My friends and I ran a RPG pen and paper that was TF based.

In it i wanted to explore a lot of fun takes on my favorite characters. As Game Master i started swindle off comedic, sorta like animated and G1. As things went he revealed it was a ploy and false persona to make others think he was incompetent. When in fact by end of game he conned Autobots, Decepticons, the Galactic council, the interstellar peace keepers and gained a moon of his own!

I wound up settling on a mix of Justin Hammer from Iron Man, a little tony stark, and just made him absolutely moral free. But I threw in an addiction to deals. think a little like Rumplestiltskin from Once Upon a Time but more serious.

 

that would be different but hey change isnt always bad

 

And Onslaught's behind everything about it. Swindle's just the face.

 

you know who would make an awesome swindle? Bob Odenkirk's Saul Goodman

 

Swindle in my mind is charming, polite, talkative, non-threatening, and always smiling.
And that makes him terrifying to me.
He's the kind of guy I imagine who could be laughing with you one moment and shoot your head off in the next. He's not a leader, he has no military desires, but he has his own goal and ambition. He's got a perfect facade and no one would suspect him of anything more than a simple merchant or dealer. He's out for himself and hasn't a real care for anyone else. I also like to imagine he's the kind of guy that's only loosely affiliated with his side, and would turn to the autobots at the first sign of a better deal.

 

I like Swindle just the way he was in Animated.

 

"Better call Brawl!"

 

My personal canon (coming to Blender once I stop procrastinating) Has him attempting to buy his way out of the war by selling things from his workshop or illegally stolen from the 'con base to anyone, and if he thinks he can get away with it he murders his customer to rob them. And he adds any built-in or handheld weapons to his inventory. yeah.

 

I liked Swindle's relationship with Ultra Magnus in Spotlight UM. Ultra Magnus keeps capturing him and setting him free in return for getting the location of other Decepticons. It only got serious during Costa's run when Swindle tried to killed the Autobots with Menasor.

 

I think swindle is already a really dark character for a kids franchise, his smooth talking charismatic sense of humour coupled with his emotional vacancy when comprehending the consequences of his actions make him a pretty worrying villain and to take away any humour from the character will make him a lot less dark and could potentially put him in 90's comics dark territory if done wrong which would be a crying shame.

I like the mob family type thing with the combaticons, every mob needs its players

 

Nah, I think Mixmaster would be a better fit. There was even one comic where sound wave learned that Mixmaster deals illegal drugs (most notably Syk) in his fee time.

 

Swindle is fine as he is. Greedy and corrupt but still a likeable character.

You want a kingpin, privateer or trafficker then look to Gutcruncher who is a more appropriate character for such things.

 

The "darker makes everything better!" frenzy of the '90s is over, so no thank you.

 

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