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.