Fantasy Firefly

[OnCider]

Since being a fan of the Firefly TV series and seeing "Serenity", I've had the idea of creating a fantasy d20 campaign based around the central ideas of the series. I wondered whether you good people at EN World could help me out with fleshing out the campaign world.

The PCs would be fighting on the wrong side of a society that appeared on the outside to be a fair and just but in reality is totalitarian, rascist and secular.

Non-human races are not extinct, merely not common. Elves have done their usual trick of turning their backs on a human-dominated world. Dwarfs and halflings are slave races working in mines and as household slaves respectively.

The state religion is monotheistic. Worship of the older (polytheistic) religion is suppressed and only practised in secret. Similarly magic is treated as heretical, wizard spellbooks are burned to protect the faithful. Sorcerors are burned at the stake etc.

Does anyone have any other ideas to flesh out this campaign world or do you think I'm trying to cover too much?

 

[Shadowdancer]

Sounds good. Make sure most of the adventures are set in a frontier area, since that was one of the main themes of the series and movie. Also, a frontier would make it easier for the PCs to hide from the 'Alliance' and use it as a base of operations against the central government.

Maybe a long country with lots of coastline along one side, and a large mountain range and/or desert along the parallel side of the country. The more civilazied portion of the country would be along the coast, with several built up port cities. The frontier area, along the mountains/desert, would have smaller settlements and mining outposts, with lots of attacks from monsters and humanoids living in the mountains/desert.

 

[Kahuna Burger]

I had a similar campaign once with the major difference being that the elves were the oppressors. The PCs were a bunch of "lesser" races who wouldn't accept their propper place in the world and were being relocated to a "new homeland".

If you want it to mirror firefly, I would try not to go too heavy handed on the "EEEEEEEvil alliance" bit. There's something to be said for making the "bad guys" oppressively lawful but not activly evil.

 

[MarkAHart]

I plan on doing something along similar lines for my next campaign. Basically, some of the feel of Firefly, but using fantasy and Spelljammer instead of SciFi.

One thing I like about Firefly is that the bad guys are not all pervasive and all powerful. They may have tremendous power and influence, but out on the frontier they have limited control. For a fantasy campaign with the Firefly feel, I think it important not to make the bad guys too overwhelming so that the characters have no hope of success.

Although I admire the Midnight campaign setting, it always seemed too dark, too oppressive for my tastes -- the PCs faced such overwhelming odds that resistance seemed suicidal.

 

[Cthulhu's Librarian]

Reavers=Githyanki barbarians

 

[Dagger75]

Well I had a short lived Firefly-ish campaign. Mine was a spelljammer game. It basically was the dwarven nation vs the elves. The elves lost and now the whole slice of the galaxy is under the Dwarven Confederation. The elven planets were the futherest from the Dwarven central planets. Now the dwarves are strip mining and clear cutting those Elven plants. Elves can't do much, they had very few ships survive and those dwarves have those bloody flying mountains everywhere.

It was neat, to bad real life, people moving and a friend getting a divorce cut it tragically short.

 

[tensen]

Since being a fan of the Firefly TV series and seeing "Serenity", I've had the idea of creating a fantasy d20 campaign based around the central ideas of the series. I wondered whether you good people at EN World could help me out with fleshing out the campaign world.

Hehe. After my third time of watching Serenity I was having a similar idea. Glad to see I'm not alone in it.

 

[Rel]

I've felt similarly inspired but it will be (at least) a year before I get a chance to do anything with it. My first blush instinct is that if you want to do Firefly then just do Firefly (i.e. a Sci-Fi game rather than fantasy). But if not then my secondary response is to remind you that Serenity was as much a character in the series as any of her crew. And there is something about being a ship's crew and having everybody's fate so intimately tied to a "bucket of bolts" that makes them a CREW and not just a PARTY.

With that in mind I'd tend to suggest that if you're going the traditional fantasy route, use a vast archipelago of islands as your setting and put the PC's on a ship. I think you'll capture the feel of Firefly much better with a mercenary ship crew than simply a mercenary group of PC's on land.

 

[tensen]

Aye, you really can't do a Wash or a Kaylee without having a ship.
I guess you might be able to push it with a wagon..
Kaylee: "Just don't ride one of those Arthurian-7 models, the wheels have a habit of falling off, and the wagon falls right off the road." (Nah, i don't think it works quite right)


Kaylee needs to have a ton of craft skills.
And Wash, well depending on what you do, could have anything from supreme sailing skills to animal handle (so he can make the mounts do amazing tricks.)

 

[sniffles]

Great minds think alike.

I was just trying to figure out how to do a Firefly-esque fantasy campaign in the Eberron setting.