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.