More about running a Cowboy Bebop game! One of the most important

>I'll drop some advice from the last thread in here.

I guess first thing to do is to look at how the series was structures and how well you can translated.

The Bebop crew always starts out on the brink to starvation, they find an opportunity for money and follow it (every member in their own way) to earn their next meal.
They potentially meet new people and help them solve their problems but almost always they end up just as poor as they started, even if they did the right thing in the end.

What translates well is the episodic nature and the premise, just throw them a few possible leads and they are bound to take one of them. It will always be clear what their goals will be.

Another thing is the constant return to the status quo, it could be frustrating for the players to never really get anywhere and the standard solution would be to just let them earn money through the missions for better gear and ships instead of making them not earn anything, but if they are completely invested into trying to get the original Cowboy Bebop feeling and truly believe that the journey is the reward then there is no harm in keeping them starving, always desperate for new work.

When I think of themes then I guess the biggest one would be about being haunted by the past, almost all Bebop members had a difficult past that they were trying to forget/run away from/remember.
Especially in Spikes case it came back repeatedly and forced him to drop what he is doing and deal with it.
This could be an interesting to include into the game, every player has a backstory they'd only share with their closest people, stories about regrets and what ifs and other stuff they'd rather forget forever.
Occasionally ghosts from the past come back to haunt them, possibly interrupting missions and requiring the players to share their past with the team to get their help with it.

>advice #2

there are two facts that are indispensable to do this right:

1. All players need a tragic and unresolved backstory. This backstory must be ideally randomly assigned from a table; to prevent Marysueitis, but vague enough so they can customize them with their own details.
On every odd bountyhunter mission, there is always a lead to advance one of the PCs plot.

2. The bandits themselves must have good backstories themselves. I want to write a list of them, or instead a d12 table of bandit generation. It must have 12 each of: Names; Crimes (or assumed crimes); Main skill; Motives for crime (in the series, most of the criminals have their motives, which makes them human. PCs must be tempted sometimes to let them go), and an Ace up their sleeve (a twist to fuck PCs in the last moment). Also a randomly assigned bounty (fluff the details depending on the bounty: if is too high, maybe he's got a well-provided gang or pissed off an important man. Too low? maybe the law is underestimating him)

It would be cool that PCs can sometimes choose which prey is best to hunt. Maybe they know a lot about one guy, but the prize is too low, and there is another who they only know the name and the prize is high, but they do not know which kind of dangers they pose.

>>51458324
I think you're getting onto a slippery slope of micromanagement. Either you force players to manage their money to such an extent that it becomes unfun, or you're forced to handwave it away and that defeats the while point.

Honestly, I would make/use a system that uses money as experience. If the players want to advance/get new toys/ Upgrade current toys/ whatever, they need to make money which is then spent on advancement.

It keeps the game about money, without the tedious tracking of every day expenses.

>>51458324
Edge of the Empire's Obligation mechanic is probably one of the most elegant ways I've seen debt and finances integrated into the system.

Start each episode/arc/mission what-have-you with your players having exhausted all their funds from the previous adventure.

Make it so they receive exp equivalent to the amount of time they were living it up off the last bounty.

Something like that? Feels like it kind of removes all pressure though.

Can I run this in Lasers and Feelings?

>>51459133
You could probably run a game of Roman Courtroom drama in AdEva if you tried hard enough.

Though seriously, Lasers and Feelings might not be 100% shit for running bebop

>>51459392
Now I want roman Evangelion
>Sinius, get in the Colossus

A good system for Cowboy Bebop is Cyberpunk 2020. Is represent lethality of combat really well, and fits perfectly with many themes, such as always being short on cash, and each of the main characters fit very easily into a class from the game.

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Rolled 18, 5 = 23 (2d20)

I'll just leave this here