I am always stunned that we haven't seen an Aliens RPG since forever.

As a Browncoat, I'm supposed to be excited by more Firefly stuff, but that ship has sailed for the license to be worth very much. It's been 10 years and the hype from the movie and the show on DVD propelled the Serenity RPG.

But now? The RPG community has shrunk and that IP hasn't been gone long enough for the nostalgia bump and also hasn't been infused with any new energy, other than Whedon saying he'd like to revisit it years and years from now.

Quote from: Ghost Whistler;631622never played the game nor read the books.

Roger Zelazny's Amber Chronicles are very good fantasy novels that divert from the modern BOG fantasy that rules the mainstream.

And they're short. Roger didn't write 800 page tomes. He was more of a novella guy who packed badass tales into 200 pages.

Quote from: Mistwell;631709Naw he said it will be set after Serenity, not before.  I don't think it will ruin chemistry.

oh well, sucks to be alan tudyk or ron glass!

Quote from: danbuter;631833Serenity was about equal to a bad episode of Firefly. It got nowhere near as good as the good episodes of Firefly. It was decent but disappointing, for me. Too much focus on River killed it.

No I think they made the right choice: not explaining how the weird teen was a weird teen would have been a bad idea. it's also fan service to explain (as much as was needed) River and Simon's origin story. The movie was as good as any of the Firefly episodes, and some of them weren't as good as others...hard to say really given that there are only 14 episodes.

Quote from: Spinachcat;631889Roger Zelazny's Amber Chronicles are very good fantasy novels that divert from the modern BOG fantasy that rules the mainstream.

And they're short. Roger didn't write 800 page tomes. He was more of a novella guy who packed badass tales into 200 pages.

Yeah, but an rpg without dice is a storygame!

Myself and a couple others in our group love Firefly and were quite interested in the Serenity rpg when it came out. We didn't play it in the end, not because the system, but because, as someone mentioned above, the big thing about the show was the characters.

The setting is interesting enough, but we already had that in the Star Wars one offs we play every once in a while, which are based around a bunch of ne'er do wells trying to make a living in the Outer Rim while the Empire does it's stuff.

Quote from: Spinachcat;631889I am always stunned that we haven't seen an Aliens RPG since forever.

As a Browncoat, I'm supposed to be excited by more Firefly stuff, but that ship has sailed for the license to be worth very much. It's been 10 years and the hype from the movie and the show on DVD propelled the Serenity RPG.

But now? The RPG community has shrunk and that IP hasn't been gone long enough for the nostalgia bump and also hasn't been infused with any new energy, other than Whedon saying he'd like to revisit it years and years from now.

It's not inconceivable that, given the geek fanbase and MWP's previous ownership of the license (And didn't someone earlier say Whedon owns it now?) he may have given MWP the license, relatively cheaply, for marketing reasons (Not much marketing, but very cheap for him as well...).

Quote from: Ladybird;631863Since we appear to be discussing it here, I've never seen Firefly, and I'm not terribly interested in doing so (No real objection to it, it's just not something I want to spend my time on).

You're doing yourself a disservice, especially if you have a Netflix account.

My friend got me to watch, I got my wife to watch, and I offered to buy a second Box Set of Firefly from my parents while visiting, if they didn't like it (I still own only one Box Set).

I'm not saying everyone loves it after watching it; just everyone "I" know.

Quote from: TristramEvans;631503I liked the show and film well enough, but if I wanted to play that kind of game I'd probably just use Traveler. The fact that its MWP, who seem to pretty much be doing just storygames these days means it won't be of any interest to me.

Quote from: J Arcane;631508Yeah, personally, between Traveller, H&H, and Mini Six I'm more than covered for Firefly game systems.

Quote from: jibbajibba;631562I mentioned in a thread about understanding Traveller that Firefly is an almost perfect match for Traveller. So I agree if I wanted to play Firefly I would just use Traveller.

You even have social status, tech level variations,  an Imperium like organisation monitoring the core worlds and a focus on free traders with a bit of skullduggery.

If someone (Mongoose) had been clever they would have grabbed the firefly license to put out a Firefly Traveller supplement years ago. All you need to do is tweak the careers, issue some new ships, fudge the star system background (we all know the firefly system physics are bananas) and fill the rest with fluff, backstory and a few NPCs and you are done.

This. All of this. The Cortex system just doesn't turn me on, but considering that in the first ten minutes of the very first episode of Firefly there was a shout out to Traveller gamers - I don't see why you would use any other game system.

Quote from: Ghost Whistler;631891oh well, sucks to be alan tudyk or ron glass!

Well, Ron Glass has died, but Alan Tudyk was pretty damn funny in Tucker and Dale vs Evil.

Quote from: Emperor Norton;631493Do you ever get tired of whining?

Ghost Whistler whines on the Internet, film at 11.

Quote from: jeff37923;632054Well, Ron Glass has died,

Are you sure about that? Both Wikipedia and IMDB list him as still alive.

I think I saw three episodes--the first one aired, the first one chronologically, and "Our Mrs. Reynolds" when I decided I wasn't going to waste any more time, just show me what the fuss is about.

Conclusion: overly precious geek-opera. And whether or not you agree with that value judgment, the common elements of the form (which includes Smallville and even non-SF&F stuff like Dawson's Creek) make a story-game approach a good match.

Quote from: Premier;632060Are you sure about that? Both Wikipedia and IMDB list him as still alive.

I thought he had died. :idunno:

Quote from: Elliot Wilen;632067Conclusion: overly precious geek-opera.

Could you define that?

The reason I ask is that it seems to me that most table-game games (story-game or not) could be called that...

I'm not overly familiar with Cortex though I think I got some Cortex materials in a pdf charity budle once. (I *think* it's Lightspeed and the Serenity RPG). What's the problem with it?

Cortex+ I already heard enough about to not want to know.

Portmanteau of geek with soap-opera.

It's funny, the TV genre feels, to me, like an outgrowth of let-me-tell-you-about-my-PC. Ensemble casts, spotlight-rationing, character-arcs. The ones I've seen, though, are fairly weak on unifying narrative. In effect they seem like multiple overlapping single-episode dramas. "Arcs" are often self-contained to the point that they don't interact (a character in a supporting role in some else's "arc" may not exhibit the "issues" that drive their own "arc") and once resolved they often don't have much impact. On top of that, actual episodes are often effectively problem/monster-of-the-week and as such have little effect on the status-quo--they're just filler based on the surface attraction (violence, sex, whatever) which the show is ostensibly about.

There is some long-term development but it's super slow-burn, like any given issue is two-steps-forward, one-step-back, and no real resolution until the season finale--and even that can turn out to be a teaser which gets erased next season.

RPGs are diverse, so all this might be like some non-storygame RPGs. In my experience, though, it's less. Wallowing in character drama doesn't get fronted, and people readily move on to consequences instead of recapitulating the same issues. In actual play, relationships (esp. inter-PC) are also happening in the meta-game layer (paraphrasing your concept), so almost entirely socially-regulated and received--whatever you do with them is optional on top of the other layers containing the adventure and encounters, etc.

The geek-opera as a non-interactive medium basically puts the audience in the role of the person who's been cornered at a party and is listening to someone go on and on about the relationship layer. Taking this back to a game, putting that stuff closer to the mechanics layer is likely to have more of a payoff for people who enjoy this sort of narrative.