Firefly-based Board Game

POSTED BY: Kozure
UPDATED: Thursday, February 26, 2004 19:22
VIEWED: 13134
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TEELABROWN

Wednesday, January 28, 2004 11:15 PM

Quote:
If you're looking for a cooperative game, the Lord of the Rings board game might be a good example. People play as one of the 5 hobbits, each with a different abilty. The goal is to work together in order to beat the different scenarios from the books.

A similar thing could be done with Firefly. People could play the different crew members and play out the different conflicts from the episodes. Mal's talent could be plans. Jayne's would be senseless violence. Inara would be influence in high places.

I'm not sure how feasible this is. Just a thought.

That's sounds cool, different contacts or whatever. Great idea!

............................................................................................
"Freedom is the Freedom to say that 2+2 makes 4. If that is granted, all else follws"-Winston, 1984
Keep flyin', and remember, THEY can't take the sky from US!

KOZURE

Thursday, January 29, 2004 3:35 PM

Quote:
Originally posted by AlferdPacker:
I'll toss my two cents in.

If you're looking for a cooperative game, the Lord of the Rings board game might be a good example. People play as one of the 5 hobbits, each with a different abilty. The goal is to work together in order to beat the different scenarios from the books.

A similar thing could be done with Firefly. People could play the different crew members and play out the different conflicts from the episodes. Mal's talent could be plans. Jayne's would be senseless violence. Inara would be influence in high places.

I'm not sure how feasible this is. Just a thought.

I've played the Lord of the Rings co-operative game quite a few times and like it a lot. This concept I'm working on has some of the same flavour but I'm trying to ensure that I've got a relatively new rule system. Here's the overview and general game summary that I had already written before you mentioned LoTR:

Quote:
Overview

Firefly is a cooperative game for 1-9 players. Each player takes on the role of one or more crew members of the Firefly-class transport ship Serenity, trying to make a living on the Rim while staying one step ahead of the Alliance. Each of the crew is trying to reach, in her or his own way, a state of serenity.

Object

As a cooperative game, either all the players win, or all the players lose. Some variants allow for individual winners but the core of the game is working together. The players win if all of the crew members reach their serenity goal by finishing jobs, overcoming complications and doing things which grant them inner peace. The players lose if any of the crew die, Serenity stops flying, or they fail to beat certain complications.

I should have a working draft version of the rule-book by Friday evening. I'll figure out a way to post it (probably in HTML format on my personal web-site) and I'd welcome further comments and ideas (as well as constructive criticism) on the rules. The various pieces, including the game board and Tale cards (jobs and complications) will take much longer as there will be art and graphic design involved. You should be able to get a good grasp of the flow and feel of the game from the rules, though.

Kozure the Kamikaze Highlander

Proud Citizen of Canada-That-Was

STILLSHINY

Thursday, January 29, 2004 3:49 PM

I'm liking this idea.

“Firefly is the source of probably more joy & pain than anything I’ve done.” - Joss

KOZURE

Saturday, January 31, 2004 7:59 PM

Finished a working draft:

http://www3.sympatico.ca/czono/firefly-board.htm

Comments and constructive criticism welcome. It pretty much goes without saying, but I'd greatly appreciate that no one modify and re-use the rules without permission. I encourage people to distribute it freely in its current form and mail back feedback to the address given on the page.

It's real rough right now, and I'll dress it up with quotes, illustrations and Firefly-ified lingo later, but I wanted to share the draft.

At the moment, the board and pretty much all the pieces are only in my head but I have a firm idea of what they'll look like. As soon as I develop some working versions, I'll post PDFs of the game pieces and people can playtest the game for themselves.

Kozure the Kamikaze Highlander

Proud Citizen of Canada-That-Was

KOZURE

Saturday, January 31, 2004 8:53 PM

I was just casting about for graphics to help me create the game board and cards for this board game. Who owns the "rights" as it were for the 3D models images in the "Serenity Up Close" thread?

http://www.fireflyfans.net/feature.asp?f=49

I'd like to obtain (if I can) the permission of the author to use two of those images (top down and belly up) for the main game board.

I work in a creative field myself, so it's important to me that I don't use anyone else's work without permission.

Kozure the Kamikaze Highlander

Proud Citizen of Canada-That-Was

FOFFILMS

Saturday, January 31, 2004 9:58 PM

For my 2 cents I think what might work best for a Firefly board game would be a combination card game (ccg style) and board game, using the board for position and timing, using cards to represent events, jobs, characters etc...

I made a Harry Potter based card / board game which is a blast to play.

I also made a Star Trek card / board game that I based on the decipher cards, but using a board makes the game so much more interesting and fun.

Anyway, I think cards and boards go well together.

You've got your chocolate in my peanut butter...

www.fof-films.com
Firefly Fan Film - Coming SOON

SAINT JAYNE

Sunday, February 1, 2004 3:25 AM

I'm excited to see the game rules - I read them all. When you get the board mocked up I'll have another look. I'm having a little trouble picturing the game, especially combat and off-ship travel.

I'm also worried about a failed roll ending the game for everyone. Can Wash (flying: 5) cast an unlucky roll and be caught by the reaver ship (flying challenge 10)?

Is River useless? Are there Shiny cards that allow her to - well, basically do anything? I'd also like to see Book with every score above 3 - he seems to know everything.

KERNELM

Sunday, February 1, 2004 4:33 AM

Very nice. I'm a big fan of German board games and games of similar type, e.g. Settlers of Catan, Carcassonne, Puerto Rico, and anything Knizia (including the aforementioned LOTR game). Games that require strategy but don't have a huge number of rules. I was hoping somebody would make something like that involving Firefly, since I know I certainly couldn't do it. Looks like a great start!

KOZURE

Sunday, February 1, 2004 4:29 PM

Quote:
Originally posted by Saint Jayne:
I'm excited to see the game rules - I read them all. When you get the board mocked up I'll have another look. I'm having a little trouble picturing the game, especially combat and off-ship travel.

I'm also worried about a failed roll ending the game for everyone. Can Wash (flying: 5) cast an unlucky roll and be caught by the reaver ship (flying challenge 10)?

Is River useless? Are there Shiny cards that allow her to - well, basically do anything? I'd also like to see Book with every score above 3 - he seems to know everything.

I'm also worried about a failed roll ending the game for everyone, so many of the Shiny Cards and the special crew cards allow re-rolls and/or added dice for rolling.

River has one card which I'm temporarily calling "Flash of Lucidity" which allows her to have a rating of 8 (!) in any one ability. She also has the "No Power in the 'Verse can Stop Me" card which basically permits her to terminate any three opponents of health 2 or less without rolling. The idea of River is that she's more or less a nuisance/burden until that critical moment where she's in the right place at the right time and >bam< she plays one of her deadlier Crew cards and saves the day. She also has a "Prophecy" and "Crazy Talk" cards which have some interesting effects.

I'm working on the Shiny and Crew cards today and will post them later.

Book I tried to balance out, but I noticed in many scenes where people were hurt, Book didn't take an active roll in healing. Even in situations where there weren't many other people to do medical treatment (as when Simon was injured) it was Zoe or Mal doing the assistance, not Book. Thus I assigned him the low rating of 1 in Healing. As for Flying, we haven't seen him actually do any Flying, so that's more conjecture than anything else. We've seen Wash, Mal and Inara fly (either the shuttles or Serenity) and that's about it for the crew.

Book helped Kaylee with the engine in Serenity, but he didn't seem like he knew exactly where everything was, which is what would justify a 4 rating or higher in Fixing to me.

As an added explaination of ratings:

1 = Unskilled or Unpracticed
2 = Trained, but not frequently tested, or is untrained but has seen the situation frequently
3 = Competent
4 = Professional
5 = Expert
6 = Exceptional

Thus, Book is a competent fighter, unpracticed with healing, competent at fighting, unskilled in flying and professional (but not expert) at talking.

Also, if you total the ratings in all of the six abilities (fighting, healing, fixing, flying, talking and health) all of the crew are equal, adding up to 15, with the sole exception of Mal, who has 16. Mal also has a few crew cards which bump up his scores in a few situations.

Thanks very much for the input so far. It's great to have feedback. My wife gave me a lot of tips (you should have seen the rules before she helped me edit them into a less rambling state) but it's also good to have feedback from people who haven't heard me explain rules as they're being read.

Kozure the Kamikaze Highlander

Proud Citizen of Canada-That-Was

KOZURE

Monday, February 2, 2004 10:35 PM

I've run into a little impasse and I have a gut feeling about the fans around here that can help out. I've created "crew cards" (referenced in the rules above) for Mal, Kaylee, Book, Jayne, Simon and River. I didn't have much trouble with them.

I'm really stumped at the moment for cards for Zoe, Wash and Inara.

I'll post the example Crew cards this evening for comparison, but perhaps in the meantime, if anyone would like to put forward an example of when Zoe, Wash and Inara had a stand-out moment - when they did something that was pretty cool and/or unexpected, it would help me further.

I've got Wash's "Crazy Ivan" trick, Zoe's body armour and Inara's "threaten Companion blacklisting" moments, but I'm currently at a loss for others. I know they're out there and I'm just spacing on the ideas, so if you have suggestions, fire away.

[edit: Link to new crew card proposals and crew special abilities - http://www3.sympatico.ca/czono/firefly-crew.htm ]

Kozure the Kamikaze Highlander

Proud Citizen of Canada-That-Was

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