FireFly Table Top RPG Thread #2 by arcbeatle

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FireFly Table Top RPG Thread #2

POSTED BY: ARCBEATLE
UPDATED: Friday, March 5, 2004 18:09
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Tuesday, March 2, 2004 5:00 PM

Okay,

Having looked over everyones main concern about making a FireFly Role playing game, (look for the thread FireFly Table Top RPG D12) Im movoing on (after a hump of homework that delayed the answer) to answering:

How in Heavens name can you make a FireFly RPG with half a seasons worth of Information about it???

Simple.

Theres enough.

The one man difference in FireLFy from mainline TV is its abilaty to make clear whats going on, even if it is involing compression coils or lazers.
But the Fact is, we dont need to know HOW things work, as long as they work.
This point is made clear in the show itself every time Mal cuts in on Kaylee trying to do her tech jargon.
It aint matter how the compression coil broke, its broke.
It doesnt Matter that Verra for soem odd reason needs air to fire, we dont need to know.
Is FireFly in one star system or many? Not much gameplay need for that, long as your crew gets where they need to go.

Get what Im saying?

Joss Did a great job making sure that we knew what weapons did (sonic blasters, guns, lazers, sticks that make you bleed from your orifaces.) and thats all I really care about. All the unknowns on FireFly are really just about the crew, and if your doing a roel playing gmae with your own crew, in their own ship, going their own places, theres no need to know what Books true alligences are, or why the blue hand mens rods only kill the people other then themselves.

The game only needs so much.

Hopefully, If I can finish FireFly D12 soon enough (If I get help from any one, that would be shiny, Ie got a big work load and can only do so much...) then I can even do an expansion, which being that I am going to cover the whole series in my core rules, will proably have to be based on FanFiction lol.

So theres why I can make it. So Can we get on to discussing how too?

Thaughts? Comments?

People only beleive somehting if it's in a movie

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Tuesday, March 2, 2004 9:05 PM

JHARROD

In all honesty, and after reading a handful of fanfic on this site, I think incorporating stories and characters into the whole system would be ruttin' shiney.

Kudos to you and the fantastic fanfic writers.

"They tell ya to never hit a man with a closed fist, but it is on occassion hilarious"

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Wednesday, March 3, 2004 5:54 PM

ARCBEATLE

Well thanks!
Of course I have to get the stuff done based of the Epesodes first, it is the sacred tome of this game!

But after I use up season one, theres not anything else to use.
Except all of your genious thoughts out there.

Please though, If any one is interested in helping contact me:

Malflick@yahoo.com

thanks!
(PS) are there any FanFics in particular w/ some coolish technolagy I should check out?

People only beleive somehting if it's in a movie

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Wednesday, March 3, 2004 5:55 PM

ARCBEATLE

Gosh, I jsut read the FireFly movies greenlighted.

Now aint that Shiny.

I think my other projects can go on hold for a few days... i mean monthes.

here comes'

People only beleive somehting if it's in a movie

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Thursday, March 4, 2004 3:58 PM

ARCBEATLE

FireFly RPG Pre Production Article 1:

Charictarisation: how to make big damn hero's.

As I used up sheets of paper writng out what a character in this game should be, mainly doing Simon Tam and Malcom Renolds to see how they worked, I came accross something... kinda odd.

I had Givin our hero's six abilaties:
Strenghth (possably will be changed to "might"
Agilaty (quickness?)
Senses (I just didnt want to use perception)
Stamina
Knowlage, and
Social

I made simon's character, and after going through what I thought he was, came up with something like this:
Strength: 3, Agilaty: 4, Stamina: 2, senses: 4, knowlage: 4, social: 2
Obviously thats without skills or anything, pretty bare bones, and looking back I probably shouldnt have givin him 4 agilaty with how bad he is at shootin folk, but one thing was abvious:
He was far too unbalanced.

Not that in game play he would be, no I could get away just fine with some drekk like that and no one would be the wiser. Simons Character, dare I say it, wasnt at all like he was in the show.
Why?
Becouse, the numbers of dice I had givin him were too small.
When I first made this system I thought that the less dice: the better. I'd seen what happened in the old star wars D6 game, characters with no limits on their abilaties, Dark Jedi who could roll boxes of dicemultiple times and still need to finish their action roll.
I realised my Mistake.

What I had been trying to do was make FireFLy an epic RPG, characters who are obviously not intellegent or obviously weak, where characters would throw all their dice into a single key abilaty and smirk as they managed to do better then the balenced, characterised characters. Cursing I tried to figure out what the heck to do, I needed to makemy characters have more abilaty points with out making it easy to make a extreamly unbalenced character... What to do...

I suddenly found inspiration by looking through other RPG Books, Exalted is a game with strict point limits that characters cannot surpass: the D20 Star wars game gives players a huge number of points, but each point individually does little, taking more and hardr to get points to reach a bonus, the problem with that is it has no point breaks and you can still throw all your points into 1 or 2 key abilaties to extort to your hearts content.
Then, there is the aged and out of Print Men in Black RPG.
Who thought.
The game has a very differnent take on abilaties: it gives you alot of points, but spreads important skills out amung the different abilaties, and then letting you never improve abilaties, only skills.

Why I can hear those angels now.

I had previously had an ability point limit for starting charaters of 4, but if I made it very hard to up abilaties, making ability upping a rare and valuable occasion that would occur only a few times, I could simply then up the ability limit to 5 for strating charractters and give then 18 points instead of 13. Its not much really, but its enough. Players cant jsut max out their point limits at character creation and then work up whatever else they decide they need as they go on, if you do that, your pretty screwed. After Thinking about it more, a much better way of controlling this is to give more points than they can max out in.

So Baisicly heres my sum up of the sbilaties:
-6 Abilaties
-18 points to put into them
-Abilaties have a point break of 5 at character creation
-Abilaties take a hell of alot of experiance to raise, since one point represents a drastic inceae in how much you know, can llift, etc.

I dont know how much experiance (or what ever Ill call it) characters will need to up somthing, but trust the Arcbeatle here folks, its a sum.
(note: I also will move the skills around a little, which will come up in my next little article.)

-Jim

People only beleive somehting if it's in a movie

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Thursday, March 4, 2004 5:25 PM

JHARROD

It would be interesting to see how the firefly rpg would play out using a combination of the white wolf system(my personal favorite) and other systems. I look forward to it being completed!

"They tell ya to never hit a man with a closed fist, but it is on occassion hilarious"

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Friday, March 5, 2004 6:09 PM

ARCBEATLE

I dont know how similar it will be in the end, I likvewhite wolf too, but every thing they make is very super-human, and they have a great system for it, but like everyhting else it doesnt work by itself.

Im not sure whether I'll be using a success type system (aka, white wolf, roll die, meet target #, get a sucess) or one where you just roll a die and add the numbers up.

Baisicly that will all get decided when I try too desighn Combat for hte game, which Im putting last for the fact that every single person I know says I'm not very good at making combat systems.... But alas, what can I do?

onec again, casting call if any one wants to help.

-Wylder

People only beleive somehting if it's in a movie

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