Firefly: Furiously Fast in retrospect

On Saturday I ran the first of my weekend games of the year. This was originally intended to be the Christmas Game, but was cancelled at the time because poor scheduling led to a poor show of interest. (I was very disappointed to cancel that game, and even moreso as January marched on with an absence of gaming. I'll have to try to schedule the game better this year.)

The game was therefore rescheduled to take advantage of the FDWC's venue, which they have generously allowed us to use. Present were myself plus three players. One person who had signed up to attend failed to appear without any notification, while the one "maybe" didn't make it. On the one hand, this was a shame, as I think it might have worked a little better with a full crew; on the other, we had a good group dynamic, so no great loss.

The concept of the game was one I came up with while reading the Star Wars Saga "Knights of the Old Republic Campaign Guide", of all things. Basically, that book had a throwaway comment about swoop gangs being an issue on some planet or other, a comment that stuck in my mind just as I was looking for something for the Christmas Game. The short version of the setup is that it was basically a "Fast & Furious" movie set in the Firefly 'Verse - the characters were engaging in a heist, involving lots of vehicles and shady characters, and all that.

What Went Well

• Good group dynamic. This is always very important - it has long been my contention that 90% of the enjoyment of RPGs depends on getting the right mix of GM and players, and we managed to hit that. This is perhaps especially important with "Serenity" as it's very much a player-driven game and so requires players who will enter into the concept and will, well, drive.
• The crew. As noted in an earlier post (and also a post on the other blog), I was making use of the crew of Betty, from "Alien Resurrection". This meant that the crew were almost entirely suited to the setting (being a rough draft of the crew of Serenity, if you will), while at the same time not being the characters from the show.
• Prep work. Prior to the game, I had worked out much of the detail for the first act of the story. However, I hadn't done much with the second and third acts, largely because I couldn't predict how the PCs would handle things. This proved to be almost exactly the right level of prep.
• The venue. I was a bit surprised that we were the only people present. But the hall we were using was pretty much ideal for our uses, and represents a good alternative to the flat. So that's something to consider for future one-shots.

What Didn't Work so Well

• I could probably have done with a few more named NPCs, filling out the cast of characters a bit more. I could certainly have done with a bit more flexible prep work - more fleshed out locations, lists of suitable adjectives, and the like.
• There was at least one major absurdity in the way some NPCs reacted. In particular, the effects of hover tech on setting up road blocks needs some more consideration.
• There are a couple of glitches with the characters. Several times, key skills were confined to a single character who needed to be somewhere else at the same time, leading to issues. Oh, and at least once there was a difficulty set such that the party actually couldn't succeed. Oops!
• The character of Vriess isn't as much fun as he might be. Partly, this was just that the character was totally unsuited to the adventure; partly, it's just that his complication is a pretty massive issue. In future, I'm inclined to restrict him to NPC-only use unless we have a full complement of players.
• I'm inclined to think that Call needs adjusted as well - basically, I don't think the 'Auton' thing is particularly useful, and doesn't really fit the 'Verse. So I think I'll replace that Dark Secret with another next time I use the character.
• I'm still not happy with my handling of vehicles and vehicle chases. This is a significant weakness, especially in a sci-fi setting.

Overall

All present had fun, which is the main metric for a good game. And although the list of cons seems much longer than the list of pros, most of them are just a matter of tweaking. So that's pretty good.

One other good outcome from this game was that I came away with the inspiration for the next "Serenity" one-shot, which should hopefully become this year's Christmas Game. It's always nice when that happens.