Prostitution in the 'Verse
So this weekend I played a one-shot game set in the Firefly/Serenity universe using the Spirit of the Century rules. This was partly a chance to play in Firefly/Serenity, which a number of people expressed interest in, and also a test run of the rules. We didn't end up testing the rules very much, though we learned the basics, but we had a lot of fun.
My concept for the one-shot was using a Companions Guild ship -- an armed scout with its own security which was going on missions of interest to the Guild. So I always thought that Companions were a wasted premise in Firefly. They were in principle a set up to explore issues of sexuality, but they were never really used. Thus, I made up a bunch of pregenerated characters for the Guild ship. A key idea for these was using real-world photos of people from the Old West -- an idea taken from Floyd C. Wesel's pregenerated characters for his Serenity RPG convention games, The Crew of The Symphony.
Madeline played Fannie Granger, the captain -- an older Companion who had given up active service and married, but whose husband died in the war.
Liz played Lilly Shepis, a journeyman Companion working as second to Fannie.
Cynthia played Pearl Hart -- originally an NCO of the security forces, but we rewrote her to be the commander since no one picked the commander.
Heather played Lalu Chang, the loud-mouthed engineer.
Bill played Galvin Holloway, a former officer who since the war has become a professional gambler.
Bob played Eliza Collins, the genius but still girly doctor.
I noted that there was no cross-gender play (Bob is a woman). I had made an extra male character, Kenne Black, who was to be the commander of the security forces. However, no one picked him and we wrote him out. There was an extra male character -- and indeed Liz usually plays a male character, but this time she went for Lilly. I've got a page with all the character sheets,
The Coronado and her Crew
The scenario was that they heard that a rich man had beaten up a Companion, and headed over to the planet, Newhall, to investigate. They found a complicated setup there -- the woman beaten up was not a Companion, but rather someone who had been kicked out of the Companion Training Grounds. However, they still wanted to set straight the issues on the planet there.
Bill commented that this seemed very much like "Whores in the Vineyard" to him -- the western theme plus the power of the PCs to come in and solve the planet's problems was indeed much like a Dogs scenario. I hadn't planned that intentionally, but it fit. (The mock title reminds me of Brand and Mo's Bitches in the Vineyard game, incidentally.)
So the NPCs I had were: Kira, the woman who was beaten; Terrence, the secretly retarded man who did it; Jordan, Terrence's rich brother who owns half the planet; Sheriff Wei Lau, the local constable; and Sheydra, acting head of the local Training Grounds.
At one point, Liz used her "Uncanny Hunch" stunt to hand me a note which contained her hunch -- "Kira is protecting Jordan in some way. She knows somthing about him and is in love with him." We ran out of time and so had to wrap up the game a little abruptly, but everyone was really into it.
Nearly all of this was in-character dialogue and simple skill rolls, so we didn't do much with the system. We only got to serious conflict near the end, and at that point we were trying to get through quickly. We did try earlier using the social conflict rules for Galvin's poker game with Jordan. However, we cut that short as we agreed that it just felt too slow. It only involved one PC, and there were no maneuvers or other choices in gambling as written.
Of course, the elephant in the room was that the whole adventure was centered on prostitution, which we often commented on. For example, Madeline commented at some point, "We have a brand to protect." There were a bunch of questions and discussion about what should be done about the Training Grounds, and what the local people's attitudes were.
My concept for the one-shot was using a Companions Guild ship -- an armed scout with its own security which was going on missions of interest to the Guild. So I always thought that Companions were a wasted premise in Firefly. They were in principle a set up to explore issues of sexuality, but they were never really used. Thus, I made up a bunch of pregenerated characters for the Guild ship. A key idea for these was using real-world photos of people from the Old West -- an idea taken from Floyd C. Wesel's pregenerated characters for his Serenity RPG convention games, The Crew of The Symphony.
Madeline played Fannie Granger, the captain -- an older Companion who had given up active service and married, but whose husband died in the war.
Liz played Lilly Shepis, a journeyman Companion working as second to Fannie.
Cynthia played Pearl Hart -- originally an NCO of the security forces, but we rewrote her to be the commander since no one picked the commander.
Heather played Lalu Chang, the loud-mouthed engineer.
Bill played Galvin Holloway, a former officer who since the war has become a professional gambler.
Bob played Eliza Collins, the genius but still girly doctor.
I noted that there was no cross-gender play (Bob is a woman). I had made an extra male character, Kenne Black, who was to be the commander of the security forces. However, no one picked him and we wrote him out. There was an extra male character -- and indeed Liz usually plays a male character, but this time she went for Lilly. I've got a page with all the character sheets,
The Coronado and her Crew
The scenario was that they heard that a rich man had beaten up a Companion, and headed over to the planet, Newhall, to investigate. They found a complicated setup there -- the woman beaten up was not a Companion, but rather someone who had been kicked out of the Companion Training Grounds. However, they still wanted to set straight the issues on the planet there.
Bill commented that this seemed very much like "Whores in the Vineyard" to him -- the western theme plus the power of the PCs to come in and solve the planet's problems was indeed much like a Dogs scenario. I hadn't planned that intentionally, but it fit. (The mock title reminds me of Brand and Mo's Bitches in the Vineyard game, incidentally.)
So the NPCs I had were: Kira, the woman who was beaten; Terrence, the secretly retarded man who did it; Jordan, Terrence's rich brother who owns half the planet; Sheriff Wei Lau, the local constable; and Sheydra, acting head of the local Training Grounds.
At one point, Liz used her "Uncanny Hunch" stunt to hand me a note which contained her hunch -- "Kira is protecting Jordan in some way. She knows somthing about him and is in love with him." We ran out of time and so had to wrap up the game a little abruptly, but everyone was really into it.
Nearly all of this was in-character dialogue and simple skill rolls, so we didn't do much with the system. We only got to serious conflict near the end, and at that point we were trying to get through quickly. We did try earlier using the social conflict rules for Galvin's poker game with Jordan. However, we cut that short as we agreed that it just felt too slow. It only involved one PC, and there were no maneuvers or other choices in gambling as written.
Of course, the elephant in the room was that the whole adventure was centered on prostitution, which we often commented on. For example, Madeline commented at some point, "We have a brand to protect." There were a bunch of questions and discussion about what should be done about the Training Grounds, and what the local people's attitudes were.