Roleplaying Firefly Help

POSTED BY: Thalos
UPDATED: Tuesday, January 20, 2004 23:48
VIEWED: 7136
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HOWLRUNNER

Monday, January 19, 2004 9:38 PM

Very interesting idea. One word of advice, however... Use the D20 system. I really hate to say that since I despise it, but in today's RPG market it's much easier to get a game published using the Open Game Liscense than it is to use another system. I despise the system, but it does offer a couple of advantages in terms of support and notoriety.

As I said... I relly hate giving this advice and it only really applies if you're seriously thinking of trying to get the game published.

"Memory is an imortallity of a sort. In the night when the wind dies... I remember. And they all live again. Soldiers live and wonder why.

Soldiers Live by Glenn Gook

THALOS

Tuesday, January 20, 2004 2:27 PM

Thanks for the input. True enough that D20 is the "norm" and if this game is successful then I will be easy enough to convert to D20. Also, I do not know if this is going to be publishable, especially since the URL towards the beginning of this thread is a prety good source for a RPG of Firefly.

"Whoa, good Bible."

PUMAMANREDUX

Tuesday, January 20, 2004 5:02 PM

As an alternative to d10 and d20 pen and paper RPG systems may I offer this suggestion:

Deep7 Games at http://deep7.com/ offers a line of reasonably priced downloadable games (as well as pen and paper verions of some of their game lines) based on their 1PG and XPG systems (these are the same thing but XPG is a lil more complex .. both lines are made for quick cinematic action and fun over the dullness of rolling 300 d10s to do a single action, for example) ... the 1PG and XPG system(s) use 2 six sided dice for randomization ... the rules to think of using as a basis for Firefly
are Red Dwarf (an XPG) and Star Legion

one of the best looks as to how the system(s) work(s)is on this pdf file for their pen and paper Red Dwarf RPG (yep the BBC series) http://www.deep7.com/games/reddwarf/quickstart.pdf
[this download contains 2 sample pages from said game]

.. pay special attention to the rules overview section ...

the rules made by deep7 should be easily adaptable to a Firefly campaign.

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Hope this rambling post helps

HOWLRUNNER

Tuesday, January 20, 2004 10:25 PM

You're very welcome. As to it's publishability... That would depend on several factors. Number one would be a business license, which in most of the US costs less than 100 bucks. After the license is purchased it's a matter of talking to Fox and/or Mr. Whedon and Mr. Minear. You'd have to lease the rights to produce the game from whoever holds the copyright. Once you've got all that it's a simple matter of writing the RPG itself.

That, of course, is the short version of the process for getting it published on yor own and leaves out the lawyers, scheduleing time to talk to Mr. Whedon for background information and clarification, and has little to do if you try to get it published through an existing company. It also leaves out whatever hoops you might have to jump through to use the D20 Open Game License (to produce it under the D20 system if that's the route you chose to go). I don't know how involved that would be since it was long before D20 came into existence when I last tried to publish a franchise RPG.

You are going about things in the right order, however. You definately want to design the game and playtest it thouroughly before you actually pursue publication. If you plan on going after publication, design the game using whatever system you want it published as. It just makes it easier to playtest without the headaches that can arise from even relatively simple conversions.

Hope that helps some.

PUMAMANREDUX

Tuesday, January 20, 2004 11:48 PM

What it sounded like was Thalos wanted to make a version of Firefly so they could run a game at a RPG convention that is based on the series which uses the canon characters ... as opposed to make their game into a professional RPG ..

as for Howlrunner's words on getting the rights to produce an official RPG that sounds correct from what I've learned on the net. If anyone wants know whats involved I have a net contact who also has been through a (successful) licensing of a property for a RPG and I could ask for an email on the subject to add to what Howlrunner could give us.

most of the time at conventions the gamers pretty much have no probs (with rights issues and such) with doing games featuring the characters in an established universe ... at least this was the case many moons ago.

Another way to go with the game at the convention, Thalos, might be to design new characters based in the Firefly 'verse. This might be easier to get by any committee who decide what games they want to allow to be run at their con.

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