Lijo:So positioning will be key and rather than say oh, I'm flanking or I'm taking evasive maneuvers, I want to make that part of the actual encounter where you can say I'm doing this.
Lijo:So I'm in this range.
Lijo:If you want to flee, you want to move from a close to a medium position, you can do that.
Andrew:Again, we have not played with these yet, so it is something we're going to be incorporating into our upcoming playtests, but we'll let you know how those go.
Lijo:And finally, we've been working on that last gasp.
Lijo:Again.
Lijo:We talked about a gambit system a long time ago and I think our new idea of a last gasp and the gambit we are kind of merged together.
Lijo:I think what we want to say is that if you're in the situation you've lost.
Lijo:Like we've talked about, the Bebop bars, those motivation trackers.
Lijo:Once the party fills up, this is something for the opponent to do.
Lijo:And on the off chance you're losing and your Bounty's bar is filled, this is something that you the party can do.
Lijo:So again, you've lost, but this is an opportunity to complicate the situation.
Lijo:You're going to kind of muddle this person's success and that's kind of pretty Bebop where they never get exactly what they want.
Lijo:Maybe you're going to go down guns blazing or maybe you're going to cause a distraction by blowing something up.
Lijo:Or otherwise you're going to find another way to stick it to the man.
Lijo:This last gasp is a way to kind of tweak your fate.
Lijo:You're not going to win, but at least you can make sure that they're not going to be happy about it.
Andrew:Yeah, like an example from the show would be say in Asteroid Blues.
Andrew:In the end, Spike is chasing after Azimov and Katarina and essentially like they have Asimov and Katarina have lost, right? They are cornered, they are done.
Andrew:But as a last gasp, Katerina takes matters into our own hands and kills.
Andrew:Asimov kills and essentially it's killed herself, denying Spike the opportunity to take them in.
Andrew:Right.
Andrew:Like it is again, a final gambit to change their fate.
Lijo:Or simply if your party is lost, perhaps you can try to do something where you sacrifice yourself for the rest of the party.
Lijo:The good of the party.
Lijo:It's not necessarily completely hopeless but the die has been cast so to speak.
Lijo:You need to pay the toll.
Lijo:I'm sorry for all these cliches but they seem to work.
Lijo:But anyway, we never actually explained the mechanic, the mechanic we plan is that once it's time the bar is filled, the loser will roll a D20 and this will be rolled against a D12 check.
Lijo:So they need to roll an eleven or higher.
Lijo:If they succeed again, an eleven or higher, they can take one final action that will succeed.
Lijo:You cannot change your fate.
Lijo:You cannot automatically win this encounter, but you can make one final action.
Lijo:So you're trying to make it slightly less bad.
Lijo:For all intents and purposes, if you don't make that eleven or higher, well you've already lost.
Lijo:So I mean how much worse could it get? And then one thing we wanted to make sure is that if it is the party that's losing and has having this last gasp, only one player from the party can roll this last gasp.
Lijo:So you can't all keep rolling D20s and hoping you succeed.
Andrew:I had not considered that, but yeah, no, it is a single event, a single roll.
Lijo:So it should hopefully lead to some interesting drama and possibly, maybe things don't quite work out the way you thought and that should hopefully still be fun because we still want you to win.
Lijo:Well, we want you to succeed from time to time.
Lijo:If the crew succeeds, maybe one out of every eight episodes or so.
Lijo:We don't want you to lose that often, but we also want you to lose sometimes.
Lijo:I think that makes it much more interesting.
Lijo:No?
Andrew:Something we've been failing at as game maestros so far is failing.
Andrew:Every single one of our playtest parties has come out victorious so far.
Andrew:So I think it's time to swing the pendulum a little harder the other way.
Andrew:And I think we're doing it right.
Andrew:We're introducing wounds.
Andrew:We're introducing this last gasp mechanic.
Andrew:So I think.
Andrew:Sorry to our next play testers.
Andrew:You're probably going to lose.
Andrew:Sorry.
Lijo:Hey, maybe they can grasp victory out of the jaws of defeat.
Andrew:You got it right this day.
Andrew:These three new mechanics are things we are planning to implement very soon.
Andrew:Injuries.
Andrew:It remains to be seen what kind of effect these things have on the mood, the way the game plays, the character sheets we might have to design new character sheets, Lijo that account for injuries.
Andrew:We have to track these things now.
Lijo:Yeah.
Andrew:So injuries and distance will change our tactics on our encounter system.
Andrew:I think it's a good idea.
Andrew:The encounter system so far has been very free flowing, very loose, just based on people improvising together.
Andrew:And this might add a little bit of necessary structure to that.
Andrew:And then our last gasp gambit.
Andrew:I'm excited to see if this actually sticks as a gambit system finally.
Andrew:Right.
Andrew:We've gone through three or four different iterations of this so far, and this one feels better.
Andrew:I think this is one that actually adds some drama and solves a problem that we've been looking at.
Lijo:So even if you do wallop the bad guy, at least they get one chance to react, right? Yeah.
Andrew:I'm excited to see how this goes.
Andrew:Lijo, do you think that weird question.
Andrew:And I'm probably going to cut this from the podcast.
Andrew:But weird question.
Andrew:Which of these mechanics do you think is the first one we're going to cut out of the three? Probably the wound system.
Andrew:Interesting.
Andrew:I don't know.
Lijo:I like it, but part of it just seems like a bit of crunch that is unnecessary because we're already pretty rules like.
Lijo:Yeah.
Andrew:And it might be not fun.
Andrew:I think that's the problem with wounds.
Andrew:It might just not be fun at all.
Lijo:Yeah.
Lijo:I mean, again, it might just be that in the encounter, they all just get grazes and near misses.
Andrew:Do we add just like a scar tracker roll a D20.
Lijo:How cool your scars are.
Lijo:Yeah.
Andrew:So with that.
Andrew:Yeah.
Andrew:These are some new mechanics that we hope to see soon.
Andrew:Stay tuned to the podcast.
Andrew:We'll be talking about these and future play sessions.
Andrew:And again, as we're approaching the end of our Bebop runway here, it's getting down to the wire.
Andrew:We really would like to publish some version of this game before our podcast is over so we'll see how this goes.
int, we are always on Twitter:@BebopTabletop.
int, we are always on Twitter:Reach out to us with questions, comments if you think something doesn't work, it doesn't sound good.
int, we are always on Twitter:If you think that the last gasp gambit here of ending up being a 50/50 shot of whether you win or not is a terrible idea, yeah, let us know.
int, we are always on Twitter:Like I think we'd love some feedback on also if you're listening to this part of the podcast, give us a rating.
int, we are always on Twitter:It does really help apparently to have ratings on Podchaser or Apple podcast because it lets people know that hey people are actually listening to this podcast and think it's okay.
int, we are always on Twitter:Let us know if you think it's okay.
int, we are always on Twitter:That would really help us out.
Lijo:Thank you, dear listener, we are continuing our build of this game and hopefully it'll be something for everybody something that anyone could enjoy.
Lijo:So that's what I'm hoping for again.
Lijo:That secret kind of diamond in the rough game with all the other Cowboy Bebop games coming out we're going to be the best one.
Andrew:We just know it.
Andrew:Stay tuned for next week when we're going to be talking about Cowboy Funk.
Andrew:Yes, stay tuned next week for some Sci-Fi spaghetti Western with Cowboy Funk.
Lijo:Damn that cowboy Andy Yeehaw goodbye.
Andrew:Thanks for listening.
Kizer:Marco this is Wendell meet the bartender.
Kizer:He's great.
Kizer:He's giving me a tour of the place.
