[DitV] Firefly in the Verse Session 0 [Long]

[Judaicdiablo]

Introduction

I have taken the DitV rules and adapted it to the Firefly setting.  The Key differences to this setting are:

1)   I will be doing Job creation instead of Town Creation
2)   Players are Crew instead of Dogs and their primary goals are to keep flying and stay free.  Everything else is negotiable.
3)   Crew do not have ultimate authority (as Dogs do), but their presence is always a catalyst for change.  That is what being a Dog is really about.
4)   I have added a new character to the mix and that is the ship.  I gave the ship a Complicated History, left its Relationship dice unassigned, threw away the stat dice, and let the players assign it traits.  Here is how the ship turned out:
Name:  Hyacinth aka Cynthia aka Cindy

• Former Luxury Yacht 1d6
• "Can Defend Herself" 1d6
• She's got it where it counts 2d10
• Heavily Modified 2d4
• Dubious Registry 2d4
• Possession:  Smuggler Compartments 2d6

The Group

When the group started putting the characters together there were some roles beginning form immediately. 

Wilhelmina "Shotgun" Chin (Tony) – Captain – Former Alliance
Key Traits:  Nobody dies on my ship unless I kill them AND F.U. Its not my problem!
Intro Conflict:  I hope I didn't commit any atrocities during the war (she didn't.)

Cyrus Vance (John) – Medic – Former Alliance Medivac Pilot who was court marshaled
Key Traits:  Stone Cold Mother F'er AND "I can save you!"
Intro Conflict:  I hope that they need me more than I need them.  (They don't – see below for details.)

Jeb (Phil) – Mechanic and Gunslinger
Key Traits: Reckless AND I'm a good ol' boy
Intro Conflict:  I hope that I figure out Cynthia (he does so by determining that this off spec pipe actually goes to a still hidden in the captain's quarters that she doesn't even know about.)

Lee Janho (Wilhelm) – Pilot –
Key Trait – There is always time for the checklist AND "I can fly that"
Unfortunately Wilhelm had to leave early he didn't get to finish.
Hyacinth (see above) – The Ship

Group Formation

Naming the captain is important.  It will influence a lot of the mood and direction of the game and of the crew.  Ultimate decisions will fall to them and having a strong (or at least decisive) captain will help the GM keep the flow of the game moving forward.

I feel that we had a lot of success with the intro conflicts.  But there were two key moments that really helped to establish the group and the trust.

Moment 1 Setup: During Cyrus' intro conflict "I hope that they need me more than I need them."  Set the Scene:  Cyrus is an indentured servant on a mining colony.  He is trying to save a Miner's life.  Enter the Foreman (who doesn't care about the Miners or like Cyrus).  Behind him enters another doctor and the Cpt  Cyrus and the Cpt knew each other in the war.  Cyrus is hidden from the Captains view by a room separator. 

Moment 1:  John want to lose his intro conflict, but that is hard to do without just giving.  We play cat and mouse while he tries to save the Miner's life and the Foreman tries to push him off the needed machine so that he can have he imported doctor give him a nose job or something equally stupid.  I can see what John is going for, but I don't know how to get there yet.  The table is tense and watching the raises.  John really wants to say something, but I can see he is afraid to spoil the scene and just trusts me (although I didn't realize it at the time.)  The scene builds to the Foreman moving the divider, revealing Cyrus to the Captain.  The Foreman then beats Cyrus into unconsciousness.  The Captain then beats the Foreman to pulp and Cyrus wakes up in the sick bay of the Hyacinth (thus losing his conflict.) 

Moment 2: During Jeb's intro conflict he is trying to figure out Cynthia.  We raise back and forth until he find a non-standard pipe coming off of the engine.  I have something in mind (a Jacuzzi) but immediately the energy at the table shot up as each person put forth an idea about where the pipe should go.  Jeb even burst into the Captain's quarters looking for the Jacuzzi.  This really helped to wed the players to the ship and make their own.

**FitV quickie scenario**

We only had an hour and a half and I didn't have anything prepared.  It was too early to just go home, so we decided to do a small job.  There was a lot of hesitation about this and someone even joked about doing a wandering monster encounter, but as I said, "I've got my Proto-NPC sheets right here.  I'm all set"  I never thought I'd be saying that.

The Job:  Take a Companion (Jasmine) through pirate infested space to her client. 
Pride:  She is full of herself and expects to be treated better than anyone else.

Conflict 1:  Cyrus, who is a "Stone Cold MFker" decides to try to win over the Companion (who is being a bitch.)  It starts at talking and ends with an escalation to Physical when she lightly brushes him with her hand suggestively.  He then bends her wrists back hurting her (she take fallout).  He then slips away, laughs delightfully as he gives and then disappears into her quarters leaving Cyrus totally in her sway.  I wish I could say if Tony and Phil were as completely entranced with this situation as John and I were.  We were totally mesmerized with the scene.  My favorite move is when I give the Companion a 2d4 trait of "Can't help herself" and then had her go in for the seduction she didn't want or even need.

It is interesting to me that in Dogs you can actually change another PCs mind by going to conflict.  We saw this is:

Conflict 2:  The Captain vs. Jeb, the Engineer.  A distress call has been found and the captain decides "Its not my F'ing problem".  Jeb wants to follow it, "For parts and profit"   They conflict and ultimately Jeb wins and the Captain turns the boat after the signal.  It never escalated past Talking, but if it did, then things would have gotten much more interesting.  The Captain ultimately gave rather than escalating, but the mood at the table definitely shifted as we began to realize that this wasn't your typical D&D game anymore.

Conflict 3: The Companion vs. the Captain and Jeb.  We also decided that Cyrus shouldn't be part of the conflict, but he would count as a possession for Jasmine (he was good and normal sized.)  The stakes took a lot of hashing out.  Jasmine wanted the crew to abandon this "playtime" with the wreck that they found and the crew wanted to check it out.  I wanted to have Jasmine convince them to leave, but Phil especially was against this, having already won a conflict to follow the signal and didn't want to conflict again just to check out the boat.  We ultimately settled on a conflict to determine whether their reputation would be in good standing with Companions.  Basically, would Jasmine bad mouth them or would she accept their diversion. 

It was a hard conflict (and I hadn't even given her Demon Dice or a Possessed ability) and it even escalated to fighting when the Captain gets in the Companion's face and then throws a punch.  Jasmine ducks nimbly out of the way, but ultimately gives in the conflict knowing that she had won a moral victory and that was fine.  She did take 15d4 Fallout, which my players found funny.  The winning comment, which I felt was a great ender for the conflict came from Jeb.  Jasmine had just almost been punched and fell back into Jeb with her eyes all a flutter.  Jeb then counters with, (Paraphrase) "It ain't no thing. Y'know we could'a been on and off that boat in the same time we been arguing about this."

So in sum-up I have to say that this going to be a very interesting game.  I am a bit concerned about adding the 4th to mix, but really I think it is a case about people not thinking too much about their dice or their raises (and I'm as guilty as any other.)  I also wonder how many Proto-NPCs I will need if all 4 of them are involved in a conflict. 

Tomorrow is our first real game and just to put things in perspective.  I am so looking forward to it that I passed up on a chance to see an advance screening of Serenity.

--Brandon

"Book: I just feel like such a fool.
Jayne: Yeah, all those years of priest trainin', taken out by one bounty hunter."

[IMAGinES]

I have added a new character to the mix and that is the ship.  I gave the ship a Complicated History, left its Relationship dice unassigned, threw away the stat dice, and let the players assign it traits.  Here is how the ship turned out:
Name:  Hyacinth aka Cynthia aka Cindy

• Former Luxury Yacht 1d6
• "Can Defend Herself" 1d6
• She's got it where it counts 2d10
• Heavily Modified 2d4
• Dubious Registry 2d4
• Possession:  Smuggler Compartments 2d6

Where did the dice come from? I assume your players donated trait dice from their own characters - is that right? How do the players / does the GM use them? Are the dice available to everyone?

[Judaicdiablo]

Where did the dice come from? I assume your players donated trait dice from their own characters - is that right? How do the players / does the GM use them? Are the dice available to everyone?

I decided to treat it as a PC and I gave it a Complicated History.  This means that I:

• Threw out the Stat Dice (unless we decide to start having ship vs ship for some reason)
• Let everyone agree on traits it should have and then we all assigned dice to those traits
• assigned a 1d6 relationship to Crew
• Left the rest of the relationship dice unassigned

Now, for example, after the quickie with the companion the ship now has 1d8 Companion Guild.

As I see it, anyone, and I do mean anyone, can use one of the ships traits if they feel it is appropriate.  I envision assigning fallout to the ship in certain circumstances and it gathering experience as well.  When these events happen are still a bit hazy, but I will know them when I see them.  In many ways, when a Job succeeds or fails, it is the ship that gains the notoriety, rather than then specifically (unless you have a very strong Captain, like Mal.)

Why can anyone use the ship in a conflict?  Well for example, the ship has a possession of Smuggler Compartments.  Well the crew can use it if they are trying to keep something hidden.  But then again, an Alliance Captain (the GM) could use it if he were trying to find something to write them up over.  "These old Firefly class ships are known for their nooks and crannies."

Maybe it works, maybe it doesn't, but it will definately interesting to find out.  My players have already begun to really warm up to her as character.  It is cool to see

--Brandon

"Y'know.  Except for one deadly and unpredictible midget, this girl is the smallest cargo I have ever had to transport And the most troublesome."  Early

[philaros]

Couple comments...

Wilhelmina "Shotgun" Chin (Tony) – Captain – Former Alliance

Tony announced that he was making up his character, a female captain named "Shotgun". I found that rather dubious, and quickly suggested a name for her, which rather to my surprise everyone including Tony just said "okay, sure" and accepted. I do want to clarify that I was thinking "Willomena" (from an old Sesame Street cartoon bit about the letter W), not "Wilhelmina", which is awkward considering we have a player named Wilhelm. Sorry, Wil.

Jeb (Phil) – Mechanic and Gunslinger
Key Traits: Reckless AND I'm a good ol' boy

Now it's interesting to me that you picked out "I'm a good ol' boy" as one of my Key Traits, because that's not one of the high dice ones; the high dice ones are Reckless (1d10) and "Give me a sec, I can jury-rig that" (2d10) to reflect my role as Mechanic. (Then I took 2d8 I believe for "Sureshot", for the gunslinger part.) But certainly in our short scenario I played up the good ol' boy role and didn't have cause to jury-rig anything.

He then slips away, laughs delightfully as he gives and then disappears into her quarters leaving Cyrus totally in her sway.

Pronoun trouble: she (Jasmine) then slips away, laughing at Cyrus...

ultimately gives in the conflict knowing that she had won a moral victory and that was fine

Is that what she thinks? Heh, that's so cute of her, justifying things to herself...

[lumpley]

Let me know how the ship's group traits work out in play. I expect they'll work great, but I'd especially like to hear if they don't.

-Vincent

[tonyd]

I played the captain, which is already shaping up to be a challenge. There are many ways in which having a player "in charge" can be a problem in an RPG group, both for the group and for the leader.

I had a suspicion, however, that Dogs would accommodate this situation very well, which it has so far. The fact that the game provides binding procedures for deciding what the crew does is a huge asset. When the ship spotted a debris trail, I had the captain say we weren't following it. Jeb immediately stepped up. This led to a conflict, which is exactly what I wanted. I stuck with it just long enough to make sure Jeb was really ready to put some dice behind it. The conflict mechanism lets me play the cap as a hard*ss, without stepping on the other players' desire to be somewhat humanitarian.

[John Harper]

I'm playing Cyrus, the stone-cold ex-soldier. Or so I thought. He's not as cold as he was when the first session started, and I expect that trend to continue.

Anyway, I'm loving the game so far. So much that I'm trying not to get my hopes up too high for the next session tonight.

Brandon is right about that conflict with the companion, Jasmine. It was mesmerizing. I got into it initially to show off how much of a hardass Cyrus was (put the snob in her place!), and suddenly found myself trying to out-charm a gorram companion. When Brandon escalated to physical by having Jasmine brush Cyrus's arm, I almost cheered. Actually, I think I did. My only hope was to call on my "Stone Cold Motherfucker" trait (2d8) which came up 1, 2. I could barely take the blow. My cold heartedness failed me, so I decided to go with that. Jasmine managed to make Cyrus feel something, which hasn't happened to him in a long, long time. All of sudden, my character sprang to life. With the experience fallout I rolled, I chose to raise Cyrus's Heart score.

My favorite trait, though, has got be: "Don't know when to quit" which started at 1d4 and has risen to 3d4. It's gonna get a lot bigger before the series is done.

I think the ship traits are going to work very well. After our success delivering Jasmine, Brandon assigned some ship relationship dice to "Companion's Guild" (with our blessing). Very cool. I'm hoping that every Job (good and bad) will have system-reinforced results like this.

[lumpley]

After our success delivering Jasmine, Brandon assigned some ship relationship dice to "Companion's Guild" (with our blessing). Very cool. I'm hoping that every Job (good and bad) will have system-reinforced results like this.

In fact you could just add that to reflection fallout: "give the ship an experience fallout too."

-Vincent