Firelfy RPG
POSTED BY: Seshat
UPDATED: Thursday, August 28, 2003 12:03
VIEWED: 22688
PAGE 5 of 6
What would be really great is a MMORPG set in Firefly universe. MMORPG is a massively-multiplayer online RPG - a persistent online game kinda like "StarWars Galaxies".
NOTIFY: N | REPLY | REPLY WITH QUOTE | PERMALINK | TOP | HOME
Work on the Firefly conversion to FUDGE continues. FUDGE was determined to be simple, fast and scaled for humans against humans. We've been bashing several previous sci-fi near-future settings sans aliens to come up with a variety of ships, worlds, cultures and such.
if you are in the Denver area, probably an older gamer, and would like to participate in some playtesting, drop me a line.
The work so far:
http://members.ispwest.com/radiojoe/firefly
If anyone has sites with other Firefly gaming systems, let me know and I'll provide links to the sites.
------------
The bible is very specific on the issue of killy, but it's a mite hazy on the subject of kneecaps.
NOTIFY: Y | REPLY | REPLY WITH QUOTE | PERMALINK | TOP | HOME
I've been working on a Firefly Campaign in GURPS. And I have a few questions that you guys might know about.
Communication? How does the FTL radio work? I seem to recall hearing something about becons from planet to planet that boost the signal (their not being near one was why "Out of Gas" was such a hazardous perdicament).
Any ideas about this?
Their has to be some sort of deep space communication network for the Cortex to work.
Anybody who knows anything about GURPS can also chime in with any ideas they have about Tech Levels and ship drives.
-Zeke
NOTIFY: Y | REPLY | REPLY WITH QUOTE | PERMALINK | TOP | HOME
hey,
when i started this thread I ment to post some conversions for SWD6 fairly soon, but r/l got in the way
i sugested SWD6 beacuse the way i play we mostly role play to keep things moving
i have never heard of some of the stuff mentioned but it's good to see so much enthusiasim
just thought i make a plug for the second best fansite ever (bet you can guess the number 1 
) and the #1 Matrix site, www.thelastfreecity.com
peace
NOTIFY: Y | REPLY | REPLY WITH QUOTE | PERMALINK | TOP | HOME
hey,
when i started this thread I ment to post some conversions for SWD6 fairly soon, but r/l got in the way
i sugested SWD6 beacuse the way i play we mostly role play to keep things moving
i have never heard of some of the stuff mentioned but it's good to see so much enthusiasim
just thought i make a plug for the second best fansite ever (bet you can guess the number 1 ) and the #1 Matrix site, www.thelastfreecity.com
peace
NOTIFY: Y | REPLY | REPLY WITH QUOTE | PERMALINK | TOP | HOME
I've been putting together a GURPS campaign for Firefly as well and ran across a similar situation.
The solution I decided on wasn't perfect, but it works so far.
Essentially FTL communications only require a small amount of hardware to receive broadcasts, however to send something FTL, you need a piece of gear too expensive and massive to put anywhere except for dirtside or on destroyer-class vessels.
A Firefly ship, for example, would only be able to send messages a distance of, say, a solar system, but would have to make planetary stops to get a message back to the core....
Unless, they happen to be near one of those new-fangled beacon/boosters I didn't think about the first time around. Put yourself within spittin' distance of one of them and you can tap into a longer-range broadcast mode.
Thus, in deep space (a la Out of Gas), far away from any beacon/booster, Serenity only had a solar system's range to send, but could probably receive transmissions via the Cortex...
It ain't pretty, but it has worked thus far...
========================================
Jayne Cobb, Man About Town:
"That's why I never kiss 'em on the mouth."
NOTIFY: Y | REPLY | REPLY WITH QUOTE | PERMALINK | TOP | HOME
Quote:
Originally posted by mishaado:
Thus, in deep space (a la Out of Gas), far away from any beacon/booster, Serenity only had a solar system's range to send, but could probably receive transmissions via the Cortex...
It ain't pretty, but it has worked thus far...
BEACONS
I like the way you've explained this plus the beacon thing.
There need to be beacons. I don't remember where I got this idea from (I'm not sure it was Out of Gas - but if you, or someone else, can confirm that I'll be mighty pleased) - but without a beacon no one could ever send information back to whatever their futuristic equivalent of a web server is. So when Inara was choosing men on the cortex, she needed to send the information of which one she chose back to the planet. Without a beacon, she could not have done this.
Visual and Audio
I remember several episodes (including the pilot) where characters have made reference to being close enough to get a visual transmission. If you listen to the dialogue, you can deduce that at far range you can comunicate via auido but not visual, and at closer ranges you can do both.
Visual involves sending a lot more information in a shorter amount of time than audio. So this means that there is something similar to "bandwidth" that is going on here. Ideas?
-Zeke
NOTIFY: Y | REPLY | REPLY WITH QUOTE | PERMALINK | TOP | HOME
Perhaps the cortex is very similar to our own internet, but instead of hard wires that carry information - there are beacons. If you are near a beacon it's like you have a broadband connection... where the farther away you are from one, you're connection is more like a modem.
Kinda like today, in how far away from a DSL hub you are?
Thoughts?
-Zeke
NOTIFY: Y | REPLY | REPLY WITH QUOTE | PERMALINK | TOP | HOME
There's one school of thought that Firefly takes place in one star system with a lot of habitable worlds. If this is the case, the time delay for communications (including Cortex) would be pretty manageable. Yeah, the bulletin board you post on might lag behind the one on Persephone by a few minutes, but nothing that would show up in the show's presentation.
I wish there were a Firefly writer's bible available to answer a question like this.
As for voice or video communications, it's less bandwidth for a video only feed. I imagine it would be easier to transmit a smaller transmission over a greater distance. There may also be a limitation to how much information can be packed into a radio wave before background interference damages it too much. The greater the distance it travels, the more signal degradation, I think.
In any case, it seems analogous to shortwave radio versus television broadcasts.
That being said, in the Firefly campaign I'm running (modified Traveller: The New Era rules and technology), there is more than one star system. Ships can travel faster than light, but information can't travel any faster than the ship that's carrying it. The fastest ships (an updated Firefly class called a Lightning Bug) can move between close systems in about 16 hours. That means news tends to spread slowly. It takes weeks for news from one end of space to another.
How does Cortex work in my sprawling galaxy? Kinda like the example described above but with a much greater time lag. Lightning Bugs regularly travel between systems with mail and data. Presumably, a lot of this data is updates to each system's Cortex. The courier's computer compares the data from system A to system B and updates the data as appropriate. The Alliance would be vital in setting up and maintaining this kind of communications protocol system.
Though I do like MISHAADO's solution with huge transmitters and small receivers.
NOTIFY: Y | REPLY | REPLY WITH QUOTE | PERMALINK | TOP | HOME