Establishing Premise in Serenity RPG
FredGarber:
One of the ways I brought Color to my Serenity game was that I used the fact that Serenity's 'Verse grew out of Joss reading a book on the Post-Civil War era Southern US.
So I took real "wild west" things, and repainted them in Serenity colors. There can be plenty of bad situations where the 'city slickers' (Alliance) didn't deal with the Frontiersmen (Browncoats) well.
You could steal from Blazing Saddles/HHGTG, and have Blue Sun build a "commercial shipping route" right through a series of solar systems/planets, and so they are trying to convince everyone that these planets need to be depopulated, all the while they are buying up the land cheap and building rest stops with gas stations and roadside entertainment and raking in all the profits that ordinary entrepeneurs might have gotten, just by living on the right planet at the right time.
Stealing Land from People is Wrong, and it also can have echoes to the current economic Crisises (sp?) today, because these settlers are losing their homes to a big business, concerned only with profits and not sustainable economic activity.
-Fred
mcv:
In a SF setting, I don't see land being very relevant for shipping routes. What is interesting, however, is resources. Perhaps a crook or small corporation discovers valuable resources on some frontier moon, chases/scares the owners off, builds their own commercial infrastructure there, and then informs a bigger corp that's better able to exploit the find. Now it's the crook or small corp that gets to profit from the big corp's operation, when it should have been the original population.
Makes for an interesting adventure (or a couple of them even), but I don't see it as a Big Wrong to uncover during a prolonged campaign.
(Wait, isn't that Once Upon A Time In The West?)
Callan S.:
I'd say everyone in the firefly universe lives with as much freedom as the reavers. As I understand reavers, it's not that they have freedom, it's what they do with it.
What all characters do with it is the question. What's interesting is that even if someone devotes themselves to some philosophy of only doing this or that, they still have that freedom regardless of how much they devote themselves to it. That's why play can't get stagnant - it doesn't matter if a character becomes a big peace hippy - he still has the freedom to become a mass murderer. Will he?
As opposed, I think (I'm not sure) to simulationist play. Where if your guys a big peace hippy, he stays that way and that's the fun of play, that things stay the same way and show an integrity that almost makes them tangible.
Marshall Burns:
Quote from: Christopher Kubasik on February 14, 2009, 01:13:19 AM
Marshall wrote, "right down to having rules for the Black acting as a character," in reference to having the thematic Issues personified by characters within an RPG game.
It's important to note that that Firefly, and the movie Serenity, do this already.
The Reavers. The Alliance scientists who experimented on the population of Miranda. The damage that was done to River (making her almost another person when her "possession" clicked on.)
It is not possible to overstate the importance of this.
Yes! That's precisely what I was getting at. And the examples go further. Everyone in that show has been touched by the Black, and it has left their mark on them somehow. River's is the most pronounced (and I love the fact that her power -- effectively created by the Black -- is what enabled them to defeat the Black in the form of the Reavers), but everyone's got it to some degree.
Take Mal, for instance. The Black got to him when the Browncoats lost the war, and it ripped a big chunk out of him. We never see the bottom of the hole that this left; we see only glimpses of it, in "War Stories" and "Out of Gas" and the last act of Serenity. But the hole is obvious:
"In the time of war, we woulda never left a man behind."
"Yeah, well maybe that's why we lost."
Back then, he cared about people and things. A lot of people and things. Now, he just cares about "me and mine." That is, until the final act of Serenity, when he decides to make a stand for all the dead of Miranda.
So, back to Serenity RPG. I had read it before, but I couldn't remember all of it, so I bought it yesterday to give it another read over.
Now, it ain't a bad system. It's pretty much functional, although some of the GM advice is stupid. But it would be best for Simulationist play. The main reason for this is the way that traits and Plot Points work, and work with each other. Everything else in there can actually be fine and dandy for Narrativist roleplaying, as long as you're clever enough to make it a source of conflict and escalation.
As written, Plot Points are a positive reinforcement tool, not an authoring tool. They're in the same family as Fate Chips in Spirt of the Century, Thematic Batteries in Full Light, Full Steam, and TILT! in Super Action Now! (yeah, I referenced my own game, whatcha gonna do about it?). While all of these provide some increase in power over the SIS, and that power could be used to author (by which I mean "drive plot through player agency"), that's not what they're built for. They're all about reinforcing the Dream, maintaining a shared understanding of it, so that everyone can Get It Right.
What you need is something that provides authoring tools: stuff that helps players address Premise by calling attention to the issues and providing "handles" to make conflict easier to establish, complicate, and escalate for maximally engaging stories. Some examples are Keys in The Shadow of Yesterday, Spiritual Attributes in The Riddle of Steel, Humanity and Lore in Sorcerer, and the Psyche and Push mechanics in The Rustbelt (yeah, I referenced my own game again, whatcha gonna do about it?). As a matter of fact, any of these could be made to work for a Firefly-themed Narrativist roleplaying experience. But none of them would be easy to "drop in" to Serenity RPG. And, while you can get along without something like this, it's that much easier when you have it.
(Mathijs, for any of these mechanics that you're not familiar with, just ask. If I can't explain 'em, then there will be someone else who can)
-Marshall
Christopher Kubasik:
Quote from: Marshall Burns on February 17, 2009, 03:31:51 PM
Back then, he cared about people and things. A lot of people and things. Now, he just cares about "me and mine." That is, until the final act of Serenity, when he decides to make a stand for all the dead of Miranda.
Yes. But...
Just a quick stretching of the example.... As in any good Story Now driven game, Mal is constantly struggling to define what is "me and mine."
In the original pilot, he's ready to surrender Simon and River if it will spare him the wrath of the Alliance Feds. But later, he takes Simon on board as part of the crew.
In "The Train Job" he robs the medical supplies for a third party... and then returns them to the town, stating quite clearly, "I didn't have a choice," in the matter.
So, he's got a code where he's trying not to get burned again... and we see him struggling with this. The last act of Serenity is vital because it's the point where he gives up all pretense of sticking with me and mine. Going to Miranda means putting "me and mine" in jeopardy -- and Mal knows this. (And he's proven right.)
The thing about Story Now game is the flexibility of the statement about what the Protagonist values. It can slide all over the map during play, rising to a climax of one kind or another where the character commits, through action, to a final big decision about the thematic content.
As Callan points out, the characters of Story Now can shift their bearings and decisions all of the place. In fact, its a good game where the thematic issues get tested in a variety of ways -- with different emotions, relationships and responsibilities. That's how we find out who the character really is.
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