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