BHB has officially started shipping out. Still waiting on the first order to come in but I shipped out the copies I am contractually obligated to send out. It also includes the review copies to IPR so look for BHB there soon. Also I have been informed that my printers catalog (which includes BHB now) is available at Amazon.com but it may take a while for it to cycle itself on there.
Good news for BHB fans across the pond. I am paperwork away from getting UK wholesale distribution which means that a sister printer in the UK will have access to the digital files and allow for hopefully cheaper shipping fees. I am trying.
Anyways also be on the look out for the “New Year New Career in Bounty Hunting” sale which will be going on soon. BHB for $10, can’t beat that. Sale should start in the next week or so and run for about a week or so. WIll have more posted when I get closer to launching that sale.
Thats about it for now. On a personal note things may slow down a bit I started a 60 hour work week and that doesn’t include my time in the HJP offices nor my tiem over at Kore RPG. I will post soon on updates for HJP products coming out as well as BHB development.
OK this is the unofficial official announcement of BHB in Print. We still have one small revision on the cover which is being worked on and should be finished by Monday. Which means I am going to start taking orders on this Now. If you click on the HJP Print Catalog page you can purchase BHB using Pay Pal or click BHB Print Edition. We will have a more formal Press RElease probably next week… But Feel free to start buying…
Hope everyone has been having a good End of the year Holiday’s. I know I have. I’ve been taking some time off as it were for family and friends, but I am still here and getting things done. As of today BHB is at the printer and I am awaiting a proof to show up in my mail box. Once approved BHB will be available in print form…
Thatas the big news and I will be back soon with additional news on when and where you can get BHB.
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Faster than a bounty fleeing Pluto, Heroic Journey Publishing is proud to release Bounty Head Bebop: Jacked Up! the first supplement for Bounty Head Bebop The Role Playing Game. Bounty Head Bebop: Jacked Up! lets the good guys be better and the bad guys even more crooked with new rules for cybernetics and cyber implants.
Players and game masters alike will have lots of new edges and flaws when building their characters and NPCs and lots of new powers to make catching bounties easier.
Speaking through his new cyber-loudspeaker, Heroic Journey founder Mark Reed expressed his excitement over Bounty Head Bebop: Jacked Up! “Jacked UP is our first supplement to Bounty Head Bebop and I am happy to see this continuation of the series, plus it adds really cool cybernetic rock n’roll to an already jam session of greatness.”
Also, part of Heroic Journey Publishing’s weapon of choice when it comes to games has been putting together attractively laid out books with brilliant artwork. Though only a 9-page PDF, Bounty Head Bebop: Jacked Up! continues this trend with a stunning cover and good art throughout.
Find out more about Heroic Journey Publishing at http://www.heroic-journey.net/ and more about Bounty Head Bebop at http://www.bountyheadbebop.com/
ABOUT MARK REED
Reed is a professional layout and design artist and a long-time player of role playing games. He has done layout on several of Atlas Games’ Northern Crown D20 product line and has done playtesting for them as well. Reed has been a podcaster since 2006 and is now a member of Kore New Media.
ABOUT HEROIC JOURNEY PUBLISHING
Bounty Head Bebop is the first game to be published by Heroic Journey Publishing to help game designers. They offer a full suite of editing, graphics, illustration, and layout services to any game creator who needs help and advice publishing their game. Read more about the company at http://www.heroic-journey.net.
Buy Jacked Up at RPGNow
Good day all. I hope you had a great Turkey day and are gearin up for the rest of the Holiday season. As for us here at Heroic Journey Publishing things are looking better then we can have hoped.
Bounty Head Bebop is selling well. We are waiting on the reviews to start being posted but we are encouraged by some of the early initial responses to the book. I am also excited by some of the people who will be reviewing the book. I will let you guys know when they start dropping.
BHB: Cybernetics. This PDF product will be available soon I am just waiting on art to finish the product. This pdf will be around 10 pages and will add special optional rules to allow cybernetics into Bounty Head Bebop. I am excited by the initial art as well.
BHB Hexslingers: This is a upcoming larger RUle book filled with optional rules to add Magic to your Setting if you want. This is going to be out early next year, as is BHB:Starships a collection of cool unique ships, plus rules to create your own.
We have several full adventures planned for the upcoming year 4-6 in all. Look for them to be released throughout the first half of next year. Also with BHB look on our Website for adventure seeds to start appearing soon. Plus starting soon will be your favorite Bonnie & Clyde Show giving you a list of the universes scum on some of your favorite podcasts.
On the Not Bounty Head Bebop front, we are working on a second line of RPGs with a very talented writer. Things are still under wraps a bit but I have a feeling this will be a great new game coming out in the first quarter of next year.
Thats about it for now. Thank you to all of you who have bought Bounty Head Bebop already and a Big thank you to all the fans who have given us a chance. Please go check out our forums for all sorts of free goodies and a chance to share your adventures across the universe.
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For Immediate Release
November 23, 2008 (St. Paul, MN) – The Universe is a dangerous place, filled with criminals of every shape, size, and specialty. Smugglers, gun runners, thieves, murders, and worse are choking society and making it hard for law abiding citizens to go to work and live their lives. But what do you care? You’re not a law abiding citizen. You’re a bounty hunter.
Get ready as Heroic Journey Publishing releases Bounty Head Bebop, a Far modern science fiction game about the universe’s worst bounties and the bounty hunters who catch them. Using a modified version of the OGL D20 ruleset called the Inverted 20 or I-20 system, Bounty Head Bebop is a fast paced game with an emphasis on cinematic, high action role playing.
“The system integrates well with a cinematic flair while being somewhat familiar to more traditional gamers,” said Mark Reed, founder of Heroic Journey Publishing. “It feels like a quality hybrid game, something that isn’t overly rules light, but definitely rules quick.”
The game supports a number of different play styles with rules for psychics and space combat included. Bounty Head Bebop also comes with a large number of weapons, skills, and edges for players to choose from so that they can make each character and their gear unique. There is also a sample adventure included in the book to get gamers up and running quickly.
Initially, Bounty Head Bebop will be released as a PDF available for purchase from RPGNow and other One Book Shelf sites. Within the next few weeks, Heroic Journey Publishing will have a print copy version of Bounty Head Bebop. “The PDF is coming out first because we switched printers at the last minute. The price per book was much lower and it will actually make the quality of the book much better I believe,” Reed said.
Read more about Bounty Head Bebop at http://www.bountyheadbebop.com or purchase it at RPGNow.com.
ABOUT HEROIC JOURNEY PUBLISHING
Bounty Head Bebop is the first game to be published by Heroic Journey Publishing, a publishing company set up by Mark Reed and Zac Ashmore to help game designers. They offer a full suite of editing, graphics, illustration, and layout services to any game creator who needs help and advice publishing their game. Read more about the company at www.heroic-journey.net.
# # #
Press Contact
Chris Perrin
At this point, the group has been chasing after Genny Putkof, a thief of milk purification products. No one knows where she is, but they know her brother is a Redjack, a member of a street gang in the city-state of Little Jersey on Mars.
After interrogating a goon and leaving him in a bad situation, the gang goes to the Interstellar House of Pancakes in Redjack territory. Here the bounty hunter draws bad attention to himself by wearing rival gang colors while the kid makes friends by giving out gift cards. This leads to the group splitting again. The kid and the bounty hunter follow the Redjacks so they can find their hideout’s location.
After they discover the location of the hideout, the group is attacked by another gang called the Steel Rats. However, the gangers quickly realize they have more to gain from being allies with the player characters than enemies, especially because the Redjacks are looking to put a beat down on the Steel Rats.
Also, to continue the theme of characters and their side businesses, the gun smuggler realizes he can make a lot of money by enlisting the gangers to sell for him. Capitalism at its finest.
The Steel Rats and the player characters go to the appointed place to fight with the Redjacks. However, almost instantly, the psychic and the bounty hunter locate Wingman, Genny’s brother. Using a little Luck, the kid maces and captures Wingman and the group escapes the combat right as the Steel Rats use grenades to make the streets run red with Redjack blood.
After a brief persuasion with fists, Wingman is convinced he needs to give up the location of his sister, which turns out to be a local strip club. Despite the sizeable bounty placed on her head, she decides not to run and goes with the group, who are now far, far, far richer than when they started.
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One of the interesting things about the session is that later, one of the players described the Bounty Head Bebop system as “Its not rules light per se, more like Rules Quick” which publisher Mark Reed felt described the system perfectly.
Another Quote came after the game… “As a point of gaming: I am traditionally known for hating to roll up new characters…. Last night in fairly short time I was able to gen a character that was both useful and fun. To me, and my style of playing, that says a lot” - From one of the Players
The social worker seems nice enough, but he is not being as forthcoming as the group would like, so they try a little intimidation on the poor guy. Apparently, all he needs is a little heat, because the next thing the group knows, he is spilling everything he can think of about Genny and her brother’s involvement in a gang of thugs called the Redjacks on Mars. While the social worker is singing everything he knows, the kid quietly walks around his office, filling her backpack with expensive baubles.
Also, during this time, the bounty of Genny mysteriously goes from 450,000 writ to 5,000,000!
Next, the group travels to Little Jersey, where they split up. The private investigator travels alone through Redjack territory, hoping he can find Genny. Meanwhile, the merc, in a utility vehicle, and the bounty hunter on a motor bike realize they are being followed. They give each other the signal and start a brief, deadly car chase which ends with the merc and the gun smuggler blowing their purser’s car out of existence. This, however, has the unfortunate side effect of slamming flaming wreckage into the bounty hunter’s motorbike, who is none the worse for wear.
There was a second goon involved in the car chase, and unluckily for him, he survived. This led to a quick conversation about how the goon was expendable and that it was in his best interest to talk. Quickly enough, the goon told the group where to find the Redjacks and how to meet with them. For his troubles, he was kicked in the family jewels, maced, stripped to his underwear, and was giving a sandwich board saying that he hated gangs… in the middle of gang territory.
This leads to a meeting with the Redjacks and an alliance with the Steel Rats, but that is a story for tomorrow.
As a roleplaying game, it is important to know what type of adventures you can have playing Bounty Head Bebop. The following posts are the result of an actual session played with a single GM and five players. Before getting into the action, let’s meet the five characters around which the action revolved.
The bounty hunting team consisted of a bounty hunter, a private investigator, a mercenary, a psychic child, and a gun smuggler whose interest in the group was primarily financial. They were a bit of a motley crew, none of whom seemed to be particularly interested in due process or following the law. No, this group was more about getting in, getting the job done, and getting out alive to collect the bounty.
Perhaps the most interesting character of the game was the psychic kid because her back story was the most unique of the group. She was a former bounty that the group had tracked down. However, instead of turning her in, they decided that her ability to read minds was worth far more than the bounty they would collect. So they made her one of them.
However, her shot at staying out of the penal colony on Pluto, or worse, did nothing to reform her. Instead, she used the somewhat legitimate profession of bounty hunting to give her opportunities for less legitimate activities, usually theft.
These are the types of characters and stories that will come out of a game of Bounty Head Bebop. There are the characters you would expect (the bounty hunter and the private investigator, for example), but there are also the characters that can only happen in this world: the gun smuggler who sets up contracts for the group and a mischievous brat who can literally blow you away with her mind.
Next, we’ll look at what went on at the table.
All right, sit down. You know, that’s the last time I’m gonna get to say that? Until the next crop comes through, that is.
I’m still going to call you all rookies, though.
That’s right, after today, you all graduate. You will receive a certificate suitable for framing and a license to operate as a bounty hunter anywhere the SSPB has jurisdiction. Which, for the record, is everywhere. But before that, we have one more lesson: the city-states of Mars.
There’s a big debate amongst the Venetians and the Martians as to which planet was settled first. The French, they claim Venus was the first, but near as we can tell, when the Great Migration came, settlers headed to Mars.
And what a shithole they made, too. No way to terraform Mars, not any more. Instead, people live, work, work, die, and work inside big environmental domes. Did I mention they work?
Yeah, Mars has government. They have lots of them, one per city, actually. But what they also have are a whole bunch of corporations that have all set up business on the planet. Why you might ask? Well two reasons. One, the Martian work ethic. Never met a Martian who cared much for trinkets or fashion or the finer things in life, but they go crazy for anything that might make them more productive.
The second is because Martian law lets anyone dump toxic waste into craters on the planet surface and they never pay a fine.
This, however, has lead to a major Martian industry: smog farms. Carbon from the pollution and the planet’s surface is mined by Martian farmers to make synthetic fuel and plastics.
So why do you mighty bounty hunters-to-be care about Mars? Well, think of each Martian city-state as its own urban sprawl, complete with its own organized crime. Hard to tell if it’s the all the people or the crime families, but if you need to make some money fast, I’m sure there’s a job to be found on the red planet.
Two more things I’ll tell you rookies and then you can get out of here. First, people on Mars, they carry guns and they know how to use them. If you do not come correct to a Martian, you better be able to dodge bullets.
Oh, and the other thing. Watch your prey. Find his weakness. Shoot straight. Come home alive.
Now, get out of here. The Universe is yours.