Yes, I know there's a Serenity roleplaying game. I don't have it, but I've looked through Bill's copy. No, what I mean is, I've been writing up the sample turns for _Gavilan_, or rather thinking about doing so. I haven't quite decided what game system I'm going to use (if any... PBeM is flexible that way). From there, it went to "what game system will enable the kind of social conflict I want to have," and so it occurred to me that the scripts for all the Firefly episodes are conveniently available on the Firefly Wiki, and what if I pretended that instead of being a TV show, it was a roleplaying game. Now, my imaginary gamemaster "Joss" is apparently juggling nine players (eight if you suppose that River is a Dependent NPC), so he's obviously a pretty good meeting facilitator (a whole 'nother thread), but what mechanics would enable/encourage the kind of interaction between characters (PCs, yet!) that we see in that (and by mechanics I may mean perhaps just character definition, q.v. my assertion that communicating your character to the GM and other players may well be the only "system" ever needed). I'm trying to decide whether I want to grab a script and go line-by-line and turn it into a transcript of a roleplaying session or what. Probably shouldn't inflict it on the list directly if I do, but I think I removed the GAMERS web from the wiki in the last cleanup... -- Karen J. Cravens silver@phoenyx.net ---------------------------------------------------------------- GAMERS Home Page: http://www.phoenyx.net/gamers/
On Fri, Jan 06, 2006 at 09:45:10AM -0600, Karen J. Cravens wrote: >Now, my imaginary gamemaster "Joss" is apparently juggling nine players >(eight if you suppose that River is a Dependent NPC), River's player doesn't show up most weeks, so she's in the General PC Cloud of Vagueness during those times. >what >mechanics would enable/encourage the kind of interaction between >characters (PCs, yet!) that we see in that (and by mechanics I may mean >perhaps just character definition, q.v. my assertion that communicating >your character to the GM and other players may well be the only "system" >ever needed). That's the approach I tend to take. My _Tempt Not the Stars_ campaign (written up on tekeli.li) is somewhat influenced by Firefly (among many other sources); I'm running it under GURPS4, which is pretty much a "conventional" RPG insofar as inter-PC relationships are concerned. I'm quite happy with the amount of inter-character stuff that's gone on there; they haven't let it override the main plot, which is fine because after all we're all quite interested in the main plot, but there have been some extended in-character discussions. (Most of these don't make it into the writeup, alas; I tend to focus on what the PCs _do_.) I can certainly see a Forgeite-style game that would produce similar effects; Primetime Adventures (which I played for the first time yesterday, and may well write about more in another post) would be a pretty good match, with its system of screen presence (which automatically builds episodes themed on particular characters) and "conflicts" which end up being narrated by either the winner or the loser. -- Roger, gaming grognard Lots of role-playing stuff: http://tekeli.li/ ---------------------------------------------------------------- GAMERS Home Page: http://www.phoenyx.net/gamers/
On Mon, 9 Jan 2006, Roger Burton West wrote: RBW>I can certainly see a Forgeite-style game that would produce similar RBW>effects; Primetime Adventures (which I played for the first time RBW>yesterday, and may well write about more in another post) would be a RBW>pretty good match, with its system of screen presence (which RBW>automatically builds episodes themed on particular characters) and RBW>"conflicts" which end up being narrated by either the winner or the RBW>loser. I'd be interested in seeing a PTA... well, not so much "review" as "analysis." -- Karen J. Cravens silver@phoenyx.net ---------------------------------------------------------------- GAMERS Home Page: http://www.phoenyx.net/gamers/
