Recent content by sergeant_x

It also makes character deaths easier to handle. Losing a character in an advancement game is a pain in the butt because of the sense that you'll have to "start all over again", or that you've lost ground somehow. I don't like to kill characters wily-nily, but losing a character on occasion can...

In terms of flexibility, I'd say Traveller is a great choice. It does have a well-developed setting, but even that is very flexible, in that it's very large and lends itself to idiosyncrasies.

This is the reason I've come back to Traveller as my favorite game system, some 30 years after I first played it. I sometimes wonder if the lack of an advancement/reward system was a deliberate design decision, or just didn't seem important at the time. (Perhaps it's just because it was designed...

That's very close to the system used in Serenity.

Yeah... that's mostly the kind of stuff I'm talking about. I just wish they'd resist the urge to tile some stupid flashy textured background on every other page. Since the cost to do that kind of stuff has come down so much, publishers with a little money can't seem to resist the urge to pimp...

I'm not sure you do agree with me. Maybe I wasn't clear. I was saying that I prefer sparse layout and black and white artwork. That said, I recognize that the "pretties" sell books, so I don't begrudge publishers who go there, but when they let it get in the way of clarity, I'm miffed. For my...

I always like to make the pitch for trying it straight for awhile if you can convince your players. The lack of a score keeping/advancement system puts the focus of play on the activities of the characters rather than xp accumulation. Also, character death (which can be very dramatic and...

Better production values would be nice, as long as focus remains on the game design and written material. As far as colo(u)r, I for one prefer clarity over eye-candy. I bought a copy of the Serenity RPG and, as a rulebook, it's nearly unusable. The garish colors and busy graphics, combined with...

"MUST.... HAVE.... MORE.... FIREFLY!!!!!" You'd think the withdrawal pains would fade after seven years....

I like the more realistic play and character mortality is part of that. But if you and your players like the "cinematic" play, you can split the difference by modifying difficulties based on the dramatic context. The basic idea is that under most circumstances, the hardline Traveller rules...

I remember watching the pilot for the first time... my thought at the time - "MY gawd. This is TRAVELLER!!" A renegade tramp freighter crewed by ex-military, mercs and people with shady pasts? Relatively realistic, semi-"hard" sci-fi - it was all there. I remember the first thing that caught...

The lack of any kind of default advancement ladder (e.g. "experience points") was one of my favorite features in the original game and I'm glad it's been preserved for the most part. I don't want to get into a lame argument about whether such systems are realistic or not, but I find them tedious...