In the TV show, the bounty hunter tokens seem to operate not just as info on the target & bounty, but are able to
track the target’s position no matter where they are
Have there been such things in Star Wars before? Does anyone have mechanics for an item that works that way? What is necessary to make one?
Yeah, if somebody home-brewed that item the consensus would be that it’s broken. Why would your bounty hunter need to put all that XP into tracking or investigation skills and their associated talents?
I’d rule that they’re just standard receivers attuned to a specific frequency, and that the quarry they track had a tracker implanted into them. I can only think of two people who were tracked this way, and both had been in the custody of the people who wanted to find them prior to the bounty being offered.
As soon as I saw it I facepalmed… PLOT DEVICE!!!
Imagine an investigation based off the OT idea/No Disintegrations splat… BH walks into safe house, BH given acquisition, BH scours the Holonet for info, BH asks associates or goes around paying for hints to where acquisition is, BH has to find out what ship they use (if any), BH has to travel to the system. BH has to etc etc etc… not very exciting or Star Warsy really.
I have outright banned them before they were even mentioned by my players… if the BH wants to earn 25K in credits they have to bl**dy well work for it, not just exit hyperpace and follow a hand held scanner - Even I Always Get My Mark requires work if they use it…
If a BH player abuses I Always get My Mark inform them that NPC Nemesis’ may send out a BH statted out similar… I Always Snag The PC I’m Looking For 
MAYBE…the target willingly allowed this to be a stipulation of some job or occupation. Locating them with the device has a limited planetary range, and not applicable on a galactic scale. We use them but you’d have to know what planet they are on to even begin to use it.
To me, it’s very much a convenient narrative shorthand. Despite being about a bounty hunter, the actual bounty hunting aspect of The Mandalorian was never important to the overall story. So the writers came up with a gizmo that allows them to bypass all of that.
If you introduced these things in Edge of the Empire, would you also introduce items that allow all of the five other careers to bypass major portions of their job?
Love all the feedback; thanks. Great commentary. Maybe should have posted this to GM forum since consensus seems to be “not in my campaign!”, unless you were under physical control enough to get a tracker planted in you, and even then it would have a limited range to on-planet and probably less range.
Asked because one of my party found out they had a significant bounty on their heads (after taking down one BH party) and wanted to know how likely it was to evade future BHs. LOL; at least I put the fear of their obligation on them!
Like others, when I saw this in the Mandalorian I was put off and disappointed somewhat. It certainly devalues the work a good Bounty Hunter does and why they need to have a wide variety of skills instead of just following a compass that always points to your mark.
It also narrows down who can be an effective hunter, as it means those with high combat prowess are usually going to always be the one to come out on top, because all the other skills like tracking, information collecting, charming and bribing, canvassing a city for leads of last known location or potential whereabouts all become worthless.
It also means a lot more competition. Imagine the life-spans of bounty hunters that aren’t the elite of the elite. Always getting jibbed by another hunter with a puck that shoots you in the back.
Not for me
Any BH worth their salt will use homing beacons. One of my players is a BH. Before they attempted to snag the acquisition they placed a homing beacon on the hull using a Skullduggery test to hide it. I asked where they wanted to place it. Outside on the hull is easy to find and he had time to look over the ship, he wanted to place it inside the hull… he decided to open the radar array and place it in there. They bagged the main target but the ship was taken by his minions… know they can inform another chapter house that so & so is on your planet.
I have house-ruled that a Mechanic needs to equal or exceed the number of Triumphs, Successes and Advantages to find any beacons. and it needs a full week of maintenance to find a beacon - think of all the panels in the Falcon where you could hide a homing beacon. I have a list of the location of beacons and the number of T, S & A…
You could place a beacon on the player ship as a plot idea but that is a no go for me… next time the PCs are away from their ship use a Rival level (at least) BH place a beacon on their ship… then send in the Journeyman BHs to soften them up… Rival turns up to finish the job. If the PCs get away to another planet have the BH turn up a few hours after they arrive… the penny will drop eventually that they have a tracker on their ship
Agree if doesn’t have a tool. But I would think that with a hand RF scanner should be able to locate a transmitting beacon fairly easily, in a few hours, not days. If it only transmits periodically, calculate the time it takes by multiplying sillouette^2 times the period times 10 (takes 10 readings to triangulate).
My GM had the beacon hardwired into the sublight engines so drew power off them - the ship was part of our PCs Obligation so the owner just wanted to know where their ship was at all times… and as it drew power off the sublight engines was near undetectable. We just made sure we never gave the owner a reason to send out his own BHs to track us down
The ship was at least 30 years so you could imagine the grime and oil covering the thing… our mechanic found it with a Triumph, 3 Successes and 2 advantages… we kept it in place but one day we’ll remove it and stuff off to the Corporate Sector 
I meant hardwired beacons that draw power off a ship component, like the engines, life support, etc… the writers can never cover all rules for stuff… Homing beacons seem easy to detect, Jango Fett detected one when flying for plot reasons but Han never even scanned for plot reasons…
tbh in game if homing beacons become so easy to detect they lose their use or impact… or let PCs get paranoid to constantly scan for beacons then when they think their safe attach one to the ship… A GM has to enjoy the game too
Agreed. I suppose detection difficulty is up to the GM, as needed by plot/story. A simple one (thrown magnet disk) is easy to detect—if you decide to listen for it— but you have to land or space-walk to find & remove it. More complex ones could try to ride their signal on top of ones the ship is sending already, but would likely have to be customized. Drawing power from the ship allows it to operate indefinitely, though frankly in SW power cells last a long time. If the attachment took a long time, the removal should also take a long time, assuming it gets noticed of course. Combine those two, and really hard to notice & remove. The one Vader had installed on the MF for example might be such a more rare version, installed clandestinely by a skilled mechanic.
With the exception of the homing beacon on the Millennium Falcon, I can think of two examples off the top of my head. One was with Jango, the other from the Thrawn novels. With Jango, it was just a beacon plopped on the side of his ship. Not too hard to scan as an anomaly, I think. In the Thrawn novels, it was explicitly discussed how it was placed in a way on the Falcon’s hull that it would be nigh-on impossible to detect, given the chaos of the ship’s outer hull and how easy it would be to place it in a location where it would be somewhat shielded from a scan.
I would probably require a Skulduggery check to place it, and modify any checks to detect it based on the results of that check.
The Bounty Hunter Code has a section on Homing Beacons… I use it as inspiration etc… it’s useful for annual fees, the specialities of each Guild, and bounty payout levels
As a GM it is entirely your game/universe, it’s worth a read it along with the D6 supplement…
reminisces about school days, 6th form D6 games a LONG, LONG time ago