Firefly Traveller - Just a thought

Monday, February 2, 2004 2:02 AM

Firefly Traveller- Science Fiction Adventure in the (not so) Far Future

The first time I watched Firefly I felt like I was watching a Traveller adventure unfold. The Firefly ‘verse has that gritty character that pervades the Classic Traveller game systems and adventures. Of course, there are many differences between the OUT (Official Traveller Universe) and the ‘verse of Firefly, but I still think that a game system based on Classic Traveller is the best approach to recreating the Firefly ‘verse in an RPG format (or at least this gives me an excuse to play around with two of my favorite Sci-Fi things).

So, where to begin? Well, the first thing is to figure out what differences there are between the Traveller Universe and the Firefly ‘verse.

Background… The history of the OTU is very different, so the Firefly backstory will have to be developed to give the new setting a foundation. This means developing a stellar geography for the Firefly-Traveller verse as well.

Travel… Traveller uses a Jump Drive system for interstellar movement. This requires a ship to spend one week in jump space. This clearly doesn’t fit the Firefly ‘verse. In a way, these questions are circular. How people travel depends on where they are traveling to and from, so we are back to ‘where does Firefly take place?’

Any Firefly backstory needs the following elements: Exploration and colonization of other star systems from Earth (including extensive terraforming), Some form of cataclysm that renders Earth uninhabitable, A political alliance between The US (or the ‘anglo-sphere’) and China, Human culture becomes very mixed, with elements of many different cultures present in an given part of human space, and it all has to happen in the next 500 years. In addition, I want to have two competing technologies for FTL, so the backstory will have to explain why that works.

A couple of other assumptions are that technological advancement will proceed much faster than Classic Traveller envisioned. Even with the catastrophe that confronts Earth, by 2500 humanity will be at least experimenting with Traveller Tech Level 15 in some areas.

For those who want to know more about Traveller, here is a good starting place:

http://www.downport.com/traveller/

And for the current incarnation of Traveller (T20):

http://www.travellerrpg.com/

Disclaimer: This project in no way represents the official view of the owners of Firefly or Traveller (Traveller is a registered trademark of Far Future Enterprises. Portions of this material are Copyright ©1977-2004 Far Future Enterprises. I’m sure there is similar verbiage for Firefly, but I’m not sure what it is.)

Next: Where does Firefly Traveller take place?

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