Serenity RPG - How is it?

[Harker Wade]

"reminds me of Savage Worlds."

Yeah, that's what I thought. That's why I still haven't bought it. I think the 'simple' skill system missed the mark, but I do like the cinematic features and all the stuff about the 'verse.

 

[Rodrigo Istalindir]

Thansk everybody for all the replies.

Lots to think on - I'm kind of suprised by some of the negative comments on how the rules play - they looked quite GM friendly and flexible to me on my initial read.

Sometimes a game gets so flexible it stops being a useful collection of rules. More specifically, in Serenity most everything is a stat die plus a skill die. For example, if your novice engineer wants to figure out what's wrong with the engine, you might tell him its to roll Intelligence + Mechanical Engineering and its 'Average' difficulty. So he rolls a d6 (his Intelligence score) + a d4 (he's a noob) and has to get a '7' or better.

The problem is, there are no fixed skill rolls. You could just as easily have him roll Perception + Mech Eng. And the base skills top out at a d6 -- if you want more, you have to take a sub-skill, which also aren't enumerated very well. This becomes a pain for the GM (I think) for a couple reasons. First, for harder tasks, if the GM doesn't allow the check to use a sub-skill, the chances for sucess will go down, and the player might feel compelled to argue his case that the subskill really does apply. This gets old and slows things down. Secondly, it forces the GM to have to remember a lot more about the characters when designing the adventure, or especially when winging things. Keeping track of who is good at what when there are dozens of subskills but characters will have only a fraction is a pain. (Compare this to D20, where most DMs could make up a 'climb' check on the spot and have a pretty good idea of how hard it would be for any character in the party to succeed.)
Third, it has the unintended side effect (I think) of emphasizing stats over skills. An engineer with a d12 Int and a d4 Mech. Eng will have (over the course of the game) better chances of success than one with a d6 Int, d6 Mech Eng, and a few d10s in subskills, simply because the stat dice aren't capped the way the base skill dice are, and a stat die will always get used whereas a sub-skill die might not come up at all. Consistency is also a bear, as you have to (or should, anyway) remember what combinations were used in what situations, otherwise the same task might be easy one session, and impossible the next.

It's too bad. On paper it looks good. You could have different characters approaching the same dilemma with different tactics depending on their strengths. The 'perceptive' engineer might listen to the ship to 'hear' what she's saying, whereas the 'smart' engineer would rely on diagnostics, etc. In practice, it just doesn't work that well IME. A shorter and better defined list of subskills would go a long way to alleviating some of that.

 

[Mark Hope]

On the other hand, it has Chinese swear words at the back!!

 

[Rodrigo Istalindir]

On the other hand, it has Chinese swear words at the back!!

True! Best. Appendix. Ever.

First gameday I ran it, one of the players was going to town with that. I didn't know half of what he said, but it sure made it feel like Firefly.

 

[RFisher]

And the base skills top out at a d6 -- if you want more, you have to take a sub-skill

I think this is the root of most of its mechanical problems.

As for not having fixed lists of subskills & definative combinations of attribute/skill for tasks, I don't mind this at all. I just encourage the player to argue for why a certain attribute, skill, & subskill should be applicable to the current task. If you can convince everyone, then I'll probably let you roll against those. (Though I might adjust the difficulty depending on the attribute/skill combination involved.) I don't have a problem accepting that one problem could be solved just as well by several different approaches.

Beyond that, though, the game as written (or as published) seemed to be missing a lot of stuff. Not stuff that you wished they'd included but that they expect you to make up (like specific subskills). Rather stuff you figured they meant to include but which slipped through the cracks. (I don't have my own copy yet, & it's been a while since I read it, so don't expect me to cite specifics.) Nothing that I couldn't have come up with a way to handle myself, but I expect a bit more when I'm paying for a game.

(Edit: Of course, Firefly always seemed to be based on classic Traveller to me, so I'd be tempted to use that for a game set in the 'Verse.)

 

[mhensley]

(Edit: Of course, Firefly always seemed to be based on classic Traveller to me, so I'd be tempted to use that for a game set in the 'Verse.)

Firefly is almost surely influenced by Traveller. I love classic Traveller, but the rules as written are so broken as to be almost unplayable. They were fine 25 years ago when we just rolled dice and made stuff up, but its painful to read the rules now. There's more holes than rules...

 

[Wystan]

I would love to read, it if there is anyone like Diaglo on here, who wants to get rid of it, let me know.......

 

[SteveC]

Having read and played it, I would have to say that the rules are some of the worst that I've seen in a game produced by a mainstream company in a long time. The game does a terrible job of recreating the conflicts from the show, and has the same problem of Savage Worlds in that characters have trouble performing consistently at tasks. Mal and company hardly ever fail at tasks. They do so when it's going to move the story forward (i.e., when the failure at a task is going to be what a storyline is about) or they almost fail, but more complications are introduced. Sometimes complications with severe side effects for the character (e.g., "I'm a leaf on the wind.")

If you don't have enough campaign info on the Serenity universe, it can be a useful tool for that. My suggestion would be to take a Unisystem game (like, say, Buffy) for your rules, and then use the Serenity book for flavor and setting info.

Just my $.02...and just to note, Serenity didn't kick a kitten arome or anything, I just really, really didn't enjoy the experience of playing it for a game that I'd dearly like to love.

--Steve

 

[Cam Banks]

This makes me wonder how much is the system and how much is the person running the game deciding that a specific action or encounter is going to be left to chance. In many indie games, especially those like Dogs in the Vineyard (which has been used to run a Firefly sort of campaign, ironically enough) the lesson is: roll the dice or say yes. If the players want to accomplish something, don't bring out the call for a dice roll until it's a critical point in the story that should be left up to chance, fate, or what have you. Until that point, look at the skills and dice assigned to them as a general guide as to how your player characters would typically handle themselves.

Wash shouldn't be making Pilot skill checks all the time. He's clearly a seasoned and talented pro, so for most of the game it isn't about whether he beats his Pilot target number or not, but how the player has Wash react to other story elements. It's only when it really matters if you fail or not -- piloting through a minefield, or flying through Reaver space unnoticed -- that the dice come out. Even then, failure should lead to some other result, one that's not game-ending but steers the plot along an alternate route, even if it's just a jog to the left and back again later.

This is also seen by some game designers as being the difference between a game based on the stakes, and a game based on winning and losing. Running Serenity, it should come down to a question this: what's at stake? what will happen if the player succeeds his roll? what happens if he doesn't? Are both interesting to the story? If the answer to the last question is "no," then the outcomes need to be rethought.

Cheers,
Cam

The game does a terrible job of recreating the conflicts from the show, and has the same problem of Savage Worlds in that characters have trouble performing consistently at tasks. Mal and company hardly ever fail at tasks. They do so when it's going to move the story forward (i.e., when the failure at a task is going to be what a storyline is about) or they almost fail, but more complications are introduced. Sometimes complications with severe side effects for the character (e.g., "I'm a leaf on the wind.")

 

[SteveC]

This is also seen by some game designers as being the difference between a game based on the stakes, and a game based on winning and losing. Running Serenity, it should come down to a question this: what's at stake? what will happen if the player succeeds his roll? what happens if he doesn't? Are both interesting to the story? If the answer to the last question is "no," then the outcomes need to be rethought.

I just wanted say that I completely agree with this. I am writing a game at the moment, and when I came to the task resolution system, I wrote that each die roll carries with it the possibility for dramatic success or crushing failure. If the GM and the group in general can't deal with the consequences either way, it's time to break out another method to resolve the task.

So yes, I see where you're coming from and agree with you.

--Steve