If you've never watched the animated series The Clone Wars, a Star Wars series, then sometimes, if you're a fan of 'gonzo' Dungeons and Dragons, you're missing out. The latest free episode to watch is The Box.
I'll be doing some spoilers below so if you're not watching the show, there will be spoilers for that episode so read no further if you want no spoilers for this particular episode.
In this episode, our lone jedi Obie is in disguise as a bounty hunter. The Star Wars setting has a special place in its heart for bounty hunters. This hails back to the 2nd movie, The Empire Strikes Back and a classic line, "No disintegrations." where Darth Vader is speaking to a list of bounty hunters who, outside of one particular hunter, don't really do much.
Here though, these hunters, are assumed to be the best of the best of the worst of the bounty hunters for a very special mission but they have to earn this mission. To do so, they must overcome 'The Box' If you've ever seen the movie 'The Cube' or any of its sequels, you'll know what follows next. The hunters go into this death trap to prove their strength and are then treated to such threats as poison gas, fire, and walls that jut back and forth with what appear to be light sabers at the end of them. It's good fun stuff and should provide some quick visuals for those who like their dungeon crawls.
The other drama of the setting continues to build. The individuals like Bane, the bounty hunter, and Doku, the semi-leader of the Separatists force, continue to interact while another jedi looks to learn what happened to his mentor. These little slices of the setting are useful in connecting episodes from one to the next.
The Clone Wars is an excellent back drop for heroism, villainy and all the shades between.
Showing posts with label Bounty Hunter. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Bounty Hunter. Show all posts
Sunday, February 5, 2012
Wednesday, April 13, 2011
L is For Law
I AM THE LAW
Fifteen years in the academy
He was like no cadet they'd ever seen
A man so hard, his veins bleed ice
And when he speaks he never says it twice
They call him Judge, his last name is Dredd
So break the law, and you wind up dead
Truth and justice are what he's fighting for
Judge Dredd the man, he is the law
DROKK IT!
With gun and bike he rules the streets
And every perp he meets will taste defeat
Not even Death can overcome his might
Cause Dredd and Anderson, they won the fight
When the Sov's started the Apocalypse war
Mega-City was bombed to the floor
Dredd resisted, and the judges fought back
Crushed the Sov's with their counter-attack
DROKK IT!
Respect the badge - he earned it with his blood
Fear the gun - your sentence may be death because...
Chorus
I AM THE LAW!
And you won't fuck around no more - I AM THE LAW
I judge the rich, I judge the poor - I AM THE LAW
Commit a crime I'll lock the door - I AM THE LAW
Because in Mega-City... I AM THE LAW
In the cursed earth where mutants dwell
There is no law, just a living hell
Anarchy and chaos as the blood runs red
But this would change if it was up to Dredd
The book of law is the bible to him
And any crime committed is a sin
He keeps the peace with his law-giver
Judge, jury, and executioner
DROKK IT!
CRIME - The ultimate sin
Your iso-cube is waiting when he brings you in
LAW - It's what he stands for
Crime's his only enemy and he's going to war
CRIME - The ultimate sin
Your ISO-cube is waiting when he brings you in
LAW - It's what he stands for
Crime's his only enemy and he's going to war
Thank you Anthrax for that little bit of homage to Judge Dread.
In games, its often useful to know some of the basics of how the justice system works. In the 3.5 era, Atlas Games published Crime and Punishment. A nice hardcover the provided 3.5 mechanics for a variety of things that might come up in dealing with lawbreakers.
In books I'm reading at the moment, C. J. Sansom's Matthew Shardlake stars in five books. I've just received book 4, Revelation, from good old Amazon.com. Some of the things that make Matthew a good lawyer, the trust others put in him, his dodged determination to discover the truth of things, his innate curiosity,his relatively corrupt free methodology of handing issues, and his friendship with others who reinforce those good things about him, make him an individual that others seek out time and time again.
When I was a younger man, Bard Games, a company that produced the Atlantis Trilogy, had three handbooks for use with AD&D; The Complete Spellcaster, the Complete Alchemist, and the Compleat Adventurer. That last book had a class called the hunter, and under that, several variants including the bounty hunter.
This individual was one that had its own material including how much to charge, how to capture your prey, and other neat little bits. It wasn't necessarily the first time I had seen such a use, as one of the Best of Dragon magazines had a NPC version, but that Hunter version by Bard Games was neat.
And further in terms of hunting down the villains of a setting, the Clone Wars is filled with various Bounty Hunters. They make a quick way of throwing out a group of individuals that can toss a monkey wrench into things if a situation gets out of control.
The Law is something that most players in a hard core fantasy setting aren't necessarily going to worry about, but on the other hand, it's not something that needs to be the end if they are captured. For example, what about a campaign variant around the Dirty Dozen? Here the characters are captured and 'executed' and can either work for the state that captured them, or be sent to their death for real. It's a trick used by both Raymond Feist in his Demon War series, and also used in the Warhammer setting for the trilogy Blackhearts.
The Law should be something that even as its worst, can be turned into another adventure.
Fifteen years in the academy
He was like no cadet they'd ever seen
A man so hard, his veins bleed ice
And when he speaks he never says it twice
They call him Judge, his last name is Dredd
So break the law, and you wind up dead
Truth and justice are what he's fighting for
Judge Dredd the man, he is the law
DROKK IT!
With gun and bike he rules the streets
And every perp he meets will taste defeat
Not even Death can overcome his might
Cause Dredd and Anderson, they won the fight
When the Sov's started the Apocalypse war
Mega-City was bombed to the floor
Dredd resisted, and the judges fought back
Crushed the Sov's with their counter-attack
DROKK IT!
Respect the badge - he earned it with his blood
Fear the gun - your sentence may be death because...
Chorus
I AM THE LAW!
And you won't fuck around no more - I AM THE LAW
I judge the rich, I judge the poor - I AM THE LAW
Commit a crime I'll lock the door - I AM THE LAW
Because in Mega-City... I AM THE LAW
In the cursed earth where mutants dwell
There is no law, just a living hell
Anarchy and chaos as the blood runs red
But this would change if it was up to Dredd
The book of law is the bible to him
And any crime committed is a sin
He keeps the peace with his law-giver
Judge, jury, and executioner
DROKK IT!
CRIME - The ultimate sin
Your iso-cube is waiting when he brings you in
LAW - It's what he stands for
Crime's his only enemy and he's going to war
CRIME - The ultimate sin
Your ISO-cube is waiting when he brings you in
LAW - It's what he stands for
Crime's his only enemy and he's going to war
Thank you Anthrax for that little bit of homage to Judge Dread.
In games, its often useful to know some of the basics of how the justice system works. In the 3.5 era, Atlas Games published Crime and Punishment. A nice hardcover the provided 3.5 mechanics for a variety of things that might come up in dealing with lawbreakers.
In books I'm reading at the moment, C. J. Sansom's Matthew Shardlake stars in five books. I've just received book 4, Revelation, from good old Amazon.com. Some of the things that make Matthew a good lawyer, the trust others put in him, his dodged determination to discover the truth of things, his innate curiosity,his relatively corrupt free methodology of handing issues, and his friendship with others who reinforce those good things about him, make him an individual that others seek out time and time again.
When I was a younger man, Bard Games, a company that produced the Atlantis Trilogy, had three handbooks for use with AD&D; The Complete Spellcaster, the Complete Alchemist, and the Compleat Adventurer. That last book had a class called the hunter, and under that, several variants including the bounty hunter.
This individual was one that had its own material including how much to charge, how to capture your prey, and other neat little bits. It wasn't necessarily the first time I had seen such a use, as one of the Best of Dragon magazines had a NPC version, but that Hunter version by Bard Games was neat.
And further in terms of hunting down the villains of a setting, the Clone Wars is filled with various Bounty Hunters. They make a quick way of throwing out a group of individuals that can toss a monkey wrench into things if a situation gets out of control.
The Law is something that most players in a hard core fantasy setting aren't necessarily going to worry about, but on the other hand, it's not something that needs to be the end if they are captured. For example, what about a campaign variant around the Dirty Dozen? Here the characters are captured and 'executed' and can either work for the state that captured them, or be sent to their death for real. It's a trick used by both Raymond Feist in his Demon War series, and also used in the Warhammer setting for the trilogy Blackhearts.
The Law should be something that even as its worst, can be turned into another adventure.
Saturday, February 5, 2011
Brunner The Bounty Hunter by C. L. Werner
I know I'm bouncing all over the place with books. At the start of The Monks of War, deep in The Religion, and finished the first short story in Brunner, not to mention whatever RPG books I'm messing with as well as various digital comics through Marvel.
But I love me some bounty hunters. One of the first times I remember them in AD&D was a Non-Player Class in Dragon. They loved to pull that. Here's a class so awesome and overpowered, but so limited in scope, that it makes a great NPC but should never be used as a player class. My other reference to them is from The Complete Adventurer, a book from Bard Games, the people who did the Atlantis trilogy, by the guy who later went on to do Talislantia. I owned at least two different printings of the game, one with a green outline, and one with the solid green border as seen here at Troll And Toad.
Bounty Hunters, like Mercenaries, to me, make perfect sense as a default for an adventuring party. The initial goals are already there. The targets of said goals allow the GM to pull an enemy of the week deal and allow the players to go where ever they need to in order to find and capture their foes.
In terms of Brunner, the opening sequence has one part that makes sense in a setting where so much relies on having a skilled operative.
"I agree the Tileans would certainly discover an armed force sometime before they themselves were in peril. But a single man? One man could discdover their hiding place, infiltrate it and recover the child."
And there's one perfectly valid reason why sometimes a small group of adventurers may be better than sending in an army. And of course the other reason? Unlike a standing army you may need in a few weeks that you could suffer serious losses on should you attack the goblin caves, the mercenaries are 100% disposable! It's a double win.
But I love me some bounty hunters. One of the first times I remember them in AD&D was a Non-Player Class in Dragon. They loved to pull that. Here's a class so awesome and overpowered, but so limited in scope, that it makes a great NPC but should never be used as a player class. My other reference to them is from The Complete Adventurer, a book from Bard Games, the people who did the Atlantis trilogy, by the guy who later went on to do Talislantia. I owned at least two different printings of the game, one with a green outline, and one with the solid green border as seen here at Troll And Toad.
Bounty Hunters, like Mercenaries, to me, make perfect sense as a default for an adventuring party. The initial goals are already there. The targets of said goals allow the GM to pull an enemy of the week deal and allow the players to go where ever they need to in order to find and capture their foes.
In terms of Brunner, the opening sequence has one part that makes sense in a setting where so much relies on having a skilled operative.
"I agree the Tileans would certainly discover an armed force sometime before they themselves were in peril. But a single man? One man could discdover their hiding place, infiltrate it and recover the child."
And there's one perfectly valid reason why sometimes a small group of adventurers may be better than sending in an army. And of course the other reason? Unlike a standing army you may need in a few weeks that you could suffer serious losses on should you attack the goblin caves, the mercenaries are 100% disposable! It's a double win.
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