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"Here's how it is..."
I've recently watch the entire series of Firefly on NETFLIX. Its absolutely amazing. However, I'm wondering if anyone out there plays the Serenity RPG, 'cuz I feel like the last gorram person to have discovered this amazing space-cowboy-mercenary setting.
The system uses the CORTEX system, which honestly seems light and fun for that kind of game, and I've always had a penchant for bell curves. The system seems very tight, easy to understand. OGL/v.3.5/Pathfinder RPG is still my #1 game of choice.
So I ask you: Can you share your experiences playing Serenity RPG here? Can you recommend which resource books to get? All of them? Are there any great module storylines you created that I could learn from, since I'd like to get the right feel for the setting.
Feel free to talk about Firefly here too as well. If you know any updates, or status of another movie etc., what happened to the copyright on the game since Weiss Productions stopped printing it?
Please link up any resources you may know of. I've already discovered the Cortex System Web site, but are there other good ones you can suggest I look at?
Background: I've been itching to run a sci-fi rpg; although I love Star Wars/Doctor Who/Classic Gamma World-Mutant Future, ... right now I would really just like to tell stories in the Firefly setting, but seem to be challenged since the materials just went out of print, and I'm looking for others with advise/encouragement/knowledge.
Thanks all,
Pax
P.s. Of all the TV Show-based RPGs, I think the Firefly setting is a very strong one, just as Dr. Who, Star Trek, Star Wars, Gamma World was as well.
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RPG Superstar 2009 Top 32, 2010 Top 8
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Took some digging, but here are some resources, including some paper minis and Serenity deck plans.
Not cortex, but thought they'd help.
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Cortex works fine for Serenity to capture the feel. I have played it a few times. I picked up all the books mostly cause their is just not that many of them. There is the main book, screen, and like 4 others who's names escape me at the moment. All of them are pretty decent. If I recall one is a book most mostly NPC's, one is a setting/adventure book, one is a bunch of small adventures.
Also, on these very boards, someone posted their own home campaign in detail. As I recall, it was full of some very excellent adventure ideas and plots.
Edit: I think this is it: SmiloDan's D20 Firefly Campaign. Of course it doesn't seem to be for the Serenity RPG, but the plot line is there for reference.
Not really what you are looking for.... but someone worked up a Firefly mod for NWN that can be downloaded from NWNvault.
It is DM based, so there are no static quests but has an interesting "piloting" mode for the Serenity. I ran one NWN group through it.
Greg
"Here's how it is..."
I've recently watch the entire series of Firefly on NETFLIX. Its absolutely amazing. However, I'm wondering if anyone out there plays the Serenity RPG, 'cuz I feel like the last gorram person to have discovered this amazing space-cowboy-mercenary setting.
The system uses the CORTEX system, which honestly seems light and fun for that kind of game, and I've always had a penchant for bell curves. The system seems very tight, easy to understand. OGL/v.3.5/Pathfinder RPG is still my #1 game of choice.
So I ask you: Can you share your experiences playing Serenity RPG here? Can you recommend which resource books to get?
There aren't so many books as far as I know. You'll need the main rulebook (obviously) but the rest ain't that necessary IMO. They do convey the feel of the setting however, but not much more than the series itself if you are looking for inspiration.
My experience has been short, but was excellent. In itself, that's a huge feat since it means that the system is enjoyable from the get-go; you don't need to be past Xth level/X experience to appreciate the game's potential. The ship as being the "other (communal) player character" was the selling point for me.
It looks like the system carries the short, episodic type of games best (which would make a whole lot of sense). Combat is nasty, making options to do something else than "shoot in the other guy's face" (often to avoid being shot in the face by its friend) appear interesting.
'findel
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There are only 5 books out in the black:
- Main Rulebook
- Big Damn Heroes - some new Options for Heroes, some new rules (updates to current cortex rules), some ideas for Gamemasters. Useful but a bit overprized
- Six-Shooters & Spaceships - Equipmet, Ships and their crews. I loved the book
- Adventures - 5 Adventures, some ar sadly hard to run without the specificc crew the author had in mind (Ghosts of the Rebellion I'm looking at you), all requiere some work. I'd advice to download the free adventures you find here (registration required, lots of useful stuff for serenity) and work with them.
- Out in the Black - great Adventure and a complete bordertown, fun to run, requires some work.
I liked the presentation and, to some extend the rules, but found it incredibly hard to assess the challenges for the player characters. The rules are very luck-dependent and (although I think that has been changed in the current cortex system) plot points = advancement points assured that thos players luckier with their dice advanced faster because they didn't need so many plot-points to keep their characters alive - that made gamemastering even harder.
I eventually switched to the UNIsystem, because I used it for years and it seemed pretty close to the Cortex System (close enough to get use out of the purchased books) rather than tweak the Cortex System to my liking, but I think it could have been done without too much work.
Plot points should and will be used frequently - I used Poker chips for plot points and put them in a cigar-box in the middle of the table.
My players loved the short campaign I run, before and after switching the system, I liked it better after I switched, though it might be that I felt more comfortable using a system I knew for years, especially when I hadt to prepare sessions in a hurry, which I often did.
Never played with the Cortex system but we used GURPS for a while. Next week we kick off a new Firefly game using Deadlands rules...been playing in a weird west game for a while now one day we just decided it'd be perfect for Firefly.
M
Next week we kick off a new Firefly game using Deadlands rules...been playing in a weird west game for a while now one day we just decided it'd be perfect for Firefly.
M
Tho old Deadlands rules? I can see that work. It wouldn't be that far from the original Cortex rules anyways (philosophically speaking anyways).
Ran a Serenity game when it first came out...only had the Main Book). It was fun...but find a gaping hole in the the main book.
I could not for the life of me figure out how the PCs can upgrade their ship. Anybody know where it was?
Did Six0Shooters & Spaceships fixed it?
Tho old Deadlands rules? I can see that work. It wouldn't be that far from the original Cortex rules anyways (philosophically speaking anyways).
Yes, I believe the "marshal" is going to bolt on some stuff from "Lost Colony" as well...I'm not familiar with it but I think it adds some tech skills and edges/hinderances, etc.
M|
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Ran a Serenity game when it first came out...only had the Main Book). It was fun...but find a gaping hole in the the main book.
I could not for the life of me figure out how the PCs can upgrade their ship. Anybody know where it was?
Did Six0Shooters & Spaceships fixed it?
To upgrade the ship they have to spend advancement points. The Ship is treated like a character in every way, except it doesn't get its own progression points, but the crew can throw some of theirs in a pool. In addition, they need to spend money and time in a drydock.
It isn't spelled out very well, but it can be pieced together from the information in the "Boats and Mules" Chapter, especially "Increasin Attributes" on Page 114.
Neither Sixshooters & Spaceships nor Big Damn Heroes contained more detailed rules.
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This is getting to be quite informative. The PAIZO community is awesome. I broached the topic of running firefly/serenity as a monthly RPG game session and half my current Pathfinder RPG players LOVED the idea, yet half never heard of firefly. lol
So, please keep the links, ideas, resources coming, and I will keep updating this thread with our progress.
First step, some of us are going to watch the movie on BluRay, possibly next week. From there, I contacted local stores who said the books are out of print now. sigh.
I'll look on Ebay today for a lot of all the books, and go from there. Any other thoughts?
I didn't know they were out of print. Was just at my FLGS Monday night, however, and noticed they had a copy of the core rules and one of the supplements ("Big Damn Heroes"? Maybe more, but that's the one I think I remember noticing). Silly question, but have you tried Amazon? A friend of mine is always telling me about http://www.nobleknight.com/ for OOP so you might check there as well.
M
Edit: BTW, I picked up a couple of minis from the Chronoscope line to represent my characters (only two players so two chars each). I mocked up some "deck plating" from bits, primed them, and hope to get them painted up this weekend sometime. Here's a pic (probably only visible if you're a member of Cartographer's Guild...sorry about that).
This is getting to be quite informative. The PAIZO community is awesome. I broached the topic of running firefly/serenity as a monthly RPG game session and half my current Pathfinder RPG players LOVED the idea, yet half never heard of firefly. lol
So, please keep the links, ideas, resources coming, and I will keep updating this thread with our progress.
First step, some of us are going to watch the movie on BluRay, possibly next week. From there, I contacted local stores who said the books are out of print now. sigh.
I'll look on Ebay today for a lot of all the books, and go from there. Any other thoughts?
I would actually recommend watching the pilot of the show before the movie. Maybe the episodes:
Serenity
The Train Job
Bushwhacked
Our Mrs. Reynolds
Ariel
And maybe The Message, Objects In Space and Heart Of Gold.
The first five I list are pretty universally loved in my group, and give a good range of background and overviews of technology, culture, and the "feel" of Firefly.
The last three are good for feel as well as culture, and a bit of backstory and minor details (such as the space station in The Message, or how laser guns tend to work these days in Heart Of Gold).
The Movie, I can't really suggest having new players watch it, since it pretty much would provide them with the "end" of the story without any of the build-up. It'd be like reading the last chapter of a mystery novel without the first 2/3 of the book. At least in my opinion. :)
Also - I've found that my group tends to fall into the trope of "Who will fill the role of Mal," or "Who will be the crazy River clone" - and it has taken me a while to break us (myself included, when I play instead of running) of that habit. The 'Verse is full of different folks, and the more diverse your group can be, the better. :)
Good luck! Keep us posted on how your game(s) goes!
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While I like the AGE system for Dragon Age I can't really imagine it to work particularly well for firefly.
There is a Savage Wordls firefly, and EDEN STUDIO PRESENTS 1 contained an article that was basically Firefly for All Flesh must be Eaten/Unisystem (I used the latter and was quite happy with it). It should be fairly easy to convert some of the official/semiofficial material to these to rulesets.
Someone took the Dragon Age Tabletop AGE system and made an unofficial version of Firefly with it.
Thanks for the link FreeSwagAhoy :)
@ Feytharn- We've actually found it to work pretty well for the setting and feel of Firefly. I'm really happy about how it is turning out. :)
Here is a more updated post that shows the changes I've made recently.
http://wrathofzombie.wordpress.com/2011/03/16/firefly-hurtlin-through-the-v erse-version-2-massive-update/
As always I'm looking for feedback to improve the product! Thanks for all who take a peek!
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Someone took the Dragon Age Tabletop AGE system and made an unofficial version of Firefly with it.Thanks for the link FreeSwagAhoy :)
@ Feytharn- We've actually found it to work pretty well for the setting and feel of Firefly. I'm really happy about how it is turning out. :)
Here is a more updated post that shows the changes I've made recently.
http://wrathofzombie.wordpress.com/2011/03/16/firefly-hurtlin-through-the-v erse-version-2-massive-update/
As always I'm looking for feedback to improve the product! Thanks for all who take a peek!
I'm sure you are, you probably wouldn't put so much work in such a gorgeous pdf ;), as I said I cannot imagine it to work - that might change, as I'm really tempted to try it out - I didn't mean to dismiss your work - perhaps I shouldn't have posted other alternatives in the same post, they were just meant to add to the possibilities of playing the 'verse, sorry for any misunderstanding.
P.S. you may want to check your link, it doesn't work for me (though the document is perfectly reachable through FreeSwagAhois link).
Someone took the Dragon Age Tabletop AGE system and made an unofficial version of Firefly with it.Thanks for the link FreeSwagAhoy :)
@ Feytharn- We've actually found it to work pretty well for the setting and feel of Firefly. I'm really happy about how it is turning out. :)
Here is a more updated post that shows the changes I've made recently.
http://wrathofzombie.wordpress.com/2011/03/16/firefly-hurtlin-through-the-v erse-version-2-massive-update/
As always I'm looking for feedback to improve the product! Thanks for all who take a peek!
I'm sure you are, you probably wouldn't put so much work in such a gorgeous pdf ;), as I said I cannot imagine it to work - that might change, as I'm really tempted to try it out - I didn't mean to dismiss your work - perhaps I shouldn't have posted other alternatives in the same post, they were just meant to add to the possibilities of playing the 'verse, sorry for any misunderstanding.
P.S. you may want to check your link, it doesn't work for me (though the document is perfectly reachable through FreeSwagAhois link).
Thanks for the heads up on the link.
www.wrathofzombie.wordpress.com/2011/03/16/firefly-hurtlin-through-the-vers e-version-2-massive-update/
Yeah I didn't think you were knocking me or anything. I just wanted to state that it was working for me.
Not everything can work for everyone and I have no problems with people who feel something doesn't work :)
Thanks for the compliment on the PDF. I appreciate that!
Someone took the Dragon Age Tabletop AGE system and made an unofficial version of Firefly with it.Thanks for the link FreeSwagAhoy :)
@ Feytharn- We've actually found it to work pretty well for the setting and feel of Firefly. I'm really happy about how it is turning out. :)
Here is a more updated post that shows the changes I've made recently.
http://wrathofzombie.wordpress.com/2011/03/16/firefly-hurtlin-through-the-v erse-version-2-massive-update/
As always I'm looking for feedback to improve the product! Thanks for all who take a peek!
I'm sure you are, you probably wouldn't put so much work in such a gorgeous pdf ;), as I said I cannot imagine it to work - that might change, as I'm really tempted to try it out - I didn't mean to dismiss your work - perhaps I shouldn't have posted other alternatives in the same post, they were just meant to add to the possibilities of playing the 'verse, sorry for any misunderstanding.
P.S. you may want to check your link, it doesn't work for me (though the document is perfectly reachable through FreeSwagAhois link).
Thanks for the heads up on the link.
www.wrathofzombie.wordpress.com/2011/03/16/firefly-hurtlin-through-the-vers e-version-2-massive-update/
Yeah I didn't think you were knocking me or anything. I just wanted to state that it was working for me.
Not everything can work for everyone and I have no problems with people who feel something doesn't work :)
Thanks for the compliment on the PDF. I appreciate that!
Stupid wordpress >_<
Let's try this again.
http://wrathofzombie.wordpress.com/2011/03/16/firefly-hurtlin-through-the-v erse-version-2-massive-update/
Being a bit of a party pooper here, I was not a big fan of the Serenity RPG or the Cortex system. In my biased opinion, Cortex is simply not a very polished universal system. It lacks versatility. It tries to be in the middle between crunch and lite but kind of fails at both. Serenity RPG felt very rushed. The book itself seemed more focused on using images from the series than actual content. It is unattractive in pdf.
There are simply better universal systems that can easily handle the 'Verse.
I recently ran a Firefly one-shot for my regular group. I used PDQ. They had never heard of the system before. We made characters and played an entire session all in the same evening. It was a huge success. The other GM wants to run something using PDQ now.
Since you're being a party pooper I'll join in too. I dig using a little of a setting's "flavor" in the game book texts where appropriate...but not in rules. I got a little overload of "shiny" and "big damn x" and whatnot from this book. Same with Battlestar Galactica. Deadlands was a little over the top with it too. I thought the Planescape setting did an okay job of giving the feel without intruding into the bits that should be written in proper English.
Can't say about the rules, though...never played using their system. Looked okay at a glance.
M
We have vastly different tastes, so a negative critique from me should be a positive critique for you. :)
RPG Superstar 2010 Top 16
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Since you're being a party pooper I'll join in too. I dig using a little of a setting's "flavor" in the game book texts where appropriate...but not in rules. I got a little overload of "shiny" and "big damn x" and whatnot from this book... I thought the Planescape setting did an okay job of giving the feel without intruding into the bits that should be written in proper English.
Bless your heart. I've often wanted to play the Firefly RPG, but the cowboy lingo in the rules book persuades me to set it aside every time.
I have no problem with lingo and slang in the flavor, setting, and background sections of any game world or their associated books. It's when it makes it into the rules that I question the creators motives.
That said, I've run Firefly style games in Interlock/Fuzion, HERO, Cortex, and even tried it in Pathfinder. It's all a matter of what the players can get behind. All of those systems have worked just fine.
I remeber playing Serenity/Firefly back when it was called Traveller.
;)
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Someone took the Dragon Age Tabletop AGE system and made an unofficial version of Firefly with it.Thanks for the link FreeSwagAhoy :)
@ Feytharn- We've actually found it to work pretty well for the setting and feel of Firefly. I'm really happy about how it is turning out. :)
Here is a more updated post that shows the changes I've made recently.
http://wrathofzombie.wordpress.com/2011/03/16/firefly-hurtlin-through-the-v erse-version-2-massive-update/
As always I'm looking for feedback to improve the product! Thanks for all who take a peek!
I'm sure you are, you probably wouldn't put so much work in such a gorgeous pdf ;), as I said I cannot imagine it to work - that might change, as I'm really tempted to try it out - I didn't mean to dismiss your work - perhaps I shouldn't have posted other alternatives in the same post, they were just meant to add to the possibilities of playing the 'verse, sorry for any misunderstanding.
P.S. you may want to check your link, it doesn't work for me (though the document is perfectly reachable through FreeSwagAhois link).
Thanks for the heads up on the link.
www.wrathofzombie.wordpress.com/2011/03/16/firefly-hurtlin-through-the-vers e-version-2-massive-update/
Yeah I didn't think you were knocking me or anything. I just wanted to state that it was working for me.
Not everything can work for everyone and I have no problems with people who feel something doesn't work :)
Thanks for the compliment on the PDF. I appreciate that!
Stupid wordpress >_<
Let's try this again.
No prob and a very big thank you for creating that Firefly AGE port in the first place. :)
Hey everyone! Here is my official Firefly: Hurtlin' Through the 'Verse Char sheet!
http://wrathofzombie.wordpress.com/2011/04/06/official-firefly-hurtlin-thro ugh-the-verse-character-sheet-done/
I ran a Firefly game a couple of years ago. It didn't last long due to people's schedules, but it was quite enjoyable.
One thing I added to the game was good food! We'd make a nice meal and sit around the table, just like the crew of Serenity, and play. I think I called it Gourmet Gaming, or something.
Made sushi one night, which was fun. My only food requirement was "home made goodness". No take-out. Hell, even home-made pizza.
The game itself was enjoyable. I've been tempted to start up again. Love the setting!
And yes, I'm a Browncoat...:)
wrathofzombie, now that Dragon Age Set 2 has been released, will there be updates to Firefly: Hurtlin' Through the 'Verse ?
I made a bunch of changes based on the Beta that was released and thankfully not much has changed.
I do, however, want to incorporate rules on poisons, traps, and grenades now. I'm not sure if I want to change how I have explosives done currently or just incorporate this new info somehow.
