Lawman: A Roleplaying Game About Interstellar Bounty Hunters And Shooting People For Money
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The Lawman RPG Core Rulebook!
Lawman is a tabletop roleplaying game set in the far distant future year of AC 20406 (Nobody remembers what the AC stands for¸ nor does it really matter.) in the explored Galactic Core of Space.
Old Urf¸ as it was known¸ and its originating systems have been lost to time¸ and now¸ pretty much everybody carries on like it never really existed¸ nor does it really matter at this point.
Enjoy a map of the 800 billion worlds in the Galactic Core¸ each populated by meatpeople¸ cyborgs¸ mutants and robits.
Cartographer's Note: Not to scale.
The descendants of humanity as we once knew it rose to near-transcendent heights of success¸ achieving wonders and things that we couldn't even begin to theorize throughout our millennia of existence - only to get ridiculously bored with our god-slaying scientific endeavors¸ and eventually fall into the pratfalls of another pseudo-dark age. (Who knew?)
When science and nerdy stuff fails¸ people regress back to the simpler¸ primal behaviors¸ such as 'being dumb' and 'often doin' crimes.' Such as the situation 20 years ago¸ when the last vestiges of idyllic utopian living were completely steamrolled to the sound of uneducated slobs fucking up the works for the rest of society.
As the looting and bedlam rage on¸ the local police forces¸ wracked with their own corruption and/or hopelessly outnumbered and outgunned¸ are nearly powerless to affect the situation at large. Things are bad.
Fortunately¸ corporate interests have our back¸ once again¸ good common folk. The Sirius Hypercorporation has invested a good share of last year's profits into an excellent marketing and branding campaign and has created a freelance bounty hunter program called LAWMAN. (You've seen the commercials.)
If Lawman megastar and legendary paid spokebot Big Texas says it's good¸ who are you to judge?
Willing to hire literally almost anybody off the streets (with a comprehensive background and psychological screening¸ of course) to be employed as a badge-toting¸ no-nonsense takin' son of a gun ready to operate as an independently liable¸ semi-competent¸ part-time crime enforcement officer.
Think of a (trademarked business of instant food delivery service) driver¸ except they've been given the authority to arrest perps.
When you're a LAWMAN¸ you get your own ship (registered privately under the company to you¸ Gud help you if you lose it.)¸ your own team to work with¸ and an infinite list of baddies worth tracking down through all five sectors of the Galactic Core¸ each with a hefty price on their head for their malicious crimes. Not to mention the requisite paperwork to cross interstellar lines and get away with nearly anything you need to do in order to capture your quarry and bring them back to a hoosegow.
Things are pretty good¸ as long as you maintain employment¸ that is. Otherwise¸ that friendly crew of yours might stand to make a buck off you while you sleep. Or worse.
In short¸ Lawman exists to give players access to an easy to construct¸ overconfident badass with zero sense of impostor syndrome as you explore the cosmos¸ looking to break noses¸ bust kneecaps¸ crack ribs¸ fracture skulls¸ scream obscenities (and receive)¸ and haul in riff-raff for the proverbial fat stack of cash-money that everybody needs for bills and luxuries and whatnot.
And if that doesn't happen¸ the worst thing that can happen is a multitude of grisly¸ grotesque¸ awful ways to get killed on the soil of backwater worlds or in the fringes of deep space.
LAWMAN is a zany science-fiction/pseudo western tabletop RPG that's intended to be tongue-in-cheek and designed for quick¸ throw-away space adventures or a steady¸ dedicated campaign.
You drop in the space boots of a barely trained new hire of your own design¸ with a head full of loosely correct guidelines and operation procedures¸ in a universe full of other bizarre¸ unbalanced people who happened to be just as misinformed and potentially dangerous as yourself.
Except that at the end of the day¸ you are playing "the good guys."
The good guys¸ in this instance¸ go after the multitude of bad guys that exist in the known Galactic Core. (Former Lawmen who become recently unemployed¸ even those amongst their crew¸ also run the risk of being apprehended.) You use whatever means necessary (and within reason¸ otherwise risking termination) to accomplish your goal of hunting down space trash¸ get paid on their heads¸ dead or alive¸ and repeat.
It can be played with 2 to 5 other people with an entry-level understanding of what a tabletop RPG is. (Big bonuses if they like Sci-Fi and/or pop culture garbage.)
All of these people (save for one) are a crew of Lawmen¸ out with a similar goal¸ but easily self-motivated enough to backstab¸ betray and otherwise ruin each other if it means additional power or prestige from the company at the end of the day.
The one player who is not part of the crew runs the story¸ organizes the random menagerie of events and bad people and things that encounter the crew - in a role called the Direct Manager (or DM).
The DM creates stories and events based on the responses of the crew's reactions in the form of storytelling. They give the crew challenges¸ sudden plot twists¸ interesting story points¸ craft interesting adversaries¸ and also reasons to laugh¸ relax¸ or adversely be nervous for the safety of their characters and belongings¸ and - the kind of fun that your semi-regular Friday night tabletop RPG deserves to be.
All the players and DM need are a single twenty-sided dice¸ a sheet of paper (or have some of the included character sheets printed off¸ but even index cards will work.) and that's really it. It's designed to be incredibly pick-up-and-go friendly for even the most novice of players once you understand the core rules.
Ex. A roleplaying session in action.
Lawman was conceptualized ages (fifteen years¸ actually) ago¸ as something that 'would be cool if I could make it¸ but I don't know how.' So¸ for a while¸ it sat as notes and hopes of becoming a game.
Fortunately¸ in times of COVID-19 isolation and extreme boredom¸ the idea was revisited¸ and a stack of hand-scrawled index cards and copious amounts of notes somehow became a written and illustrated tabletop roleplaying system crafted entirely by myself¸ ready to share with the world.
*Warning. LAWMAN may or may not cure your own crippling diabetes. Contact your local physician.
Lawman was inspired by some of the following things¸ and if you also like these things¸ you'll probably enjoy this game:
Cowboy Bebop. (because it's great without saying any more.) Trigun. (because it's great without saying any more. ) Outlaw Star. (because it's great without saying any more. ) Borderlands. (one at the time¸ although TWO really came and improved on it¸ and I'm not ready to talk about my feelings on three¸ yet.) Firefly. (because people still enjoy a single season of incomplete television twenty years later and for good reasons.) Robocop. (for ultraviolence and the seething 80s satire.) Judge Dredd. (Comics. and 2012. Same as above¸ and we're gonna ignore the Stallone movie for the most part.) Idiocracy. (yes¸ gets thrown around a lot¸ but it's probably the direction we're going as a society and a perfect representation of the humor. President Camacho is the perfect example of a Lawman character.) and an old parody RPG that five of you may remember called HoL from Black Dog Games. (Mostly for the humor and style.)
A completed Lawman character¸ ready to go!
The Bulletmancer and Thingfixer are two archetypes of possible characters you can play in Lawman!
The game mechanics are designed to work simply¸ for people who want to get into a game without reading 80 chapters of rules¸ and constructed with a focus on ease.
Lawman is powered by a system I've created from scratch called CF20 (short for Critical Failure 20)¸ and runs off a check with a single d20 against a target number to resolve and succeed at an action¸ with difficulties ranging from Easy to Impossible. Your DM declares the difficulty of the skill using one of the descriptors¸ and you roll for it (or explain why you think you might have an easier time with it based on an acquired skill. They then make the call and adjust if they think it also makes sense.)
CF20 also has the flexibility for players to create the kind of characters they want¸ with the kind of aptitudes and detriments they establish as a cooperative process with their DM. There's no levels or predefined classes. You come up with what you want¸ the way that you would with other minimalist games. The system is designed to have caveats to prevent overpowered manipulation of it¸ as the DM has the final say on what can be approved¸ but is open and only limited by the player's imagination.
Creating a Lawman is a simple process that can take only a few minutes¸ involving naming them¸ having a preferred weapon type (and name for their weapon)¸ and coming up with some non-combat-related skills of what you want your character to be good at. (ex. "Pretty okay at computers."¸ "Can dismantle toasters and reconstruct them from scratch."¸ "Never forgets a face." etc.)