Issue 7 of Itstime4games.com
I discuss the Serenity film and Firefly TV series and the RPG.
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http://www.itstime4games.com/Portals/0/sound/itstime4games7.mp3
Serenity RPG by Margaret Weiss Productions
http://www.serenityrpg.com/
http://www.scifispace.com/html/firefly.php
The TV series Firefly lasted but one series in 2002. It was written by Josh Wheldon who is behind Angel and Buffy The Vampire Slayer.
Firefly is considered by many to be one of the finest SCIFI series ever and it was shortsighted of the studio to cancel it. Fortunately it is often on the scifi chanel and also available on DVD. Get it and watch it.I am sure you will enjoy it.
What is it about? Well this is how it is. 500 years in the future humanity has abandoned earth and travelled in massive ARC ships to a new system. We terraformed dozens of new earths. The central systems became the CORE and that is where a authoritarian goverment evolved. Life there is easy. High technology abounds. Disease and poverty unheard of. Paradise in fact- if you dont mind the total lack of control and freedom over your life. Out at the edges of the sytem orbiting secondary suns and gas giants are the worlds of the rim. The CORE felt it should rule the RIM. The rim worlders did not. The end result was war. The rebels/ rim worlders/ browncoats lost.
One such browncoat was Mal. He was a soldier in the wars. After loosing he bought a ship - Serenity and plies his ways around the rim trying to make a living and avoid authority. He has a crew of mifits and mercenaries but in the TV series they grow together as family. Two of these are Simon Tam and his sister River. Simon smuggles River aboard Serenity frozen in suspension. She is a psychic and mentally disturned and both are on the run from the Alliance. Why? Well you will have to watch the film to find out that.
The TV series is fun- dialogue is great at times. They create a curious blend of a kind of western frontier atmosphere on the rim. Indeed many settelments have lost technology and are reliant on horses and shot guns. meanwhile huge war vessels the size of cities patrol space and come from the highly advanced almost utopian core. I think it works well and has a feel which is fairly uniqgue. But alas it ends before you really resolve a lot of the issues. The film answers some of these - but you are left wanting more. Hopefully films 2 and 3 might lead to a new series.
Now what about the RPG?
First thing to say is that it is a slim volume at about 230 pages only and perhaps a little pricey. It looks quite nice with pictures from the flim and nice artwork in places - especially the ship plans.
The game system itself is a new one (although being truely honest it is not entirely new as I have seen it used before) and D20 it is not. That's nice. D20 is a good system but its dull to use the same system all the time.
So what is the system. Well attributes (Strength, agility etc) and skills are expressed in terms of a dice type. So you can have a vitality of a d6 or a strength of a d12. Dice go up to a d12.
When testing a skill roll the GM decides which attribute is relevant. Sometimes strength might be appropiate in opening a door and sometimes agility more appropaite. Then you choose a relavant skill and you roll the appropiate dice for the attribute and 1 dice for the skill. The total is then compared to a target number dependant on the difficulty of the task. So with a d6 and a d4 maybe you have to beat say a 7.
Its a fairly intuitaive and easy system. It also applies to almost every thing you do in the game. So even skill rolls for ship board activities use the same mechanic.
As for characters these are expressed in terms of attribues, skills and then traits which can be advantageous "assets" or a disadvantage " complications". There are no classes as such. You mold the character using attrinutes, skills and traits. There is no level system - instead you get development points to develop the character during the game.
Overall i think the game and character generation system is easy to learn and is clearly designed to not get in the way of a good game based on NPCS and plot. Players wanting a plot light mechanic heavy system are better looking elsewhere.
What about the back ground material. Well the decriptions of the history of the world system and the NPCS are quite good. There has been alot of chritisim leveled at the game for lack of detail on maps of the system which are usualble rather than pretty and colourful. I agree with this critism. I want a map of the system I can read. I want to be able to identify worlds and be able to give players a map they will use to make decisions- "well beaumonde is 2 days away , but Haven is closer".
What of the future. Well we are promised a GM shield and an adventure soon and hopefully an atlas and world detail in the nexy year or so.
Overall I think its worth a look- especially if you are a firefly fan. As the system is light and easy to pick up its not too high investement to give it a go.