2023 Character Creation Challenge Day 14: Serenity

So I have a very interesting fandom relationship with the Firefly TV series and it’s full length movie, Serenity. I need to finish my fandom sections so I can just post the link to the story there instead of typing it out in a limited blog post. My recently departed friend, Roger Taylor, loved gaming in this universe. There was one game he was running where the players were having a discussion in town about their “secret plans” and one of the players piped up in character “Perhaps we shouldn’t be discussin the secret plans in the middle of the street?!?” I loved hearing about that story and wished I was there to play.

The Serenity Role Playing Game came up for sale on one of the Facebook RPG auction sites that I frequent (and is one of the few reasons I still pop in on FB every once in a while). When I saw were the price was, I checked it against various internet bookstores and found a copy for a very reasonable price. So I snatched it up. Shiny.

The character creation steps are listed on page 30. The first step is for the game master to determine what level of game the sessions will be in the form of a heroic level. This could be Greenhorn (42 attribute points) Veteran (48 attribute points) or Big Damn Heroes (54 attribute points). Since I don’t have a GM to check with, I’m going to select Veteran. For my character concept, I’m going to make Steven “Dart” Carter. A really good pilot that only gets in individual fights when he has no choice (don’t pick on someone he cares about, because then he’ll step in). For some reason he gets really nervous around Alliance patrols. If his shipmates knew that he was an AWOL from the Union of Allied Planets Navy and had a different name in his different life, would they still trust him? He likes just being able to move about on the Rim.

The next step is to select my character traits. These come in the form of assets and complications and help define your character. When they are used in game play, they can add or subtract from certain roleplaying situations. Knowing my character’s history, I selected Born Behind The Wheel (minor asset), Military Rank (minor asset), Traumatic Flashback (minor complication) and Twitchy (minor complication). I wonder how this character would have been roleplayed at the table? Next comes the attributes.

Each attribute is represented by a die (D4 through D12) and costs a number of attribute points that was determined by the heroic level of the campaign (see above). I calculated out the die I thought a good pilot would need. They are Strength D6, Agility D10, Vitality D8, Alertness D8, Intelligence D8 and Willpower D8. From these the derived attributes are generated.

Selecting the skills is the next step in the process. Starting characters get 20 skill points to spend plus the same amount of points used to generate the attributes (so for Dart, he gets an additional 48). 68 in total. Skills have general skill costs (covers the broad spectrum) and specialty skills (focus on specific things and must be named). I picked the skills and specialties that I thought Dart might be using since he found his freedom.

Last is the finishing touches. This includes equipment, description and background. With the veteran setting, Dart has 1,500 credits, the clothes on his back and a few items that the GM would have OKed. I had to track down what my character’s plot points are.

Afterthoughts:

There were a few things on the character sheet I had to go hunting for as it was not listed in the character creation steps. Annoying, but not bad. The system sounds pretty simplistic. I’d love to see it in action around a table, but I don’t know anyone who still plays. That’s too bad.

Additional Notes:

While I haven’t found any new blogs that are participating in the Character Creation Challenge, I am seeing a lot of participants using the hashtag #CharacterCreationChallenge on various social media sites. There is also two very active message boards where quite a few characters are being shared. This includes the RPG.net message board and the RPG Geek message board. If you know of one that I may have missed, please email me at Carl (at) TardisCaptain.com and I’ll add it to the board.

Coming Up Next:

Star Trek: Star Fleet Intelligence by FASA

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