2005: Serenity Role Playing Game

1974 is an important year for the gaming hobby. It is the year that Dungeons & Dragons was introduced, the original RPG from which all other RPGs would ultimately be derived and the original RPG from which so many computer games would draw for their inspiration. It is fitting that the current owner of the game, Wizards of the Coast, released the new version, Dungeons & Dragons, Fifth Edition, in the year of the game’s fortieth anniversary. To celebrate this, Reviews from R’lyeh will be running a series of reviews from the hobby’s anniversary years, thus there will be reviews from 1974, from 1984, from 1994, and from 2004—the thirtieth, twentieth, and tenth anniversaries of the titles. These will be retrospectives, in each case an opportunity to re-appraise interesting titles and true classics decades on from the year of their original release.

—oOo—

The Serenity Role Playing Game was published in 2005 by Margaret Weis Productions, Ltd. It is a Science Fiction roleplaying game—or rather a ‘Space Western’ roleplaying—based on the film of the same name released in the same year. Both film and roleplaying game are set in the universe of Joss Whedon’s short-lived 2002 Fox television series Firefly. It would be the first roleplaying game to use the Cortex System, or rather the first roleplaying game to use what it called the Cortex System, the mechanics having been previously used in the Sovereign Stone roleplaying game, initially produced by Sovereign Press, Inc. and subsequently published by Margaret Weis Productions, Ltd. Not only would the Serenity Role Playing Game be the ‘first’ to use the Cortex System as named, but it would also actually be named for the system-wide communications and data network that appears in Firefly. The Serenity Role Playing Game would win the 2005 Origins Award for Gamer’s Choice Best Role Playing Game of the Year and the 2006 Gold Ennie Award for Best Production Values. Whilst the licence for Serenity Role Playing Game would lapse in 2011, Margaret Weis Productions, Ltd. would return to the setting under a different licence agreement with the Firefly Role-Playing Game in 2014, this time using Cortex Plus, an evolution of the Cortex System that was first seen in the Smallville Roleplaying Game and in Leverage: The Roleplaying Game.

The Serenity Role Playing Game and both the film Serenity and the Firefly television series are set in the year 2517 in a large system of habitable and terraformed planets and moons that were settled by colonists in generation ships from Earth-That-Was. The core two planets formed the U.S.-Chinese Alliance and sought to enjoin the outer planets under their rules. The Outer Planets declined to do so, leading to tensions that would erupt in the Unification War. Despite their best efforts, the Independents, known as Browncoats for the great coats they wore, were defeated by the Alliance and it has been expanding its authority ever since. The remnants of the Browncoats, dissenters, settlers, and others fled to the border where Alliance influence and presence was weaker, but life was tougher since the worlds there had not been terraformed beyond forbidding, dry environments akin to the Old West of Earth-That-Was. This is the ’Verse, where in both the television series and the film, the protagonists are the rag-tag crew of a Firefly-class small transport, the Serenity, getting by on small jobs, crimes, and shifting cargoes and passengers. In the Serenity Role Playing Game, the Player Characters are the same, whether that is the players playing the crew of the Serenity or creating their own characters and their ships. Either way, they will be telling their own gorram stories.

To that end, as well as introducing the setting of the ’Verse, the Serenity Role Playing Game provides the attributes, skills, and traits for each of the crew aboard—Mal Reynolds, Zoë Washburne, Hoban ‘Wash’ Washburne, Jayne Cobb, Kaywinnet Lee ‘Kaylee’ Frye, Inara Serra, Shepherd Book, Simon Tam, and River Tam, along with ‘Roleplaying Notes’ that are actually Mal Reynolds’ assessment of them. This adds a lot of in-game detail and flavour and helps set the scene. Alternatively, the players can create their own characters.

A Player Character in the Serenity Role Playing Game is defined by his attributes, skills, and traits. The six attributes are Agility, Strength, Vitality, Alertness, Intelligent, and Willpower. They are represented by a die type, from ‘d4’ to ‘d12’, although it is possible to go higher. Skills are also represented by die type, again from ‘d4’ to ‘d12’. Skills tend to be general up to a rating of ‘d6’, but higher die types represent skill specialisations. A Player Character must have at least two traits, one a beneficial Asset, the other a hindering Complication, but can have up to five of either. The number of points a player receives depends on the Heroic Level of the characters or characters. This can be either ‘Greenhorn’, ‘Veteran’, or ‘Big Damn Hero’. These points are effectively spent twice, first on attributes and then skills with an extra bonus. The cost for any die type is equal to its size, so a ‘d4’ costs four points, whilst a ‘d10’ costs ten. Assets and Complications can be Minor, Major, or both, the cost coming out of the points to spend on attributes. There are two Assets of note, ‘Reader’ and ‘Registered Companion’, which require the permission of the Game Master for a player to select since they might not match the tone of the campaign.

Name: Arabella Townsley
Concept: Historian gone wild
Heroic Level: Greenhorn
Plot Points: 6

ATTRIBUTES
Agility d8 Strength d4 Vitality d6 Alertness d6 Intelligent d10 Willpower d8

VITALITY 14
INITIATIVE d8+d6

ASSETS
Allure (Asset – Minor), Highly Educated (Asset – Minor), Natural Linguist (Asset – Minor), Combat Paralysis (Complication – Minor), Soft (Complication – Minor)

SKILLS
Artistry d6 (Writing d8), Influence d6 (Lecture d8), Knowledge d6 (History d10), Linguist d6 (Mandarin d8), Perception d6 (Research d8), Scientific Expertise d6 (Historical Sciences d10), Unarmed Combat d6, Survival d4

Mechanically, the Cortex System is straightforward. To have his character undertake an action, a player rolls the die for appropriate attribute and the skill and adds the total together, the aim being to roll equal to, or greater than, a Difficulty number. This ranges from three or ‘Easy’ to thirty-one or ‘Impossible’. Results that are seven or more higher than the Difficulty number is an Extraordinary success, which the Game Master adjudicates. In combat, it might result in a target suffering a broken limb or being stunned. Various Assets and Complications will add a bonus or impose a penalty on the result. The circumstances can alter the die type to be rolled. If hindered, the die type is stepped down, but if a Player Character has an advantage, it is stepped up. A die type can be stepped down as far as a ‘d2’ and stepped up to a ‘d12+d2’, ‘d12+d4’, and so on. What is notable about the system is that no matter what die types the attributes and skills are, even if they are a ‘d10’ or a ‘d12’—or higher—a player or the Game Master can still roll ones on the dice, and if ones are rolled on both dice, the attempt is a botch. Again, like an Extraordinary success, the Game Master decides upon the consequences of the botch, the most immediate result being a Player Character to lose his next action. In addition, there is no set way in which an attribute or skill can be combined to undertake an action.

Since a Player Character is a hero, he also has access to Plot Points, starting play with six, and can earn more through play. This can come from the effect of Complications and the situation, but they can also be rewarded for cool ideas, and completing challenges, personal goals, and crew goals. They can then be spent to buy extra dice for a task—two Plot Points for a ‘d4’, three Plot Points for a ‘d6’, four Plot Points for a ‘d8’, and so on. This must be declared before the roll, but Plot Points can be spent on a one-for-one basis to a straight ‘+1’ bonus. Plot Points can also be spent to reduce damage suffered, trigger certain Assets, and even change the story to some extent. For two or three points, this will be a consequential change, for up to six, the change is minor, and so on, all the way to a major change that costs eleven or more Plot Points!

Combat uses the same mechanics. Initiative is handled by rolling each combatant’s Initiative die types and anyone can take multiple actions, but each action after the first suffers a step down in die type. Defence is also handled as a roll rather than a set value; the roll being determined by the defensive action that the combatant wants to take. The Defence value applies only to the next attack that a combatant suffers and can be active or passive. An active defence enables a roll of both an attribute and a skill, but a passive defence is rolled on an attribute only. The rules account for aiming, called shots, feints, grapples, automatic fire, and so on. Damage is either suffered as Stun damage or lethal Wounds. Armour will reduce either, but both are deducted from a combatant’s Vitality. If a combatant suffers Stun and Wound damage equal to Vitality, there is a chance he is knocked out, and if he suffers Wounds equal to half his Vitality, he is Seriously Wounded and suffers a Step Down penalty.

In terms of play, the Serenity Role Playing Game and the Cortex System is very variable in its results. Where in another roleplaying game, a player will have the flat value of his character’s skill to add to the roll, what he has to rely on in the Cortex System is Plot Points. Which means that the player needs to generate them through play, so leaning into his character’s complication. Offsetting that is the fact that after play, Plot Points can be converted into Advancement Points—in addition to those awarded at the end of a scenario—that are spent on Player Character improvement.

Two lengthy sections in the Serenity Role Playing Game support the technological aspects of the ’Verse. The first looks at money and equipment, including a section on the economics of operating a tramp freighter, emphasising the default set-up for the roleplaying game, whether that is roleplaying as the crew of the Serenity or as a crew of the players’ own creation. The equipment list is extensive and includes a variety of robots and ‘Newtech’ that will originate in the Core planets and be extremely rare out on the Rim. Amongst the items are the expensive and rare laser pistol from the television series episode ‘Trash’ and the LoveBot from the film. The rules for ‘Newtech’ are effectively design rules for creating interesting devices and modifying existing ones.

The second is on spaceships and vehicles and is just as extensive, explaining how they work and how they are operated. Mechanically, they are treated as Player Characters, with similar attributes, skills, and traits. It enables the Game Master and her players to create ships as easily as they can characters and it literally gives a ship character, one that the players and their characters can love and hate as the crew of the Serenity do. The rules do cover weapons and armour, but the ’Verse of Firefly and Serenity is not a setting in which spaceship combat is common. In the main, weapons add to the expense of a ship’s operation and are the province of the Alliance navy. Several vessels are given as examples. These include the Aces and Eights, a Firefly-class vessel operated by a renowned gambler, the Bumblebee-class homestead transport, the Serenity itself, an Alliance Patrol Boat, the El Dorado, a swanky passenger liner, and a Reaver skiff. These are accompanied by deck plans too.

The Game Master is given decent advice on running the Serenity Role Playing Game and exploring its themes of thrilling heroics, hidden secrets, outcasts and misfits, and freedom. It discusses character creation, establishing relationships, designing adventures, and more as well as suggesting campaign concepts other than operating a tramp freighter. These include a planet-based community, bounty hunters operating on the Rim, or even working for an Alliance organisation. Overall, the advice is sound and is accompanied by a cast of ready made NPCs that the Game Master can use in her campaign. This includes many from the film, such as Mr. Universe, Reavers, and the dreaded Operative of Parliament. Rounding the section out are full write-ups and details of the crew of the Aces and Eights, described in the chapter on spaceships. These are the most detailed characters in the Serenity Role Playing Game and can be used as NPCs or as an alternative set of pre-generated Player Characters to the cast of the Serenity. The Serenity Role Playing Game is rounded out with as decent a guide to the ’Verse as was available in 2005 and an appendix that presents ‘Gorram Chinese’, the slang of the Rim and its mix of Chinese and English.

Physically, Serenity Role Playing Game is decently presented with lots of stills from the film and decent artwork, as well as very good deck plans for the various spaceships. The layout is tidy, but feels slightly heavy. The book is well written, but sometimes the use of ‘Gorram Chinese’ and frontier slang is intrusive. There is a lot of in-game fiction, which is quite extensive and enforces the tone of the roleplaying game and its setting.

Unfortunately, the Serenity Role Playing Game is not without its issues, most of them to do with its organisation. The roleplaying game and the Cortex System are not challenging to understand, but the Serenity Role Playing Game lacks examples of either play or character creation. There is an example of combat, which does double as an example of play, but it is presented in-game fiction, so is not immediately obvious. There is no index. The organisation is weird. The actual rules for the roleplaying game are almost two thirds of the way into the book after those for money, gear, and spaceships. There is no character sheet. What it means is that the Serenity Role Playing Game is not as easy to use as it should be.

Although the Serenity Role Playing Game was a success and won awards, and would be supported by several supplements, that was more due to the licence than the roleplaying game itself. It was a decent sourcebook for the Firefly universe when there was relatively little information about it, but its Cortex System was not popular. In many cases, the Serenity Role Playing Game was purchased for its background rather than its rules and the setting run under different rules. The Cortex System drew comparisons, often unfavourably, with Pinnacle Entertainment Group’s Savage Worlds, which has proven to be more successful. This is despite the fact that over its history, the Cortex System was used for a number of licences based on popular television series, including the Battlestar Galactica Role Playing Game and Supernatural Role Playing Game. However, it would receive critical acclaim with the development of the more narrative focused Cortex Plus System, first seen in the Leverage: The Roleplaying Game and the Smallville Roleplaying Game.

One of great aspects of the Serenity Role Playing Game is how easy it is to pick and play. Mechanically, it is neither too complex nor too simple, and the familiarity of its setting—Firefly only having been broadcast three years before and the much anticipated film fresh in people’s minds, made it accessible. To be blunt, the Cortex System, more serviceable than great, is nothing to write home about (whereas to be fair, Cortex Plus, was), and that means it is neither intrusive nor difficult to learn. An experienced roleplayer will have no problem picking up the Serenity Role Playing Game and learning how to play. However, the inexperienced or new roleplayer—perhaps attracted by the fact that it is based on the Firefly setting—will find learning to play much, much harder than it should have been.

Overall, whilst far from perfect, the Serenity Role Playing Game is a combination of a stolidly functional set of rules with a good adaptation of its source material that is easy to learn and play.

2010: Leverage: The Roleplaying Game

1974 is an important year for the gaming hobby. It is the year that Dungeons & Dragons was introduced, the original RPG from which all other RPGs would ultimately be derived and the original RPG from which so many computer games would draw for their inspiration. It is fitting that the current owner of the game, Wizards of the Coast, released the new version, Dungeons & Dragons, Fifth Edition, in the year of the game’s fortieth anniversary. To celebrate this, Reviews from R’lyeh will be running a series of reviews from the hobby’s anniversary years, thus there will be reviews from 1974, from 1984, from 1994, and from 2004—the thirtieth, twentieth, and tenth anniversaries of the titles. These will be retrospectives, in each case an opportunity to re-appraise interesting titles and true classics decades on from the year of their original release.

—oOo—

Published by Margaret Weis Productions in 2010, Leverage: The Roleplaying Game is a licensed roleplaying game based upon the television series which ran from 2008 to 2012. In the series, a Crew of con artists—a mastermind, a grifter, a hacker, a thief, and a retrieval specialist—take on a series of heists in order to fight injustices inflicted upon ordinary citizens by corporations and the government. Each of the episodes follows a set story structure. A Client comes to the team with a problem that only its members can find a solution to. This involves researching the villain or Mark and finding a weakness which the Crew can use to undermine him, and then formulating a plan which will make use of both the weakness and the skills of individual team members. As the plan goes into action, the Mark and his henchmen will seem to gain the upper hand, but ultimately, the Crew will outwit them all. Flashbacks will reveal further clues and improvisations that helped them overcome certain complications, and so ultimately, bring justice for the Client. This is the exact format that Leverage: The Roleplaying Game follows to provide not only an excellent adaptation of its source material, but also arguably, the purest treatment of the heist genre in any roleplaying game.

 

From the outset, Leverage: The Roleplaying Game is a simple sell. It is modern day, it is set in the real world, and the Player Characters, though highly skilled, are all easy to grasp and understand. They are all ‘crooks with a heart of gold’ or Robin Hood-types, rather than out and out criminals. The tone of the series and thus the roleplaying game is also family friendly—although there is action and there are fights, there is never gunplay, at least not on the part of the Crew. (The lack of gun play will also have an impact on game play, making carrying out a heist that much more challenging and thus more satisfying when pulled off because brute force or threat is not an option.) Plus, even if the players have never seen Leverage the television series, then they might have seen its BBC forebear, Hustle, or films such as Ocean’s 11 and the other entries in the series. Lastly, despite the fact that Leverage: The Roleplaying Game follows the formula of the television series, the formula and thus its set-up means that as a roleplaying game—especially a licensed roleplaying game—Leverage: The Roleplaying Game has not actually dated in the ten years since it was published.

 

Leverage: The Roleplaying Game is one of five roleplaying games from Margaret Weis Productions to use Cortex Plus, the others being the Smallville Roleplaying Game, the Marvel Heroic Roleplaying, the Dragon Brigade Roleplaying Game, and the Firefly Role-Playing Game. It is both a roleplaying game and a roleplaying game, a roleplaying game in that each player is roleplaying a character and each character is playing a Role. There are five Roles—a Mastermind, a Grifter, a Hacker, a Thief, and a Hitter—and Leverage: The Roleplaying Game works best when there are five players, each of whom takes one of the five Roles and so forms a Crew. The Mastermind specialises in plans and coordinating the Crew’s activities on the Job; the Grifter gains and use people’s trust through disguises and roles; the Hacker gains, supplies, and denies information, typically using technology; the Thief steals or plants things by stealth and foiling security systems; and the Hitter supplies force and a tactical edge. There is some crossover between Roles for the Crewmembers, so the roleplaying game can be played with fewer players, but its optimal number is nonetheless five. A Crewmember also has six Attributes—Agility, Alertness, Intelligence, Strength, Vitality, and Willpower; two Specialities, each one associated with a Role, such as Driving for Hitter and Piloting for Hacker; three Distinctions or personality quirks or traits, which can work to a Crewmember’s disadvantage as much as they do advantage; and Talents, essentially tricks which related to particular roles and when activated grant a Crewmember an advantage. Roles and Attributes are rated by die type, the larger the die type, the better the ability of the Role or Attribute, both being defined by ten-, eight-, six-, and four-sided dice. A Speciality is valued as a six-sided die, whilst a Distinction can be rated as an eight-sided or a four-sided die depending whether it is in the Crewmember’s favour or not.

To create a Crewmember, a player selects a Primary Role and a Secondary Role, assigning a ten-sided die to the former, an eight-sided die to the second, and decides on two Specialities, attaching each to a particular Role. A six-sided die is assigned to a third Role, and four-sided dice to the remaining two. The size of dice types assigned to the attributes will vary depending upon if the Crewmember is focused or versatile. Lastly, the player selects three Distinctions and two Talents.

 

Winston Moran

Winston Moran used to work in financial security, preventing banks and other institutions from being robbed. He was injured in a car crash which also left his wife in coma and due to the injury was forced to take early retirement. Unfortunately, his employers defaulted and left him without pension, forcing him to turn to ‘crime’ to pay for his wife’s medical bills.

 

Roles

Grifter d8, Hacker d6, Hitter d4, Mastermind d10, Thief d4

 

Attributes

Agility d8, Alertness d8, Intelligence d10, Strength d6, Vitality d8, Willpower d8

 

Specialities

Bank Fraud, Games

 

Distinctions

Voice of Authority, Walks with a Cane, Industry Veteran

 

Talents

Slip of the Tongue (Grifter)

Sea of Calm (Mastermind)

 

This though, is the quick and easy version—but not the fun version. The suggested version—the fun version—is ‘The Recruitment Job’. Each player partially defines his Crewmember and together the Crew play through a simple Job designed to showcase what each Crewmember can do and define and bring into play the other undefined aspects of each Crewmember. Essentially, this is the playing group’s pilot episode or ‘Zero Session’ for their Leverage series. There are one or two quirks about Crewmember generation. The first is that a Crewmember’s Secondary Role will define how he approaches his primary Role. For example, the Grifter whose Secondary Role is Hitter, is a ‘Swashbuckler’, aggressive and challenging  with a Mark, but uses lots of misdirection and quips in a fistfight, whilst the Hitter whose Secondary Role is Grifter is a ‘Duellist’, a quick, deceptive combatant who uses feints and distractions to bait his opponents. The second quirk is that there is no Charisma attribute and this is by design. Rather, the Attributes of Intelligence, Strength, Vitality, and Willpower all assume aspects of a Crewmember’s charisma and how he uses it on the Job. Essentially, every Crewmember is charismatic, but exactly how will vary from Crewmember to Crewmember—just like the cast of a television series.

 

Mechanically, Leverage: The Roleplaying Game uses the Cortex Plus system—in 2020 revisited with new core rulebook, Cortex Prime. The basics revolve around two opposed dice rolls, one by the player, one by the Fixer—as the Game Master is known in Leverage: The Roleplaying Game. Each dice roll consists of two dice. For the Crewmember, the dice roll will consist of a die from one Attribute and a die from one Role, both of which will vary from situation. For example, when his Crewmember is chasing a potential Mark, the Fixer might call upon the player to roll his Crewmember’s Alertness plus Hitter, or if a Crewmember is being chased by security guards and he wants to hide, perhaps on the ceiling, the Fixer would ask his player to roll Agility plus Thief. The Fixer will in turn be rolling dice which might be for the environment, such as ‘Ten Stories Up d6 plus Vibration Sensors d8’ or an NPC, which for most NPCs, such as the Client, a simple Mark, Extras, and so on, will have no more than a handful of traits, such Wannabe Hacker d4 or The Best Golfer d6. Other NPCs, including Marks, Foils, and Agents—the latter typically out to capture or beat the Crew or a particular Crewmember, can be as complex as actual Player Character Crewmembers.

 

Although just two dice form the core of the basic roll, other dice can be added to it. The use of Specialities, Distinctions, Assets, and Complications can all add dice to the roll. In most cases, these require the expenditure of Plot Points. Plot Points—of which a Crewmember starts with one—can also be used to activate Talents and create new Assets, which last for the scene (or the whole Job for two Plot Points). Ultimately, only the two highest dice are counted and added together. This sets the stakes for the Fixer to roll her dice and attempt to roll higher. If she does, she ‘Raises the Stakes’, and it is up to the player to reroll the dice, and if add in more dice, to gain a score higher than that rolled by the Fixer. Alternatively, whomever rolled lower can back down and decide not to roll to beat the other. In which case, the Crewmember or Mark has given in and taken down, the winner of deciding the outcome. If however, one side rolls five higher than the stakes are currently set at, then they have achieved an Extraordinary Success and an automatic takedown of their opposition.

 

Where Cortex Plus gets interesting is in the generation of Plot Points. Whenever a one result is rolled on a die by a player, it is not counted towards the two dice he keeps as his Crewmember’s total, but it does generate or improve a Complication, which adds another die to the Fixer’s dice roll. When that happens, the player receives a Plot Point. When the Fixer rolls a one on any of her dice, it generates an Opportunity and the player can bring in one of his Crewmember’s Talents, if appropriate. The fact that rolls of one generate Plot Points and Plot Points can be used to create Assets, add dice to a roll, and so on, means that players will want to be rolling ones almost as much as they high results, and the best way to roll ones, is to roll lower value dice, such as six-sided- and four-sided dice. Both of course, have higher chances of rolling ones. A Crewmember starts play with a Role set at a four-sided die, but the other way to bring in a four-sided die is to add a Distinction to the roll. If the Distinction works in the Crewmember’s favour, then it is rolled as an eight-sided die, but if it is to his disadvantage, it not only adds the desired die, but also the reviled four-sided die. Either way, rolls of one represent the type of setbacks that might be seen in an episode of Leverage, but at same time generate the Plot Points that will ensure already expert Crewmembers complete the Job and take down the Mark. 

For example, the Crew managed to plant a bugging device in the Mark’s office. However, the Mark’s security ensured it was not able to broadcast what it downloaded from his computer, so the Crew needs to get it back. Winston Moran has already been into the Mark’s office, ostensibly to talk about a bank fraud, but that was to give the bug time to work. Now he needs to get it back. He tells the security guard that he dropped his wallet in the office, so the guard lets him go and get it. The guard is diligent and comes to check on Winston. To see if Winston grabs the bug before the guard becomes suspicious, the Fixer asks his player to roll Winston’s Alertness plus Thief. Unfortunately, this is a d8 for Alertness and a d4 for Thief—the latter is so low because Winston is not as young as he was.

 

Winston’s player rolls an eight and a one! This sets the stakes at eight because the one is set apart and further, it generates a Complication. The Security Guard has Security Guard d6 and Really Doesn’t Want Any Trouble d6, but since Winston rolled a one and generated a Complication, it adds another die to the Fixer’s roll, in this case, Suspicions Aroused d6. She rolls a four, a five, and a two! This Raises the Stakes to eleven. Winston’s player states that he is going to roll d8 for Alertness and a d4 for Thief again, but spend a Plot Point to bring in a Distinction, in this case, Walks with a Cane. As this is being used to Winston’s benefit, it adds a d8 rather than a d4. His player rolls a three, a four, and a six to give a final result of thirteen. This beats the Fixer’s stakes and she backs down as Winston allays the security guard’s suspicions with, “Found it! Sorry for being so slow—old man with a cane, you know?”

Beyond the simple mechanics, Leverage: The Roleplaying Game introduces numerous elements which model the television series. For example, all of the Crewmembers are Experts and as in classic episodic television, they do not really improve, or at least if they do, it is at a very slow rate. Instead of the classic Experience Points, a Crewmember records each of the Jobs he completes. During a future Job, a player can have his Crewmember make a ‘Callback’ to the previous events of another Job to gain a bonus eight-sided die. This provides the Crewmember with a ready pool of bonus dice, but alternatively, a player can improve an Attribute or Role die, or purchase further Specialities or Talents by permanently marking off the Job titles.

 

Where the television series is really modelled is in the use of Flashbacks. In an episode of the television series, the focus of the Job is all on the Mark and how he is affected by the Crew’s efforts to scam him. They come in two forms. Establishment Flashbacks add an element to a Crewmember’s backstory to bring an Asset into play, whilst Wrap-Up Flashbacks establish Assets which can aid in turning the tables on the mark and go towards the finale and Mastermind’s final roll against him. They are both a narrative device to further showcase the various Crewmembers’ Roles and other traits and a means to overcome a Job’s final hurdles.

 

For the Fixer, there is a deep discussion of the heist genre as seen in Leverage, taking her through the process of constructing a Job—from the Client and his Problem to the Mark, a discussion of a traditional three-act structure versus the five-act structure of a Leverage episode, twists to use and twists to avoid—the latter primarily to prevent the players and their Crewmembers getting to bogged down in planning, taking inspiration from news stories, and even a ‘Situation Generator’ for creating a random Job. The Fixer can also make use of the example Clients, Foils, Agents, Locations, and more, though Locations are relatively easy to come up with given that the Leverage: The Roleplaying Game is set in the modern day and the Fixer can draw inspiration from around her. The world around the Crew is explored in broad detail, whilst the criminal and the Crew’s place in it is given more detail. With advice on subjects such as ‘Thinking Like a Criminal’, ‘Violence’, and the nature of ‘Cons’, including long, short, and classic cons. This last part is a solid introduction to grifting and running con games, and much like the rest of the chapters intended for the Fixer can just as easily be read and perused by the players. Rounding out the Leverage: The Roleplaying Game is an episode guide for the first two seasons of the television series. This either works as inspiration for the Fixer or it feels a lot much like filler content, but either way, it would have been nice to have some ready-to play-Jobs alongside it.

One issue with Leverage: The Roleplaying Game is the same as the Leverage television series. It is fundamentally episodic in nature, such that there is relatively minimal character or on-going development from one episode to the next. This is partially reflected in the slow growth and improvement of the Crewmembers through the Jobs recorded and spent as Experience Points. What this means is that the Leverage: The Roleplaying Game is not necessarily a game to play on an ongoing or even a long term basis, but since every episode of the television series and every Job is more or less self-contained, it works well for one-shots, for short seasons, and even pickup games with minimal preparation time if the Fixer uses the tables provided in the book to create a situation.

In terms of play, Leverage: The Roleplaying Game is a game which encourages player input, whether that is in the expenditure of Plot Points to add Assets to a Job or be inventive in how each player brings his Attribute and Role combinations into play. The Fixer will probably suggest combinations most of the time, but there is scope for a player to suggest his own too. This though, is also open to abuse, but a good Fixer should be able to nix that in the bud and encourage her players to play in the spirit of the Leverage television series.

 

Physically, Leverage: The Roleplaying Game is a really clean, bright looking book decently illustrated with stills from the television series. It is both engagingly and well written, and although it lacks an index, the table of content does a reasonable job of making up for it.

 

Neither the mechanics nor the genre of Leverage: The Roleplaying Game have dated and both are as comfortable to run in the here and now of this year or any other year, as much as they were in 2010. The focus of the design on emulating its source genre however does date it to its publication era, that of the storytelling game/indie roleplaying game movement which dominated the late 2010s, but of course, designed to a far more commercial end. As much as it is designed to emulate the Leverage television series, its treatment of its genre means that it can do other heist or con game set-ups just as easily as it can Leverage the television series. Nominated for the 2011 Origins Award for Best Roleplaying Game, Leverage: The Roleplaying Game is an elegant, well-designed treatment of not just the Leverage television series it is based upon, but also of the heist and the con game genres in general.

Big Book o' Badduns

Things Don’t Go Smooth is a supplement for the Firefly Roleplaying Game, the RPG based on Joss Whedon’s 2002 ‘space western’ television series that aped the aftermath of the American Civil War. Published by Margaret Weis Productions, in this ‘space opera’, the crew of the Serenity try to make living, not always legally, on the fringes of both society and a massive star system far from the aegis of the controlling central government, the Alliance. This is not a ‘clean’ space opera—making a living in space can be hard and is often dangerous work; high technology rarely makes it as far as the outer planets and their moons; and the preferred technology is stuff that works, so for example, firearms rather than lasers and on many planets, horses rather than vehicles.

Things Don’t Go Smooth is all about helping the GM make the lives of his Crew—that is, the player characters—just that bit more awkward. It presents a host of antagonists with which to confound, confront, and confuse the Crew, including spies and crime bosses, rival crews and gangs, and the unexplained and the miscellaneous; presents their spaceships and space stations, gives narrator advice for running them, and introduces an array of new triggers; and lastly, provides two scenarios with which the GM can showcase the antagonists of his choice. The supplement comes as a full colour book, illustrated with a mix of photographs and grayscale art, which comes with solid cartography. 

The bulk of the supplement is devoted to its antagonists. The first five are spies and crime bosses; the second four are rival crews and gangs; whilst the last four are oddities and the unexplained. Each of the first heads an organisation with men at their command and plots of their own backed up with knowledge, favours, ambition, and a more than healthy dose of paranoia. They include a freelance spy with a taste for the highlife who trades in information and more; a mercenary queen with an axe to grind against both men and the Alliance; a Moon Boss who will do anything to protect the independent sanctuary he has established; a mercenary commander who trades on her corporate links; and an ex-Browncoat who continues the fight behind the façade of a successful waste management company. Where they possess plots of their own that can see them hiring a Crew or working at odds with a Crew’s aims, the rival gangs and crews are designed to be going after the same jobs as a Crew, and as the competition may be as good as a Crew, perhaps aping their skills and attitudes, perhaps reflecting them. The four rival gangs and crews include smugglers forced to shift unpalatable cargoes, a crazy pirate crew high on adrenaline and alcohol, an information broker backed up by assassins and thieves, and a family of junkers on the make. The oddities and the unexplained are designed to add a degree of mystery to the ‘Verse with legends and rumours that include software that checks for, and shuts down, Browncoat technology; a completely innocent Alliance agent, a wealthy CEO obsessed with ‘saving’ Earth-That-Was, and a ‘ghost’ with gifts to give.

In each case, a full character write-up is given for the primary NPC, who is then backed up with a supporting cast and a description of any bases or equipment. Encounters suggest how the antagonists might be used whilst new Signature Assets are listed and explained for use with both the NPCs here and those of the GM’s own design. Or of course, use by a player character. The thirteen represent a good mix and none of them are quite out and out villains, there being some nuance to their aims and motivations. For example, Zaine Alleyne is a medic who takes too much pride in his skill with a scalpel to quite see the immorality of the work that his Triad bosses have him do, but still has morals enough to undertake acts of philanthropy elsewhere…

Further support for these NPCs comes in the form of write-ups of their boats, thus expanding upon the list of spaceships given in the Firefly Roleplaying Game core rules. They range from an Aegis Class Alliance Battlesphere and Keying Class Medium Transport to a Nanjing Class Yacht and a Sunslinger Science Vessel, altogether adding thirteen new ship classes, along with an array of new Distinctions—Background and Customisation—as well new Signature Assets. These enable the GM to design and build boats for his own NPCs as well as use those for the NPCs presented in Things Don’t Go Smooth.

The last of the NPCs offered are not so much NPCs as elemental forces out of the Black—‘Reavers’! Oddly absent from the Firefly Roleplaying Game core rules, in Things Don’t Go Smooth the Reavers are described as an unstoppable moving force that cannot be reasoned with, fought against, or even defeated. At least not with dice rolls, but rather they can be escaped or avoided. Thus there is no write-up for Reavers in the traditional sense of NPC stats, but several scenario hooks are given along with an example of how to use them.

The GM also receives advice on running antagonists, backed up with three thorough—and entertaining—examples of play that showcase the threats they represent. The advice also covers the creation of lairs and hideouts, and quick NPCs and plots, but most notably Things Don’t Go Smooth gives the GM a set of new triggers, not to add to Distinctions and Signature Assets, but rather to scenes and locations. This is in addition to any Traits they may already have. Location triggers are specific to a place, typically one that a Crew visits regularly, whilst scene triggers are tied to particular scene in an adventure. 

Rounding out Things Don’t Go Smooth are two adventures, ‘Merciless’ and ‘Thieves in Heaven’. The former is a heist movie set in a museum in which the Crew needs to case the joint before making a run on its security, whilst the latter dumps the Crew into the middle of a medical mystery and one company’s desire for a monopoly when they suddenly need a spare part for its boat—one that the ship’s mechanic cannot simply fix. In both cases, suggestions are given as to which of the villains listed earlier in the supplement are best suited to use in order to make either scenario more awkward and thus more entertaining for the players.

Overall, Things Don’t Go Smooth is neatly presented supplement. It is well written and decently illustrated. What stands out though in comparison with the earlier Echoes of War, are its maps. They are a huge improvement, being reasonably detailed and helpful. One interesting aspect to the supplement is that it is not as tightly tied into the crew of the Serenity as Echoes of War was. This does not mean that the contents of Things Don’t Go Smooth cannot be used with the Serenity crew, but it does feel as their importance is downplayed.

Things Don’t Go Smooth very much feels like a companion volume to the Firefly Roleplaying Game core rules. It provides the means for a Crew to have memorable and meaning adventures by giving the GM not just interesting and memorable villains to put them up against, but villains who are antagonists with interesting and memorable motivations. This is backed up with solid advice and support and two good adventures. Things Don’t Go Smooth lets a GM get enjoyably villainous for the Firefly Roleplaying Game.

A Fancible Foursome

Firefly Echoes of War: Thrillin' Heroics is a supplement for the Origins Award nominated Firefly Roleplaying Game published by Margaret Weis Productions. It collects the first four scenarios for the game originally released individually as PDFs as well as crewmember write-ups and a stripped down version of the Cortex Plus System. This means that its contents are not only compatible with both the preview, Gaming in the 'Verse and the Origins Award nominated version, but it also means that Firefly Echoes of War: Thrillin' Heroics is a standalone book that can be run using just the rules it contains, or it can be with access to either version of the rulebook.

The rules are succinctly covered, for these are the basic rules, and so do not include the advanced options given in the core rules, but they do include everything needed to play the quartet of scenarios in Echoes of War. Character creation, or rather customisation of the twelve crewmember archetypes is treated in a similarly succinct fashion. These rules are followed by four scenarios, each of which should take several sessions to complete. Thematically, the four scenarios all in some way hark back to the ‘Unification War’, either through an old friend from the war or a contact who fought in the war.

The scenarios open with caper/heist hybrid, ‘The Wedding Planners’ by Margaret Weis. In strange turn of events, Badger hires the crew with nary a fuss for a big job—get the daughter of a cattle baron to her wedding aboard another starship. Which means getting a spoiled, rich, media darling to the space wedding of the year on time and without any complications. This being a Firefly Roleplaying Game scenario, there are of course going to be complications and this time around they involve pirates and the course of true love—not necessarily to the same ends. It all gets terribly complicated at the end, almost to the point of a farce, which has the potential to turn into a chaotic mess.

The simplest of the scenarios in Echoes of War, Andrew Peregrine’s ‘Shooting Fish’ is the most straightforward and  has the most obvious potential for fun. The crewmembers come to the aid of an old friend who runs an orphanage that is in danger of being closed down due its accumulated debts. Which means that it local landlord can take it over and turn it into a money-spinning brothel! Fortunately there is a way to raise the cash—quite literally fast! If the crew can enter and win the local boat race, then they can pay the orphanage’s debts. Unfortunately, the only boat the orphanage has needs more than just maintenance to get it into the water and there is nothing clean and legal about the race itself—guns, grenades, sabotage, drunken good ol’ boys, and more are all acceptable in the race. The rules for handling the boat’s repair and various minor encounters are nicely done, but the race feels again a little chaotic and lacking in advice. Nevertheless, this is a fun adventure.

‘Friends in Low Places’ by Monica Valentinelli takes the crewmembers back to Serenity Valley to help out an old Browncoat friend whose new wife has gone missing. Given that his previous wife was an unscrupulous redhead by the name of Bridget, the crewmembers may just decide that getting involved with wife number two might not be such a good idea, but ‘Good Ole Monty’ is desperate for their help. This is an investigative scenario and a fairly difficult one at that, the likelihood being that the crew will end up having to garner aid from high places into order to find the wife’s whereabouts. The one thing that lets this scenario down is the lack of maps and the poor quality of the maps. Those that are given are functional at best and given that this is a location-based scenario, a map of Serenity Valley itself would have been helpful.

Last is ‘Freedom Flyer’ by Nicole Wakelin. Once again, the crewmembers are asked to come to the aid of a friend—a regular motif in this anthology, but the title is Echoes of War—who wants to get out and make a new life before her old one catches up with her. Again, this scenario has something of the heist to it, but involving more stealth and the need to avoid Alliance entanglements than in previous scenarios. Of course, there is the matter of the friend’s past and the fact that it will catch up with both her and the crew in the form of a pragmatic bounty hunter who should be fun for the GM to play.

Physically, Firefly Echoes of War: Thrillin' Heroics is cleanly and neatly presented. It makes decent use of photographic stills from the television series, though the few pieces of additional line art are perhaps too cartoon-like in places. Where the book does disappoint is in its maps, which are in the main serviceably bland, and in some of the repetition from one scenario to the next. 

There are two obvious problems with Firefly Echoes of War: Thrillin' Heroics. The first is that it collates a number of releases that were first released as PDFs, so if you own any of them already, this collection may not be as useful. The second is that it repeats a lot material that is already available in one form or another—the rules, the crew of the Serenity, and the new pre-generated crew. What this means is that again, there is the possibility that the purchaser is paying for material he already has and does not need again. Either reason should be enough for the potential purchaser to carefully consider whether he needs this supplement.

The less obvious problem with Echoes of War is that its four scenarios are written with the crew of the Serenity in mind. Which is fine with a large playing group who are prepared double up on a character or two—after all, few playing groups are likely to consist of nine players! What this means is that in many cases, the GM will be mapping the personalities of the Serenity crew onto the player character created crewmembers and back again in order to fit the roles that the scenarios require. Which of course will not be a problem for an experienced GM who will know the personalities of his players’ characters, but may present an issue for the less experienced GM.

Yet where Firefly Echoes of War: Thrillin' Heroics truly shines is as an introduction to playing and running the Firefly Roleplaying Game. Like Firefly the series and want to get a taste of what it is like to roleplay in the ‘Verse without getting the core rules, then it is an obvious place to start. That said, it is not an introductory product as far as roleplaying goes as its starting point is not quite basic enough and anyway, the scenarios are too complex for an inexperienced GM to either adapt to a group that is not playing the crew of the Serenity or to run. It is much more suited to a group and a GM who have some roleplaying experience under their collective britches. 

A nice touch is that each of the four scenarios comes with several suggestions as to possible sequels and consequences. Of course there is no advice on creating such sequels present in Echoes of War, but then that falls outside its remit and so they are useful for when the GM has a copy of the Firefly Roleplaying Game. There are of course issues with Firefly Echoes of War: Thrillin' Heroics—the dull maps, the repetition of material, the underwritten advice, and so on, but the scenarios themselves are excellent, a solid quartet that do a nice job of modelling the Firefly television series and give the chance for the crewmembers to be big shiny heroes.

As shiny as it gets

In 2013, Margaret Weis Productions published a taster for the Firefly RPG that we had been waiting for. Gaming in the ‘Verse presented both a preview and a ‘quick start’ for the Firefly Roleplaying Game, based on Joss Whedon’s 2002 ‘space western’ television series that aped the aftermath of the American Civil War. In this ‘space opera’, the crew of the Serenity try to make living, not always legally, on the fringes of both society and a massive star system far from the aegis of the controlling central government, the Alliance. This is not a ‘clean’ space opera—making a living in space can be hard and is often dangerous work; high technology rarely makes it as far as the outer planets and their moons; and the preferred technology is stuff that works, so for example, firearms rather than lasers and on many planets, horses rather than vehicles.

In the Firefly Roleplaying Game, the players have the opportunity to explore the ‘Verse themselves. They can do this as the crew of the Serenity—Mal Reynolds, Zoe Washburne, ‘Wash’ Washburne, Inara Serra, Jayne Cobb, ‘Kaylee’ Frye, Simon Tam, River Tam, and Shepherd Book—and thus tell of their adventures between end of the television series and the events of the movie, Serenity, or they can create their own crew and then create a ship of their own to love, hate, but most of all, call home. In creating a crew member, a player also has a choice. He can either select from one of the twenty-four available archetypes—from Academy Dropout and Alliance Agent to Newly Ordained Shepherd and Retired Outlaw or he can create a character from the ground up. Obviously, such a character, whether created using an archetype or from the ground up, will not be as capable as member of the crew of the Serenity, but he will have room to grow and change as his adventures are played out.

Each character is defined by three attributes—Mental, Physical, and Social; several broad Skills, each of which can have a speciality; one or more Signature Assets, items intrinsically bound to the character, like Jayne Cobb’s Callahan full-bore auto-lock rifle Vera or Shepherd Book’s Identicard; and three Distinctions. The latter define a character and come in three categories – Roles, Personalities, and Backgrounds. All four aspects of a character—Attributes, Skills, Signature Assets, and Distinctions are rated by die type, from four-sided die up through six, eight, ten, to twelve-side die. Each Distinction provides a bonus die to a character’s actions, but can also act against a character to complicate his life and so provide him with Plot Points that can be spent later on.

Dorothea Liu
Quote: “Is that a genuine first edition Great Expectations, all the way from Earth that was?”
Character Type: On the run bride
Character Description: Dorothea Liu thought that she had a solid career in medicine before her, to be followed by a husband and children. It was what her family had planned for her after all—and she even thought that she loved her husband to be. Then she found out what her husband was—the son of a Triad boss—and the truth of her father’s business empire. She was heartbroken. She saw her parents in a new light and knew that the last person she wanted to be was her mother. With her mother’s blessing she fled, jilting her husband to be…
According to the hospital she is on extended sabbatical. According to her father, she is a traitorous shă guā. According to her mother, Dorothea is all that she could never be. According to her husband, she is a chī chóng huā dàn who should be on his arm and bearing his children.
Likes/Dislikes: Dorothea is fascinated by the history and peoples of the Border and the Rim—perhaps too fascinated. Given her own history, it should be no surprise that she is a sucker for a sob-story.
Flashbacks and Echoes: Dorothea had a more than comfortable upbringing, but then she saw the violence meted out by her husband to be. She never wants to see that again.

ATTRIBUTES
Mental 10 Physical 6 Social 8
SKILLS
Craft d4, Drive d6, Fight d4, Fix d6, Fly d8, Focus d6, Influence d8 (winning smile), Know d8 (History), Labour d4, Move d6, Notice d6, Operate d6, Perform d4, Shoot d4, Sneak d6, Survive d4, Throw d4, Treat d10 (surgery), Trick d4
DISTINCTIONS
KNOW IT ALL d8
Look smarty pants, if we wanted schoolin’, we’d have gone to school.
Gain 1 Plot Point when you roll a d4 instead of a d8.
Pedantic: Gain 1PP when you correct someone at an inappropriate juncture or tell the crew a fact that is interesting, but not useful.
Highlighted Skills: Fix, Know, Treat
ON THE RUN d8
Someone’s after you—Alliance, the Triads, the Guilds, maybe all three. You’re a fugitive and you’re in trouble.
Gain 1 Plot Point when you roll a d4 instead of a d8.
Highlighted Skills: Move, Notice, Sneak
FASHIONABLE d8
You attend the most exclusive parties, dress in the latest fashions, and hire the best Companions.
Gain 1 Plot Point when you roll a d4 instead of a d8.
Clout: Step back Influence until the end of the end of the next scene to remove a social complication.
Highlighted Skills: Drive, Fly, Influence

SIGNATURE ASSETS
Doctor’s Bag d8
Sometimes things don’t go smooth and sometimes they don’t go smooth and someone ends up with a bullet in ‘em. Times like that you need a good doctor and his bag.
Nice dresses d6
They may not be the latest styles in the Core, but out here in the Border worlds? They cut quite a figure. Out on the Rim, they’re just sassy.

In addition to creating a crew, the players also get to create or ‘find’ their ship. This involves picking a Class and then choosing Distinctions and Signature Assets to ensure that the ship stands out. Some twenty-two Classes are listed, including the Arbitrator Class Alliance Patrol Boat, the Marco Polo Class Space Bazaar, and the Cobb Class Science Ship as well as the Firefly Class Transport. There are as many Distinctions, which either relate the ship’s History, such as Former Salvage or Stolen or to the customisations carried out by the crew, such as Livestock Hauler or Smuggler’s Delight. Signature Assets might include a Chapel, Mining Equipment, or Shuttles.

Sapphire Star
Polaris Class Cargo Liner d8
Engines d6 Hull d10 Systems d8
An older mid-sized cargo liner, sturdy if slow.
Gain 1 Plot Point when you roll a d4 instead of a d8.
DISTINCTIONS
Won her in a card game d8
You gamble more than you should, but one time you should really stuck your neck out and you won big.
Gain 1 Plot Point when you roll a d4 instead of a d8.
Well-loved: Crewmembers on board may share Plot Points with another Crewmember who’s operatin’ the ship.
Cruisin’ the ‘Verse d8
Your berths are first class, with plush velvet seats, stunning chandeliers, and lovely music. Whilst the food is excellent and the service impeccable, these fineries come at a price—snooty passengers.
Gain 1 Plot Point when you roll a d4 instead of a d8.
The Customer is always right, unfortunately. Start every episode with an Unreasonable Customer Demands d6 Complication.
SIGNATURE ASSETS
Mighty Fine Quarters d8
Shuttles d8

The Firefly Roleplaying Game uses the CORTEX Plus System. Derived from the CORTEX System—now known as CORTEX Classic—that powered the Serenity Role Playing Game, the original RPG based on the Firefly television series also published Margaret Weis Productions, the CORTEX Plus System is narrative orientated set of mechanics designed to tell the type of gritty stories seen in Firefly. The difference is this: in a traditional RPG a fist fight or a shootout would involve rolls each time a punch is thrown or a trigger is pulled. In the CORTEX Plus System, each round of dice rolls—typically one roll per player character and one roll for the NPCs or the challenge—covers the whole exchange. So a fist fight is covered in one roll, the results are narrated, and the story moves on. The aim here is not to get bogged down in unnecessary detail, but to make it dramatic and exciting.

To undertake an action, a character rolls one die each for a skill and appropriate attribute and compares the totaled value against the stakes rolled by the GM. For example, several members of her husband’s Triad gang, led by one of his lieutenants, Mitchell Gao, have caught up with Dorothea and in the resulting scuffle, her fellow crewmember, the Inquiry Agent, Jian Zhang, has been stabbed and Taken Out—in general characters are incapacitated for a scene or more when Taken Out, although in dire circumstances, being Taken Out means being killed. Dorothea implores the Triads to give her time to treat Jian. The GM rolls for Mitchell Gao, who as a minor character has the Traits Triad lieutenant (d8), Ambitious, but not stupid (d6), and Sucker for a pretty smile (d4). The GM rolls all three dice and sets the stakes at 10 (5+5), but he also rolls a 1—a Jinx. This earns Dorothea a Plot Point. Dorothea’s player puts together her dice pool from her Social (d8) attribute, her Influence (d8) skill, her Know it all Distinction (d8) to convince the Triads that Jian really is hurt, and to reflect the fact that the Triads are after her, adds a d4 for her On the Run Distinction instead of a d8 to earn her a Plot Point. The result of the roll is 8, 7, 4, and 1. The best combination is course 15 (8+7), which is great because it is five higher than the Stakes. This earns her a Big Hero Die that she can add to any roll. It is equal to the highest die type rolled by the GM—a d8. Yet she has also rolled a Jinx! The GM uses this to step up Jian’s Vicious Stabbing from a d8 to a d10! Nevertheless, Mitchell Gao is persuaded to wait and Dorothea has time to treat Jian. This time, her dice pool is formed using her Mental attribute (d10), her Treat skill (d10) and surgery speciality (d6), plus her Doctor’s Bag (d8) Signature Asset. She also has at two Plot Points and if all else fails, she also has the Big Damned Hero die, so it looks like Jian is in good hands!

Yet under different circumstances, Dorothea might not have her Doctor’s Bag to hand or she might roll badly. This is where the Plot Points come in. If multiple dice are rolled for an action, but the action is failed, a character could expend a Plot Point to add one of the other dice to the result. Or she could create a temporary asset that she can use just for the scene. For example, trapped in the engineering bay by the Triads and Jian still needing help, she might expend a Plot Point to bodge together some basic medical supplies. Or even to actually act if she has been Taken out and cannot do otherwise do anything.

Plot Points earned by temporarily reducing a Distinction from a d8 to a d4, from receiving a Complication from the GM when he rolls a Jinx, whenever the GM spends a Plot Point of his own to oppose your character, and from great play. Plot Points power the wilds swings of good and bad luck in the Firefly Roleplaying Game. They are primarily earned when things do not go smooth, when there is a chance of, or actual failure occurs, but they are spent to succeed on difficult rolls, at dramatic moments, and so on. Pretty much like the television series.

As to the television series, its treatment in the Firefly Roleplaying Game is shiny! Each of the series’ fourteen episodes not only receives a full breakdown and description, including the stats and details of the NPCs involved, equipment and assets used, places visited, and ships encountered, they are also used to showcase the rules. It starts off simple in the pilot, ‘Serenity’, just by giving the stats for Patience, Badger, and Lawrence Dobson as well as a Reaver Ship, before explaining the basics of the rules with the fist fight on Unification Day in ‘The Train Job’. By the time we get to ‘Shindig’, we are shown how complex the rules can get with Mal’s duel with Atherton Wing. Each of these examples eases the learning of the CORTEX Plus System. In addition, each of the episodes is developed with more ideas and suggestions, going beyond what appeared on screen so that the GM could run more than just the episode.

Thus we are almost half way through the Firefly Roleplaying Game before it starts discussing the rules of the game in a more traditional manner. It also means that the background for the setting is rather spread out and given the lack of an index means that locating particular pieces of information can be a challenge. To be blunt, the lack of an index is both inexcusably irritating and disappointing. This is not the only problem with the Firefly Roleplaying Game—its focus is perhaps a little too tight. It really does not expand beyond the possibility of the players taking the roles of the crew of a ship and flying the ‘Verse, so the GM is on his own should he and his players want to go in another direction. Nevertheless, the Firefly Roleplaying Game is well written, an engaging read, and easier to learn than many other RPGs.

Unlike Gaming In The ‘Verse, the Firefly Roleplaying Game comes with just the single scenario, a lengthy affair called ‘What’s yours is mine’. In addition, the GM is given decent advice on creating and running a Firefly game, which nicely couples with the suggestions and ideas given for each of the episodes. The scenario itself is a solid affair that should last two or three sessions.

Putting aside the irritating lack of an index, the Firefly Roleplaying Game is well written, the presentation is excellent, and it is very accessible. Above all, in capturing the grit and drama of the television series, the Firefly Roleplaying Game is both a fine adaptation and the means recreate it at the gaming table.

Reviews from R'lyeh Christmas Dozen 2014

Since 2001, I have contributed to a series of Christmas lists at Ogrecave.com, suggesting not necessarily the best board and roleplaying games of the preceding year, but the titles from the last twelve months that you might like to receive and give. Continuing the break with tradition—in that the following is just the one list and in that for reasons beyond its control, OgreCave.com is not running its own lists—Reviews from R’lyeh would once again like present its own list. Further, as is also traditional, Reviews from R’lyeh has not devolved into the need to cast about “Baleful Blandishments” to all concerned or otherwise based upon the arbitrary organisation of days. So as Reviews from R’lyeh presents its Baker’s Dozenth’s Christmas List Dozen, we can only hope that the Baker’s Dozen below includes one of your favourites, or even better still, includes a game that you do not have and someone is happy to hide in gaudy paper and place under that dead tree for you.

-oOo-

Dungeons & Dragons Starter Set 
(Wizards of the Coast), $19.99/£16.99
If you are going to list some of the best games of 2014, then you have to deal with the ‘elephant’—or rather the ‘dragon’ in the room, for 2014 saw the return of the number one roleplaying game. 

Forty years after the original version was released, Wizards of the Coast published Dungeons & Dragons, Fifth Edition. This new version of the classic RPG is immensely accessible and very playable, and there is no better place to start but with the Dungeons & Dragons Starter Set. It includes everything necessary to play: the basic rules, a set of five pre-generated characters, a good adventure, and of course, dice. This is a great way to bring old players to the game and a great way for old players to bring new players to the game, and the provided scenario, ‘Lost Mine of Phandelver’, is an excellent starting point, offering plenty of play before the DM (and the players) needs to invest in the Player’s Handbook.

Machi Koro

(IDW Games), $19.99/£16.99

Japanese games came of age in the English language hobby in 2014 when the highly regarded Love Letter and Trains both won Origins awards. This year they were joined by the easy-to-play and ever so cute, Machi Koro, published by IDW Games. It is a simple card and dice game in which all the players have to do is roll the die (or dice), check the buildings on their cards and get some income, and then buy another building or even improve their suburbs with landmarks. 

Each player is the mayor of suburb whose inhabitants wants better landmarks; build four landmarks and he wins the game. This is ever so easy-to-learn, quick-to-play, and can be enjoyed by the casual player and the seasoned gamer alike. Plus there are expansions to come which will provide more cards and thus more buildings. Which means more options. In the meantime, the core box for Machi Koro is simply fun.

You Are The Hero:
A History of Fighting Fantasy™ Gamebooks 

(Snow Books) $45/£40

2014 was a great year for gaming and the history of gaming. You Are the Hero looked at one aspect of gaming history and then one aspect of that aspect… By that we mean that it explored the history of the British Fighting Fantasy™ series of solo adventure books rather than the history of the solo adventure books. This delves back to the origins of the publishing phenomenon that put The Warlock of Firetop Mountain and nearly sixty subsequent titles on the shelves of bookshops around the round and accumulated millions of sales, before going on to examine each and every entry in the series, and then the board games, computer games, magazines, and more. All commented upon by both the creators and the fans. This is also a history in part of the British gaming scene, but mostly it is a loving look at the Fighting Fantasy™ series that enabled us to go on fantastic adventures in the comforts of our own homes before the digital age.

Ivor the Engine

(Surprised Stare Games) $42.50/£25.00

Some games have ‘meeples’ or ‘my people’. Only one game has ‘sheeple’ or ‘sheep meeple’. That is, little wooden sheep; and that game is the most charming game of the year—Ivor the Engine.

Based on the BBC children’s television classic, this game sees the players come to the aid of a small green locomotive who lives in the “top left-hand corner of Wales” and works for The Merioneth and Llantisilly Railway Traction Company Limited with the help of his driver, Jones the Steam. Their prime task is tidying up all of the escaped sheep, but they can also complete jobs and so visit places such as Grumbly Gasworks and Gwynaudolion Halt, Mrs Porty’s House and Pugh’s Farm, and Tan-Y-Gwlch and Dinwiddy’s Gold Mine. Fans of the television series will enjoy the references, whilst those new to them will find them equally as charming. Although this looks a lot like a children’s game, it is competitive enough that experienced gamers can pick and play it with gusto. Plus it comes with little wooden sheep. Really cute little wooden sheep.

Firefly Role-Playing Game

(Margaret Weis Productions) $49.99/£31.99

Although we got a good taster of the game last year with Gaming In The ‘Verse, this year we finally got to see how shiny the Firefly Role-Playing Game really is. It lived up to that tag, because the game not only takes you step-by-step through every Firefly episode, but through the rules at the same time, so the original television series truly serves as a big set of fat examples of play. It is a great way to learn the Cortex Plus mechanics—the best yet—and once learned you can play out the further adventures of Mal Reynolds and the crew of the Serenity, or even better create your own crew and your own ship and chance all of the possibilities and dangers of being out in the Black. With the Cortex Plus rules, everyone’s character comes alive, not just what they do, but also what they hold dear and what just might make life difficult for them and their crew. Life don’t go easy in the ‘Verse and the Firefly Role-Playing Game is designed to bring that to your adventures and make them as dramatic as Joss Whedon’s Firefly.

Colt Express

(Ludonaute) $54.99/£27.99

There is a train coming down the track—and you are going to rob it! The year is 1899 and the Union Pacific Express is heading out of New Mexico with the Nice Valley Coal Company's weekly pay aboard. So you and fellow bandits have boarded the train and must race down the carriages, stealing bags of money and jewels from the passengers, punching and shooting at each other, climbing up to the roof (and running along the rooftops), all trying to get to the front of the train where Marshal is guarding the $1000 payroll. 

In this fun game, the players take turns to program what their bandits will do over the course of each round. Some of these actions will be seen by everyone, but whenever the train goes through a tunnel, none of the bandits can see what each other is going do. Once everyone has programmed their actions, they are revealed in order, and guess what? No plan ever survives contact with the enemy, or in the case of Colt Express, contact with rival bandits, the passengers, and the Marshal. So plans go awry, punches are landed where you never expected, gunshots miss, and some rotten stinking, varmit steals the loot before you do! All of which takes place aboard a fantastic cardboard train that comes as part of the game. So get ready for some schemin’ and stealin’ and see if you can leave the Colt Express with the most loot!

Designers & Dragons
(Evil Hat Productions) $80

2014 was an important year for the roleplaying hobby. Not only was it the fortieth anniversary of the original version of Dungeons & Dragons—and thus of the very hobby itself—but it also saw the return to our shelves of the very first roleplaying game with Dungeons & Dragons, Fifth Edition. So there has never been a better year in which to look back at our hobby and that is exactly what Shannon Appelcline has done with Designers & Dragons, a four volume examination of the roleplaying hobby, decade by decade, publisher by publisher, trend by trend, from 1974 right up to the present day. In the process updating the original series that ran at RPG.net and was previous published by Mongoose Publishing. A useful reference for the ‘grognard’ looking to refresh his memory or delve into some nostalgia as it is for the newcomer wanting to know where it all started, Designers & Dragons is the definitive history of the hobby.

Player’s Handbook
(Wizards of the Coast) $49.95/£29.99
When you have exhausted all of the possibilities of the Dungeons & Dragons Starter Set or want to more choices when playing ‘Lost Mine of Phandelver’, its included scenario, then what you need is the Player’s Handbook, also published for Dungeons & Dragons, Fifth Edition.

This new volume gives everything that player needs to play (minus dice) and gives him choices aplenty in terms of what he can play. All the classics are present—Elves and Orcs, Fighters and Wizards, plus Dragonborn and Tiefling, and Sorcerer and Warlock; and then all new in this edition, character options that support actual roleplaying rules. The Player’s Handbook not only supports playing adventures of the DM’s own devising, but also those published for Dungeons & Dragons, Fifth Edition, and then for almost every scenario published in the last forty years (with just a very little work, of course)! This is an easy-to-read, easy-to-grasp introduction to the world’s number one roleplaying game—and it is truly great to see it back on the shelves at our games stores.

Star Realms

(White Wizard Games) $14.99/£12.99

Star Realms is a deck building card game of starship combat. Specifically designed for two players, it sees them start small with just some Scout ships to generate money and Viper ships to inflict damage on the enemy. With the money a player can buy better ships, bases, outputs, and more from four factions. These include the Blobs with their strong combat vessels, the Machines which destroy their own ships and enemy bases, the Star Empire which can quickly bring its own ships into play or force the enemy ships to retreat, and the Trade Federation which generates wealth and Authority (the game’s equivalent of health points).

Each player is free to purchase ships, bases, and outposts of whichever faction he can afford, and with both players buying from the same deck, the competition is on—not only to see who can generate money enough to purchase ships and build a good deck, but also use the deck to the best of its ability to destroy his opponent! All of this—just 128 superbly illustrated cards—fits neatly into a tiny box and is just as easy on the pocket!

Pandemic: The Cure

(Z-Man Games) $49.99/£37.99

Ogrecave.com has been a fan of Matt Leacock’s Pandemic since it was released in 2008. The infamous co-operative game pitches four players against the game itself as they race to find the cures for four diseases that are ravaging the world whilst trying to prevent them from spreading and further outbreaks from occurring. That though was a board and card game, but now the designer has turned the Pandemic concept into a fast playing dice game: Pandemic: The Cure. Now the players not only have to rush from continent to continent treating diseases, they also need to take and collect samples enough to roll for a cure! In the original version of Pandemic, the diseases were represented by cubes and their appearance controlled by city cards, but in Pandemic: The Cure the diseases are represented by dice—dice that are rolled to see where they appear and then if the players have collected enough, rolled again to see if a cure can be found for the disease—and until a cure is rolled, the samples have to be stored somewhere and that somewhere is the players’ dice. Which means that the players give up possible actions in order to focus on a cure. Pandemic: The Cure is quick playing dice game that presents as much challenge as the original Pandemic, but in a slightly different fashion. Just remember to wear gloves—after all, the diseases are the dice!

Mindjammer: The Roleplaying Game

(Mindjammer Press) $54.99/£34.99

In this FATE Core powered Science Fiction RPG, the New Commonality of Humankind is spreading out from Earth using relatively recently discovered faster-than-light technology and rediscovering colonies founded centuries before using generation ships. Yet as these lost colonies are found and reintegrated into interstellar culture, the New Commonality of Humankind finds itself facing cultural adulteration from these previously isolated worlds. This sets up the central conflict at the heart of Mindjammer, played out on a frontier of old new worlds as a space opera with Transhuman elements, that plays out across the physical universe as much as it does the virtual world known as the Mindscape, a shared reality that connects all of the Commonality. This is a setting in which it is possible to play a sentient starship, the memories of a dead man downloaded into a robot, a genetically engineered soldier, and more. Mindjammer: The Roleplaying Game is a game with not just the scope to play out a campaign in its highly detailed setting, but also the capacity to be taken apart and used as parts of kit for the GM to create and design aliens, technologies, worlds, and more to create a campaign of his own devising.

Castles of Mad King Ludwig

(Bezier Games) $59.99/£47.99

Have you ever wanted to build Neuschwanstein, the ‘Swan Castle’ of King Ludwig II of Bavaria? As pleased as he is with that castle, the good king has asked you to build the biggest, the best, the most extravagant castle ever—all subject to his mercurial nature and whims. Which means that each of the architects/builders must build their castle at one room at time, even as they are actually selling rooms to their rival builders!

Beginning with a simple foyer, a player tries to build the most fantastic castle possible, whether that is outside, upstairs, or downstairs in the storerooms (and dungeons). Every turn is challenging because the player take turns being the Master Builder who sets the prices for the randomly drawn buildings and gets paid when his rival builders purchase them. As the game progresses, a player will add new rooms and as he completes each room by ensuring that all entrances of the room are connected to other rooms, he will score points and gain special benefits, such as another turn, more points, or more money. At game’s end a player can score bonus points based on the random goals set at the start of the game. The random nature of King Ludwig’s whims and thus of the game means that Castles of Mad King Ludwig is worth playing again and again—after all, everyone loves castles and getting to build castles is the best way to show this love.

-oOo-

So that was the Ogrecave.com Christmas Dozen for 2014. Yet, 2014 also marks the Ogrecave.com Christmas Dozen’s ‘Baker’s Dozen’, the thirteenth year of the Ogrecave.com Christmas Dozen. So only seems fitting that for this thirteenth list, it should be a Baker’s Dozen—meaning thirteen entries, not twelve! Thus we round out this year’s list with the other elephant in room that just snuck under the wire to qualify for 2014 and not 2015, where the elephant is both the setting and the price!

Star Wars: Imperial Assault 
(Fantasy Flight Games) $100/£79.99

There is no bigger game in 2014 than Star Wars: Imperial Assault and no board game with a bigger canvas! This is a miniatures game in which the heroes of the Rebellion are pitched against the Stormtroopers and the villains of the Galactic Empire in two modes. The campaign game sees a group of elite Rebel operatives on desperate missions to undermine the Empire which ruthlessly protects its interests and holdings, whilst the skirmish game is a two-player head-to-head fight between Imperial and Rebel strike teams for the same objectives. 

The game comes packed with detailed miniatures and full colour interlocking map sections, as well as the Luke Skywalker Ally Pack and the Darth Vader Villain Pack, giving another miniature each and yet more missions. This is a big game on which to play out a big story, whether exploring the events of the Star Wars tale and bringing back your Rebel operatives back again and again, each time getting better and better with successful missions, or designing armies to pitch against each in skirmish mode. Star Wars: Imperial Assault offers play aplenty and being set in the Star Wars universe means that there are expansions and thus more play to come!