Pen & Paper Roleplaying

POSTED BY: GorramIndependent
UPDATED: Friday, August 26, 2005 00:20
VIEWED: 10272
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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.

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