On starting up a role-playing campaign in the Firefly ‘verse

Josh
Monday
2:58 pm

The Firefly/Serenity universe is one of the best out-of-the-box settings for a role playing game that ever existed: A group of people on the raggedy edge, trying to scrape out a living in a postwar setting that blends the best elements of the Wild West and dystopian future.

As you know, I’m a big fan. (I started www.fireflyrpg.com a few years ago, and have a Mark II version that’s currently being refreshed with new content at test.fireflyrpg.com .) So, when Twitter friend and Geek6 reader @benhamill mentioned that he might — might — be running a Serenity-style game in the near future, I couldn’t pass up the opportunity to share some tips.

If you’re not a role player, you can still read up on the tips, and get a little misty for the sky that got taken away from us too early. And if you are a role player, read through these tips and tell me what I missed — what would you add as a tip to sum up the quintessentially singular ‘Verse?

Gray moral choices:

Unlike the empire in “Star Wars,” the Alliance aren’t the bad guys. They advocate helping people — all people — at the cost of their personal freedoms. Granted, the federal programs don’t quite reach all of the people they should, and there are definitely some odd goings on, but in many ways, you can draw a lot of parallels between the Alliance and ANY governmental body. There are people who mean well, and there are idealists, but there are also power-grabbing legislators and corruption. The Firefly world is painted in shades of gray — there are bad good guys, good bad guys and a million places in between.

Campaign tip: I rarely make things clean cut. I rarely have the characters playing Robin Hood, stealing from the evil rich and giving to the good poor — more often than not, they find themselves in the position of having to decide which flawed group is more flawed, and they don’t always play for the same team.

The variance in technology:

Part of making a great Firefly campaign work is changing up the setting. As evidenced by the 13 hours of footage we have, it’s NOT a “Western in space.” Sure, folks out on the rim still use covered wagons and horses, but even the marginally-civilized border worlds have hovering chandeliers and mansions. For every dusty canyon the players find themselves in, they should also be spending time in the hyper-locked down, always watched core worlds, feeling like someone’s always peering over their shoulders.

Campaign tip: Set the introductory adventure on a backwater, dusty rim-world. Then, move to civilization fairly quickly and back again, to make the differences that much more obvious.

The ship:

Joss Whedon has never been quiet in referring to Serenity the ship as “the 10th character.” The ship should be more than just a conveyance — it should be a home. It should have mass, weight and a feeling. It should feel precarious — the hallways probably aren’t carpeted, and maybe it bucks hard every time the pulse iterator kicks in. Also, don’t ever just let a player go from their bunk to the bridge without at least a cursory description: “You climb the rungs of the ladder out into the hallway and take the three steps up to the bridge in one leap.”

Campaign tip: Early on, set up a ship-bound episode where the players CAN’T leave. This gives them a chance to explore the nooks and crannies, as well as establish a cursory relationship with the space. Packing them into such a small space will also enforce the higher role-playing need of a game like Serenity/Firefly.

The relationships:

Part of what distinguishes The ‘Verse from other settings is that sense of family. The crew of the ship isn’t a “party,” a “group” or a “team.” They’re kin. The relationships shouldn’t be the same as our core crew of Big Damn Heroes, but they should be close.

Campaign tip: Joss is famous for saying “The ship travels at the speed of drama.” Make sure to write in stretches of nothing, where players are just sitting around the table while the ship is in transit. There doesn’t always have to be a stowaway, bomb, derelict spacecraft or rogue federal officer in pursuit.

The groundedness, and lack thereof:

It’s harder than I thought running a campaign completely devoid of elements of the fantastic. There are no magical powers, no bending time, distorting reality or introducing Macguffin-like alien artifacts. Instead, all of your cool ideas must somehow be rooted in reality. This can get dull, if you’re not careful. Thankfully, the show provides a tiny bit of wiggle room in River’s “psychic-style” energy, which deals more with science (a stripped amygdala and other stuff), and less in paranormal elements.

Campaign tip: Give one player a little something extra, and it doesn’t have to be magical to be cool. Perhaps she has amnesia, and was once part of an elite combat team that banished her. Or, if you really want to get crazy, perhaps he has an engineered, experimental corporate implant that allows him to see quantum fluctuations in nearby universes — which is like being able to see the future, except it doesn’t happen in our universe but 10% of the time. Oh, and it sometimes drives him so mad he can’t see straight.

Postscript — the language:

My favorite thing about the ‘verse, although not critical to playing in it, is the language — that falsely-educated improper grammar mixed with big words, big attitude and that unique patois. How can you not like a universe where the quotes sound like, “Been a long time since Patience shot me, and that was due to a perfectly legitimate conflict of interest. I got no grudge.”

Or, perhaps more appropriately, “Now, I did a job. Got nothing but trouble since I did it, not to mention more than a few unkind words as regard to my character, so let me make this abundantly clear: I do the job, and then I get paid.”