F#iref#ly

Having had some time to reflect on F#, I think it's the system I'll use should I ever end up running a Firefly campaign (which I've wanted to do for years). F# is very flexible (good for all that multi-genre-ism), handles tech extremely lightly (just like the show does) and it features the right amount of danger to characters that the series has. Yes, F# doesn't do the "characters die like flies" thing that the Serenity movie did, but that's okay - I wouldn't be likely to use Reavers as Orcs, either.

I'm tempted to run F#iref#ly at the Thursday night group sometime, to try it out. I'm also intimidated/scared to do so, because the coffeehouse we play at on Thursdays is the Seattle Browncoats HQ, and I'd feel like some stranger (or the barista) might wander over and correct me if I break cannon.

Multi-genre-ism: Firefly, Deadlands, 7th Sea, even Land of the Lost

Man, do I ever love Firefly. I've wanted to game it for a long time, but have never quite made it happen.

What I love most about Firefly is the many Genres it draws from. It's relatively hard SciFi, but it's also a cliche-ridden Western. Every so often, an episode will be about courtly affairs and dueling, or creepy Reaver-laced Lovecraftian horror, or a good old fashion heist/caper film. There's even Orcs in Serenity. You can do anything in that setting. Each new planet or episode can have a completely different roots.

In particular, I think it'd be a great RPG setting because you could run a long-term campaign with recurring characters, yet keep everything fresh by setting each session in a different genre. I love trying out new things, yet also get significant pleasure out of ongoing character development. A setting like Firefly gets the best of both worlds in that regards.

There's other RPG settings that get a similar multigenre feel...

• Deadlands explores much of the same territory, but includes pulp and steampunk elements instead of SciFi, and plays up the Horror aspects much more than Firefly ever did. It also has magic, which is about the only genre trope you couldn't work into Firefly. It uses a variant on Savage Worlds these days, and I expect I'll end up running it or playing in it someday. The poker hands used in Hexslinging and fastdraw shoot-outs is pretty slick.
• 7th Sea is all historic fantasy, but it leans heavily on more than one era of history. I like that one PC can be a pirate, another a viking, the third a french musketeer, the fourth a celtic bard, and the 5th a spanish inquisitor. Despite all that crossing of the streams, it manages to stay coherent. It's also got the most flavorful magic systems ever set to paper - Porté is damn creepy. Which brings up it's other cross-genre embellishments: Swashbuckling pirates, noble nights and scheming courtiers cross paths with supernatural archaeology, witches and demonologists, the sidhe, dark conspiracies, and Zorro. Good stuff.
  

This week, I'm embarking on an ongoing RPG experiment. I'll be starting a one-player Savage Worlds campaign with my wife. The setting will be the cheesy old children's show Land of the Lost. More on that in my next post.

The Wayward Coffeehouse

3 posts about Thursday:Part 1 Part 2 Part 3:

And now, a tangent about the Wayward Coffeehouse. That place has got it's geek on. It's the HQ of the local Browncoats. They feature sandwiches named after all the crew of the Firefly, and drinks referencing the same plus Dune, Star Trek, Farscape, and The Princess Bride.

I wish we'd tried more (what we did have was very tasty)... but at the same time, there's something very intimidating about a latte flavored with iocane powder.

Dr Horrible's Sing A Long Blog

This very odd-looking miniseries may be the dumbest thing Joss Whedon has ever been involved in - and that's saying something. I mean that as a compliment. Whedon has a talent for making things work that just rightly shouldn't.
Teaser from Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along Blog on Vimeo.
The first section goes live tomorrow (July 15th 2008), and the whole thing is only up on the web for a week. View it this week, or not at all. (Well, I expect it may one day come out on DVD.)

I'm specifically pimping this show because I want to support Whedon's attempt at creating a new market for series projects outside of the Hollywood & Network machine. I'm not sure exactly how a free program on the web for less than a week will do that, but I'm willing to give him a chance. Besides, I'm secretly hoping that we'll get to see Malcolm Reynolds kick Doogie Howzers butt.

What does this have to do with Gaming? Crap if I know, but my other blog is so full of stuff these days. This would just get lost there. I guess I'll justify this by mentioning the many gaming tie-ins to Joss Whedon. Eden Studios did a Buffy RPG, Margaret Weiss (of Dragonlance fame) wrote the Serenity RPG, and...um... here's a link to a yahoo group for an Aliens vs Predator RPG (Joss wrote Alien Resurrection, so gimme a break. I know I'm stretching.)

Firefly Brainstorm Lists: Amber-Conversion

The two people pushing hardest for the Firefly/Serenity campaign that almost happened last year were me and Jeremy. We both prefer rules-light systems, and neither of us wanted to learn the Serenity RPG system well enough to run it. It was intended to be a rotating-GM game, so everyone would have had to learn it pretty well. The system discussion took a couple weeks. We went from the Amber-based system below, to Dogs-In-The-Vineyard in the Firefly setting, to just playing something else (Amber, as it turns out). In retrospect, I wish we'd done the DITV Firefly.

Diceless System for Firefly/Serenity (based on Amber DPRG mechanics)

This is based on Jeremy’s idea that a diceless version complete with Amber Auction would:

1. create some built-in rivalries from the get-go, to put the players in the right frame of mind,
2. give everyone a clearly-defined specialty, something everybody knows they’re good at
3. allow us to play very rules light so it’s easy for anyone to GM a session
4. put the exact definition of our abilities and capabilities in the hands of each sessions GM (which is great for Psy powers, for example)
5. be a lot of fun

Attributes that may prove important to the setting:
Speed
Accuracy
Strength
Endurance
Intellect
Intuition
Tech
Charisma
Cool

Here's the logic behind portions of that list:

Speed vs Accuracy: I think we need two separate stats for these. Being a good shot and a fast draw feel like two separate skills in a western. A successful gunfighter needs to be good at both, but plenty are better at one than the other.

Strength vs Endurance: Jayne is a character who’s clearly strong, but kind of a sissy.

Intellect vs Intuition: Simon is clearly very rational and clever. River is primal and psychic. Shepherd Book has a good balance between the two. Jayne lacks both.

Tech vs Charisma: Kaylie (and to a lesser extent, Wash) is good with machines. Inara (and to a lesser extent, Mal and Simon) is good with people.

Cool: Where Zoe excels and Wash scrubs out. (Zoe, by the way, is like Bleys in Amber - 2nd or 3rd best at everything). Maybe this is part of Endurance?

Your Talent: Each PC gets something that makes them special beyond stat points, but it’s limited to one per PC. Examples drawn straight from the show:

• Simon is “The Doctor”.
• Kaylee “Understands Technology”.
• River has “Amazing Potential, But It’s Completely Beyond Her Control”.
• Wash has “Hotshot Pilot”.
• Mal has “It’s MY Ship”.
• Inara is a “Certified Companion”.
• Jayne has “Personal Armory”.
• Shepherd Book has “Mysterious Past”.
• Zoe seems to lack anything terribly special, so maybe she’s just got more points than anyone else to explain her being second best at everything -or- maybe Wash is the NPC pilot, and Zoe has “NPC Husband”
  

Should each PC get one free Talent, or should Talents cost 20 (out of 100?) Points?

Related posts: Character Concepts and Genre/Plot Ideas for use with Firefly.

Firefly Brainstorm Lists: Characters

This list was generated in early 2007, when some friends and I were contemplating a rotating-GM game set in the Firefly/Serenity setting, but using the Dogs In The Vineyard rules system. Had that game taken place, my character probably would have been based on the "The Man With The Past" archetype.

Character List: The Firefly/Serenity setting allows old stereotype characters to become fresh. Here's a short brainstorm list of character types that would be good within such a setting. Any of these that don’t get used for PCs should be used as NPCs eventually.

• Whore with a heart of gold - Either a full-fledged Companion or some unliscensed boy or girl turning tricks on the side. May be combined with another archetype to give a reason for “adventuring”, or could just be really loyal and tags along for whatever her friends are tangled up in.
• Bank Robber / Second-Story Man - Someone who’s a criminal for the challenge or excitement of it. Gadgets, acrobatics, elaborate schemes, etc. Could utilize a combination, or maybe just focused on one.
• The Duelist - Either a gunslinger, competition shootist, or a noble swordsman, who thinks he’s the best around, and is always looking for a chance to prove it.
• The Man With The Past - Like Shane, Han Solo, or The Prisoner, this character can never escape thier deeds of thier personal history. Even if they’d like to just settle down and own a farm, what they’ve done keeps cropping up to get them. Rivals, spurned lovers, enemies and bounty hunters lurk in every port just behind the friendly facade. (More artistic would be situations just paralleling the decisions and actions of their past, not literally recurring villains from their past, but sometimes it’s too hard to pull off artistic subtlety in an RPG.) There’s two types here - the true hero who’s on the run from enemies, and the reformed villain who has to grapple with the sins of thier past.
• The old coot - Grizzled veteran, hard-bitten pioneer, crazy old spacer. A great character-actor role where you get to spew pessimism and cantankerous monolog whereever you go.
• The Shepherd - The lone pacifist or rationalist of the group. Doesn’t have to literally be a priest, especially since that’s been done in the original show. Just a voice of reason to keep the frontier justice from getting too far out of hand.
• Samurai - A noble warrior. Does what is right, fights for the oppressed, etc. Refuses to flee, surrender or back down. Fits the genre really well, while still being unique from what we see on the show outside of short-term NPCs. However, there is the risk of it leading to TPK massacres.
• Dodger - the quick-fingered orphan/urchin/pettythief. Lovable little kid who’s always getting into trouble. Maybe some sort of prodigy worth keeping around. Maybe just a relative of the captain.
• The Psychic - Could be messed up like River, or could be a more stable psi-sensitive monk. The extent of their abilities are probably best not being spelled out in detail, but being mutable depending on situation and GM. (I’d love to figure out a way to make an Indian Medicine Man fit into the game, because it’d play great against the western theme, but there’s just no natives in the setting.)
• The scoundrel - the one guy in the group that’s willing to sell out the others, like Jayne. It’s a bad idea for Liam to play this part, it’d be like typecasting him after his Continuum role. Seriously, due to what happened before, we’d all end up spacing him in the opening reel.

Firefly Brainstorm Lists: Genre

This list was brainstormed back in early 2007, when my play group was considering playing a rotating-GM campaign set in the Firefly/Serenity universe.

List of Genres that can be explored in the Firefly/Serenity setting...

• Western - This is the most obvious theme of the show outside of sci fi. Inspiration can be drawn from any spaghetti western. Good guys and bad guys are easy to tell apart. Hard-working pioneers and miners struggling against the odds. Corrupt local government or railroad barons.
• Hard Sci Fi - Ship could be stranded in space, dealing with a failure of life-support, or some crazy interstellar phenomenon. Inspiration can be found in many Star Trek episodes, but a lot of novels do it more realistically.
• Space Opera - Melodrama meets questionable science. There’s even a big oppresive government and a rebellion.
• Heist films - Con men and bank robbers are pretty common in the setting. There’s even a mafia - and it’s pretty nasty. The Alliance government is rather corrupt, too.
• Courtly Intrigue - Rich folks are like nobility. They have courtly interactions, fancy balls, dueling is popular.
• Bushido - Such a strong asian subculture within the setting. Especially considering kurosawa’s influence on The Magnificent Seven, etc, it wouldn’t feel out of place for a Samurai to enter the series. Bushi would be right at home next to Geisha and Chinese Laundry, after all.
• Pop Dialog - Everybody talks like Sawyer from Lost. If you don’t know what that means, just take any Buffy or Tarantino character and give them a southern accent. Pop references are OK, shakespeare turned on end is even better, and witty insults are a must. Banter and scenery chewing are encouraged.
  
• Cthulhoid horror - Reavers are twisted, malicious and no longer purely human. And it is widely believed to be contagious. The lack of supernatural explanation actually increases the terror potential: we did this to ourselves.
• Epic Fantasy - In the movie, Serenity, Reavers are treated like LOTR Orcs . I feel this is at odds with much of the rest of the series, but it’s there as an option.