Serenity Roleplaying Game

[molonel]

I hate to say it's more for roleplayers than rollplayers, but the arguments against it seem to be goading me into dropping that bomb.

I just gave myself a migraine ROLLING my eyes into the back of my head when I read that. There have been a lot of very astute comments on the mechanics of the system, many of which are valid. Nobody is faulting the game for NOT being D&D, but when you're seeing people advocating for the system that recommend putting aside mechanics and just "letting things happen" because the system wonks up even basic tasks, then that's a problem.

It's not "gritty." It's not "rollplaying versus roleplaying." It's just a badly designed system.

I play GURPS. I play White Wolf. I play D&D, and d20 Modern. And I've played plenty of other systems. And sometimes, it's just bad game design, and there's nothing wrong with saying that.

 

[buzz]

Certainly, the same thing is true in The Riddle of Steel, for instance, but the fact that NPCs are also capable of killing you dead makes the advantage of Fightin' debatable. It's kind of like asking why anybody would stockpile conventional arms in the nuclear era. The answer is easy: People don't want to take their lives into their hands all the time.

I don't have a lot of experience with TRoS, but IIRC combat is a primary focus in that game, so I don't know if it's an apt one bring up.

As for NPCs, they're only dangerous if the GM is twinking them, too. It's actually nigh-impossible to kill someone outright in Serenity, and if the PCs are set up for combat, even moreso. We've been totally mowing down the NPCs in our game; I don't think any PC has even been hit yet.

OMG! The thing that I defined as happening happened! What a frickin' shock! Er, no. There is no sense that personal agency -- even in the form of a fictitious identity -- is ever lost. It's just kicked up from character control to a meta-narrative. And that sucks.

Wash's death is the dirty, filthy, Sim interruption to the game that violates the Social Contract, Shared Imagination Space and lots of other Capitalized Terms. It's deprotagonization on the hoof and in a game, should probably involve some gnashing of teeth and taking a break -- and after that lack of surety and safety, people will remember it, because they actually *felt* something. They didn't just talk about pretend people feeling things or gushed about how terribly clever their interjection into the flow of events was.

I think this is really more of a taste issue (immersion/Sim vs Nar), and I'm not really sure how many groups, no matter how authentic it felt, would be cool with the GM unexpectedly killing their PC for dramatic effect. Still, I don't think that the source material necessarily demands one approach more than another, because then that'd be true of RPGs vs. fiction in general. We already know that the group activity that is RPG'ing isn't going to match exactly the essentially solitary activity that is writing fiction.

Sure, but that's a technique that doesn't really require any particular system. But within a system, there are ways of going about it that can model genuine sentimental reactions, or not.

Quite true.

 

[molonel]

I think this is really more of a taste issue (immersion/Sim vs Nar), and I'm not really sure how many groups, no matter how authentic it felt, would be cool with the GM unexpectedly killing their PC for dramatic effect. Still, I don't think that the source material necessarily demands one approach more than another, because then that'd be true of RPGs vs. fiction in general. We already know that the group activity that is RPG'ing isn't going to match exactly the essentially solitary activity that is writing fiction.

The GM: You're dead.
Player1: What? What I was just sitting in my chair. Did I get shot?
The GM: Yeah. Sniper shot.
Player1: But you didn't roll.
The GM: You're just dead. I didn't need to roll.
Player2: Um, okay. He has an armor class, you know.
The GM: I know. It's more DRAMATIC this way. See my jazzhands?
Player1: Actually, that just sucks.
The GM: Oh, you're just not ROLEPLAYING it.
Player1: Should I use jazzhands while I'm roleplaying?
The GM: If you like.
Player1: Okay, well, me and my jazzhands are going to go watch a movie.

 

[buzz]

The Serenity rules facilitate the spirit of the TV show well, IMO.

In what ways do you feel it does, DS?

In our play so far, I haven't really seen it. At least, I'm not seeing it evoke the spirit any more or less than a generic system paired with the setting material would. The closest I think we've come was a scene in which we had to bluff some Alliance feds who'd boarded our ship to keep them from finding a passenger we were transporting. Thing is, we did most of it without the rules coming into play at all. Even with my original draft of my PC (who actually had good Influence and Persuasion skills), I don't think it would have worked if we actually rolled for it.

 

[buzz]

The GM: You're just dead. I didn't need to roll.
Player2: Um, okay. He has an armor class, you know.
The GM: I know. It's more DRAMATIC this way. See my jazzhands?

Sigged!

 

[eyebeams]

I don't have a lot of experience with TRoS, but IIRC combat is a primary focus in that game, so I don't know if it's an apt one bring up.

I think it is, because in TROS, combat is a big focus, but that doesn't mean you fight all the time -- because you can die extremely easily. The rules focus does not necessarily translate into how play happens.

As for NPCs, they're only dangerous if the GM is twinking them, too. It's actually nigh-impossible to kill someone outright in Serenity, and if the PCs are set up for combat, even moreso. We've been totally mowing down the NPCs in our game; I don't think any PC has even been hit yet.

Then it's definitely an issue of power disparity. One thing GMs and game designers both have to account for is inherent PC superiority. I've discussed this in various places, but the essence is that players will usually portray a character with given abilities with more competence than the GM, because the player can dedicate his attention.

As for "twinking," this is a case where the players set the standard. If they set the standard of combat prowess being a focus, then the GM should feel free to apply that standard as well -- unless the players *want* a disparity in relative power and it's understood as part of the game.

I think this is really more of a taste issue (immersion/Sim vs Nar), and I'm not really sure how many groups, no matter how authentic it felt, would be cool with the GM unexpectedly killing their PC for dramatic effect. Still, I don't think that the source material necessarily demands one approach more than another, because then that'd be true of RPGs vs. fiction in general. We already know that the group activity that is RPG'ing isn't going to match exactly the essentially solitary activity that is writing fiction.

I've discussed elsewhere that I personally don't believe in that sense of safety being assumed. I am, after all, the guy who insulted a PC based on a physical trait the character *and* the player shared to make the player taste genuine anger in his persona. But -- and this is a big but -- my players know that this can happen in my games and that I will provide downtime and breaks to transition out of intensely emotional play.

I think this is a big problem for game design. How do you properly have a game where life is precious in character but is easily, arbitrarily lost in the system? Situations like Wash's are very risky in an RPG, but if they *aren't* risky, they aren't worth doing.

 

[Plane Sailing]

FWIW when I eventually got to watch Firefly, I was thinking "Wow, this has exactly the same kind of atmosphere as the traveller games we used to play!"

Does this mean 100% correspondence? No, of course not. But it was a close enough approximation for me to appreciate, and I imagine I could happily run firefly-like games in traveller should I choose to do so.

 

[Dragon Snack]

I just gave myself a migraine ROLLING my eyes into the back of my head when I read that.

Glad to be of service.

There have been a lot of very astute comments on the mechanics of the system, many of which are valid.

So, care to point them out? 'The GM made me roll for landing on a clear day and I botched my roll and crashed' isn't an astute comment on the system, it's a comment on the GM. 'If your dice are "off" you can have a bad night' is just as valid in D&D (ask my players). 'Half baked' and 'cobbled together' don't tell me a thing.

Nobody is faulting the game for NOT being D&D, but when you're seeing people advocating for the system that recommend putting aside mechanics and just "letting things happen" because the system wonks up even basic tasks, then that's a problem.

I'm not the one arguing for putting the system aside. Could it be that GMs are setting the DCs too high for particular tasks? Again, a comment on the GM, not the system.

It's not "gritty." It's not "rollplaying versus roleplaying." It's just a badly designed system.

Again, tell me why, because I'm not seeing it as much worse than other systems I've played. It's certainly not the worst, but by all the snide comments (err, astute comments?) it sure seems like people think it is...

I play GURPS. I play White Wolf. I play D&D, and d20 Modern. And I've played plenty of other systems. And sometimes, it's just bad game design, and there's nothing wrong with saying that.

I play D&D, Savage Worlds, and Serenity. I've played GURPS, WW, FUDGE, Seven Seas, WEG d6 SW, Earthdawn, Shadowrun, and a handful of others that were forgettable.

Serenity certainly isn't at the bottom of the list.

 

[molonel]

So, care to point them out? 'The GM made me roll for landing on a clear day and I botched my roll and crashed' isn't an astute comment on the system, it's a comment on the GM. 'If your dice are "off" you can have a bad night' is just as valid in D&D (ask my players). 'Half baked' and 'cobbled together' don't tell me a thing.

Yeah, but look at the suggestions of the people DEFENDING the system:

"If I were running that session, you wouldn't have had to make a roll."

"I managed to fry another crewmembers earbud transmitter while trying a simple modification on it (despite a decent skill), but it was funny* and not a deal breaker (meaning it just made our covert mission harder, it didn't kill anyone or run us into a brick wall). The botch is a way for your charcter to be taken down a peg or two, if used "correctly". Obviously I would consider the GM having us crash the ship during a normal landing using it "incorrectly"."

(That quote was YOU, incidentally.)

Nobody suggested that the GM was incorrectly interpreting the rules. They just said that for a normal landing, they should have skipped the rules and not allowed them to crash even though they were evidently playing the game correctly.

I'm not the one arguing for putting the system aside. Could it be that GMs are setting the DCs too high for particular tasks? Again, a comment on the GM, not the system.

We have no indication that the GM was setting the DCs for the tasks overly high, and two suggestions (one from you) that offered that maybe USING THE RULES wasn't the best idea.

I play D&D, Savage Worlds, and Serenity. I've played GURPS, WW, FUDGE, Seven Seas, WEG d6 SW, Earthdawn, Shadowrun, and a handful of others that were forgettable. Serenity certainly isn't at the bottom of the list.

It's damning with faint praise when you say that a game isn't the worst system you've ever played.

 

[Erekose]

. . . Characterizing, say, Walsh's or Starbuck's fates as some kind of "fallout" puts the player in the driver's seat, when the whole bloody point is about *not* being in the narrative driver's seat at all. I'm sure you could have some humdrum, non-surprising phony version of Walsh's death, which is kind of like seeing the movie with detailed spoilers, pausing the DVD player every three minutes to have smug discussions about the writing . . .

And just to make sure . . .

. . . In Serenity, Walsh's death is a tragic blindside . . .

Would have been nice if you'd flagged that there were spoilers in the replies - I know you didn't mean it but as I stated in the original post I haven't seen all of the series and certainly not the film so giving away what would have been a major surprise is pretty bad.

Kind of makes me wish I'd not started the thread in the first place . . .