Comparing Potential Systems for a "Serenity"/"Firefly"-based Campaign

[ProfessorCirno]

Dogs in the Vineyard works fantastically. Just make it, you know, in space.

I found the actual Firefly game got way too caught up in trying to make things "realistic" while ignoring that the show was popular because it was Han Solo: the Series and only paid attention to mundane things when they were plot points.

 

[innerdude]

Interesting, I'm getting a lot of votes for the Traveller system.

I'm totally unfamiliar with it.......

I'll have to check out some of the provided links to it.

What's the main "hook" of the Traveller system? Is it that it specifically ties into the whole "space as exploration" genre?

What's its most compelling positive trait relative to other systems?

Paizo appears to have all of the Mongoose Traveller series at cover price (core rulebook hardcover around $40), so getting my hands on it doesn't appear to be a problem.

What would be the biggest strengths and weaknesses of choosing Traveller vs Savage Worlds for a Serenity campaign?

 

[innerdude]

One more quick comment ---

Based on our current group make-up, I'm not sure how well a more "free form" system would work. I would love it; but half of my group are hardcore "crunch fiends" / power gamers.

 

[deinol]

What's the main "hook" of the Traveller system? Is it that it specifically ties into the whole "space as exploration" genre?

What's its most compelling positive trait relative to other systems?

Paizo appears to have all of the Mongoose Traveller series at cover price (core rulebook hardcover around $40), so getting my hands on it doesn't appear to be a problem.

What would be the biggest strengths and weaknesses of choosing Traveller vs Savage Worlds for a Serenity campaign?

Traveller has spaceships.

Seriously, that's a major thing to consider. I don't know much about Savage Worlds. It's on my list of things to try, but I've just never had the money and nobody I know owns a copy. Are there good rules in Savage Worlds for spaceships?

Someone else in the thread mentioned Gurps. If you like Gurps, they do have a number of excellent space related books. I certainly have a number of them, but I mostly use them for ideas to supplement my Traveller collection.

So what makes Traveller a good choice? The default theme of the game is very similar to Firefly. A small crew of independent freelancers, hoping from world to world looking for opportunities. Trade, piracy, mercenary work, all of these are common Traveller adventures. Mongoose Traveller introduced a system of "Ship Shares", where starting characters basically get a downpayment on a ship. They are expected to pool them together so each of them have a stake in the vessel that is purchased. Usually it is hard to start out owning a ship outright, so they may own 75% of the ship and have to work to make payments on it.

So the default theme of Traveller fits well with Firefly. The default setting is a much larger space, the Imperium is millions of worlds spread across the galaxy. If you want to move it to a tighter, one system setting like Firefly you just need to remove warp drive. So instead of taking a 1 week to get 1 parsec, make it take a 1 week to get 1 AU.

One of the parts of Traveller's setting that really works for the quasi-legal freelancers is the speed of communication. In Traveller the default assumption is that information is slower than ships. In order for news of a raid, or a wanted poster to arrive at a planet someone has to fly there and deliver the message. So there can be a race to unload stolen goods at port before news of the theft arrives. I think faster than light travel with light speed communications adds to the old west in space feel of the game. It is one thing about the Firefly setting that actually works against it. In a single solar system radio communications will out-pace ship travel if you don't have faster than light travel. Still, all the tools are there in Traveller to make a Firefly type game work.

 

[Thanee]

I have access to the actual Serenity RPG rule set through a friend who is something of a game collector, so we could use it if we wanted to--but frankly, none of us are familiar with it, and from most commentary / reviews I've seen of the rules, people who play it don't particularly like it (they play because they like the setting, not the mechanics).

So my question is, can the Savage Worlds rules "handle" a good Serenity/Firefly campaign better than either of the other two options, and has anyone actually tried it?

I havn't tried Savage Worlds with Serenity in particular, but I do have experience with both Savage Worlds and the Cortex System (i.e. the actual Serenity RPG).

I would say both should work absolutely fine, though I see no reason to use Savage Worlds (and I really like Savage Worlds) for Serenity, because all the work has already been done for you!

Every RPG system has some issues, and the Cortex System is no exception here, but it is a nice, rules-light, and smooth-running system. I would go with that one.

Bye
Thanee

 

[Jeff Wilder]

An Alliance/Browncoats game made the short-list for my upcoming campaign a while back, and I was going to use the d6 System. IMO, the feel and play of the system is ideal for the universe of Serenity. (D6 tends to work well when action and bravado is emphasized over meticulous planning and tactics.)

 

[Umbran]

The setting is a single solar system, one with a few habitable planets and several gas giants that all have dozens of habitable moons (post terra-forming).

"Single solar system" is a bit misleading, as to most folks it implies a single star. It is a system with one major star, four smaller stars, and seven protostars/brown dwarfs. Things are close enough together that you don't need FTL travel to get across it - kind of in the same way as in the Old West, where you didn't need an airplane to get across the United States.

Traveller has spaceships.
Are there good rules in Savage Worlds for spaceships?

I'm not sure there really needs to be such rules to do Firefly. Despite the fact that the show's named after a class of spaceship, it doesn't actually have much fast ship-to-ship interaction (ass compared to, say, BSG). If I recall correctly, they only get to ship-to-ship combat in the film, and the PCs mostly move through it, rather than engage in it - it is more like the setting of a skill challenge than a combat encounter.

 

[deinol]

"Single solar system" is a bit misleading, as to most folks it implies a single star. It is a system with one major star, four smaller stars, and seven protostars/brown dwarfs. Things are close enough together that you don't need FTL travel to get across it - kind of in the same way as in the Old West, where you didn't need an airplane to get across the United States.

Yes, but you'll still need to figure out what sort of travel times to expect between worlds.

As I mentioned before, the speed of travel vs info is one of the main differences between Traveller and Firefly. For example, the distance between Mars and Earth can be anywhere between 5-20 minutes away for a radio signal. At a rough guess it would take a Firefly between half a day to 2 days to travel that distance. (I have no actual numbers, just a wild guess based on the pacing of the show.) So if your ship is flagged by the Alliance, expect the inner planets to know about it within hours. Of course, outer planets may only get messages at special receiving stations, which would give them the feel of a wild west telegraph station.

I'm not sure there really needs to be such rules to do Firefly. Despite the fact that the show's named after a class of spaceship, it doesn't actually have much fast ship-to-ship interaction (ass compared to, say, BSG). If I recall correctly, they only get to ship-to-ship combat in the film, and the PCs mostly move through it, rather than engage in it - it is more like the setting of a skill challenge than a combat encounter.

I think ship information is still useful even if you never do ship-to-ship combat. How much cargo can you carry? How fast can you travel? How much fuel do you need? How hard is it to repair the engines? Can the ship fly in atmosphere?

Do you need hard rules for this sort of thing? Probably depends on GM style. I would say the biggest advantages of Traveller vs Savage Worlds is that the game already has answers for these sorts of questions. I can't comment on the difference between the Serenity RPG and Traveller, but I'm sure it would answer these questions as well. Certainly if the choice is invest in a new system or borrow a friends Serenity book, I'd probably lean toward borrowing the book. I do realize that my owning a ton of Traveller books biases me toward the system I'm familiar with. On the other hand, if the original poster is interested in trying out a "new" RPG that is geared toward a space trader game, Traveller does have 30+ years of material an experience he can draw upon.

That's another good point. There are a ton of Firefly fans who have already thought about how to run a Firefly game in Traveller. A cursory search on google I find a bunch of messageboard posts filled with advice. I don't know if there is a really good central location for Traveller/Firefly info, but there have been people talking about it since the show's debut.

So in my mind there are really only two choices: The Serenity RPG and Traveller. Serenity definitely has more specific support for the Firefly setting. Traveller has a similar feel and will have a lot more support for a freelance space trading game in general. I'm certain I would enjoy either game at the table, even if I have a preferred system I would use to run it.

 

[MerricB]

I ran a 13-session campaign of Serenity earlier this year using the Serenity RPG (Cortex) system. At least, it approximated the system, because very soon after using it I became aware of how painfully broken it was. It is a real dog of a system. The character generation system is good, and created memorable characters, but the task resolution system is one of the worst I've seen in my nearly 30 years of gaming.

The campaign was great, but it had nothing to do with the system. Most of it I ran diceless or with very limited reference to the rules.

I am now preparing for a second "season" of the campaign, for which I will be using the Mongoose Traveller rules. There are a number of reasons why the Traveller rules appeal to me:

* Character backstories created as part of character generation
* Simple and effective resolution system that assumes a certain level of competence and predictability.
* Rules for trading. This is a big one: Traveller allows the crew to make a profit - or not - from regular trading runs. As a lot of Firefly revolved around the crew making money from trading, having these rules in the core game are essential.

I hope to start the new campaign sometime early in 2011. I'll let you know how it goes.

Cheers!

 

[Rel]

I would absolutely run a Firefly game using Savage Worlds. In fact, I'm kind of doing a nod in that direction with the series of Space: 1889 games I'm running. The ship and crew bear a few superficial resemblances to the crew of Serenity (with a LOT of mixing/matching/literary license).

Savage Worlds has just enough vehicle rules to use if you need to. But really the ships are treated as more of a plot device than a combat platform in Firefly.