Playing the Game: Crossing Over

Yes, crossing over. But not with that douchey John Edwards guy. No, we're talking about stories and characters that flow between campaigns and environments. This is closely related to the post I did back in May about Set Pieces.

One of the recurring issues in using Secondlife for gaming, versus doing it in a pencil and paper "desktop" setting, is that you only have limited control of the environment. Sure, within your own Sim you're essentially god. You can set the rules, build the world, define the backstory, control the main plot arcs, and generally do everything a Game Master does in a conventional RPG. There is nothing wrong with this. It's your sim. You're paying the bills.

If it was a live game, your players would expect nothing less. In a second life region, it's your region. Your visitors need to accept that.

Now, I'm not exactly saying "just go ahead and be as strict as you want," because, if you do, chances are you won't get a lot of visitors. At least not ones that stay very long. Unless they really, really, like your campaign. Which, of course, means you need to allow some flexibility. Find a balance between what you expect from your campaign space and what your players expect to get away with.

There are times when players/characters are going to want to play in a certain environment, but not as a Set Piece. They're going to want to participate in the story that's going on there and then. The difference between crossing over and borrowing a set piece is, often, one of perspective. When you are using a set, it becomes part of your story. When you cross over, you become part of their story.

Examples? When we evacuate the wounded from Hale's Moon to the high tech medical center on Beaumonde and we use the MedLab on the Babylon 5 sim as our set, for that time, to us, Bab 5 is Beaumonde. We're using it not as it is but simply as a set to represent something else. The same goes when the Trekies visit the Mining Colony of Earstwhile 3 and use Hale's Moon as their set. In either case, they've had a quick word with the sim's staff to be sure it's cool, and the event isn't really part of the local story. Local participants are doing so more as actors on the set than "really" being their characters.

The level of "Set" may be different, depending on what's going on and who's playing. When the locals are being themselves, and the visitors are being themselves, you've got more of a crossover.

Different campaign settings, and different story arcs, are more adaptable to allowing crossovers than others. Star Trek and Star Wars, for example, both exist in vast areas of space complete with Aliens and FTL drives. Introducing a new alien race or some distant government is usually pretty easy. As long as you're not directly contradicting established Cannon, it'll probably fit in just fine. The Babylon 5 campaign is also fairly easy to incorporate new Aliens into the mix. Though new Human organizations and governments aren't quite so easy. Bab 5 is more limited in that regard. Finally, campaigns like Firefly are much more restrictive. There's no FTL. No aliens. And everything happens in the same star system.

As a player, it's usually easier to crossover into a "more open" or "less restrictive" campaign than to shift into a more limited setting. For example, some of our players from the Firefly campaign RP on the Al Raquis and Splintered Rock sims, both of which are set, effectively, on Arakis (Dune), but are open to General SciFi. Because of the nature of the different campaign backgrounds, and the general environment, it's easy for them to do. If a local asks them where they're from, they can say "Zenobia" and when asked "where's that?" they can say "around Georgia," and no one will worry about it. In a Dune campaign, Zenobia is just another world and Georgia is just another star. It only becomes a problem if they (either the locals or visitors) get too heavily into the Big Picture. On the local scale though, not a problem.

As long as the visitors remember where they are and don't try to force their story on the locals, it can work pretty well in most settings. It's only when players try to bring in elements that just can't work that you have a problem.

Where does that leave us as players and Game Masters?

As a player, there's always the caveat of "respect the genre." If you want to become a regular somewhere, figure out how to best fit into the environment. If they're open to crossovers, great. If not so much, then adapt your own background as needed to fit in and enjoy.

As a Game Master, figure out a polite way to deal with crossovers. If they're not making waves, it's probably OK to let them slide. You may get some great RP out of it and you can retcon out any conflicts. If they are making waves, then suggest they either adapt or, perhaps, find another venue.

Anecdotaly, one of the most amusing encounters I ever had with a crossover/on-the-fly-adaptation was when some Trekkers showed up on Babylon 5. They were just visiting but were speaking in character and, when asked about their odd uniforms, quickly ad-libed something about being the crew of a freighter who's captain had an odd fashion sense. It was priceless. How they handled it in their story I never heard, but their quick ad-lib let them fit into Bab5 for the visit without so much as a ripple.

Loading the Canon: Loading the cannon.

I touched on the subject of heavy weapons in a previous entry, but it seems like a good time to touch on it again and expand it a bit. Specifically, I want to focus on vehicle weapons and how they're portrayed in the Firefly 'Verse vs how they work in the real world.

Now, what prompted this post was a brief discussion on the Firefly RP channel involving nuclear weapons and railguns, and I'm going to start with getting some frustration off my chest. Namely: "Look. If it really was as easy as 'Just use a rail gun and blow up the cruiser!' the Indies wouldn't have had their asses handed to them during the war."

Remember something. The Alliance has more, and better, tech than the Indies do, and the resources to deploy it. Seriously. Do you really think you're going to take out a cruiser with a single shot of an essentially unguided projectile?

Previously, we looked at what was actually shown in the series and BDM. In the series, that amounted to "Not very much." There were some missile shots and some auto-cannon and that's really about all we see. The only directed energy weapons we see is a modern Lassiter and the funky stun rifle things. Yes, there is the EtW antique Lassiter, but it's an antique and we never see it fire.

Through the course of the series, we see the Alliance's armed gunboats and a skiff during the flashback to the battle of Serenity Valley. We can safely assume the Cruisers we encounter are more than just carriers and are, themselves, well armed. But we never really see that. It's fairly safe speculation, but speculation nonetheless. Ship to ship combat just wasn't a major factor in the Firefly saga.

What little we see of the vehicle armaments is entirely missile and cannon, which actually makes sense. Kind of. Both weapon systems have one thing in common - they have a largely self contained delivery system. What do I mean by that? The entire store of 'energy needed to get to the target and to put the hurt on said target' is included in the mass of the ammunition.

The specifics of how the hurt is done may change depending on the round (HVAP (High Velocity Armor Penetrating) vs Shaped Charge, for example) but it's all part of a (mostly) self contained system. In the case of cannon shells, the propellant fires in the fixed weapon and spits the shell out the other end at high velocity. Thanks to Mister Newton, there's an equal amount of force imparted into the fixed part of the weapon as there is going into the shell spitting out the far end. Recoil is not, in fact, your friend in this case. The reason the shell leaves the weapon at high velocity and the ship doesn't move much is the relative difference in mass. The shell has a payload which may be anything from some kind of sophisticated explosive with a complex fusing mechanism to a simple solid metallic slug.

Cannon have the advantage of using relatively cheap, and compact, ammunition compared to missiles, and the inherent simplicity of the system. They have the disadvantage of recoil and the static mass of the fixed weapon.

Trivia: When the venerable A10 Warthog fires it's GAU8 30mm Gattling cannon, the recoil is slightly more than the thrust from one of the aircraft's two turbofan engines.

Missiles are remarkably similar, but rather than doing all the acceleration before they leave the vehicle, they take their engine with them. They have an even broader range of payloads than cannon do and don't have the rather annoying recoil. In fact, missiles potentially have much higher terminal velocities than shells do, carrying much greater kinetic energy to target. Missiles are also usually guided, so they can maneuver to hit, or otherwise inconvenience, their targets. Down side is larger, heavier, and more expensive ammunition.

As I said before, these are perfectly rational weapon choices given the levels of technology shown in the series. The BDM changed things up a bit with the addition of directed energy weapons on the Alliance spacecraft, and even a few being seen on the Reaver boats. Most notably, the directed EMP weapon they used on Serenity.

We don't really know much about the energy weapons we see - other than the classic SciFi 'visible beam' thing. Since the fight took place in the upper atmosphere of Mister Universe's private planet, we can assume the reason we see the beams is because of atmospheric ionization and not because they have crappy beam collimators.

Energy weapons have some interesting trade-offs with more conventional weaponry. The first advantage being an effective time-of-flight of Zero, followed closely by an absolute line of sight accuracy. It is much easier to put a beam of light on target than a physical object. Want an example? Take a laser pointer with you to the range next time and see how much easier it is to hit the bullseye.

Regardless. Energy weapons also have some disadvantages, many of which are blithely ignored in most Science Fiction. First, there is the matter of power. While it's entirely possible to use some kind of self contained "cartridge" to fire the energy weapons, akin to the Nuclear Pumped X-Ray Laser developed in the 20th century, it's almost never seen implemented or even implied. In nearly every case, the power for the weapons is drawn from the ship's main power supply, often routed through some sort of accumulator, then used to put hurt on the target.

Then there's waste heat. This is something else that's usually ignored, at least in general SciFi. Nothing is going to be 100% efficient. There's always conversation losses. That's why your car has a radiator: the engine only converts a fraction of the heat energy in the fuel into motion. The rest is lost as waste heat. Energy weapons have the same problem. Only part of the energy that goes into the weapon comes out the other end to form the beam, so the rest of that energy needs to be dissipated by the ship somehow. Unlike cars that can use convection to dump heat into the surrounding air, spacecraft have only two ways to get rid of excess heat: radiation and mass transfer. I'll save a discussion of that for a later LtC post, but it's an issue for directed energy weapons.

Now, how does this all tie back to Nuclear Weapons and Railguns? Good question.

"Railgun" refers to a specific form of electromagnetic projectile launcher. They're technically neither gun, nor 'cannon,' but are similar in that the launcher remains static while the projectile is sent down range at high velocity. In theory, they're relatively simple to make, but the engineering for an actual "weapons grade" system is quite complex. And, while they can achieve much higher velocities than a conventional gun, they have some of the same limitations of both conventional guns and directed energy weapons.

There's nothing specifically saying that these weapons couldn't be developed in the Firefly campaign. After all, the concept goes back to the early part of the 20th century and, by the early 21st, they were being considered as shipboard and tank weapons. But from what we see in-story in both the series and the BDM, they're never used.

Why not?

With a purely "This is fiction" perspective, it's fairly safe to say that they were never used because Joss never thought to use them. At least never in a place where we see them. It's possible the Rollers Zoe mentioned were armed with railguns, but we really don't know. We do know they used cannon. We know they used Directed Energy Weapons. We know they used Missiles. But railguns are pure speculation.

From the perspective that started this topic, namely "an easy way to take out a Cruiser" perspective, it comes back to Tactical, Engineering, and Physics issues.

The idea of a railgun being an easy way to take out a capital ship ignores a slew of issues. How exactly do you get the resources to build it? How do you power it? How do you deploy it? How do you aim it so you hit a moving target 500 kilometers off? How do you get the shot off before the Cruiser and her escorts turn your converted freighter to wreckage? How can you be sure you won't just spall off the Cruiser's existing anti-meteroid shielding?

As a Game Master, would I let my players do it? Yes. I would. If they went in with an attitude of "Just get a rail gun and shoot them down!" I'd hand them their asses just like the Alliance handed the Indies their asses at the Battle of Serenity Valley. If they actually worked out a plan and covered enough of the bases to make it a good story, it would be a different situation. They might still get their asses handed to them, but they wouldn't be blase about taking on a capital ship.

As for the nukes? This is already too long, so I'll have to get to that on another entry.

Loading the Canon: Economics 425b

This is another one of those entries that will span a bit of both Firefly Canon and gaming. Economics is something that most gamers really just don't want to deal with and, I suspect, Joss didn't want to deal with very much in the course of writing for the 'Verse. Numbers didn't make for good story, while glossing it over made it easy to write.

In fact, it seemed he liked to employ the classic Game Master trick of keeping his characters poor as a motivation to get them onto the next job. We saw a lot of that in the series. Serenity's crew was always living on the raggedy edge of being dead broke. It didn't matter how much the take was on the last job. The money never lasted long. They would take whatever job came their way, rather than running the boat either as a strictly mercantile operation or as a strictly mercenary operation. For Player Characters, that actually makes sense. It lets you tell a broader range of stories and that is what Firefly was all about.

The problem is, it gave us a very murky view of what the economy of the 'verse actually was. We know, for example, that a lot of commerce on the Rim and Border worlds was done in cash rather than through credit. The 'coin of the realm,' so to speak, being small Platinum tokens. There was also scrip, and credit, and probably several other forms of currency we didn't see come into play on-screen. What's important, is that it appears that the 'credit' was a consistent unit of currency across the worlds we see.

There was never a case where we see, or it's even implied, that they are changing from one form of currency to another. We don't have Pounds Sterling on Londinium, Marks on Ariel, Yen on Beaumonde, Dollars on Blackburne, or Sheckles on Persephone. It's all the same currency. It's implied that the costs for various items would change across worlds, but you'd be paying for it with the same units of cashey money. They were evidently on the Platinum standard.

The problem is, we don't know what the relative values are for the money we see changing hands. For example, the ultra-concentrated food Our Heroes salvage from the derelict in the pilot was worthless to Badger because of it's Alliance markings. The assumption being he couldn't fence it or sell it off himself if it had such obvious markings. That leaves Mal to sell it to Patience for a bag of coin. We have to assume that the coin was at least as much as Badger was going to pay them for going out and getting it, otherwise it makes no sense for Mal to sell it to her.

There are numerous other examples of these low margin jobs and crimes that, quite honestly, don't make a lot of sense except as a way to keep our characters poor and searching for the next job.

And people wonder why Firefly is so attractive to Gamers?

Anyway, Joss didn't give us a lot to work on when it comes to figuring out the actual values involved in the Firefly economy. Realistically, we can probably treat the economy like we treat the science: It made Joss's head hurt, so whatever worked for the story is going to be the way it is. We don't really worry about the details so much.

I'm sure someone who's an actual economist can shed more light on the subject, but the fact is Firefly Canon is vague on Firefly Economics and we're going to have to wing it. Though, to be sure, I'm going to hit a few implications later in this piece.

Unfortunately, that's really not very satisfying. Worse, as gamers, we're kind of stuck with trying trying to make this vague backstory fit in with a concrete set of numbers in our Second Life reality. A GM can toss out something vague like "It's a heafty chunk of change" without needing to specify a number, where a couple of players trying to haggle out a price are going to want some kind of actual number.

While I don't have a specific conversion of Plats to Dollars to use in game, we do have some basic real-world economics to work from which we can extrapolate into something we can work with in game.

At it's most basic, economics is easy:

1. Acquire or produce a product.
2. Sell it for more than it cost you to acquire or produce it.
3. Profit.
4. Wash, rinse, repeat.

That's it. Seriously. There's a whole lot of ways to interpret the word 'product' in this case. It may be an actual object, like guns, bombs, food, or fuel. Or it may be a service, like transporting said food, fuel, guns, or bombs. Our Heroes were in the service industry most of the time. Either providing transportation or firepower for someone else.

It's when you add layers that things get complicated. For example, between the linked stories in Shindig and Safe, we see just how complex this can be, and see just how difficult it is to get a good handle on Firefly economics.

The premise is that Badger has hooked Mal up with a local Persephone Noble who wants to get some livestock off-world where they can be sold at a greater profit and with lower taxes than they can be sold locally. Simple. But what are the implications?

Badger, as we know, is, as well as being a snarky little twerp, a ruthless profiteer. He's going to be taking a Finder's Fee from whatever Mal gets paid for the mission. We can surmise that Badger's going to want to cover the costs, be it in favor or cash, for the tickets to the Shindig. How much is that going to be? We never really know.

Now, Lord Harrow needs to get his herd of cows to Jiangyin, where they can be cunningly concealed before being subsequently sold. Why is he moving them there? Because he can turn a greater profit by selling them there, of course. That's after paying Mal for transporting them there too. So we can assume that the local taxes on Persephone are high and the profit margins are pretty thin.

We also can surmise that Mal was able to at least turn a modest profit on this mission, or at least break even, even after paying for food, fuel, maintenance, and everything else it takes to keep Serenity in the air.

Now, to come back to the real world for a moment, basic economics tells us that for it to be worthwhile to transport any product anywhere for sale, it has to cost less to produce in Location A and transport it to Location B for sale than it does to produce and sell locally at Location B. There's issues of availability of course. If A is the only source, it will be a matter of transport it or do without. But the point is the Producer needs to make their profit. The transporter needs to make their profit. The final seller needs to make their profit. At each step, someone needs their cut and at each step there's people trying to cut costs.

This is why Maersk operates massive container ships rather than a bunch of small freighters. Economy of scale.

So, before this gets too freaking long (OK, I know, it already is too freaking long), I'll bring it back to what it means to us as gamers.

One: Firefly Canon doesn't give us a lot to go on for what constitutes "a lot of money" vs "barely breaking even." The numbers are abstract at best.

Two: This campaign 'verse is about Characters, not economics. A character's motivation may be to turn a healthy profit, but we don't need specific numbers to do that.

Third: Everyone is going to have a different idea of what's valuable, what something is worth, and how much is "a lot." We can use real world prices to figure out a range, with, just to grab some numbers based on what we've done so far, say $10 = 1 Plat - Subject to a great deal of variation depending on who's story we're in and other factors.

Forth: Second Life currency (L$) is, effectively, real money. Negotiate game pay, in either direction, at your own risk.

Fifth: FFRP currency is useful for giving real numbers to in-story transactions, but may or may not be suitable for all occasions.

Sixth: There is no number six, because he is number one. (Oatie bar to whoever gets the reference)

I know what you're thinking now. "Is she done yet?"

Yes, Virginia. I am.

For now.

Loading the Canon: The United Alliance of Planets

This is another entry that I've been working on for a while. Hence the fairly broad span between the 'Posted' date and when you may actually see it here.

One of the great things about the Firefly campaign is the perspective of the Characters. We see the 'Verse through the eyes of Mal and his crew, each of whom had a different perspective on the Alliance, Unification, and what they wanted out of life. Mal and Zoe were both ex-soldiers who fought for Independence. Jayne didn't care. Simon and River were young and living in the Core and probably didn't have a lot of exposure - much like 'Nam would have been for children of the 60's, or Desert Storm to children of the 80's, or the current wars to children of the 90's. Inara was actually for Unification.

Different characters, different perspectives. For the audience, it was mostly Mal's perspective. He didn't really seem to consider the Alliance as Evil. He just wanted to be left alone to go his own way. We could easily imagine that if the show was about characters on the IAV Magellan we'd have a very different view of the United Alliance of Planets.

In-Series and BDM Canon is fairly vague about what the Alliance is really about. We know they're referred to as Federals, thus implying some kind of Federal government. We also know they're main governing body is a Parliament, suggesting some sort of democracy. Given that the Alliance was founded on the shoulders of "Earth's two last Superpowers: China and the United States" it's hard to imagine just what sort of unified government is running the show. The United States was (well, at least is now) a Two Party state with elected leaders, while China is (was) a One Party Communist state with a heavy Capitalistic influence. Given my early 21st century perspective on these things, the only sort of state I can see coming out of that is, well, kinda messed up.

Where'd the Parliament come from? Who knows. Parliamentary democracies are popular in Europe and some Asian states, but don't really tie back to the founding super powers. Given the context, like other things in the 'Verse campaign, we just take it as something that is, consider it Canon, and move on.

See how I glossed over that?

The Series doesn't really give us much more than the existence of the Alliance. There's no specifics other than the implication that regional commanders have a fair amount of autonomy and various officials are somewhat limited in their scope of operations. The BDM gives us only a little more to go on, introducing 'The Parliament" as something who's power could be broken. I always took that to mean the sitting government, rather than the body itself. Like the Tory's or Labor or the Rhino Party. Whoever's in charge will face the wrath of the voters and have to deal with the fallout.

Of course, it also implied that 'this' government was the same one who was in power when the Pax was originally used. Otherwise, they'd just pass the blame off on their predecessors like the politicians they are.

One thing that the Federal system implies is that the local worlds could have a lot of freedom in just how they handle their own local governance. We see a glimpse of that in the episode "Shindig" where we see that Persephone has an actual Noble class. In other instances, such as "Our Mrs Reynolds" we see that the local elders have a great deal of control, and in the pilot, we have Patience as the de-facto leader of the entire colony. That, incidentally, is where I based the concept of the elected leader of a small colony's main township being the de-facto leader of the entire world.

We see this autonomy in a number of places, but there's also a lot of places where it's kind of confused.

The main 'presence' we see of the Alliance is through their troops and Marshals. In several scenes we see anything from a two man patrol to a platoon strength unit. Sometimes it's soldiers in the classic "Purple Belly" infantry armor. Other times it's the bland gray uniforms. While we never see a lot of them at once, we see them in a lot of different places, which implies a broad presence, if not a major one.

Though, in contrast, and often in the same episodes, we see examples of local law enforcement officers, which again implies some autonomy. Or, at least, the Federals aren't the only game in town. Though, in the BDM, we have the Alliance paying local security companies to handle security duties on some remote colonies. Why don't they have a local Sheriff? Who knows. I put it down to Drama and Joss needing a hook to get Our Heros involved and a vault to hide from the Reavers in.

So, where does that leave us as players?

Good question.

Near as I can tell, "The Alliance" wasn't detailed out enough during the course of the show and movie to give a definitive answer. We do know there were implications of Self Rule for the colonies, with the Alliance sending in some Federal presence to 'show the colors,' so to speak. That leaves us, as Game Masters, a lot of flexibility to run our local sims as we see fit. It also gives us, as players, the flexibility to have our personal experience with the Alliance be what we need it to be. If Mal and Inara could have very different views of the Alliance, it's perfectly acceptable for us to as well.

What is canon here? Hard to be sure, but I would go with: "The Alliance is a Federal system with a varying level of influence depending on where you are. All of the colonies in the Verse are, at least on some level, encompassed by the Federal system, and the Federal presence on any given world could be quite varied: from total control, to the occasional patrol on the ground by Uniforms from the local Cruiser."

Too vague? Maybe. But it's the best we can do given the source material.

Playing the Game: My character is my own

I was actually debating whether to put this entry under the "Loading the Canon" series or under the "Playing the Game" heading. There's elements of both here, but, in the end, I decided it's more about Gaming than specifically Firefly cannon. In fact, what I'm going to touch on here could apply to any campaign setting, not just Firefly.

Over at Chrysalis, my friend Imrhien's Character blog, she did a recent OOC post about players dictating terms to other players. It's well worth a read. The basic gist of it comes down to the only people who can tell you what you can and can't play are the Game Masters / Admins of the sim you're playing in.

In other entries I've talked about Cooperative Story Telling. In an environment like Secondlife, it's all about cooperative story telling. The Firefly sims, more than some of the other genre I've looked at, allow and expect a lot of ebb and flow of characters playing in multiple places. Even when a player doesn't take their character to other sims, all of the sims are treated as existing in the same campaign universe. When Lily Snoodle (a favorite example) spends time on MacLaran's Drift, or Washtown, or Londinium, or Hale's Moon, it's the same Lily Snoodle. Same character, same campaign.

If an individual Admin/GM has an issue with any given character or concept, they can feel free to tell the player that character isn't welcome on their grid, and to personally ignore any story lines involving that character. Or, probably better, since their players may be involved with the character they don't like, they can 'filter' story to better fit their own arcs. It's something I touched on in the post on Set Pieces.

Imrhien's post was about one GM/Player/Admin essentially declaring control over an entire archetype of characters in the 'Verse campaign. Since I don't have any direct experience with the Companion's Guild as it's being run now, though have RP'd with Companion characters in the past, I can't really say anything about how the Guild is run. Though I can say, from multiple perspectives, that anyone declaring they have an over-arching position that affects everyone else's slice of the campaign, is a Bad Idea^(tm).

An example?

Firefly's Canon established that the field commanders have a fair amount of leeway in how they handle their commands. In the Firefly game in Secondlife, that lets Alliance in each sim (or set of cooperating sims) to have the Alliance military act appropriately for their story, without adversely affecting the stories that happen in other people's sims.

Your "Alliance Commander" is "An Alliance Commander," not "The Alliance Commander." You want to play a high ranking Alliance Official or Military Officer that isn't directly associated with any particular Sim? Sure. Why not. You'll just be "out of your jurisdiction" and any "power" you have is strictly with the cooperation of the other players. Not to say they won't play along! A lot of our players are quite good and will be willing to run with something new, but they don't have to.

So what does it all mean to us as players?

Ultimately, we have control over our own characters. The only person/people who can make us change anything is the GM/admin for the game we're in, and even that is only in the context of their slice of the 'Verse.

A GM can say "Don't play that here," but they can't say "Don't play that anywhere." Well, they can say it, but they can only enforce it in sims they work with.

Though, I will add that if any of the GM's tell you "your Furry Klingon cyborg hybrid probably doesn't belong in the 'Verse" you might want to heed their advice. A lot of the admins and GM's at least try to work together to make it easier to play across multiple sims. While they may not have authority on other parts of the grid, their opinion may well have some weight.

To be fair, it's probably best to not declare yourself in a position of power over other characters without working with other people first. Declaring yourself Cruiser Captain with an NPC crew, or putting together a PC crew, is one thing. Declaring yourself a Fleet Admiral in control over all the Alliance Military in an entire star system is another.

You get the idea.

Playing the Game: Setting the stage

I thought I'd actually done a post on this previously, but it turns out it was just a series of conversations between myself and a number of other players. When Jai pointed out that I hadn't actually written anything about it in this venue, I decided to rectify that.

It's actually a subject I've been thinking about for a while, but never really known just how to write up. The subject in question is "set pieces."

I've touched on this tangentially in other entries on playing in Secondlife, but never directly: using other people's sims as sets for your own RP. Given the footprint, prim, build skill, imagination, etc., limits, there'll be a lot of times when you simply can't create the set you want for a particular scene. It can take a lot of time, effort, and prims, to build, say, a high tech medical center or really convincing derelict spaceship. When your own sim's set up as a mining colony or City Center, you might not have the resources to build the set.

That's where the use of set pieces comes into play.

The gaming community in Secondlife has created a broad, broad, range of sims for people to RP in. They span the full range from High Fantasy to seriously high tech Science Fiction, with everything else in between. Want a medieval forest? It's there. High tech ship yard? Got it. Run down urban chaos? Yup. Desert? Airless rock? Space station? Derelict ship? High school? Castle? Tavern? All there. Every one of them and probably twenty more I didn't mention.

In many ways, this is a huge opportunity for the players. But it also comes with some serious perils. Each one of these sims was built for a specific reason, usually as the setting for some specific game or RP campaign. Each one of these sims will have its own paradigms, rules, expectations, staff, regular players, etc. Some of these sims will be more welcoming of outsiders than others. Where some are actually designed for general purpose RP in, others can be very hard core about it being their setting.

In general, Rule Number One of using Set Pieces is always respect the staff of whatever sim you want to use. Chances are, if you ask first, they won't mind you coming in and using, say, the MedLab on Babylon 5, to represent a high tech medical facility on some core world. The thing is, ask first.

Rule Number Two should be never interfere with the local RP. If you've followed Rule Number One, the locals may be willing to participate as extras in your plot. If they're familiar with your campaign ('Verse, B5, Trek, Star Wars, etc) they may even be able to do a credible job of it. Even then, if you can keep campaign specific references out of it, you can probably interact without issue.

There are a lot of sims out there that are sparsely populated when the "scheduled game" isn't going on. If you're looking for a set piece, it's often possible to simply borrow a space when no one else is using it. That doesn't supersede rules one and two, but it may well give you the option of popping onto an empty set, doing your piece, and popping out without interfering with anything the locals have going on.

Finally, there's running with a bit of 'temporary integration.' Being a little more flexible in your own RP when you're on someone else's set may open up even more possibilities you wouldn't have otherwise. You can always retcon out the inconsistencies added by the locals when it comes time to move your story on.

For example, from the 'Verse perspective: There's a lot of crossover between the Firefly players and the folks on Al Raqis - a Dune sim. The Firefly players can, for the most part, treat Al Raqis as if it's just another world in the 34 Tauri system and ignore the obvious inconsistencies when they're home.

This is a topic I may return to later. One of the recurring, closely related, themes in some off-screen conversations has been how to best maintain Campaign Consistency, while still allowing enough crossover to keep an active player base. Honestly, it's not something I've entirely figured out but is something I plan to explore in future posts.

Playing the Game: Why combat meters byte

Note: I started this quite a while ago, then got wrapped up in other things and forgot to finish it until now.

Yeah, I know, mildly provocative title. But I've never made a secret of not being a fan of First Person Shooter style combat in Secondlife. It all comes back to SL being a Virtual Reality simulator and not a Combat simulator. Seriously, if you are into serious FPS combat, go play Unreal or Halo or Counterstrike, or any of the many other games that do a far, far, better job of simulating combat. It's what they were designed for.

Secondlife has its own built in combat system, which is usually left off in most sims. It has one advantage of being integrated into the server itself, but has some serious flaws. Not the least of which is that when you "die" you're teleported back to your Home location. Obvious drawback there. As far as I can tell from the little research I've done, they included it more or less as an afterthought because some people really wanted it. It's just not all that good.

From my own observations, the most commonly used Combat Meter system in Secondlife is DCS2, the Dynamic Combat System. DCS2 is, admittedly, a versatile system but, in my not entirely humble opinion, suffers from some glaring flaws. Though, to be fair, the flaws aren't unique to DCS.

Like many other systems, DCS is biased towards a Class and Level sort of setup. Characters fall into a class of one type or another which gives them a default set of "skills" or "powers" within the DCS context. They level up with experience and, as they level get, to add more skills and stats. Experience can be based on time in game (common, but lame), combat kills (also common, and lame for other reasons) or by GM fiat (less common, but actually appropriate). There's a limited mechanism for other players to award someone experience for good RP, but that's really it.

I don't mean to rip on DCS, not even for their 'setting up a sim to use it is free, but we charge for the meter' model. They've got to pay for the server that hosts their back end, after all. The problems I see with it are common to any sort of game mechanic that uses character classes and levels, something I glossed over in the post on Cooperative Storytelling. Essentially, Secondlife lends it self much more to a Freeform style of RP than to a hard and fast Game Mechanic based model. When meters are level based, you're automatically tied into whatever sort of character progression the meter's designers thought was best. Even when character progression is secondary to story progression.

On a purely operational level, separate from the game mechanics, there's the issue of making any meter clean and fast and hard to cheat.

There's two main "models" combat meters used in SL, not counting SL's own built in version. The first I'll call "Avatar Local." In these, the AV has an attachment that handles everything: Damage tracking, healing, special effects, are all handled locally on the participating avatar. These are usually feature limited, but are fast and don't have a major impact on sim performance or suffer from external sources of lag.

The second major model I'll call "Remote Server." These use an external server somewhere in a sort of client/server model. When you're hit, the meter on your AV calls the remote server and has it process the damage based on whatever mechanics it has set up. The server then kicks back the results and your meter is updated. This is the model DCS2 and FFRP both use. There are a number of advantages, like being able to modify things on the server side and have the changes come into play without having to update everyone's client. The biggest disadvantage, and one I've always found glaring, is that you're now adding a set of calls to an external system. This adds in another layer of latency and lag, not to mention potential security concerns.

I don't particularly like this model.

Where does this leave us?

Well, given my preference for text based interaction rather than FPS combat, or at least a mix, and my opinion of current alternatives, I'm going to come up with a Wish List of sorts of features that would make a good Combat Meter system. It's essentially a combination of the best features of the above models.

1. A client / server model that lives entirely on the local Secondlife simulator. While it will increase the load on the server somewhat, it will reduce possible security risks and make sure Meter-based lag affects everyone equally.
   
2. Open source for both the client and the server.
   
3. Anti-cheating functions that are compatible with it being open source. It is possible. It just takes a little extra work.
4. Compatibility with most, if not all, weapons available in SL, including freebies and "enhanced" weapons designed for other combat systems.
5. Optional recognition of enhanced weapons, where there's an available API.
6. Inclusion of a simple game mechanic that lets players customize their characters, but is both fair and easy to implement.
7. Optional experience systems, or at least a way for players to update their characters as they develop.
8. A way to let the same combat meter work across different sims using the same character.
9. A way to play different characters from the same account. (e.g. Alternate AV's representing different characters, rather than creating separate accounts.)
   
10. Optionally recognize armor and special weapons types, like sniper rifles or heavy weapons. (Armor appears to be unknown in most of the systems I've looked at.)
    
11. Compatibility with, or integration with, a vehicle combat system.
    
12. Expandability to incorporate special features as needed.
13. A way for individual sims to tweak things to suit their needs while still being cross-sim compatible.

Not really all that much of a list? Ok, so it is. But none of it can't be done and none of it wasn't in mind when I started my initial work on a cross-sim in-world combat meter system. There's more I'd like to see, but I think that Baker's Dozen is a good start.

Does this meter exist? Given the vast resource jungle that is SecondLife, it's entirely possible. I just haven't found it. Could I code this myself? Technically, yes. I could actually get this to work, though there are other folks in our group who're more skilled coders. The question, of course, would be whether I had the time to write this beast. And the answer to that is, "probably not."

Players will use whatever combat system suits them best, whether it's a meter or text based or the delicate balance of both. Some sims in the collective 'Verse will require one or the other, but with one possible exception, I'm pretty sure that none of them will force someone into combat if they don't want to participate. If a sim owner decides to force the issue that Meter/No-Meter is mandatory on their part of the grid, and combat is not optional, then the simple solution is to simply not play there.

Ultimately, what happens to your character should never be forced upon you by the limitations of some arbitrary combat meter system.

Playing the Game: Virtual Worlds

After an initial burst of activity I've somewhat neglected this blog. There was a lot to be said about Canon in the Firefly/Serenity 'Verse, at least from our perspective as gamers in Secondlife. There's been a bit of disagreement and fractioning of the community over Canon too. Pat of that, of course, comes from folk having the own perspectives on what should and shouldn't be in canon and what should and shouldn't be allowed in game.

I tried to address a lot of those issues in previous posts. It's hard to have strict canon with only 14 episodes, one feature length movie, and a few comic books that tie things together. There's just not enough information to go on. Doesn't stop people from arguing about it though. Just watch the Trekkers going at it some time.

In a restricted pencil and paper gaming environment, you have the luxury of setting canon for you and your group and not having to worry about accommodating a broader crowd. As I tried to get across, an open environment like Secondlife provides doesn't afford that luxury. Unless you plan to be snobbish about it, of course. In that case, go ahead and be as restrictive as you like.

But this post isn't about that. It's about dealing with the vagaries of translating our games into the realm of virtual worlds. Specifically, Secondlife.

In the last post I talked about cooperative story telling. The concepts there apply whether you're playing a game in Secondlife, on a forum, in IRC, or pretty much anywhere else that there's an ongoing give and take between players. Work together. Build on each other's stories, and everyone has a grand time.

But what about assembling the environment you're playing in?

I remember some years ago, lounging around a friend's room at a gaming con, one of the better game masters, a fellow computer geek, talking about how he'd really like to have adaptive voice changing software for everyone. That way you could speak as the character or NPC or whatever, and people would hear that voice. The scared little kid. The angry cop. The megalomaniac bad guy. This has to be 15 or 18 years ago when the technology was close, but not quite there. The conversation went on to what would be really cool, and described something like a cross between Secondlife, Neverwinter Nights, and Halflife.

We're actually fairly close to that 'really cool' state with Secondlife. But it has its limitations. Some of them are pretty glaring limitations and often lead to issues that actually affect the RP as it's happening.

One of the biggest limitations in SL is the footprint problem. A standard region (sim) is 256 meters on a side. Virtual, scale, meters. That's really not a lot. While it's usually enough for the kinds of combat most RPG's simulate - melee, close quarters gunfights, urban brawls, jungle ambushes, etc., - it's not an awfully big space. Yes, you could drop, say, Candlestick Park into a single sim, but you couldn't include the parking lot. On a 'city' scale, a sim is roughly a city block or so square.

I'd say it's enough for in-game combat because most RPG firefights take place over fairly short ranges. But not military ranges. Once you're out of an Urban or Jungle setting, engagement ranges go up dramatically. And we won't eve talk about snipers. The current world record for a confirmed sniper shot would cross 11 full sims.

The small footprint precludes exploring large areas unless you either layer vertically, since the sim is four kilometers high (effectively - you can go higher, but can't really build above 4Km), which has it's own issues, or you get multiple sims and spread out. The problem with that, of course, is the sheer cost of it. Sims run in cost from less than $100 a month for an "Open space" to around $300 for a full performance version. That's a lot of money to dedicate to gaming.

While there are alternatives to Secondlife using OpenSim, the open source version of the Secondlife server, there's not a lot of people there and you'd have to recreate many of the objects, textures, scripts, etc., that we have in the main Secondlife grid. The upside would be the fact that sims are dirt cheap, like $50 a month for full performance, or less if you have the capability of running your own.

Yes, I've considered it.

Cost aside, there's the issues of physics, limited prim counts, limited terraforming, lag issues, player limits, and all the other issues we've come to know and "love" in Secondlife.

Now, it may sound like I'm just bitching about the limitations of Secondlife, and I'm not. Well, not exclusively. I'm ultimately pointing out some of the known issues that keep it from being the ultimate RP platform. On the plus side, there's the radical customizability of your avatar, a very versatile (though limited in some key areas that would be useful to us) scripting system, and the ability to build some pretty elaborate sets to suit your needs.

How does this relate to us as players in a virtual environment?

The most important thing to remember is that what you see may not really be what you get. Examples?

• The entrance to the mines are really a couple kilometers away, rather than 120 meters from the bar.
• The tunnels leading from the mines actually go out into the wilderness, and go deep, rather than running under the church as they appear to.
• There really are four hundred people living in town and not just the dozen or so player characters you see.
  
• Some doors are locked, whether they're coded that way or not.
• Just because someone's combat meter says "Noble" or "Mutant" or "Mercenary" doesn't necessarily mean your character knows that - or it's even accurate.
  
• The Colonial Viper isn't really a Colonial Viper. It just looks like one - because it's what we have.
• The person's name you see floating over their head may not be who they're actually playing at the moment. Remember, not everyone is going to create a different avatar for each character they play.
• The space station is really in orbit and not at 2500 meters as it appears.
• The completely out of place Darth Vader avatar isn't really there (unless someone's wearing a Vader costume in-character. Which would just be weird.)

You get the idea. We have to adapt what we see to what should actually be there. When it's something obvious it's usually easy to treat it as the Designer/GM/Admin intended, rather than what you're seeing on screen. When it's more subtle it can be harder. But that's where the GM's and the experienced players come in.

Secondlife gave us a versatile but limited platform. It's up to us as players, and GM's, work within those limitations and create an environment we can all share in. Even when it means ignoring what we see on screen and accepting what we're told is real.

Playing the Game: Cooperative Storytelling

It's been a while since I've done an entry here, and I admit it's overdue. Of course, I haven't done an entry in Children of Earth in a while either. But that's neither here nor there. This is about gaming and now I'm going to shift away from Firefly Canon for a post or two and talk about Role Playing in a collective environment like Secondlife.

Role Playing in Secondlife ain't your grandpa's RPG.

Every RPG rule book has a little blurb in the beginning that talks about what Role Playing is and what you can expect from that particular game. It usually runs at least a couple paragraphs, up to a couple pages, and is the same real concept no matter who's writing it or what setting they're in. It boils down to you're one character in a cooperatively told story, and the Game Master is directing the action for everyone.

Simple, really.

Most pencil and paper RPG's also come with a ton of back story, resource materiel, game mechanics, and everything else you need to play a coordinated, cooperative, story with your friends. In our Secondlife setting, we don't have all that.

While the overall campaign setting is based on the 'Verse and its Canon, which I've been writing about, our individual settings are unique and were developed by a number of very creative people. Like a lot of conventional games, we've taken what was originally published and run with it in various directions.

What we're usually lacking, is game mechanics. While some areas might use a dedicated "combat meter" for first person combat, many areas, and players, don't. Game mechanics, such as they are, are usually very abstract and revolve around agreements not to metagame, god mod, be a dick, etc. It puts an emphasis on the Cooperative part of Cooperative Storytelling. It's a style of gaming sometimes referred to as Freeforming.

Another aspect that puts an emphasis on Cooperative is that the role of the Game Master is often very different in a Freeform environment. Where the GM in a conventional RPG is effectively required, in our's they serve more as moderator when a disagreement arises between players than as the driving force of most stories.

Yes, there are some stories that are Game Master run, but overall most of the story arcs we encounter were spawned by other players.

Getting good Player Generated story arcs can be somewhat tricky, since there's no one Game Master to maintain a balance between keeping everyone involved, maintaining the flow, and making it exciting for everyone. Again, it comes back to the whole cooperation thing. Working with people behind the scenes and telling whoever's "in charge" of the environment - be they a server admin or GM - can go a long way to making the story work for all involved.

But those points are important. Most players have a natural desire to tell their character's stories, where a Game Master is usually telling a broader story. Properly done, gaming is more like a well developed TV show, where there may be a star, but the rest of the cast is important too. The difference, of course, is that an actual Game Master has a responsibility to keep everyone interested and involved where a Player generating Story doesn't. What the 'Player as GM' should be doing, is giving people the opportunity to get involved and have the flexibility to let the story flow as more people add their characters to the mix.

It's not always easy.

Tips? First and foremost, be flexible. Sure, you may have things that're important to the arc you're working on and you may not want to let another character mess that up, whether it's rescuing you from the baddie, taking a bullet, or killing the baddie in his sleep. Sometimes, your carefully laid plan gets a crowbar tossed in it. When it does, think like a Game Master, not a Player. It's not just your story.

Another option is to bring the other player(s) in on your arc. If they know that you need to be shot, or kidnapped, or lost in space, or something, they.re much more willing to work with you than if you keep them in the dark and treat them as Extras.

Also, there's things that can be taken off-camera. Sure, you were rescued by the Other Heroes and that messed up the kidnapping that was part of the larger arc, but you can work around that. While it may not be as exciting in real-time, from a story perspective it's just as workable to have the baddies somehow execute their plan while everyone else is asleep. You snuck out and went for a walk and didn't tell anyone and bang, you're caught. Story goes on, and the other characters don't feel like props.

Loading the Canon: A leaf on the wind

"I'm a leaf on the wind. Watch how I soar."

"What does that even mean?"

Unlike a lot of Role Playing Gamers, my home genre, so to speak, was Science Fiction, not Fantasy. While I'd been exposed to classic Fantasy fare like AD&D, I cut my gaming teeth on SciFi. To me, one of the best things about Firefly from a story standpoint was that I was able to easily suspend disbelief and get into the story in spite of the SciFi aspects of it being peripheral to the story.

As I've noted in other posts in this series, the Science, when we see it, is actually fairly well done. Silence in space. EVA suits. Ships that feel like more than just a backdrop. Honestly, I would take Serenity over Enterprise any day of the week. The details, when they had any, were nicely done. For someone who actually liked messing around with the details, it said a lot that I fell in love with the series without them.

But then, it was about the characters and not about the ships.

Ships though, are the main topic of this post. Last time, we talked about Electronic Warfare and communications. This time, I'm going to touch on ships and how they maneuver. Or don't, as the case may be.

In the pilot episode, we see Serenity cross paths with a Reaver transport on a run between worlds. When you watch the scene, the crossing velocities appear to be pretty slow. Now, that's a requirement of dramatic television. If we showed the actual crossing velocities, you'd miss it if you blinked. That's how fast the ships must be going to cover any sort of distance in useful time frames.

This is actually somewhat contradictory because we know Serenity's main drive (The "Boom! drive" as I like to call it) gives a pretty impressive initial kick. Though, it appears that may be ALL it gives. At least from what we see. They spin up the core and dump it all at once in a massive pulse, giving the characteristic "Boom!" and then they coast for the rest of the flight. Why I say it's contradictory in the pilot image, is because the crossing speed should be a good deal higher than it appears.

Why do I say that? Simple. Visually, it looks like the boats are crossing at maybe fifty miles an hour. Tops. Possibly a lot slower. For an interplanetary trip, the ships have to be moving a LOT more than 50 miles an hour. They really need to be moving at thousands, if not tens, or hundreds, of thousands of miles an hour.

For the ships to have an apparent crossing speed of even a hundred miles an hour, they would have to be flying in pretty much the same direction! As an audience, of course, we ignore it. We're used to seeing it in SciFi TV shows and movies. We suspend disbelief and accept that the Reavers are cruising past at low speed and we don't care.

Could they have been traveling in the same direction, so the crossing speed was what it appeared to be? Of course they could have. But common convention has the nose of the ship pointing in the direction of travel. That's standard, and we see no reason to break it here. The Reaver looks like it's on a crossing course, not flying backwards on a very similar course, which is reinforced in later dialog.

Earlier in the pilot, when Serenity has just escaped from the Dortmunder, we get the impression that the Alliance gunboats lack the performance to real in the escaping Firefly and still catch up with the Cruiser that's about to mosey off to answer a distress call. There's actually a number implications in that scene that are significant from a technical/gamer standpoint, but were obviously done to advance the plot.

Other examples of "Drama > Reality" in the 'Verse are several of the scenes involving the Reaver fleet in the BDM. When Serenity first encounters the Swarm, they cruise through the midst of it at what looks like freeway speed at best. Never mind they should be decelerating into their approach for Miranda. In that scene they're going slow and in a nose first attitude, indicating they're in standard Coast Mode flight - having established the Boost and Coast flight model in the series itself.

There's a lot of implications that were ignored for Story sake. Serenity needed to do the low speed pass to establish how large the fleet was, give us a chance to see them tearing other people's boats apart, and generally add a bit to the overall Reaver creepiness factor. The scene worked from a plot standpoint, if not a technical one. We could probably over-analyze this, or make up all sorts of technical reasons it was still "right," but we're not going to. We're going to admit that Joss got the science wrong, because he didn't care and the plot was more important, and the scene was there strictly for Story and not because it was technically accurate.

One the way out from Miranda, we see a couple of things. One: the "Itty bitty cannon" is capable of blowing a Reaver ship to bits with a single hit at close range. We DO mean close range too. Mal is barrel sighting that shot. It really is as close as it looks. Which kind of makes you wonder why the Reaver pilot wasn't saying "Ai ya, hwai leh! They've got a Gorram cannon!" They were close enough he should have seen the bloody thing!

In any case, none of the Reaver boats return fire after that first shot. Wash just punches it and then, point two: The entire Reaver fleet takes off after them. Watch that scene again, and for amusement sake, notice the one Reaver boat that seems to be doing a wheelie when it punches it, and then notice how little time it takes for what whole fleet to drag up and tear off after Serenity. It's like the entire squadron was ready for them to play rabbit. While it's implied the Reavers like to run down their prey, it seems a bit much to expect that entire fleet to go off after them!

But that was part of the story. Mal said it: "They won't see this coming." Story here demands the entire Reaver fleet take off after them and they do. So it is written, so it shall be.

Finally, the third point here. When they arrive at Mister Universe's "private planet" the Reaver fleet is still in more or less the same relative position they were in when the punched out of Miranda's orbit. Or Lagrange point. Or wherever the hell they were floating around sending out raiding parties. The point being they never closed the gap with Serenity and, notable for a number of reasons, the entire formation seems to be pretty much intact. It's like they ALL had exactly the same acceleration impulse and kept the same relative position through the entire flight.

From a story standpoint, it made perfect sense and led to the closest thing to an epic space battle we ever see in the 'Verse. From a technical standpoint, it made absolutely no sense. There was absolutely no reason ever presented for the ships to have the same acceleration, same "cruise speed," and same overall performance. It's another example of "The story is more important than technical accuracy." And you know something? I don't mind. I love the movie anyway. But from a technical gaming standpoint? Ugh.

Where does this leave us for Canon as gamers?

If we were doing this as a pencil and paper or a moderated on-line game, we could easily incorporate ships moving at different speeds, having different performance levels, ranges, accelerations, etc. It's how I would run a game live. Some ships would be faster than others, and you might find yourself having to deal with getting some place ahead of or behind someone else. Chases might matter.

But then, they might not. We'd want to keep the focus on the characters and their interactions and not on the ships. So the solution becomes something like this. . .

In most cases, flight speed doesn't matter. Characters will arrive when they need to for Story sake.

If there is a chase, there's three options.
1: If story demands the "guys being chased" need to escape, they escape.
2: If story demands the "guys being chased" need to be caught, they get caught.
3: If story demands the "guys being chased" don't quite get away, both sides arrive at the final destination at roughly the same time, so as to increase dramatic tension.

Space battles have a very similar set of options.
1: If story demands the "good guys" win, then they win.
2: If story demands the "good guys" lose, then they lose.
3: If story demands the"good guys" fight to a draw, then it's a draw.

Noticing a theme here?

The second part of this goes as follows.
1: If the "loser" is a minor NPC (a Mook, or other character no one cares about) they die.
2: If the "loser" is a Player Character or Significant NPC, they limp away to crash land on a conveniently placed asteroid, planet, or moon, in order to lead into the next part of the story.
3: If the "loser" needs to be captured, rather than escaping as above, then they're captured and the story flows from there.

Ok, I admit. This was more GM/Plot focused than Canon focused here, but Canon doesn't really give us much to work with. If we go straight by what we see in the series and movie, we're left with a technically weak "everyone goes the same speed" situation that makes the technical players brain's hurt.

Secondlife itself adds some layers here, since it's almost as bad a flight simulator and space combat simulator as it is an FPS combat simulator. So my take an canon and RP? Just go with the flow. Treat everything in the context of the story and if players want to argue about who's ship is really fastest, let them. A GM can sort it out. Because, ultimately, this isn't about the ships, it's about the characters.

Loading the Canon: Stopping the signal

As has been, and will be, often mentioned, Firefly was a Western in Space. It wasn't a spaceship show. While spaceships sometimes played a very important part of the stories, the tech behind it pretty much didn't matter. "I need that in Captain Dummy talk, Kaylee." was more than an amusing quote. It was the approach to technology in the entire series. Firefly spared us the Treknobabble by simply treating tech they they had in Westerns of old. The Duke never bothered to explain how the Winchester worked. He just pulled the trigger and killed the bad guys.

Now, the lack of detail can be a mixed blessing for Gamers and Technical Geeks alike. On the one hand, you don't get bogged down in the particle of the week and can avoid stories that involve finding creative was to abuse established tech. On the other, you don't have anything to work from when you do need some technical detail and are forced to wing it.

There are a lot of different aspects to technology overall, some of which I've already touched on, and some I'll probably never worry about. But for this entry, I'm going to take a look at one of the vaguer parts of the 'Verse: The world of Electronic Warfare.

Ok, well, technically, it's not really all EW. It's just where it would generally fall on an MOS or Game System skill tree. I'm talking, of course, about sensors and communications.

The flight deck of Serenity, and I would assume any other Firefly of the same vintage, always struck me as looking like the flight deck of a 60's era Soviet bomber. Lots of switches and knobs. Not a lot in the way if fancy displays. In fact, I seem to remember reading somewhere that the flight seat on the Firefly set was actually taken from a Douglas DC6. The feel was very utilitarian.

This utilitarian feel was quite evident in some of the instances where they're sending or receiving a wave from the flight deck. The screens are small, and the images seem to be of fairly low quality. A good example is Mal talking to Patience in the pilot episode.

This might have been something unique to the Firefly class ship, or at least to 'flying delivery van' class transports in general. The displays on the Alliance ships seem to be better, though they actually seem less sophisticated than the displays found in the combat control center of a modern early 21st century warship.

But the relatively primitive displays flow right into what appears to be equally primitive sensors. There's a number of times in the series where it looks like you'll find better radar in a State Trooper's patrol car than you'll find in a typical spaceship. Serenity's sensors seem to be weak, at best. In "Our Mrs Reynolds" the sensor array was able to identify the "Net" not too long before it came into visual range. In the pilot episode, they detect the IAV Dortmunder not too long before she's almost on top of them. How far? We never really know, because this is a Western in Space and they don't usually talk about such things. But the implication was that they were awfully damn close.

In that same episode, we see that the sensor arrays on an Alliance cruiser are, essentially, gao se. They don't pick up Serenity until after Wash has had a chance to power down. To their credit, they do initially pick up the thermal signature, and are then able to quickly identify the class, but still. They're a ship of the line. You'd think they'd have better sensors!

Even worse for the Alliance, is they have absolutely terrible ECCM capabilities. That's Electronic Counter Counter-Measures. Serenity kicks off the Cry Baby and the Dortmunder's sensors are completely fooled. They do the same thing again in the BDM when escaping with Inara, indicating that it's not just the Dortmunder that's got crap for sensors. Either that, or the electronics in the Cry Baby is so far in advance of anything the Alliance has to counter it that the Fleet needs to rethink their whole EW budget.

Another example? The vultures operating the Net in Our Mrs Reynolds don't notice the approaching Serenity until she was almost on top of them. Though, given the apparent sophistication of that particular installation, it's no surprise their sensors also sucked. In the episode "War Stories" we get to see just how bad the sensors are on Niska's skyplex. The mook on duty in the control room there didn't get an alert on the approaching Serenity until she was growing rapidly on one of the external cameras. That was kind of like looking out the window to see someone about to drive a semi tractor through your front door.

So, what does this leave us for Canon? Well, it leaves us confused, actually. It appears from everything we see in series that ship's sensors aren't a lot better than they were on Earth that Was in, say, the 1950's. There's a few exceptions here and there, but that only adds to the confusion. It's also an opportunity. From the perspective of a Player/Character/GM, you can usually just assume that everyone's sensors are pretty much crap (including your own) and ignore it. Since nearly everything happening in an SL context is going to be at very short ranges, this works out fine. The only time it would come up is when people are RPing across large swaths of the Black, usually off camera.

There's no reason to assume good sensors and such don't exist. Only that they're not exceptionally common, even on large capital ships. This leaves room to play all sorts of Electronic Warfare games. At least for those so inclined.

Did I mention my personal boat In-Character is the ELINT version?

Now, in contrast to sensor technology, the communications technology is quite sophisticated. Where it's firmly established that there is no FTL travel in the 'Verse (ok, actually, it's firmly established in an interview with Joss Whedon, rather than explicitly in the show or BDM) there is FTL communication. We see several cases of interplanetary communication with no delay, explicitly implying FTL comms.

The Cortex, for its part, is their equivalent of our Internet. I'm sure Joss based the Cortex on the contemporary 21st century Internet when he wrote it. The addition of wireless FTL capability extends it deep into the Black. Though there are a few apparent limitations on where the signal can actually go.

In the series, it's just the cortex and FTL communications. But the BDM introduces us to Mister Universe and the simply massive communications station he calls home. It's evident from the dialog that his station can receive pretty much anything transmitted anywhere in the 'Verse. And why not? The dishes are huge! As a transmitter, the station apparently can reach a large swath of the 'Verse simply by punching the signal out so people can listen to it. This is actually kind of contrary to the Cortex as Internet idea, but is rather like having a direct patch into, say, DirecTV's birds. The report gets out and people can see it whether they want to or not.

The Official Map of the 'Verse also includes various comms relay stations around the 'Verse. My guess, since it's never explained, is that they serve very much the same purpose microwave repeaters do in overland communications networks. They receive a signal from somewhere, then rebroadcast it to wherever it's supposed to end up.

How does that fit in with the rig Mister Universe has? No idea. The BDM, and its antenna farm, predates the official map of the 'Verse. There's nothing contradictory about having both a massive communications system like his and the series of Cortex relays noted in the map. There are some story continuity issues, but most of them are items for another blog entry. In this context, we can ignore the story and just focus on the fact that there are some big honkin' communications facilities in the 'Verse (no reason to believe Mister Universe's is the only one) and they're capable of drawing in vast quantities of traffic from across the 'Verse.

There's also the minor question of personal communication. It seems likely that 'Sending a wave' is the equivalent of sending an email, or IM, or vmail, or VoIP call, or whatever, over the internet now. We see people do that all the time. We also see them using some walkie talkies that look like they came from Radio Shack or something. Not the modern FRS radios. More like those really old hand held CB's. They seem positively huge. But they may also be very long ranged. Just because we only ever see them used up close, it doesn't mean they aren't Firefly's answer to an Iridium phone.

What does all this mean for us as Canon from a Gamer's perspective? We can take away several things from this. FTL flight does not exist. FTL communications does. Communications are normally instantaneous, which fits in perfectly for gaming in Secondlife. They are also normally very reliable. Except when they're not, which is almost always when it's required to advance the story. So as players, if we need to kick off a wave to a friend who's half way across the 'Verse, we can. It may violate the known laws of physics. But it doesn't violate Canon.

Loading the Canon: Characters

I'm going to start with a couple of caveats here. First, this is (most importantly) a post on what the series and BDM have presented as "appropriate" characters. Second, this is post is not about any individual characters and very much not about their players. Third, this is strictly a reflection of my view of Firefly cannon. I only mention this because I know it may ruffle some feathers and if I ruffle yours, I apologies in advance.

Yes. I'm going to talk about furries, mutants, constructs, psychics and robots.

I'm actually going to take this in a few stages. There's what we saw in-series. What's implied by other things we saw in-series. And the reality of adapting to a virtual world environment that places no restrictions on what people can do with their AV's.

First: What we saw - the problem

Joss Whedon stated that the 'Verse has no aliens, and no FTL drives. Everyone we see is Human. This includes the Reavers, who are firmly defined in the BDM. Even in the series, Reavers were assumed to have started out as Human.

We never see any mutants. We never see any furs. We never see any aliens. And the only robot we ever see is Mister Universe's "Love Bot" who doesn't appear especially sophisticated. In fact, she appears to be an animatronic version of a modern Real Doll.

We see one, and only one, Esper of any form. That being River. From what we see she is, at best, a low level passive telepath. In fact, most of the time she just appears to be very intuitive and it's only in the BDM that we learn without a doubt that she can read minds.

Her comment "I can kill you with my brain" while provocative, appears to be her messing with Jayne's head rather than a statement of capability. Compared to Espers from other series, River is simply not that powerful. Though given the length to which the Alliance went to recover her, and suppress the secrets she'd learned, she IS powerful in context for the campaign.

Firefly was not a Hard Science Fiction series, but what we do see always seemed plausible. Vacuum kills you. People float around in open space. You need to wear space suits. It's even -silent- in space and the environment itself can make you sick. That, effectively, rules out Mutants in the classic Mutant Character sense.

Radiation doesn't turn you into a mutant. It makes you die. Or at least very sick. If not, there's a good chance your kids will carry some form of mutation which, in reality, is almost guaranteed to be detrimental. Radiation induced mutations are almost always bad, ranging from a predisposition to cancers to horrible deformities.

From a canon perspective, it appears that all the characters are going to be Human. Any race, of course, but all Human. No furs. No mutants (Reavers aren't mutants). No intelligent machines. Espers should be incredibly rare and, compared to, say, a Babylon 5 Telepath, or a Jedi, not very strong.

This is an issue, since we have characters who are all of the above in our ongoing games.

Second: What's implied - a way out?

There's two points in the Series that give us a little flexibility. At least if we're being generous. Namely, the implication that the technology exists to genetically engineer organs that can be carted around in a living body from "The Message."

We don't know the extent of their genetic engineering capability though. From what we see in the episode "Ariel," the medical technology is ahead of what we have now but not miraculously ahead. And remember, in that episode they're in one of the premier medical centers in the 'Verse.

That's actually a contrast to their cold sleep technology, demonstrated on River in the pilot, which seems very compact and effective. But I digress.

Genetic engineering gives us something of an out as far as characters go. If they can engineer organs, it could be stretched into complete organisms. Given the apparent cost of just engineering organs though, it seems likely that engineered life forms would be rare and expensive.

It also lets us stretch to accommodate 'cosmetic reconstruction', which could give us Nekos (almost possible now, actually) up to maybe, if we stretch, allowing altering skin to grow fur, etc. The process would probably be expensive, and rare.

None of it could be considered Canon though. Just plausible given what we know of canon.

It doesn't help the Mutant thing, but it does help with the Furs and we could easily extend the technical potential to allow AI.

Third: It's all a game

Now, it sounds like I'm declaring a lot of character types non-canon. It sounds that way because a lot of character types are non-canon. But, that being said, we're looking at this from the perspective of a game in Secondlife.

We're not playing from a fixed rule book and we're trying to accommodate characters from different regions who might have been built with different assumptions. It's very much like a live (insert Game System here) game where you allow people to play characters from other campaigns that use the same game rules. They don't always fit so well. The basic rules are the same, but the house rules, and assumptions, may be quite different.

Where does that leave us? From a canon perspective, as mentioned above, we're pretty much limited to normal Human characters. A bit of cybernetics here and there or cosmetic alterations are no big deal. But Mutants, Furs, etc., push beyond the edge of canon.

As players and game masters though, it's usually best to be as inclusive as possible. That means allowing characters who push the limits as long as there's at least some justification for their existence. The only time it would become an issue is when the character in question doesn't fit at all, and the player is unwilling to adapt to the environment.

If a character could be reasonably justified, or certain 'shouldn't be allowed' aspects can be ignored, then let it go.

If a character bends things so much that it interferes with other people being able to enjoy playing than it should probably be asked to alter, or leave.

Rant: It's got to be said

First, and most importantly, this is NOT about any of the people we game with. None of them have ever exhibited the behavior I'm going to rant about. Ever. So if you're a regular Hale's / Firefly's player reading this, it's not about you. Seriously.

But it is about Furries.

Personally, I like furs. Some of the art/avatars/models are simply amazing and some of the characters are fantastic. That applies especially to some of the folks who frequent our little corner of the 'Verse. But we're blessed with some exceptionally good players and equally great characters. But not everyone is so lucky.

In over two years, I've only encountered it once on Hale's Moon, but I have encountered it in other RP areas. Namely: people who insist on playing their Fur in whatever environment they're in whether it belongs there or not. Worse, when you call them on it "your anthro wolf really doesn't fit into (insert non-fur campaign here)" they will invariably come back at you with being a "speciesist" and how dare you tell them they can't play (insert inappropriate character here).

Get an fscking grip. Furs do NOT belong in every campaign. I'm sorry, asshole, but your anthro-ferret doesn't belong in the CSI:Fresno game. It's up to you to create a character that's appropriate to the environment, not the environment's responsibility to bend to accept whatever you want to play. "Well I don't play Humans" isn't an excuse. It's a cop out. If you want to play in an environment that doesn't accept furs, THEY are not being "speciesists" for not accepting you. YOU are being a prick for being unwilling to play by the house rules.

Deal with it. Or don't play.

A lot of SciFi games can accommodate a Fur without much work. No reason there couldn't be an alien race that looks a lot like an anthropomorphic housecat. Hell, Star Trek: The Animated Series had an anthro-feline navigator. What they didn't have was magic talking wolf people from Canada. If you're not willing to adapt to the campaign setting, you probably don't belong there.

There. Got that out of my system. It's been lodged in there since the clown on the Trek sim, over a year ago, went off on me at length when he asked if his Canadian anthro-wolf was ok and I told him that a wolf-like alien was probably OK, but an actual walking talking wolf from Earth probably wasn't.

If you don't want to know the answer, don't ask the question.

/Rant

Loading the Canon: Ironmongery

"Boy, it sure would be nice if we had some grenades, don't you think?"

Being a Western in Space, Firefly presented us with a different take on Science Fiction weaponry. Our Heroes used weapons that wouldn't have been out of place in Gunsmoke, or one of Clint Eastwood's "Spaghetti Westerns." They had a fairly nice array of kinetic weapons from Zoe's lever action carbine (similar to a cut down Winchester Model 1892 or a Marlin 1894) to Jayne's beloved Vera. There is a lot of supposition on places like the Firefly Wiki about just why they all use kinetics. In fact, it's a decent resource if you want to look into it. But I digress.

Kinetics seem to be the weapon of choice through the whole series. Our PC's all use kinetics. The Alliance troopers are usually shown carrying kinetics. Even the 'canons' used in Firefly (the anti-aircraft weapon Mal uses in the Battle of Serenity Valley) and Serenity (the one they acquired on Haven) appear to be perfectly conventional weapons. While I haven't been able to find a good reference on-line, the "Serenity canon" appears to be a tweaked-for-film Bofors 40mm/L60. The twin mount from Firefly looks familiar, but I can't find a definitive image or writeup. Maybe Oerlikon 20mm/70's in a twin mount? Regardless, both appear to be conventional kinetic weapons.

There are energy weapons in the campaign, but they appear to be very rare and/or very specialized. We see the Lassiter as an antique, and the laser pistol Burges uses in Heart of Gold as a customized weapon based on a military model. We never actually see the military using these things. In a number of cases we see Alliance security or police forces using some kind of undefined energy rifle that reminds me of a sonic rifle. Though 'rifle' would be an inaccurate term. In any case, we can see from Jayne using one in the episode Ariel that they're utterly useless against a solid object, except maybe as a club.

So from a players perspective, weaponry is mostly going to be limited to conventional firearms that wouldn't be out of place in a modern (early 21st century) setting. Sure, some of them might look a little funny, or have strange attachments, but they're all going to be normal guns. You might encounter some non-lethal stunner type weapons on a core world, or the very rare energy weapon, but guns be guns be guns. Yes, you could probably squeak by something exotic. But why? There's no mechanical advantage to the exotics and you'll save yourself a lot of arguments by sticking with Western themed, or at least Modern themed, weapons.

Body armor is also something that should be touched on from a gamer's perspective. In the series, the only people we see regularly wearing body armor are the Alliance ground forces: the purple motocross armor that gives them their Purplebelly moniker. It doesn't seem especially effective, though that's usually the case with Mook class NPC's. it's like Stormtrooper armor. Why do they bother wearing the stuff? In a live game, it would probably be more effective, but from what we've seen it's just purple and plastic. The only time body armor really does what it should is when Mal is confronting the Operative, and his armor works as advertised.

In-character side note: I've justified the high effectiveness of Sea's armor, when she wears it, based on the armor the Operative wears. IC it's been the justification for not being dead more than once at the hand of a DCS bug.

The only time we see Our Heroes armored up is when they're in their EVA suits, which, arguably, are at least partially armored. In fact, I'd go so far as to say they'd count as reasonably heavy armor in a live game - if we were in a live game. They're vacuum sealed and have various plates in strategic places. Most of the time though, Mal's wearing armor no heavier than his long brown coat and no one else except maybe Zoe is even wearing that much.

Shifting to a player perspective, canon establishes that body armor is available and can be very effective, but doesn't appear to be favored by non-military personnel.

Vehicle weapons are a different story. In the series we see very few armed vehicles. There's mentions of "Rollers" which I would presume are tanks, and the armed gunships used by the Alliance fleet. There's nothing said really about how the rollers are armed, but given what else we've seen it's probably large bore kinetics. The gunships, on the other hand, appear to favor missiles as their primary armament. This is actually logical. Given that these ships can take the stress of reentry and atmospheric flight seemingly without problem, they're probably pretty rugged. Missiles are a perfectly logical ship to ship weapon, giving range, accuracy, and a lot of hitting power, at the expense of a low ammunition load. There may be cannon for close support or short range work, but for actual combat missiles make sense.

Serenity, the BDM, changed that. Or perhaps just gave us a look at a different scale of ship. In the climactic battle between the Alliance squadron and the Reaver horde, we saw a lot of energy weapons employed by the Alliance, and a lot of, well, really wild, improvised, unconventional weaponry employed by the Reavers. Whether this constitutes a "change" to canon or not is unclear. The weaponry in Serenity seems to append, rather than supplant, the weaponry displayed in the series. So, as a GM, I'd say energy weapons are fairly common for large spacecraft, while gunboats and smaller are more likely to be armed with missiles and cannon for close in work.

One strange note on weapons and how effective they are comes from the "Itty bitty cannon" Our Heroes borrowed from Haven. In Shepherd Book's hands it was able to shoot down the gunboat/skiff that had attacked the town. We don't know whether it was multiple hits, or a single lucky shot, or he just damaged it and the pilot screwed up and augured in. What we know is that later a single shot from that cannon was able to demolish a similarly sized Reaver attack ship. That's either some serious firepower, a lucky shot, or the Reaver boats are really, really, fragile. Possibly a combination of all three.

Ultimately, ship to ship combat was never a major part of the campaign. The spectacular space battle in Serenity was a backdrop for the action to happen against, not the focus of the action itself. It was a carefully planned diversion. Our Heroes aren't participating in the battle, so much as using it to cover their desperate approach to Mister Universe's station.

Back to a player's perspective, ship to ship combat is just kind of there. That ships can fight is canon. Fair enough. But they don't do it often, and what people would consider "space fighters" appear to be completely non existent. The smallest ships we see fighting are maybe half the size of a Firefly. If, as a player, you're really into the space dogfights thing, might I recommend going over to Babylon 5 or a BSG sim? They're just not Firefly.