I was reading through my hoard of pdfs and found the Firefly RPG. It's alright for a rules light system but it made me want to talk over the setting, characters Veeky Forums would want to cook up, and sci fi without sapient aliens in general.
What kind of space cowboy would you roll?
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So, who'd win in a fight: the Operative from Serenity, or Jubal Early the bounty hunter?
The Operative.
Operative
a mixture of characteristics from Spike Spiegel, Gene Starwind and Vash the Stampede.
That's a lot of pistol play probably a d12 plus the specialty of pistols. Would you keep the ex-Triad background that Spike had? The hunted man aspect that Vash had?
State rights, amirite?
It'd be easier to support the Alliance if they weren't bullshitted into creating the Reavers. I like a lot of the Alliance NPC backstories but they are clearly written up as Evil Empire types.
hunted by the triads. only through sheer luck and moving in a small barely registered ship do I survive.
and yes, at least three pistols.
Interesting. However...the Operative got taken out by Mal with one punch. Mal got the initiative, hit the operative first, and won.
With Early, things turned out differently. Mal still won the initiative: Mal struck first. But Early took Mal's punch and beat Mal silly.
Early defeated Serenity and her crew single-handedly; the Operative used the resources of the entire Alliance, and still couldn't secure the crew; Early had the entire crew locked up and under his complete control for almost the entire episode.
Don't mess with Jubal...
There are some really solid third-party sourcebooks for Diaspora (FATE) that are basically written for Firefly. Just in case you want to play without touching the clusterfuck that is Cortex.
I agree, in a one-on-one fight Early will always win. He isn't just a good fighter, he's a smart fighter who comes at you in precisely the manner required to take you out. Early isn't going to try and go toe-to-toe with the Operative in a sword fight; he's going to come at him sideways, hard, and take him down quick.
user The Space Typhoon
Physical 10
Mental 6
Social 8
Dead Eye
1. Quick Draw -The first time you set the stakes in a firefight, spend 1 Plot Point to double Shoot. If your opponent raises the stakes, Step Back Shoot for the rest of the scene.
On The Run
1. Hide in Plain Sight - Spend 1 Plot Point to reroll a die when you're being pursued. On your next roll, both 1s and 2s count for Complications.
Yee-Haw!!!!
1. Double Down - Double your largest die in a pool before you roll. Step Up a Complication to that die type or create one equal to that die type.
Drive d6
Fight d6
Move d8
Notice d8
Shoot d8
Sneak d6
Signature Asset - Lucky Pistol d8
saved~
Well, Satan, there's still points to allocate for skills and specialties but it's a start.
>Not using Traveller
>The system that the show was based on
Nastiest/baddest firefly villain? Niska, obviously. Patience also nasty. And Governor Higgins was a piece of work.
I forgot his name, but the guy in Heart of Gold. Something fucked up about killing your way through a pile of whores to scoop up your bastard son.
Good point! Not sure why I forgot that creep....Rance, I think. Rance Burgess?
Yeah, that's the one. Nishka I can understand, business is business and you need a reputation to keep people from fucking you over. Rance was just some prick who wanted to pass on his bloodline and had a barren wife.
>The system that the show was based on
Can you confirm that senpai?
There was an interview saying he based in on an RPG he played in college.
Someone give me another character, I want to try making some.
Traveller's fun, but it doesn't actually capture the feel of the show very well. Mostly because thrilling heroics get people killed very quickly in Trav, and only middle-aged people are any good at their jobs.
Erm, user: isn't that Firefly? Firefights tend to end in someone getting seriously hurt/killed, all the characters but River are 'retired' from previous jobs/lives. (Heck, even River could be a retired military agent of some kind....). Mal, Wash, Zoe, Preacher, Jayne, Inara are all middle-aged, and the Doc is close.
Then play Classic where 1 rank of a skill is a lot more impressive and relax the lethality rules.
slaver, i would use my slaves to bait reavers so rich people from the inner systems can have a reaver turkeyshoot. sorta like that corn and deer blind thing
Sort of. You can handwave it with Simon being an expert doctor, but I can't imagine Traveller characters living through any one of the Firefly episode plots... Maybe the one with the sword duel. Mal, Zoe and Inara are in their thirties, Wash is younger, Kaylee's younger, Simon and River are in their twenties for absolutely sure.
Granted, that's absolutely true. I stand by my post for out-of-the-box Trav though.
I thought rich people from the inner systems didn't believe in reavers. They're like a space Boogeyman to core worlders aren't they?
You're playing with napalm by taking reavers alive.
>I can't imagine Traveller characters living through any one of the Firefly episode plots...
Well, there's only one gunfight in the premier ep., only one duel in Shindig, a couple shots fired in Trainjob in one scene, a single hostile shot fired in The Message (not counting ship chase), no hostile shooting in Ariel, nor in Trash (except as they are running away), Our Mrs Reynolds builds up to a very Traveller sort of climax.......
Erm, your assessment may not be entirely correct.
When you control for the fact that TV characters tend to be portrayed by actors in their twenties-thirties, it's not that bad. Hell, if you halved the length of Traveller terms, but had the same rate of skills per term you wouldn't be too off Firefly.
It definitely fits the "Veterans tooling around in a starship and trying to keep food in the pantry" thing Traveller has going on
More specifically, I can't imagine normal Traveller characters pulling half that shit off. They'd have lost every single ship encounter they ever had (off the top of my head), they'd never have gotten off Ariel, and they'd all die in Out of Gas. The combat's not the worst of it (though I figure scratch one PC per gunfight easily).
Admittedly, there are some the other way. I can't see Mal's wife or Jubal Early getting the drop on the whole crew that way, but you'd lose a PC to each when they're cornered. Same with the dead guy in the Message. Someone would have caught a bullet there too.
Maybe we got nailed harder than usual by the GM when we tried the system out, but I easily spent more time on lifepaths than actually playing.
>It definitely fits the "Veterans tooling around in a starship and trying to keep food in the pantry" thing Traveller has going on
True dat
I dare say it's more due to that stuff being based on the roll of the dice in Trav rather than serialised storytelling.
Sure it's plot armour, but it's not really the bad egregious kind.
If Firefly happened in real life I imagine a bunch of them would be dead by Objects in Space, but it's better for the story to show the version of events where they all survive till Serenity at least
Biologist/Geneticist, travelling around selling various seeds and chemicals for different world types. Of course, be careful with those, some are quite poisonous or explosive. You'd probably break slightly under expenses if you didn't smuggle, with all the Alliance restrictions on outer world tech, so there's an excuse for some interesting situations. Also not carrying a powerful weapon like a gun around means I won't be tempted to shoot my way out of everything without backup or preparation, which is a bit of a roleplaying flaw of mine.
Can you post the rules? Kinda pulled that idea out of nowhere without knowing the system.
That's why I quite like the Firefly system: plot armour is baked in, but in another way it doesn't help.
In a lot of systems, a GM who won't let you die takes the fun out of things. In Firefly death is basically not on the table, but you still _fail_ when you top out a complication or get Taken Out in high stakes. Also makes conflicts run on the same mechanics, so gossiping at a ball and rappelling onto a maglev train are both fun and interesting mechanically.
Aye I get that. You get badly shot in a gunfight, then you're stuck looking for a surgeon on a podunk backwater, which is an adventure in of itself.
>Early defeated Serenity and her crew single-handedly
The only person he actually fought was Mal, though. He just locked everyone else in their rooms (except for the whole "Threatening Kaylee with rape" thing)
And that's if the GM decides to stack the "shot" complication up on you. Our GM is sneaky. We got into a shootout with some browncoat terrorists, and the GM was stepping up "sirens in the distance" Every gunshot was giving away our position. Tense as fuck, knowing more was on the line than mere death.
Plus that awful moment when someone botches a six-die roll and the GM fucks you sideways with an open umbrella.
>They'd have lost every single ship encounter they ever had (off the top of my head), they'd never have gotten off Ariel, and they'd all die in Out of Gas.
Ok. You're forgetting that all the npc's will be Traveller npc's; i.e. they won't be any better at things than the pc's, and probably worse. So, again: your objection is meaningless.
And how would they all die in Out of Gas?
You seem to have a hateboner for Traveller that is clouding your rational judgement.
Which was more than the Operative ever did......
>middle aged
Basically everyone except Kaylee, River and Shepherd Book are in their early thirties
Given the age difference between Zac Efron!Simon and River in that flashback I'd say he's in his twenties. But that's much of a muchness
Knowing Zac Efron was in Firefly is quite handy for the actor-linking game
The Serenity is an unarmed freighter. I can only barely explain how they get away with what they do. The general problem is that Traveller is quite a simulationist game and the Firefly crew tend to go up against vastly superior numbers of (on paper) equivalently skilled opponents.
In Out of Gas Mal wouldn't have survived, and the scavengers wouldn't have vanished into a plot hole when Mal waved a gun at them. Also, the crew in shuttles would probably have died in space, or else lived long enough to return to a commandeered Serenity and died there.
Traveller's fine, it's just not a heroic and lighthearted system. Makes it a bad fit.
Going by the birth year (2490) given by the wiki and the year that he joined the crew (2517), Simon's 27 at the start of the show, and I think River is around 17.
The operative was doing pretty good until he assumed his pressure point worked.
Dang, I thought River was older. The actress just has one of those faces.
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Don't know about explosive seeds but there's plenty of stuff for tricky sciencticians
Ok then. I could take the Engineer background, pump and up Know a bunch and refluff my engineering nonsense as biological. No exploding seeds, but a decent array of otherwise rare chemicals and gene sequences and the tools to use them. Probably also a not abysmal Medical skill through association, since new biospheres do need modified beasties too.
>the Firefly crew tend to go up against vastly superior numbers of (on paper) equivalently skilled opponents.
>????
Son, you have just clearly and unequivocally shown us that you don't know what you're talking about.
Mal runs. Mal runs all the time. They don't stand and fight.
You've mistaken Firefly for something else...
>Firefly = heroic
No. Just no. You've made a mistake.
Yeah, with the entire military might of the Alliance behind him. Jubal had only himself and his mind to work with.
He forced a confrontation and was able to burn out all of the crew's boltholes before they could reach one, then hung around with Mr Universe until they came calling.
Aside from not anticipating that Mal would be suicidally buttbothered enough to run a reaver aggro train down his throat, and not realizing he'd had a certain nerve cluster moved, he had their number super hard. Even in defeat, the alliance troops likely would have gotten at least some of the wounded group killed had he not called them off.
Mr Universe had the right idea. Just have a pillow fort and a sex robot. No need for anything more.
Yet Jubal Early beat them single handed - no ships, no troops.
He beat one person (who doesn't exactly have the best overall reputation as a fighter), then locked a bunch of sleeping people in their rooms and proceeded to get outsmarted by an autistic girl.
Jubal beat the one person (Mal) whom the Operative could NOT beat....and stahp pretending River is a little girl............
The Operative is a poor man's Jubal Early.
Why are you pushing Jubal so hard? Are you the actor that played him?
>Jubal beat the one person (Mal) whom the Operative could NOT beat
Apparently you weren't paying attention to all the parts of the operative fighting Mal where Mal was getting his shit wrecked. The first time was a save by whore flashbang, the second time was the operative not realizing Mal didn't have his favorite pressurepoint while doing one of his dumb sword kill ritual things because apparently weebs are still a thing in Firefly.
Hey, kid: if your Operative needs the Alliance to back him up, that's ok. Jubal wasn't backed up by shit, and was more successful on his own than the Operative was with all his friends and toys.
>and was more successful on his own
Except he wasn't successful at all. Don't get me wrong, it takes some hella talent to sneak up on someone in space, but River was never not leagues ahead of him.
>b-but he was able to beat up Mal!
So are most people until it's time for the climactic finish where the underdog pulls a win.
Jubal gave Mal and Book some ouchies, and a gunshot wound for Simon because he didn't follow River's script. Operative burned all their friends and business associates to the ground. Which one accomplished more, even if they failed in the end?
>but River was never not leagues ahead of him.
Well, she is kind of a psychic.
That is middle aged. If you're older than 25, you're in middle age, and if you're older than 40, you're old.
Do you even big damn heroes, motherfucker?
>According to the Oxford English Dictionary middle age is between 45 and 65
They push the cowboy thing pretty hard, but folks still have access to medical tech to live past 70. Unless you're on the Rim, in which case you're fucked.
I finally got around to watching Firefly recently in preparation for Star Shitizen 3.0 and didn't really like it, I felt like the plot armor plus the constant quips kinda ruined any suspense the show may have built since you know they're all getting out unscathed. Jayne could have been an interesting character if he wasn't the stupid hick who was the butt of every joke. Mal seemed cool in the first few episodes but the whole helping everyone and respecting women thing kinda made him predictable and boring. I think by the end of the show the doctor was my favorite character even though the romance with him and Kaylee was really really bad.
That being said I'd want to make a desperado space biker from some equivalent to and Outlaw MC
Yeah, Simon is cool. Fringe benefits of medical training evidently include knowing how to tackle a guard to the ground and knock him out without using your hands, so good job there. I kinda wanted to see him swordfight at some point, I expect he'd be at least somewhat trained in it with his background.
Also, Hands of Blue were legitimately scary.
I agree with Jubal, though: every doctor should get shot once - just so's he know the pain he's dealing with ...
And the bonus badass points with awesome one-liners.
"I'm just going to pass out now." hell yeah!
Well, it's Simon Tam. His patients probably develop temporary CIPD via his mere presence, given how good at this he seems to be. Not a problem.