E.N. Mini-Games - With A Bullet

[HellHound]

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This product is a supplementary adventure for EN Publishing's Gun-Fu: Balletic Ballistics mini-game.

Boss Tanaka is not a man who minces his words. His deal is offered in simple, direct terms. "My man in Lombok is Tony Ashgar. Once you're through customs, get a cab to his bar, the Highlight. All the airport cabbies know it. Tony'll pay you there."

Now, riding in a taxicab just as Tanaka suggested, the whole thing seems simple enough. Smuggle medical goods past Customs and the scowling but insufficiently diligent guards, and then a week's holiday sampling the delights of this dubious metropolis. The bags were placed in your hands, handed over to baggage check, claimed at Lombok International and loaded into the trunk of the first available taxi. The taxi now crawls slowly through streets choked with vehicles and pedestrians, scooters and heavy trucks competing for space. All around the noise is deafening, the smell indescribable, and you can't help but with the taxi had air conditioning. All the same, it seems like time to relax, to celebrate. With the goods safely stowed in your backpacks in the trunk, the hard part is already over.

Until that loonie comes surging out of the crowd, swinging a satchel in one hand. A satchel that he releases into the air, and all you can do is watch as it arcs straight towards your open windows...

With A Bullet is a Gun-Fu adventure for 5th-level heroes. You'll need the Gun-Fu: Balletic Ballistics game in order to make perfect sense of everything in here, so go buy it now if you haven't already. It's cheap. And easy!

Our heroes find themselves in a taxicab on a crowded street in a troubled nation. They have entered into an agreement to smuggle medical supplies to a local dealer named Tony, and so far all has gone well. All ceases to go well, however, when the taxicab is targeted by a random terrorist bomber and the crowd around them erupts in gunfire. They are forced to make their way through streets crowded with suspicious military forces, and must use their wits to avoid capture and summary execution.

Fortunately, this Tony they seek is a sympathetic sort, especially after pursuing forces break into his bar, resulting in a pitched gun battle in true Gun-Fu style. By this time our heroes are no doubt ready to leave this treacherous place, and Tony is only to happy to oblige them. Unfortunately, Tony has himself been betrayed, by the sinister figure who first hired our heroes, and more bullets must fly before the dust can settle.

This adventure features six primary encounters, several of which can occur in any order (or not at all). Of course PCs are a contrary lot, so the adventure is flexible enough to accommodate multiple scenarios. Make sure you read each encounter over carefully and have the whole story in your head before you start running this adventure. This is not a location-based adventure, so you won't find detailed maps or keyed descriptions. A Gun-Fu game is more concerned with drama and vast amounts of ordinance, anyway, right?

Well, it should be. This adventure is meant to not only show up the rules of Gun-Fu, but to provide some inspiration on HOW this game is best played. You'll discover as you read through the adventure that many encounters feature indeterminate numbers of opponents, and indeed even the very "plot" of the adventure is not spelled out clearly here -- WHY the bad guys are out to kill the good guys will actually depend on the actions of the players. Keep in mind that a Gun-Fu adventure is not primarily a static challenge for the players to overcome -- it is a stage upon which cool things can happen.

This is your stage. Get cool...

 

[Tinner]

With a Bullet: A Gun-Fu Adventure
Author: Corey Reid
Publisher: EN Publishing
Format: Fully bookmarked b&w PDF, with color cover
Size: 17 pages
Price: $0.99
What you get: One PDF file

Note: This review was completed using a copy provided as part of The Big E.N. Publishing Summer Release and Review Redux!

It has been said that there are two types of good game masters. Those that are complete control freaks - the kind that meticulously track every aspect of their game and swamp the players with detail. And then there are the Gm’s that are masters of winging it. They do very little planning, and run a freeform, devil-may-care kind of game where putting on a good show is at least as important as good planning.
That second kind of GM is going to have a real field day running With a Bullet, the first adventure released for the En Publishing mini-game Gun-Fu.

As is fitting for an adventure for a very quirky game, With a Bullet is a very quirky adventure. Never mind those adventures that offer multiple hooks and scaling advice for GM’s to manipulate the adventure to fit their campaign. With a Bullet dispense with such formalities, and gets right into what the Gun-Fu system does best – action!

The entire adventure can be, and is succinctly summed up very few words.. To quote Reid’s introduction “Our heroes find themselves in a taxicab on a crowded street in a troubled nation. They have entered into an agreement to smuggle medical supplies to a local dealer named Tony, and so far all has gone well. All ceases to go well.”
There’s a little more than that. But in essence, that’s the sum of the plot. Clearly, the GM is going to be called on to flesh this adventure out with more details.
Ad honestly, that’s a good thing. Gun-Fu is a mini-game. It’s a bare-bones framework for telling a specific kind of story. It’s not the kind of game that requires intricately detailed adventures, because each Gm is probably going to build a different style of game. From this initial setup, it’s easy to see that With a Bullet can accommodate man styles of game. He PC’s could all be gangsters and underworld types, or they could just as easily be undercover police. This adventure could take place in Hong Kong, Singapore, Taiwan, or any other setting. By keeping details to a bare minimum, Reid has ensured that With a Bullet can be enjoyed by the widest variety of groups possible.

The adventure itself consists of a series of six encounters that can be run in almost any order. The initial complication to the smuggling job introduced in the setup is brilliant. The PC’s are minding their own business in a taxicab, ready to make their illicit delivery, when a rogue terrorist tosses an explosive device in the window of their cab. In some games, that kind of setup would feel like a railroad. It would seem like a cheap attempt to kill PC’s and destroy their gear. In a Gun-Fu game, it’s a perfectly valid start to the action. With the Gun-Fu damage save system, this early in the game, before PC’s have exhausted their Panache Points, they are likely to be able to walk away from even a ground zero explosion. And the genre is rife with characters that burn through weapon after weapon. This isn’t D&D where every +1 sword is ruthlessly hoarded. This is Gun-Fu where shell casings rain like water, and a duffel bag full of guns is standard equipment. It’s a novel way to start a game, and it works.

Without spoiling the adventure, suffice it to say that the remaining encounters are all quite similar, and just as in genre. There are the usual double-crosses and betrayals, plenty of gun battles, mistaken identity and much more. The encounters are all appropriate for the recommended 5th level characters.
The only encounter that left me cold was Smash & Grab, which sees the PC’s attacked while shopping. For some unknown reason, military forces decide that firing a machine gun at some shoppers sounds like a great idea, and proceed to do so. Don’t get me wrong, it’s a great scene, full of action and explosions. But it doesn’t do much to advance what little plot the adventure has. Furthermore players being what they are, they’re likely to want to take the military machine gun for themselves. It’s a potentially game-breaking weapon that will either badly weaken the PC’s if they fight and lose, or greatly strengthen the PC’s if they somehow manage to abscond with the big gun.

The adventure concludes in inimitable Gun-Fu style with a gunfight to the death onboard a cargo ship. As befits a violent mini-game, this final chapter is appropriately titled “And Then Everyone Dies”

Conclusion: With a Bullet does a good job of illustrating the kinds of action-packed adventures that the Gun-Fu mini-game was designed to tell. The adventure itself is left wide open and absolutely will require some serious “winging it” to be playable for any group. I see this as a strength, rather than a weakness. Considering that this adventure is the same size as the Gun-Fu mini-game itself, the price is definitely right, and for a GM who needs a little more help designing adventures that fit the genre, With a Bullet is right on target.