Well, it lasted 13 sessions, which is how long I wanted it to run. And it ended with a bang, with one of the PCs being revealed as a traitor, the lead PC being left for dead after trying to kick away a grenade, and arriving at the nick of time to save the rest of the party.
Over the course of the campaign, we had some great roleplaying, some memorable storylines, and all this whilst lumbered with one of the RPG systems I never hope to play again.
I enjoyed the character generation, but once it came to resolving things, the system fell down horribly. I have come to realise that the resolution system for a RPG is one of the most important elements in making a game enjoyable. If it is too fiddly or too random, the rest of the game - for all its good points - will fail to work. And the Serenity RPG (and by that virtue any other Cortex system RPG) failed one of the essential requirements I have with a game:
Competent characters must produce competent results
The entire structure of the Serenity dice system just creates a very random game. Very good characters (2d12) will roll low surprisingly often. The way that Serenity attempts to fix this - with Plot Points - is woeful. They do horrible things once opposed rolls get into it (combat), but with each PC being given 6 points at the start of each session, and then with the GM being instructed to "let them fall like rain", you lose any sense of proper resource management.
I avoided using the system as much as possible during the campaign, allowing my players to roleplay the action. However, I do like having a resolution system to fall back on. I just prefer one that I respect.
The rest of the players in that campaign are now onto a new campaign of Werewolf; I'm opting out pleading exhaustion (at one point I was running four sessions on that particular weekend, including a D&D session before I ran Serenity). I got home last Sunday evening, and immediately started thinking about resuming the Serenity campaign...
The thing is, the characters are great characters, and there's a lot of story left to be told. I started thinking about it during the drive home and continued thinking about it when I got home, and I think I've got the core of a new "season"...
Mind you, it wouldn't be with the Serenity system. I'd earlier thought about the Doctor Who RPG system (the new one), but I'm leaning more and more towards using Traveller. Apart from anything else, it has the "harder" type of SF that I'd prefer to run Serenity as. (The campaign wandered into the pretty wacky at times). Exactly how much trouble it'd be to run Serenity using Traveller I don't know, nor exactly how much I'd enjoy running it as Traveller, but in about six months, I may well get a chance...
Cheers!
Over the course of the campaign, we had some great roleplaying, some memorable storylines, and all this whilst lumbered with one of the RPG systems I never hope to play again.
I enjoyed the character generation, but once it came to resolving things, the system fell down horribly. I have come to realise that the resolution system for a RPG is one of the most important elements in making a game enjoyable. If it is too fiddly or too random, the rest of the game - for all its good points - will fail to work. And the Serenity RPG (and by that virtue any other Cortex system RPG) failed one of the essential requirements I have with a game:
Competent characters must produce competent results
The entire structure of the Serenity dice system just creates a very random game. Very good characters (2d12) will roll low surprisingly often. The way that Serenity attempts to fix this - with Plot Points - is woeful. They do horrible things once opposed rolls get into it (combat), but with each PC being given 6 points at the start of each session, and then with the GM being instructed to "let them fall like rain", you lose any sense of proper resource management.
I avoided using the system as much as possible during the campaign, allowing my players to roleplay the action. However, I do like having a resolution system to fall back on. I just prefer one that I respect.
The rest of the players in that campaign are now onto a new campaign of Werewolf; I'm opting out pleading exhaustion (at one point I was running four sessions on that particular weekend, including a D&D session before I ran Serenity). I got home last Sunday evening, and immediately started thinking about resuming the Serenity campaign...
The thing is, the characters are great characters, and there's a lot of story left to be told. I started thinking about it during the drive home and continued thinking about it when I got home, and I think I've got the core of a new "season"...
Mind you, it wouldn't be with the Serenity system. I'd earlier thought about the Doctor Who RPG system (the new one), but I'm leaning more and more towards using Traveller. Apart from anything else, it has the "harder" type of SF that I'd prefer to run Serenity as. (The campaign wandered into the pretty wacky at times). Exactly how much trouble it'd be to run Serenity using Traveller I don't know, nor exactly how much I'd enjoy running it as Traveller, but in about six months, I may well get a chance...
Cheers!
