Firefly: Wedding Planners

So, last night was the first of what will hopefully be several Firefly one-shot games. The Crew were hired by Baron Optimus Fairchild to transport his daughter Lilianna to her wedding on the luxury liner Rim's Dream. Naturally, things didn't go smooth when it emerged that the young lady didn't actually want to marry her intended, and the Crew was thus involved in all manner of antics, involving pirates and bodyguards, true loves, and of course the pursuit of cold, hard cash.

It was a fun game, with four players plus myself. The players took on the roles of Mal, Inara, Wash, and the man they call Jayne. Some reflections:

Pacing

I messed up a little on the pacing, in that acts one and two of the adventure were a little drawn out, meaning that acts three and four were correspondingly rushed. This all worked out okay in the end, but it wasn't exactly ideal. For future episodes of the series I'll need to look at that; surely it's possible to fit the equivalent of a 45-minute TV episode into three hours?

(Of course, it's possible that part of the issue was unfamiliarity with the system. In theory, we won't have to revisit the rules at the start of future sessions, and the whole will run just that little more smoothly.)

Characters

Surprisingly, I felt that the crew of Serenity actually made for poor PCs. The main issue was the juxtaposition between playing the established characters versus the players wanting to make them their own. For the most part this was fine, but it didn't sit quite right. Oddly enough, the crew of Betty just don't have that issue, probably because they are sufficiently obscure to negate any concerns about playing them 'right' - people can just get on with playing them as they see fit.

There was one other issue, and it was the same problem I've been having with Sabra: some of the characters are very specialised and don't easily fit too many plots. Specifically, in the case of last night's game, Wash seemed to spend an awful lot of time in the cockpit of Serenity and not doing a whole lot.

My suspicion here is that Wash is best used in concert with Zoe, so that the two characters can bounce off one another. Likewise Kaylee, who is another very specialised character, probably works best if Simon is also involved. And Simon really needs either Kaylee or River to tie him to the group. River is probably best used as an NPC in most cases.

(The other characters all seem to be pretty good at standing alone: be it the cynical captain, the amoral mercenary, the badass warrior-woman, the mysterious shepherd, or the sharp-tongued companion, they all seem to have agency by themselves for driving the plot forward.)

That last, of course, is worth bearing in mind should I ever run a 'proper' campaign using the game engine. Although it makes a certain amount of sense for the pilot/mechanic/doctor to be a fairly specialised character and very good at what he/she does, it's actually really important that he/she has some 'hook' beyond just being that specialist, so as to be well placed to contribute to a wide range of adventures.

The Game Overall

It strikes me that this is a game where it should be very easy to run a full-blown campaign. In both "Firefly: Inglorious" and "Wedding Planners", we've ended the session with some loose ends that could very easily be followed up on: a Complication that went unresolved, or a new passel of enemies for the crew, or similar. Part of the cause of this is that the game tends not to have the PCs kill their foes (which is, of course, unusual in an RPG), which means they're liable to crop up again.

So as far as I can see, what is needed is a number of early hooks for the game (some of which the players should provide), several early jobs for the crew to pursue (or not), a cast of several Patrons, Fences, and Pimps to arrange further jobs, and some mechanisms for generating further content as needed.

Beyond that, it's mostly just a case of keeping the wheels spinning - as the PCs complete episodes they'll naturally throw up material for further adventures that can then populate further episodes.

All in all, a satisfying experience. I'm looking forward to the next session!