Where to start?

I've been gaming for a long time now, and there's a lot of areas to talk about. Since this is a fork from my existing "Firefly in SecondLife" efforts, I'll try and concentrate on the 'Verse as an RP campaign and SecondLife as an environment for gaming rather than try and cover everything. I won't promise I'll be able to stay that tightly focused but I'll do my best.

The problem is, where to start. I could delve into SL itself, but it would be hard to come up with anything that was useful and didn't sound like a bitch session. We all know the frailties and limitations of SecondLife as far as an RP environment goes, so why rehash? So, discarding the first couple of drafts that looked at it, I'll shift to the 'Verse as a campaign environment.

Now, for the record, I'm not a generic Joss Whedon fan. While I absolutely loved Firefly and Serenity, and enjoyed what little of Dollhouse I saw, I didn't particularly like either Buffy or Angel. Though that is more because of the subject matter than anything else. In summary: Too much Buffy. Not enough Slaying. Even Joss Whedon can't make the undead into appealing characters in my eyes.

But the 'Verse felt alive. The main characters were wonderful, and Serenity herself was as much a character as the rest of them. I'd go so far as to say Serenity felt more 'real' than any other ship I've seen in SciFi. Anywhere. Yes, the Eagles from Space: 1999 and the Star Fury fighter from Babylon 5 are probably the most 'likely to actually work' ships shown. They just lack Serenity's feel. Unlike Enterprise (any of them), Red Dwarf, Agamemnon, or almost anything else, you could picture what it would be like to live aboard Serenity. She was real. The only ship I can think of that even comes close was, maybe, Millennium Falcon, and even that's a stretch.

While I admit my first reaction to the "A Western in Space" premise was "You're shitting me. That'll suck!" I found myself drawn into the characters and their setting. Firefly was great from the word go. It didn't matter than the ship had no guns or FTL drive. It didn't matter that there were no aliens. It didn't matter the setting was, other than artificial gravity and the interplanetary drive, decidedly low tech. I was hooked.

The characters and their setting made it very easy to suspend disbelief, which is crucial for any SciFi to succeed. The stories were such that the tech didn't matter. The fact that the 'Verse was barely outlined beyond planets having names and people living on them didn't matter. The characters mattered. It was only when you started to try and figure out where things where in relation to other things that the lack of detail made life difficult.

I've always had a tendency to look at SciFi TV shows and Movies from the perspective of 'Would that be a fun campaign?" I've been known to refer to shows as the " campaign." Some things lend themselves well to a gamers adaptation. Others, not so much. Firefly and the BDM had a lot going for them in that regard, but also had a few issues.

Until the release of the "Official Map of the Verse" there was really very little information on what was actually where. There were occasional references to how long it would take to get from one place to another, but from a gamer's perspective you needed a little more. Joss could say it took ten hours to get from Greenleaf to Haven, or something, but a GM really needed more.

There was a bit of Fan speculation about how the 'Verse was laid out before the release of the Serenity RPG, which had its own, unofficial, map. The Official map contradicted most, if not, of the fan work and the RPG source material. It's really a work of art, but added some problems of its own. The orbital mechanics and steller brightness are issues for future blogs, but suffice it to say that there's a lot that doesn't work.

The other thing that was never addressed in the series was exactly how all the planets could end up with the same gravity and atmosphere, regardless of size, relative distance from their respective star, or whatever. It was never touched on, because it didn't matter to the stories. But for a more hard core Sciency SciFi, it's something that leaves you scratching your head. Though, like the orbital mechanics, the Terraforming issues are something for a future post.

Finally, there's the government. The UAP in the Series was presented in a much different light than they were in the BDM. While Mal and Zoe fought for the Independents in the war, and were trying to stay clear of them whenever possible through the show, we never get a really good feel for why the Alliance was so bent on Unification. And what the results of that unification were once the war was over. In the BDM, we see a much darker side of the Alliance as presented by the Operative of the Parliament. But again, we don't know much.

They are not the Evil Empire. That much was actually clear from the series.

So, what do we have?

From a campaign perspective, we've got the Core Worlds that let us play in a cleaner, more high tech, environment. The Core is more or less safe and sterile and could actually generate a lot of interesting settings for characters to play in. At the other end, we've got the Rim worlds. For the most part, the Rim was presented as much like the Olde West. Things weren't so shiny and clean. There wasn't a lot of wealth, or tech. The law was often somewhat flexible, depending on who was enforcing it for whom.

All in all, that's the makings of a great campaign setting. There's a good mix of environments. A range of technology and social levels. But things are never so wildly different, or so far away, that the players can't get a grasp on things.

Is it going to work for everyone? No. Probably not. But after over two years RPing in SL, it's the one campaign environment I've come to call home. It's the one "commercial" campaign environment I'd run games in live. And that says a lot.