Cowboy Bebop TTRPG Review – Easy Come, Easy Go…

As a fan of the 1998 critically acclaimed anime series Cowboy Bebop; I was thrilled about the opportunity to review the TTRPG based on the show. A successful Kickstarter campaign preceded the release of this game, and Mana Project Studios raised over 500 thousand dollars for the project.

If you don’t know what the Cowboy Bebop TV series is, let me sum it up for you. It is the year 2071, humanity has travelled the stars and colonized the solar system. The show is a space western, which follows the crew of the spaceship Bebop. Our protagonists are bounty hunters, or Cowboys, a nickname and the show’s namesake. They travel the solar system, collecting bounties, and trying to escape their troubled past. This is a very brief explanation, suffice to say, Cowboy Bebop is an amazing TV series and beloved by anime fans across the globe. If you haven’t seen the show, I can guarantee that this TTRPG is not for you. This is one for fans of the TV show, you could of course play the game anyway, but you are not the target audience of this game.

Game Review – Cowboy Bebop TTRPG

While preparing this review, I noticed that the Cowboy Bebop TTRPG is a hybrid system. It gets most of its inspiration from Blades in the Dark, and the Powered by the Apocalypse system. The designers mention this in their rule book, which is a nice touch. The game set’s out to be a rules light narrative system, where players create the story themselves with little input from the game master.

Players will take on the roles of bounty hunters, or BH as they call it in the book. Like the original characters of the anime; BH characters travel the solar system, hunting bounties; each with their own dark past. The game master is known as the big shot; for some reason, it isn’t abbreviated like the BH moniker is.

Gameplay sessions seek to recreate an episode from the anime. There is a bounty to catch, which the BH’s need to investigate. After gathering the necessary information, they hunt their target down. Finally, this will end in a confrontation with the target.

The Book

The PDF I received for this review came hyperlinked, and at a brief glance, it looks great. Almost all the art in the book, are screenshots from the Cowboy Bebop TV show. Which isn’t a problem, the problem is the poor use of space in the book. Some pages feature one image and around 5 lines of text. A massive waste of space. That said, the fonts and artwork is in keeping with the distinct Bebop style. The artists have created a very pretty rule book, despite containing a few errors.

Cowboy Bebop Rules

Ability scores and skill checks are not on the menu here. Instead, BH’s have traits, and use these for conducting tests. A d6 dice pool system, determines the results of tests. A test is for whenever a player wants to do something, where the result may end in a complication. Players may want to sneak past some guards, or intimidate an informant for information about their quarry. Traits pair with one of the five approaches, they are called; rock, dance, tango, blues, and jazz.

Whenever you conduct a test in the Cowboy Bebop TTRPG, you review which of the approaches your actions fall under. Rock is carrying out an action under pressure, or doing something cool. Dance is using great feats of stamina, or becoming the center of attention. Blues is using introspection, dealing with one’s past and or emotions. Tango is using your charisma to overcome an obstacle. Jazz is using your awareness to solve the problems before you.

The BH gets to pick almost anything as a trait, e.g. blue hair. This trait is then paired with one of the approaches; on the character sheet. Before I continue, if this seems vague or confusing to you, well, that is because it is. The test system in this game is not well explained at all, I had to re-read it a few times and run quite a few dummy scenarios in my head. The worst part is the names they use for the approaches. I get they wanted to maintain a musical theme, but this is as unintuitive as it comes. What does under pressure mean, anyway? You could make an argument for any action, that involves chasing a violent bounty target, means you are under pressure.

It doesn’t improve much there, I’m afraid. The game makes use of the clock system; an amazing mechanic, I first heard about when playing the Blades in the Dark TTRPG by John Harper. Cowboy bebop RPGs problem with clocks is, that the game overuses them. Want to advance the plot? Fill the clock. How do you illustrate failure? Use a clock. The players failed to fill the clock that would uncover the bounties secret? Give them another chance in the form of a clock. This makes every game session feel the same. Especially as a big shot, preparing sessions for this review.

Final Verdict on the Cowboy Bebop TTRPG

Going into this review, I really wanted to like the Cowboy Bebop TTRPG, I really did. The book is not well-organized, full of spelling mistakes, uses images to buff the page count, and the rules are not that great either. There is a skeleton of a good game here, and I am sad to say the Cowboy Bebop RPG isn’t a game I am likely to play again.

This game feels like it is trying too hard to pay tribute to be the TV show, and because of that it suffers. The game is for die hard Cowboy Bebop fans, and I still wouldn’t recommend it to them, either. If you are desperate for a TTRPG with a Cowboy Bebop feel, I would recommend you check out Orbital Blues instead. Thank you for reading my review, see you space cowboy.