Hired Gun

Basic Information

Hired Guns are characters (and Narrative Tropes) whose main motivation for getting involved in the story is the financial compensation, and they usually do not feel any great loyalty to their employer beyond the money and their own code of ethics (usually "stays bought"). They are also known as mercenaries.

List of Hired Gun Characters

• Bounty Hunter
• Career Killers
  • Hitman With A Heart
• Knowledge Broker
• Law Enforcement Inc
• Loveable Rogue
• Magnificent Seven
• Murder Inc
• Private Military Contractors
• Psycho For Hire
• Punch Clock Villain
• The Toblerone
• Those Two Bad Guys
• We Help The Helpless

See Also

Money Tropes
Narrative Tropes

Sources

TV Tropes Wiki entry

Game and Story Use

• Player characters often are hired guns. Hey, it pays the bills…
• Sometimes, their enemies will hire such people to fight them. This means that the PCs could potentially get these people to stop fighting them if it is clear that it isn't profitable for them.
  • Of course, that would be a solution without violence - and how many player characters are interested in that?
• In rarer cases, the PCs can hire such people themselves. But care must be taken that the player characters still share in the excitement of the fights.
  • And, of course, they might have to worry that their mercenaries aren't as loyal as they think. After all, one of their enemies could have hired them previously.
• The promise of money is often sufficient motivation for characters in many campaigns, and thus PCs are often Hired Guns themselves.
• When fighting NPC Hired Guns, it is often more effective - and less violent - to make sure that the employer of the Hired Guns can no longer pay them instead of fighting them directly.
  • Of course, if the PCs themselves are the Hired Guns, the enemies of their employer might do this to their side. What will they do if the money runs out?