Observations and Hopes for New Books

[GamerDude]

I'd love to run a Firefly/Serenity based game, but they have FTL communications (The CORTEX and such), FTL that doesn't put you in Jump Space (you still have contact with the rest of the normal-space universe) and such.

No, there's no FTL anything in Firefly/Serenity. It all takes place in what seems like a multi-star mega system. Everything is sublight.

Yeah, I have the core book for Serenity RPG and I think Josh Weaton's concept sucks on his system (I think there's three stars with weird planetary orbits and such). They need to have some kind of very fast travel WITHOUT relativity issues.

Thinking about how long it takes light to get from the Sun to Earth (something around 8 minutes I believe), yes covering the average 93 million miles in that time is definitely faster than travel in the Firefly universe with the cosmology as JW conceived it, so I see your point.

But I see the Firefly universe as a cluster of star systems, so maybe the Alliance and the 'outer planets' about a TU subsector in size, and so needs FTL.

 

[TrippyHippy]

I just saw the Firefly/Serenity series as being good plot-fodder for the Traveller game. Although the two are different, they are both close enough in general concept to be used in this way, I think.

 

[klingsor]

I briefly ran Serenity. I used wormholes (stolen outright from the excellent novel The Praxis by Walter Jon Williams, first of the Dread Empire's Fall trilogy) to escape the overcrowded system problem, it worked very well and I would use it again, the same could not be said of the game system.

That flavour of wormholes is very useful, rather like the jump points in the Starfire novels by David Weber and Niven's CoDominion but without the need for any special drive, you just need to hit the right spot. Not really Traveller but I would use them in another setting.

 

[GamerDude]

Yeah Firefly is close enought to Traveller to use MGT, mainly having to add a diff FTSL (faster than sublight) travel and realtime FTL communications (yes, they had that, note the episodes where they are still in transit between planets and they talk in real-time).

 

[duckydan]

Just to throw another opinion in the "Observations and Hopes for New Books" thread...

To me, my favorite book for Traveller has always been "The Traveller Book" followed by "The Traveller Adventure". I always thought of TTB as such an elegant system, completely self-contained in one volume. All the other Traveller systems that have come out after were so in-elegant to me, but I played and ran them anyway.

I put off buying this edition because I had written my own, and because I was thinking this would be yet another take on Traveller so influenced by recent gaming trends and things that it could not possibly be as good as my old favorite books.

Well... I have to say I was THRILLED that someone who obviously loved TTB as much as me made a new, single-volume book. This is so great. It exactly what I wanted, a modernization of the old favorite of mine. It is FAR beyond my expectations.

Putting the events in the character's past into the character generation is such a great idea. It makes character creation way more fun, and forces the character to have a past, and not just a bunch of stats. The new technology bring the game up to date, but does not destroy the flavor of it.

Anyway, this stuff is way better then a lot of the other Traveller post-CT books I bought, many of which were DTS (direct to shelf) after a brief skimming. This stuff is fantastic, and I eagerly await each new release. So far I have bought them all and am very happy.

My only minor quibbles are the kerning in the logo is atrocious, the typography in the book is very poor, and the deck plans are not very nice to look at. Being a graphic designer and typographer, those things bug me. However, that stuff is far over-shadowed by the innovation of new items mixes perfectly with the classic old stuff that didn't need to change.

Please keep up the good work, you have a loyal customer.