Serenity Roleplaying Game

[eyebeams]

In both Traveller's Far Trader campaign model and Firefly, you have an ensemble cast of characters who crew a merchant ship in a hardish-SF setting. Each "adventure" begins with their need to find work and haul cargo from planet A to planet B. Any profit they make then tends to get eaten up by maintenance costs, salaries, and the mortgage on their starship... which then starts the job-hunting cycle once again.

I'm not saying they're identical, but the parallels are pretty obvious, I think.

Sure, no Firefly RPG should be about the bean-counting. It's about the situations you fall into during the job-hunt. Of course, a lot of Traveller merchant campaigns are about this, too.

I think one of the big differences is that the 'Verse is set up so that you can't really go and carve out a place of your own with your money or otherwise gain real prestige. Improving your lot is possible in Traveller, but in the 'Verse? That's not possible without changing the setting. Plus, the 'Verse reflects the bizarre cognitive dissonance in popular culture about glorifying the Confederacy without acknowledging it's pining for one of the most despicable political movements in human history, and Traveller's topped by twee 1950s space opera conventions.

I'm not sure what point you're trying to make here. I was just making a comment on the game's mechanics. Fightin' Type is an Asset so good that there's no reason not to take it. The skill system is vague enough that the only specialties worth taking are ones specifically called out in the rulebook, which is mostly combat skills. Called shots are easy-peasy if you've taken the above skill advice, and are very effective. Ergo, it's great formula for success. Certainly a more useful option than putting points into Persuasion specialties.

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.

OTOH, the power of Fightin' means that even though firefight MAD is there, you can also scale back NPCs in order to emulate what goes on in the movie. It's kind of significant, as it shows that Fightin' *is* common in the millieu -- so why not take it? It's no offense against the setting.

FYI, it's "Wash," not "Walsh."

I know; my typing hands don't.

I guess I'd want to know what specific system(s) you're talking about. I don't think that Nar-focus has to mean that a PC death can't be unexpected or meaningless. Something more detached like Universalils, sure. Taking your example of DitV, I could see a big conflict ending with fallout that the player describes as, "Wash... Wash dies," and the other players going "Woah!"

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.

Also, if we really want to stretch the game-analysis of the film, Serenity is essentially the wrap-up to Joss' campaign. One could easily imagine Wash's player taking the GM aside at some point and saying he'd like to see his PC get a cool death and leave the execution (no pun intended) to the GM.

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.

You make some general recommendations in your other post. Would you be able to give some examples of existing systems you think might be a good fit?

Unknown Armies strikes me as a good model. Combat is high risk and affects in-character play, and dice only get rolled for non-routine tasks, and maintain a high element of chance.

 

[Belen]

I think one of the big differences is that the 'Verse is set up so that you can't really go and carve out a place of your own with your money or otherwise gain real prestige. Improving your lot is possible in Traveller, but in the 'Verse? That's not possible without changing the setting.

Um....why? I think that it a bit of a BS statement. Plenty of people in the Verse have made it. If you're playing on Mal's crew or running something very similar, then maybe what you said can be true. There are examples of making it in the Firely universe.

Plus, the 'Verse reflects the bizarre cognitive dissonance in popular culture about glorifying the Confederacy without acknowledging it's pining for one of the most despicable political movements in human history, and Traveller's topped by twee 1950s space opera conventions.

Give me a break. This is one thing that I dare you to bring to Circvs Maximvs.

 

[eyebeams]

Um....why? I think that it a bit of a BS statement. Plenty of people in the Verse have made it. If you're playing on Mal's crew or running something very similar, then maybe what you said can be true. There are examples of making it in the Firely universe.

Uh, "making it," is not the point. Being free frontierspeople is. This is thematically incompatible with making it. One of the subtexts of the Western is that once the frontier is secure, it isn't suited to the people who fought to protect it a la The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance.

Now Serenity makes a vague stab at some kind of revolutionary thing, but it really isn't well formed, since revolutions require a coherent agenda to be worth a damn.

Give me a break. This is one thing that I dare you to bring to Circvs Maximvs.

To make sure we have equivalent burdens, I dare you to type any responses in a cage of feces-flinging rhesus monkeys. In either case, it doesn't change the fact that the Western inspiration for Firefly includes a soft-pedaled Confederacy equivalent (and that this is faithful to the Western genre), and that Traveller owes much if its setting to Smith, Piper and co. Me, I can live with these facts and game in either setting without guilt, tough not without thinking it through. If others have a problem with this situation, it doesn't really bother me.

 

[Dragon Snack]

I think the biggest problem people have is preconcieved notions about RPGs and possibly the differences between the movie and the TV series.

The Serenity RPG is not trying to be about:

1. Shooting people up - sure it can happen, but the real gem of Firefly was the family atmosphere. Now, it takes a group that doesn't want to focus on busting in the door and blowing things up, but it can be done. Admittedly, the movie was about shooting people up, but it was trying to be something far different than the TV series.

2. Hauling cargo - again, it can happen, but you're limiting yourself if you focus on this. Dabble in it every once and a while, but don't turn it into a game of Abacus and Acountants.

3. Being heroes - sure, the crew of Serenity called themselves BDH's, but that was dripping in irony. They defend who they can, but in the end they aren't going to save the world(s). The players aren't going take down the Alliance. There are plenty of other systems to play in if that's what you want to do.

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 play D&D to slug it out in combat, I play Savage Worlds to be the hero, and I play Serenity to have fun and play a goofball (where it doesn't annoy the crap out of the other players).

 

[Belen]

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 play D&D to slug it out in combat, I play Savage Worlds to be the hero, and I play Serenity to have fun and play a goofball (where it doesn't annoy the crap out of the other players).

You do not need a system for this one though. You can just roleplay. You do not need rules to just roleplay in the Firefly universe.

In the end, it is supposed to be a game. I love to roleplay and I hate to rollplay. However, the Serenity rules are just bad game design. Period.

 

[Cam Banks]

In the end, it is supposed to be a game. I love to roleplay and I hate to rollplay. However, the Serenity rules are just bad game design. Period.

I think this is clearly a subjective assessment, going by the number of people who are real fans of the game and its rules (and not just because they wanted the book for the pictures).

There are people who think D&D is "just bad game design, period" also. I think it's fair to say that you don't like it, which is no problem.

Cheers,
Cam

 

[diaglo]

I think this is clearly a subjective assessment, going by the number of people who are real fans of the game and its rules (and not just because they wanted the book for the pictures).

subjective or not. it still gets poor ratings from me.

diaglo "had to judge this PoC for the ENnies last year" Ooi

 

[Dragon Snack]

You do not need a system for this one though. You can just roleplay. You do not need rules to just roleplay in the Firefly universe.

True, but it helps immensely to have at least the semblance of a ruleset to use as a guide. The Serenity rules facilitate the spirit of the TV show well, IMO.

Combat is deadly and to be avoided (or you aim for the one shot kill, like they did in the series). Botches are a fact of life, in the series the crew did screw up at times (so it works as long as your GM doesn't use it as an excuse to totally screw you over - and I think we all agree that rolling to land on a clear day was poor GMing).

In the end, it is supposed to be a game. I love to roleplay and I hate to rollplay. However, the Serenity rules are just bad game design. Period.

I'm not saying the rules aren't weak, but then they haven't had the tweaking of playtests and a huge player base that D&D has - and we all know D&D has it's rules 'issues'.

What would be your biggest complaint about the rules? How do you see other rulesets overcoming them?

If you used the Savage Worlds system combat would become far more of a focus than it was in the TV series (and yet still wouldn't be as deadly as the movie). I'm not as well versed with d20 Modern, but the D&D rules create a far different feel for the characters and game world.

(edit: I don't know why it posted on me before I pressed the button...edit2: added quotes...)

 

[Cam Banks]

subjective or not. it still gets poor ratings from me.

Isn't that par for the course for you, diaglo?

Cheers,
Cam

 

[diaglo]

Isn't that par for the course for you, diaglo?

i have high standards.