Why I’ve pulled my players off of Shadowrun, and back to Firefly
Josh
Tuesday
2:35 pm
Last week, in a mixed opinion among players, we shelved Shadowrun to resume our Firefly/Serenity campaign. This ended the pileup of dozens of hours in character creation, attempting to learn the rules and getting halfway through an introductory mission.
Despite all of my effort to buy, print and bind the electronic PDFs, and all of the time spent wrapping my head around the rules of augmented reality, matrix combat and technomancers, I started the rebellion. In the end, I pushed the players into Shadowrun, and I pulled them back into Firefly.
Why go through all of the stress? Simple. Or rather, simplicity. I missed the easy fun that Firefly represented. And while the system may be lighter on rules than a hobo fight, we shored it up and made it our own with house rules.
We had our first Firefly session last week in more than a few months, and I felt validated. Players slipped back into their characters with ease, and, without me forcing it, the dialogue, patois, techno-western vibe and gray moral areas all bounced right back into reality. It was a blast.
Why did I switch back?
In Serenity, spaceships are more than spaceships.
Ah, the spaceship — that staple of science fiction. When used properly, a spaceship can be one of the best storytelling devices ever. It can be a magic portal to whisk your players to another civilization, a tavern where players can swap stories, a central plot device if it breaks down or is boarded, or a den where players can recover and regroup.
And, as seen in Firefly, it can even become a central character in its own way — the more beat up, quirky and loved a boat is, the better. In Shadowrun, I missed having such a device. Sure, players could gather at a bar, or at another character’s flat, but it didn’t have the same feel of togetherness.
The system emphasizes characters and story.
“But any system can emphasize story — you just have to do it,” I can hear you saying. This is true, but it’s a lot easier to find plotlines in a John Grisham novel than in the R-S volume of the encyclopedia.
The Shadowrun system’s rules are so intense (and that’s before I even got the ‘advanced, optional’ rules), that players were so busy being focused on how to make the system go that their characters became secondary.
What will I miss?
Magic and the occult.
For all of it’s science fiction-osity, Firefly is pretty grounded. Other than the River Tam/psychic bits, the story is largely about very normal people just getting by. I’ve tried to add the slightest hint of abnormality to Firefly, and the characters never seize on it, largely because it doesn’t fit.
A living, vibrant system.
As far as I can tell, Margaret Weis Productions still seems committed to the Serenity RPG. But development is slow, and things feel like they could fall through at any time. The fan community is loyal, hearty and committed, but not huge. The books use screen grabs from the movie, but not much else for original artwork. Fans have had to step in to create enough weapons, maps, ships and the like to play.
Compare that to the Shadowrun fourth edition system, and it’s night and day. The company seems determined to not just create beautiful books with scads of new artwork, but small and constant updates. They’re creating new and inexpensive mission modules almost weekly, and each is well produced and thorough. They’ve created a revenue stream and a very cool way of creating source material for the game — this was one of the big draws for me to Shadowrun. Unfortunately, the pre-made missions tend to need a little more spice, and I’ve found that I spend about as much time tearing those apart as I do creating my own from scratch.
***
But, at least for the time being, I’m backing the little horse. The players really seem to have slipped into their roles with comfort, and a few are engineering some very cool new characters. I’m glad I made the decision, and if the timbre of our players ever switch to more hard-core RPG desires, I’m not burning my Shadowrun books. And no, you can’t have them.
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Reader Comments
I have to say… I’m not stunned. I, myself, am not as crunch averse as you seem to be, Josh, but if I’m going to be spending a lot of time looking at rules, well, I feel like the SR rules are not as robust as they could be. When some new situation comes up, they tend to have a new paradigm you need to learn, rather than applying a paradigm you’ve seen before (I’m contrasting GURPS, here).
I also feel like there is a lot of burden on the players to know various rules. To evangelize some more, in GURPS, if a player wants to get something done that requires a game mechanic, their side of the interaction is generally to roll three dice. So if you’re like me, you can take the rules-learning burden on yourself and let the players stay focused on, as you pointed out is most important, their characters, not their sheets or the rules.
I also agree with you on inspiration. I feel like the SR universe is pretty… flat. Compared to Serenity, certainly. It’s hard to get a sense of the spirit of the Shadowrun setting and see how that is intended to feel to the players, etc. etc. I suspect that that would be true of the Serenity game if the rules books were all you had to go on, but with the series and movie as a crutch, it gets catapulted ahead. (If my choice of GURPS, settingless as it is, seems incongruous after that sentiment, consider that at least it doesn’t even try and I can use whatever source material I like).
I agree I have never been able to get into Shadowrun. But Serenity I have been really digging. Have you piked up Big Damn Heroes yet?
Ben — I’m not opposed to hardcore, “crunch” rules, in the right setting. But, as a good GM, I try to give my players what they want, even when they don’t know what it is. And after seeing the cinema (OK, cable TV)-caliber improved backstory scenes they’d stage aboard the rickety Jo Lynn, or the way they really try to get into the heads of NPCs, I knew I needed a game that was long on plot and atmosphere.
You’re right — Shadowrun asks a lot of players, and the group I RP with tend much more towards me being the rulemaster, and them being the actors. I think if I were to play a game (something I rarely do, but wish I could), I’d love to give something like Shadowrun a shot.
But, in this case, must of my players are working stiffs with a lack of free time, so out-of-game study sessions happen rarely. And, as much as I thought I’d like having the pre-made stuff, I found that I really did spend as much time customizing it and reworking maps as I did creating my own.
That said, I am in love with the way Shadowrun 4 is being supported — I just wish the barrier of entry were a little lower for casual players.
I am thinking we might want to try and expand that whole reader class to incorporate some of the surreal and ethereal into the game.
“Lighter on rules than a hobo fight” has got to be one of the best descriptive phrases of the last decade.