Serenity RPG
- Thread starter Remus Lupin
- Start date
I just nabbed my copy of Serenity Adventures, and will soon be ordering those two new books (Cortex in PDF, because I'll just want the upgrades and Six Shooters in print, because well...I like me the smell of a new book!)
Rodrigo Istalindir
Explorer
Having run Serenity at a few gamedays, I'm not terribly impressed with it. The Cortex system as presented is rough and borderline broken, and the lack of useful setting material was very disappointing. It certainly didn't seem to offer anything new or compelling. A copy of Savage Worlds and one of the fan wikis would have been a far better choice IMO.
I've not seen what changes were made to Cortex with BSG or the stand-alone version, so I'm sure they've addressed some of the issues I had with it.
I've not seen what changes were made to Cortex with BSG or the stand-alone version, so I'm sure they've addressed some of the issues I had with it.
No doubt. Serenity was the first stab at it, and I agree: it feels like a first stab at something.
BSG was MUCH more polished, and the expansion of the Plot Points made a neat (but not necessarily new) mechanic into a brilliant roleplaying tool. Innovative? No, probably not. But VERY well done.
MWP's folks have definitely listened to their fans and have done a great job at polishing up the system. It's unfortunate they can't put out a Serenity Revised or Serenity 2nd Edition (I'm guessing due to sales and/or licensing issues), but there are alternatives, and they literally take a single google search to find, so...
BSG was MUCH more polished, and the expansion of the Plot Points made a neat (but not necessarily new) mechanic into a brilliant roleplaying tool. Innovative? No, probably not. But VERY well done.
MWP's folks have definitely listened to their fans and have done a great job at polishing up the system. It's unfortunate they can't put out a Serenity Revised or Serenity 2nd Edition (I'm guessing due to sales and/or licensing issues), but there are alternatives, and they literally take a single google search to find, so...
Dragonhelm
Knight of Solamnia
Technically, it was a second stab. The Cortex system was originally used with Sovereign Stone. When d20 came about, Sov. Stone made the jump.
Serenity was the first time the system had been used in years, and the first time for scifi. So it undoubtedly has that "first stab" feel.
They're good folks. I've enjoyed working with them over the years.
My experience running a Serenity game was immediately after it came out, I haven't paid attention to the system recently.
I found two things: it's easy for players to make a character that you have a hard time finding "stuff to do" for, without getting really repetitive, or that really just stands out as out-of-place in a group. One of my new-to-RPGs players rolled up a sort of animal-lover/horse trainer type when the rest of the crew was going for "mostly legitimate cargo runs." Short of making all their cargo cattle or horses, it was tough to play to her strengths.
Likewise, the creation system allows for some very specialized niche-y things that players might be drawn to because it's cool to them, but which won't see a lot of playtime because they're super-nichey. The doctor who bought up whichever skill it was for creating medicines and poisons is an example, when there are no real rules for crafting OR poisons outside that skill's existence (i.e., no combat effects of poisoned weapons, no prices or examples of poisons or components...). I ended up handwaving a few things as "you buy X creds worth of medicinal components, and on the way to the next planet, you make a couple rolls to see if you make anything useful." The vaguaries that I ended up giving probably weren't very satisfying, and the economics of it were a headache for me, which leads me to my final complaint/warning:
The game is pretty hollow, economically. For a game whose inspiration is constantly about the characters scraping an existence out of the universe, this was pretty disappointing. There weren't really any good bargaining guidelines, and there's not much to spend money on aside from ship maintenance, which is exorbitantly high compared to what else there is. As such, it's really hard to keep the characters feeling "poor" while still being able to maintain, or mostly maintain, a ship. If they've got money to keep the thing in the air, they've got the cash to buy food and whatever equipment they want, pretty much, or can save it in short order. It really relies on debt as a plot vehicle to keep the characters from being able to say "Okay, that's enough, I retire rather than keep the ship afloat" after a couple of successful jobs, and trying to calculate just how much a merchant crew can be allowed to make and haggle down/up to with their goods can feel like a full-time job itself. I guess my problem was that there was very little reference for economic stuff, and there's nothing analogous to the D&D wealth motivation of having cooler equipment to aspire to (for non-ship owners, at least. The owner has plenty of goals if they want to improve their ship, but a paid crew... not so much.)...
Ashrem Bayle
Explorer
I've recently stumbled upon the core Cortex rules and I'm very impressed. I plan to run a homebrew sci-fi game using them and I'm pretty excited.
