Cowboy Bebop Roleplaying Game Draws its Guns

Let’s take a peek under the hood of the forthcoming Cowboy Bebop Roleplaying Game and see if it rocks. Or is it junk, drifting in the cold emptiness of space?

Yes folks, it’s another episode of the super serious, tabletop game inquisitional series, The Pickle and Daweeb Show. Here we dress in suits and calibrate our dice with advanced scientific equipment. Of course we do. Three, two, one… Let’s Jam.

We talk about good and bad anime adaptations often, here on the J-List Blog. It comes with the territory. The usual suspects are Netflix or any other company that makes it their business to turn anime into live-action works, but that’s not the case today. Today, we’re talking dice and paper as we check out the playtest rules for the upcoming Cowboy Bebop Roleplaying Game. The rules went up on Drive Thru RPG a short while ago. So, let’s answer the question: “should you be excited?” (TL;DR: You should. Get hyped!)

Now, I’ll bet two Waterdeep-minted gold pieces that when most people think ‘tabletop roleplaying game’ they think Dungeons & Dragons. That’s fair, given the game’s popularity, but that’s far from the whole yakisoba bun. There are tons of tabletop roleplaying games out there that skip the whole raid-the-dungeon, kill-the-monsters, and loot-the-corpses shtick to tell evocative stories about interesting characters in unique situations. This kind of game gets me excited, and the new Cowboy Bebop Roleplaying Game looks like it’ll lean heavily into story telling too.

What!? A Story-Driven Space Western!

Take a quick look through the playtest document and you won’t find lists of gear, character classes, or complicated rules for vehicles. There’s a place for games like that, don’t get me wrong. What the designers of the Cowboy Bebop Roleplaying Game are doing fundamentally right, however, is focusing on story. Every rule. Every mechanic. Every bit of playing advice Mana Project Studio — the game’s designers — included has its origins in the anime’s methods of telling a story.

So, there’s an emphasis on collaborative storytelling, which is guided by game mechanics that focus on pacing. The players will get to do more than some storytellers (or game masters) are used to, but that’s a good thing. I expect some players will take a few sessions to get the hang of it, but then you’ve got a fast way to tell exciting, character-driven stories with your friends.

How it Works

To achieve anything meaningful in the game you create a pool of regular six-sided dice, pulling from appropriate traits listed on your character sheet. These might come from your ship, such as Spike’s Swordfish II, or from other traits like Spike’s Jeet Kune Do. Other Bounty Hunters (the players) can help you out, but the more help you get increases the number of negative dice the storyteller gets to keep. Once you’ve rolled your dice pool, you count the number of Successes and compare them to the target number to see if you pass the test or not.

Negative dice bring Consequences, and, as the session draws closer to its climax, Consequences will come at you, hard and fast. The storyteller spends these Consequences to complicate the Scene, effectively making things more interesting.

Our Two Cents

The Cowboy Bebop Roleplaying Game looks like it’ll be loads of fun to play, but I don’t think it’s everyone’s game. Some D&D players might miss broken power builds that give them insanely high damage rolls, or lists of spells that they can exploit for laughs and chaos. That said, there’s a growing TTRPG fanbase that wants story-focused rules like this, no matter what the IP is. That same fanbase wants the D&D fan to try this type of game out, and I’m a card-carrying member. So, pick up the playtest rules and give it a go, then let us know what you think.

Personally, I’m excited.

Engage IRL Isekai Mode

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