Pen & Paper Roleplaying

POSTED BY: GorramIndependent
UPDATED: Friday, August 26, 2005 00:20
VIEWED: 10302
PAGE 1 of 1

GORRAMINDEPENDENT

Sunday, May 9, 2004 7:40 PM

Howdy,

I'm a greenhorn to "Firefly," having been recently converted by the mighty fine DVD series, in which I just started the fourth and last DVD. I reckon I'll be done soon, but knowing that it may be a spell before I can see new stories, will have to be content with what I've got.

I'm looking at pen & paper roleplaying "Firefly" using one of the following systems:

(1) GURPS Traveller
(2) Star Hero
(3) Future World (Chaosium's BRP sub-system that is floating around on PDF)

My bias is towards (3), but there is no support for this system. Star HERO looks interesting, but I haven't played a HERO type system since the first edition of CHAMPIONS. I still have bad memories of point-buying systems. GURPS Traveller seems closer to the bill, but it requires buying a lot of books to make a complete game.

What should I do?

PBI

Sunday, May 9, 2004 8:19 PM

Quote:
Originally posted by GorramIndependent:
Howdy,

I'm a greenhorn to "Firefly," having been recently converted by the mighty fine DVD series, in which I just started the fourth and last DVD. I reckon I'll be done soon, but knowing that it may be a spell before I can see new stories, will have to be content with what I've got.

I'm looking at pen & paper roleplaying "Firefly" using one of the following systems:

(1) GURPS Traveller
(2) Star Hero
(3) Future World (Chaosium's BRP sub-system that is floating around on PDF)

My bias is towards (3), but there is no support for this system. Star HERO looks interesting, but I haven't played a HERO type system since the first edition of CHAMPIONS. I still have bad memories of point-buying systems. GURPS Traveller seems closer to the bill, but it requires buying a lot of books to make a complete game.

What should I do?

Check out the forums at www.travellerrpg.com. There's been a rather recent, active discussion on Firefly Traveller.

If you can survive death, you can probably survive almost anything.

MJD

Monday, May 10, 2004 12:50 PM

I like to kid myself that T20 (or any other version of Traveller) could model Firefly quite well.

Indeed, if I wasn't writing & playtesting the official T20 game materials, I think I'd be running a T20 Firefly game about now.

http://travellerrpg.com/

CAPTAINCERENTZ

Monday, May 10, 2004 2:10 PM

I am running a Firefly themed 'Star Wars the Role-Playing Game, 2nd Edition' campaign right now. Themed in that it is episodic, with similar character interactions designed into the story. I find the WEG d6 rules to be well-suited to the kind of episodic game style that Firefly 'asks' for.

If this campaign works out well, I plan on creating a full-on Firefly 'verse campaign that may or may not include a trip to 'The Earth That Was'.

The difficult thing will be getting the players into the idea of having, or at least starting, with an unarmed ship, especially when there are things like the Reavers out in the Black.

SITTINGDUCK

Monday, May 10, 2004 2:27 PM

May I recommend Savage Worlds? It's a any genre system in the manner of GURPS but a lot easier. In fact, someone has designed a Firefly themed Savage Worlds character sheet: www arcanetimes com SavageWorlds SWsheets jpg HighRezSavageFirefly jpg

To keep it from being a rutting huge graphic, I removed the dots and slashes and replaced them with spaces. You should be able to figure out which goes where.

You have the right to the remains of a silent attorney. If you cannot afford one, tough noogies!

GUNHAND

Monday, May 10, 2004 2:53 PM

Quote:
Originally posted by CaptainCerentz:
I am running a Firefly themed 'Star Wars the Role-Playing Game, 2nd Edition' campaign right now. Themed in that it is episodic, with similar character interactions designed into the story. I find the WEG d6 rules to be well-suited to the kind of episodic game style that Firefly 'asks' for.

If this campaign works out well, I plan on creating a full-on Firefly 'verse campaign that may or may not include a trip to 'The Earth That Was'.

The difficult thing will be getting the players into the idea of having, or at least starting, with an unarmed ship, especially when there are things like the Reavers out in the Black.

I've used that as well and it works pretty easilly. I pretty much redid the whole 2nd Edition Revised and Expanded and took out the Star Wars stuff and replaced it with 'Verse stuff. Where there were things that needed filled in that weren't explained so much in the shows I just went wild. Played well and everyone had a good time.

Another system I've used for it was the Unisystem Light rules from the Buffy game, it also worked well in my opinion and I liked having some of the extras that it gave over D6 such as the "hard to kill" perk and whatnot. Another thing I liked with the Buffy rules was the Drama Points (although I just renamed Force points in Star Wars and used them about the same way) and the genre emulation for snappy dialog, seeing people use Chinese to boost their drama points was a cool and appropriate thing to me.

But I didn't do as much with it as with the WEG Star Wars rules, but I do love those Buffy-like perks. The new D6 system coming out over the summer is going to have advantages that I can build like Buffy perks so I can have my cake and eat it too once I get my grubby mits on them.

But then again Eden is coming out with a magazine that has rules in it for a "very Firefly-esqe setting" so I'll be giving that a look as well.

So right now I'm kinda torn between Unisystem and D6 for running it. Either works really well and the relative lightness of the rules lets the thing flow like an episode of Firefly.

In a perfect world Eden would do a licensed Firefly game, they already have done Buffy and Angel. But they hadn't been interested in Firefly at all, although the BDM movie announcement and the DVD sales seem to have them going from "not interested" to "hmmm...maybe just maybe." Personally I think they're floating the "Firefly-esque" setting in their new mag to guage possible interest (as in would buy it not a just sounds cool kinda interest) in a Firefly game from people.

But that's just my guesstimations and nothing officially offical.

~-~-~-~-~-~-~-
"Oh hey, I got an idea. Instead of us hanging
around playing art critic till I get pinched by
the Man, how's about we move away from this
eerie-ass piece of work and get on with our
increasingly eerie-ass day, how's that?"

My eerie-ass website:
http://gunhandsfirefly.homestead.com/Index.html

SHINY

Monday, May 10, 2004 3:02 PM

Slightly off-topic, but for my fellow D&D geeks out there, here's a bit of nostalgia:

http://www.angelfire.com/wa2/haroog/wormy.htm

Please help Haken keep this site running by occasionally clicking on some of the sponsored ad links on the side of the page!

GUNHAND

Monday, May 10, 2004 3:06 PM

Oh man, I used to [l]love Wormy when it was in the back of the old Dragons.

Now I feel old.

Hehe

~-~-~-~-~-~-~-
"Oh hey, I got an idea. Instead of us hanging
around playing art critic till I get pinched by
the Man, how's about we move away from this
eerie-ass piece of work and get on with our
increasingly eerie-ass day, how's that?"

My eerie-ass website:
http://gunhandsfirefly.homestead.com/Index.html

GORRAMINDEPENDENT

Monday, May 10, 2004 4:52 PM

Interesting! I had forgotten about the Eden Studios game connection. The application of "Drama Points" sounds intriguing. Thanks to everyone who posted

Quote:
Originally posted by Gunhand:

In a perfect world Eden would do a licensed Firefly game, they already have done Buffy and Angel. But they hadn't been interested in Firefly at all, although the BDM movie announcement and the DVD sales seem to have them going from "not interested" to "hmmm...maybe just maybe." Personally I think they're floating the "Firefly-esque" setting in their new mag to guage possible interest (as in would buy it not a just sounds cool kinda interest) in a Firefly game from people.

But that's just my guesstimations and nothing officially offical.

NECROMANCERBOB

Monday, July 12, 2004 11:44 PM

Yeah, an Eden RPG would be okay. I'm not really fond of their system...and I've actually seen the drama point concept done better in other games.

As for myself, I've tossed out an idea for a Firefly-style Fading Suns game (appropriate since it was the FS list that got me started on Firefly). Not so much using FS to run Firefly, but running a game set in the FS universe with similar themes (a bunch of good-hearted folks with an old broken-down ship out to make a dishonest buck). It actually seems to fit quite well, but we haven't had the chance to run it yet.

EVILMASTERMIND

Tuesday, July 13, 2004 12:10 AM

My suggestion is to go with GURPS Traveller. IMHO it is worth the cost. I have been running a Firefly-GURPS Traveller campaign for some time now. It is set in 3418 instead of 2518 and merges both Traveller Canon and Firefly Canon.

Here is the background info I provided to the players:

Here’s how it was…

2097 AD –Terran/Vilani “First Contact” occurs at Barnard’s Star.

2302 AD - Jump 3 FTL technology is achieved. Interstellar Wars end. Terrans seize control of the collapsing Ziru Sirka (a.k.a. - First Imperium).

2317 AD – Grand Admiral Ulysses Adair of Mars establishes the Second Imperium.

2323 AD - Jump 4 FTL technology is achieved.

2344 AD - Adair's aide-de-camp, Commodore “Stormrider” Boone, assumes the title Emperor Ulysses II.

2350 AD - After consolidating his position, Emperor Ulysses II transfers the government from Earth and Vland to a newly built Imperial Capital in the center of the Imperium. Sol's very distant companion, a Brown Dwarf called Nemesis, was detected. Orbital projections showed it plunging through the Oort Cloud and into the outskirts of the Sol System. Aside from the millions of comets and Kuiper Belt Object s, Pluto/Charon, Uranus, and Neptune would also be disturbed by its passage. Terran humanity had about 150 years to do something. Naturally, the best and worst traits of our species came to the fore.

2351-2524 AD - “The Terran Diaspora” - Roughly half of Earth’s massive population is evacuated from the planet. The Second Imperium focused all its resources to save the population of the Terran Homeworld. The Imperium brooked no interference from ANY source political, religious, or cultural. Equatorial regions were seized in South America, Africa, and Southeast Asia for the construction of beanstalks. Those projects and the involuntary imposition of a contraceptive bioengineered from a rhino-virus which was hurriedly and controversially deployed as a way to make the Diaspora more easier - left a bitter feeling in many minds.

A crash program of colonization aimed to find permanent homes for the refugees from Earth. As Terran refugees spread through Charted Space, Terran diseases decimated Vilani populations on every world on which the Terran refugees were settled. Further projections of Nemesis' orbit and its effects on the Sol System led to fears that one or more planets would impact Sol itself. No one could really say what that may trigger, so even more distant colonies were planned as a safeguard.

Back on Earth the wheels began to come off. The Imperium began to experience increased resistance both within and without its member polities. Some believed that Nemesis was a hoax and that the Imperium was engaged in ethnic cleansing on a grand scale and that certain minority cultures were being deliberately left behind to perish. Others felt that humanity's resources should be used to 'defend' Earth from the effects of Nemesis' passage rather than on interstellar colonization.

Finally, too many others fell under the sway of various 'millennial' religious sects who believed that various prophecies from dozens of belief systems were to come true during Nemesis' passage and that removing humanity from the Sol system was a 'sin' or 'taboo'. These last gave the Imperium the most trouble of all.

After a generation, recruitment rates for colonies dropped off markedly and the Imperium was forced to send in troops to round up people to fill the transports. The people collected in this manner were not only unwilling, they were unskilled too. Anyone who had the slightest connection to any Diaspora critical job or support effort could (usually) avoid the sweeps. These sweeps only further exacerbated feelings against the Imperium.
These later colonies followed a standard pattern; trained Imperium personnel would land at a prospective colony site, begin to build the necessary infrastructure, and hopefully be ready to receive tens of thousands of unskilled, sullen, people kidnapped from dozens of cultures within a standard year. These new colonies wer

NECROMANCERBOB

Wednesday, July 14, 2004 12:27 AM

Ruby? Who's Ruby?

EVILMASTERMIND

Wednesday, July 14, 2004 12:45 AM

My bad.

I should have mentioned that the first player to sign up for my campaign was a "Galactic Gumshoe" (Private Detective) by the name of Ruby Wu. River found her in a "freeze-tube" in the trunk of Jubal Early's ship. She has been a member of the company of Serenity ever since.

Thus far it has not been necessary to insert new characters because the other new players have been content to take on existing roles (Jayne and Zoe) for their PCs. However now I have one guy who REALLY wants to play a "reformed" Jubal Early who expereinced an epiphany while drifting in space and has decided to become a "disciple" of River.

NECROMANCERBOB

Wednesday, July 14, 2004 11:39 PM

Ah. I see. I'm not a big fan of allowing players to take existing characters in a setting - I usually reserve those for NPCs. But then, I don't really run "outside" (licensed) settings...

CHOZSUN

Thursday, July 15, 2004 3:27 AM

I am in a group that is currently playing the Fading Suns ( http://www.holistic-design.com/FadingSuns.htm) non-D20 game.

In it, we have a 4 armed beast of an alien who rules as a mob boss of his own casino (that would be me), pilot, questing knight, cyborg engineer and a great navigator. Since we are all big fans of Firefly, we cannot help but to steer the session into a classic FF episode or two.

NECROMANCERBOB

Thursday, July 15, 2004 10:25 PM

That's about what I had planned. Minus the Scraver Vorox, though. :D

ELIANDI

Thursday, July 15, 2004 10:30 PM

My Firefly campaign based on Traveller t20 and using the Neverwinter Nights game engine begins in ~3 weeks. I've got 7 players and a co-DM, and couldn't be more excited!

EVILMASTERMIND

Thursday, July 15, 2004 11:26 PM

Quote:
Originally posted by NecromancerBob:
Ah. I see. I'm not a big fan of allowing players to take existing characters in a setting - I usually reserve those for NPCs. But then, I don't really run "outside" (licensed) settings...

Well I certainly would not let a player run River (Too powerful and too crazy!) or Mal (Its his gorram starship!) I have no problem with these particular players running Zoe, Jayne and Jubal.

We did however talk about the very point you made when we were first considering this new GURPS Traveller campaign and the consensus was that it simply would not be FIREFLY without the actual characters from the show. So that's what we went with.

"Okay, I'm lost, I'm angry and I'm armed!"

NECROMANCERBOB

Thursday, July 15, 2004 11:45 PM

I wouldn't think a River-like character would be too powerful. Thanks to her schizophrenia and relative innocence, if played correctly (and crazily), she'd be more likely to kill the rest of the cast than walk all over the bad guys.

For the record, yeah, one of my group is practically River in real life...aside from the uber-genius part. Sadly, she doesn't make it these days...

As far as the Firefly-Fading Suns (Freemen, I'm calling the campaign), the two characters we have so far are a Shepherd Book-like Hesychaist monk and a noble/techie (from House Al-Malik, the one closest to the merchant guilds). Since my players know d20 better, we're using that - I've already had to teach them two systems aside from d20 now.

DARTHNADER

Friday, August 26, 2005 12:16 AM

I absolutely suggest that anyone that wishes to roleplay FIREFLY should look into the Traveller rules as an viable option.

IMHO the Classic Traveller rules are the simplest, and therefore the most flexible to use if you are going to custom-tailor a campaign to the Firefly/Serenity setting.

GURPS Traveller may be a good choice also.

I personally know of at least 3 Traveller campaigns already in full swing with their Firefly-campaigns. A couple are playing their tabletop campaigns directly over the Internet (using some client-server software of course)

And last but not least.... the Traveller nerds on the Internet have already created bazillions of accurately modeled 3D ships and deckplans for the Firefly-class.

UNCHARTEDOUTLAW

Friday, August 26, 2005 12:20 AM

So, wait...who roleplays the pen and who the paper?

*runs and hides from the RPGers*

-Taylor

http://norcalriviera.blogspot.com
http://www.cafepress.com/norcalriviera

**Winner of That Other Shiny Caption Game #2**

River: "So we'll integrate non-progressional evolution theory with God's creation of Eden. Eleven inherent metaphoric parallels already there. Eleven. Important number. Prime number. One goes into the house of eleven eleven times, but always comes out one. Noah's ark is a problem."