When my group voted on what I'd run next, one of the options I provided was a Firefly game, using D6 Space rules. (I don't know anything about the Serenity rules; I just love the D6 rules, and feel they're a good fit for the tone of Firefly.)
You definitely have to watch those DVDs at some point.
I guess it's a matter of taste, but I really like the Serenity RPG rules (and the somewhat more advanced Cortex System RPG rules). It's a pretty mechanics light system, of course, so that might not suit the playstyle of everyone, but my exposure to it so far has definitely been positive.
In the Star Trek games I've run, I always liked to pull material that was touched on once or twice, or only tangentially touched upon, as inspiration, and expand upon it or take it down new paths. It gave the players something to relate to and connect with without them feeling they were duplicating the stories already told on the show (as was often the case in ST:TNG's first season - virus that makes you act drunk & stupid I'm looking at you!). For example, there was a Voyager episode (Nothing Human) that featured a holodeck recreation of an infamous Cardassian doctor named Dr. Crell Moset who was basically a Joseph Mengele figure that the EMH Doctor created to help him solve a problem, and all sorts of ethical issues arose from his doing this. I introduced the real Crell Moset as an NPC in a TNG era campaign where the crew was supposed to escort Crell and several other famous physicians to an intergalactic medical conference. I had the Bajoran Chief of Security PC contacted by his old Bajoran resistance cell requesting he assassinate Moset. From there, we explored our own ethical issues.
Of course, with the vast amount of Star Trek screen time out there compared to 12 episodes of Firefly and one feature film, it's a little easier to do this.
I guess it's a matter of taste, but I really like the Serenity RPG rules (and the somewhat more advanced Cortex System RPG rules). It's a pretty mechanics light system, of course, so that might not suit the playstyle of everyone, but my exposure to it so far has definitely been positive.
I admit, as I age, I decidedly prefer rules light to rules heavy RPGs. One nice feature of the CORTEX rules was how they forced specialization to get extremely high levels of skill. SO nobody could be good at everything 9although jack of all trades could be competent at a lot of things). I thought it helped justify parties . . .
Hey folks - thanks for all the support and advice.
Cam, yes I do now have a copy of the Big Damn Heroes Book - I bought & downloaded it yesterday, in fact. This is going to be a first for me - the two rulebooks I own are both virtual. Admittedly, a lot of my D&D play has been greatly enhanced by the Compendium, and I run it from my laptop, so it's not quite a giant step.
More shortly - I'm just getting up and I need to attend to a couple of things before I continue posting.
The setting is fairly broad and the show kept most of the details vague enough that you have lots of room. I'd watch the episodes more for flavor than setting details, as there aren't as many as you might think.
Boiled down to it's roots, you really only need a few details:
1) The entire show takes place inside a single solar system that was seeded with an unspecified (though suggested to be large) number of planets. These details are made explicit in the movie, but not in the show. Every human in the series arrived generations ago by massive colony slowships after Earth became too crowded.
2) All of the planets were terraformed, but in some cases are only just barely habitable. Colonies that are further from the inner part of the solar system received less care and effort into terraforming than the inner, more prosperous colonies.
3) The Inner Colonies are controlled by The Alliance (which I think grew out of an American-Chinese Alliance that brought the ships to this system, though this is never discussed in-show). The Alliance worlds are meant to be prosperous but sterile, being kind of a mix of Victorian England, a little Roman Empire early Nazi Germany. The Alliance's core worlds are very Earth-like, while outer worlds are dry dustballs.
4) The Alliance imposed strong centralized control over the outer colonies (while simultaneously providing less resources) in the age-old colonies versus Empire scenario. The Independents lose their battle and the Alliance subsequently clamps down. However, the outer colonies are still fairly distant and lawless like the old American Wild West...and many people are willing to trade hardships for freedom from Alliance control.
4) The show uses fairly common elements from the Western. Consider the Inner Colonies to be like major cities on the East Coast and the Outer Colonies to be the Old West. Technology is available but expensive and becomes less common the further away from the inner colonies you get. There is no magical Star Trek replication going on, so in one episode, the valuable cargo being smuggled is cattle. In another, it's medical supplies. Ships require fuel and travel between planets can take days or weeks (though months are possible, I don't recall that every actually happening in-show).
5) There are space stations, some being like pirate coves. The Alliance has large mobile stations that are like mobile Police bases. The bogeymen of the Firefly universe are the Reavers, feral space-faring barbarian-pirates who cannot be reasoned with and who kill anyone they come across. The origins of the Reavers turns out to be an important plot point for the movie, but isn't important for the game.
Running a game in the Firefly universe is actually pretty easy and rife with ideas for the plucking. Most standard plots from a western will work: cattle rustling, train robberies, smuggling, protecting innocents from local land baron, bank robberies, bounty hunters, etc. All of these showed up in the series and are basic variations on the classic Western tropes mixed with an SF twist. (The train, for example, is a mag-lev train...with a car full of Alliance troops guarding the cargo. Instead of just blowing up a safe with dynamite, they lower a winch from their ship to airlift it out).
Throughout the series, the general tone is hard-luck heroes who are willing to do illegal things to get by, but have a general sense of social justice. They are criminals in a lawless time, but they have a code. (further example: Spoiler tag added for plot of one episode
they discover the train cargo they stole for the crime lord is actually badly needed medical supplies for a local town. Unwilling to abandon people to the plague the medicine is meant to cure, the crew returns it...and earns a nasty enemy that comes back to haunt them when they return the crime lord's money, contract unfulfilled
).
Hope that helps. My general feeling is that the TV show starts off kind of shaky, but it gains ground FAST. The second half of the series is fantastic, especially once the actors get a real feel for their characters. It's a damn shame it didn't get the life it deserved, though the movie helped develop SOME closure.
Merric, I'm saddened to hear you don't like the CORTEX system presented in the rules. Me and mine group seemed to really like it a lot.
Can you express what it is about the rules you don't like? I'm just curious if there's something our group has overlooked that you're having issues with.
The setting is fairly broad and the show kept most of the details vague enough that you have lots of room. I'd watch the episodes more for flavor than setting details, as there aren't as many as you might think.
Boiled down to it's roots, you really only need a few details:
Ahh! Oy, SPOILER ALERT MUCH? Geez, why not just tell him who Kaiser Sose is?! Or, wait, who Luke Skywalker's daddy is? Or that Bruce Willis was dead the whole time!!!!
1) The Alliance is like the Yankees. We're talking about the show being post-Civil War. How this can be missed is baffling. That may be one of the reasons the show got canceled, because the hero Mal is a Brown Coat. This means he would have supported the South. While in the show this isn't a problem, for real people it means he would be supporting slavery and modern day racism (on top of the States' Rights over Centralized powers, which was the other big struggle, and why the Civil War is so complex and interesting). The issue of he show is freedom vs. control.
2) It's Reavers, not Raiders.
3) Watch the show. There's a language and style to it. You need to avoid aliens and sci-fi stuff, or special effects stuff. If it can be done in real life, or might be possible, then okay. More often than not it's a hoax: the "alien in a jar" is a cow fetus in fromaldahide.
