Pen & Paper Roleplaying
POSTED BY: GorramIndependent
UPDATED: Friday, August 26, 2005 00:20
VIEWED: 10272
PAGE 1 of 3
Howdy,
I'm a greenhorn to "Firefly," having been recently converted by the mighty fine DVD series, in which I just started the fourth and last DVD. I reckon I'll be done soon, but knowing that it may be a spell before I can see new stories, will have to be content with what I've got.
I'm looking at pen & paper roleplaying "Firefly" using one of the following systems:
(1) GURPS Traveller
(2) Star Hero
(3) Future World (Chaosium's BRP sub-system that is floating around on PDF)
My bias is towards (3), but there is no support for this system. Star HERO looks interesting, but I haven't played a HERO type system since the first edition of CHAMPIONS. I still have bad memories of point-buying systems. GURPS Traveller seems closer to the bill, but it requires buying a lot of books to make a complete game.
What should I do?
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Quote:
Originally posted by GorramIndependent:
Howdy,
I'm a greenhorn to "Firefly," having been recently converted by the mighty fine DVD series, in which I just started the fourth and last DVD. I reckon I'll be done soon, but knowing that it may be a spell before I can see new stories, will have to be content with what I've got.
I'm looking at pen & paper roleplaying "Firefly" using one of the following systems:
(1) GURPS Traveller
(2) Star Hero
(3) Future World (Chaosium's BRP sub-system that is floating around on PDF)
My bias is towards (3), but there is no support for this system. Star HERO looks interesting, but I haven't played a HERO type system since the first edition of CHAMPIONS. I still have bad memories of point-buying systems. GURPS Traveller seems closer to the bill, but it requires buying a lot of books to make a complete game.
What should I do?
Check out the forums at www.travellerrpg.com. There's been a rather recent, active discussion on Firefly Traveller.
If you can survive death, you can probably survive almost anything.
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I like to kid myself that T20 (or any other version of Traveller) could model Firefly quite well.
Indeed, if I wasn't writing & playtesting the official T20 game materials, I think I'd be running a T20 Firefly game about now.
http://travellerrpg.com/
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I am running a Firefly themed 'Star Wars the Role-Playing Game, 2nd Edition' campaign right now. Themed in that it is episodic, with similar character interactions designed into the story. I find the WEG d6 rules to be well-suited to the kind of episodic game style that Firefly 'asks' for.
If this campaign works out well, I plan on creating a full-on Firefly 'verse campaign that may or may not include a trip to 'The Earth That Was'.
The difficult thing will be getting the players into the idea of having, or at least starting, with an unarmed ship, especially when there are things like the Reavers out in the Black.
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May I recommend Savage Worlds? It's a any genre system in the manner of GURPS but a lot easier. In fact, someone has designed a Firefly themed Savage Worlds character sheet: www arcanetimes com SavageWorlds SWsheets jpg HighRezSavageFirefly jpg
To keep it from being a rutting huge graphic, I removed the dots and slashes and replaced them with spaces. You should be able to figure out which goes where.
You have the right to the remains of a silent attorney. If you cannot afford one, tough noogies!
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Quote:
Originally posted by CaptainCerentz:
I am running a Firefly themed 'Star Wars the Role-Playing Game, 2nd Edition' campaign right now. Themed in that it is episodic, with similar character interactions designed into the story. I find the WEG d6 rules to be well-suited to the kind of episodic game style that Firefly 'asks' for.
If this campaign works out well, I plan on creating a full-on Firefly 'verse campaign that may or may not include a trip to 'The Earth That Was'.
The difficult thing will be getting the players into the idea of having, or at least starting, with an unarmed ship, especially when there are things like the Reavers out in the Black.
I've used that as well and it works pretty easilly. I pretty much redid the whole 2nd Edition Revised and Expanded and took out the Star Wars stuff and replaced it with 'Verse stuff. Where there were things that needed filled in that weren't explained so much in the shows I just went wild. Played well and everyone had a good time.
Another system I've used for it was the Unisystem Light rules from the Buffy game, it also worked well in my opinion and I liked having some of the extras that it gave over D6 such as the "hard to kill" perk and whatnot. Another thing I liked with the Buffy rules was the Drama Points (although I just renamed Force points in Star Wars and used them about the same way) and the genre emulation for snappy dialog, seeing people use Chinese to boost their drama points was a cool and appropriate thing to me.
But I didn't do as much with it as with the WEG Star Wars rules, but I do love those Buffy-like perks. The new D6 system coming out over the summer is going to have advantages that I can build like Buffy perks so I can have my cake and eat it too once I get my grubby mits on them.
But then again Eden is coming out with a magazine that has rules in it for a "very Firefly-esqe setting" so I'll be giving that a look as well.
So right now I'm kinda torn between Unisystem and D6 for running it. Either works really well and the relative lightness of the rules lets the thing flow like an episode of Firefly.
In a perfect world Eden would do a licensed Firefly game, they already have done Buffy and Angel. But they hadn't been interested in Firefly at all, although the BDM movie announcement and the DVD sales seem to have them going from "not interested" to "hmmm...maybe just maybe." Personally I think they're floating the "Firefly-esque" setting in their new mag to guage possible interest (as in would buy it not a just sounds cool kinda interest) in a Firefly game from people.
But that's just my guesstimations and nothing officially offical.
~-~-~-~-~-~-~-
"Oh hey, I got an idea. Instead of us hanging
around playing art critic till I get pinched by
the Man, how's about we move away from this
eerie-ass piece of work and get on with our
increasingly eerie-ass day, how's that?"
My eerie-ass website:
http://gunhandsfirefly.homestead.com/Index.html
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Slightly off-topic, but for my fellow D&D geeks out there, here's a bit of nostalgia:
http://www.angelfire.com/wa2/haroog/wormy.htm
Please help Haken keep this site running by occasionally clicking on some of the sponsored ad links on the side of the page!
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Oh man, I used to [l]love Wormy when it was in the back of the old Dragons.
Now I feel old.
Hehe
~-~-~-~-~-~-~-
"Oh hey, I got an idea. Instead of us hanging
around playing art critic till I get pinched by
the Man, how's about we move away from this
eerie-ass piece of work and get on with our
increasingly eerie-ass day, how's that?"
My eerie-ass website:
http://gunhandsfirefly.homestead.com/Index.html
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Interesting! I had forgotten about the Eden Studios game connection. The application of "Drama Points" sounds intriguing. Thanks to everyone who posted
Quote:
Originally posted by Gunhand:
In a perfect world Eden would do a licensed Firefly game, they already have done Buffy and Angel. But they hadn't been interested in Firefly at all, although the BDM movie announcement and the DVD sales seem to have them going from "not interested" to "hmmm...maybe just maybe." Personally I think they're floating the "Firefly-esque" setting in their new mag to guage possible interest (as in would buy it not a just sounds cool kinda interest) in a Firefly game from people.
But that's just my guesstimations and nothing officially offical.
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Yeah, an Eden RPG would be okay. I'm not really fond of their system...and I've actually seen the drama point concept done better in other games.
As for myself, I've tossed out an idea for a Firefly-style Fading Suns game (appropriate since it was the FS list that got me started on Firefly). Not so much using FS to run Firefly, but running a game set in the FS universe with similar themes (a bunch of good-hearted folks with an old broken-down ship out to make a dishonest buck). It actually seems to fit quite well, but we haven't had the chance to run it yet.
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