RANGER'S BLOG

Ranger

Firefly Traveller Characters
Tuesday, February 10, 2004

I was going to keep plugging away at the backstory but I think we have enough base in technology and history to work on game mechanics for a bit. I think you need a base of tech and story to do the mechanics because I agree with Marc W. Miller (the guy who designed Traveller) that game mechanics are based on basic large scale assumptions. MWM earned an MA in Sociology before he designed Traveller, and I think part of the reason the game is so good is that he understood that Character Generation in an RPG is a model of how society affects people’s lives. You have to have a picture of how the society works before you can make rules about what kind of people it produces.

Characters in Traveller are not 18 year olds setting out to conquer the Universe. They are adults, with years of experience behind them, trying to survive in the Universe (sounds a lot like the crew of Serenity).

So, to generate characters I think the basic Classic Traveller with one tweek from Mega-Traveller is pretty much on target for the Firefly ‘verse. This system breaks a characters life down into 4 year blocks of ‘prior service’ to give them the skills they need to survive. This site has a good basic outline of how it works with the tables you need to generate the original 6 character backgrounds:

http://www.geocities.com/Area51/Atlantis/3631/Traveller/Rules.html

There was an advanced system developed for Traveller, but I think that system is too tied to the Official Traveller Universe (OUT) to work for Firefly. Your mileage may vary though.

The one tweek I would add is to use the Mega-Traveller system of Special Duty, an extra roll for each term to give you an extra skill per term. I’d also add ranks and promotion for enlisted and bump the commission roll for the Army up to 8+ (otherwise Mal would have clearly been an officer instead of a Sergeant).

I’d also include all the 12 extra careers from Traveller Supplement 4.

Next: Serenity’s crew as Traveller Characters.

COMMENTS

Friday, May 14, 2004 5:58 AM

SERGEANTX


T20 doesn't fit Traveller at all for my money. Levels and power gaming just aren't a good fit with the 'struggle for survival' mentality of "Firefly".

Sunday, February 29, 2004 2:55 PM

FORRESTWOLF


Well, my NWN T20 conversion is really coming along. I've figured out how to add skills and feats, so now I've got Merchant class only, the appropriate skills (with many simplifications, or the skill list would be way too long), and I'm working on feats (got the weapon proficiencies down).

Traveller is SO the right way to go, you're right. I'll throw together a Mal character card for a test once it's ready, though I should warn that everyone will end up as a Merchant-only character, since I'm just using T20-Lite.

Tuesday, February 17, 2004 4:15 PM

FORRESTWOLF


Did you ever start up a discussion board thread? I don't know where to look for that.

At any rate, I just posted my first screenshot of the Neverwinter Nights work I'm doing on Firefly. I wanted to let you know that you convinced me to go with T20. I'll be using T20 Lite, since it's on the web, and Merchant class characters seem just fine for most Firefly-style campaigns.

I'll be tweaking T20 Lite a fair bit to fit it into a Neverwinter Nights module, but the end result should still basically be Traveller.

Thanks for the advice! As for prior history on the original characters, I'd keep in mind that characters from shows typically are more powerful than what you might play in a starting campaign in any genre. Thus, if it all doesn't quite work for standard mustering out starting characters, I wouldn't be TOO worried...the Firefly characters could be more experienced than that.

Friday, February 13, 2004 2:58 AM

KUGELBLITZ


Maybe so, but after Serenity Mal probably would have been breveted at least to an offficer rank, Lt. or CPT perhaps. THat would assume that the Alliance won that one, of course. In those kinds of actions promotions will happen.


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