With our second session coming up this Sunday, I thought I'd post a summary of the first session of my new Firefly campaign (which uses the ruleset from Edge of the Empire). The summary is primarily intended for my players, so if anything begs for an explanation, just let me know.

Our players are:

• Melody "Mel" Zhu (Alex Kingston), captain of the Wandering Spirits , a Renegade-class medium freighter equipped with distillery and saloon area
• Smiler Grogan (Bruce Willis), hard-edged pilot and former (okay, current) smuggler
• Swindon Gao, nervous mechanical prodigy, fresh off the farm and ignorant in the ways of the Black
• Remy Liang (Martin Freeman), mysterious traveler and keyboard player, full of interesting tidbits
• Edwards (James Marsters), gentleman enforcer (NPC)

Other key characters in this session include:

• Ruby Reyes (Zoe Saldana), woman of mystery
• Rooster Ramirez (Dave Bautista), treacherous crew-mate
• Johnathan Wickham (Colm Meaney), freighter captain

Although not necessarily apparent from this summary, the story overlaps with the movie (the Alliance attack on the space station is actually part of the Operative's "Order 66"). Two different characters from the series appear (not listed above).

Firefly: Wandering Spirits

SEASON ONE, EPISODE ONE (01x01) - PILOT

September 20, 2015

FADE IN:

The Birthday Cake space station, deep in the Blue Sun system. Various crews go about their business.

Outside Lyon’s Den, MELODY “MEL” ZHU, captain of the Wandering Spirits , interviews two new passengers, close-mothed RUBY REYES and mysterious minstrel REMY LIANG. In another part of the space station, SMILER GROGAN and SWINDON GAO, part of MONTY REYNOLDS’ crew, wait with a load of smuggled goods… until crewmates, led by ROOSTER RAMIREZ, hijack it and send them packing.

After Reyes leaves to take care of other business, Mel is joined by her crewman, EDWARDS, “gentleman enforcer” just in time to see a trio of dangerous looking ALLIANCE FEDERAL MARSHALS enter the bar. Trying to call Monty, Smiler hears what happens inside the bar: “Montgomery Reynolds” – BANG! A gunshot – “You are bound by law.”

- END OF TEASER - CUE CREDITS -

As more Alliance soldiers appear, there’s a mad scramble for everyone to get off the space station. Mel and Remy (who has traded a box of premium chocolate bars for temporary passage) head for her ship with a giant box that belongs to Ruby, leaving Edwards behind to cover them and track down their other passenger. They arrive at the ship with relative ease… but neither of them is a pilot, so they need Ruby.

Smiler receives a call from a woman – presumably the recipient of the smuggled goods – who tells him that if he has the goods in hand, he should head to airlock 94. Desperate to get off the station ahead of the Alliance, Smiler agrees, and drags Swindon with him on a desperate plan to recover the stolen goods. They ambush Rooster and, thanks to Swindon’s technical expertise, manage to temporarily electrocute his rowdies. A brief scuffle between Smiler and Rooster ends with Rooster being left behind and promising “This isn’t over, Grogan!”

Mel is surprised when Smiler and Swindon show up at her airlock with a bunch of crates. Edwards is equally confused when he joins the scene, unable to find Ruby. Cracking open the crates, they find that they are apparently filled with mechanical junk, but when Mel realizes Smiler is a pilot, she lets them onboard.

Everyone settles in the escape and Smiler slides into the pilot’s seat – and Ruby calls Mel to say she’s on the way. Although Mel wants to leave, she delays until the last second. Ruby comes running down the hall, pursued by the same trio of Federal Agents from Lyon’s Den. Swindon and Remy try to help distract the agents, who open fire. Reyes goes down in a hail of gunfire as she tumbles into the airlock.

With Ruby onboard, Mel yells for Smiler to go. He launches away to find the area swarming with escaping vessels and Alliance ships. Under Smiler’s sure hand, Wandering Spirits manages to slip away, but not before being peppered by debris from an exploding ship, at least some of which embeds itself in the hull.

- END OF ACT ONE - COMMERCIAL BREAK -

Remy, demonstrating medical expertise, rushes the severely wounded Ruby Reyes to the ship infirmary. He does what he can for her, stabilizing her, but admits that her wounds are severe and beyond his ability. While working on her, she and Mel discover that she has a strange cybernetic implant at the base of her skull. The implant saved her from a kill shot, but was damaged, if not destroyed, in the process.

Mel heads to the cockpit to assess the situation and deal with Grogan (who has been piloting under the watchful eye – and gun – of Edwards). There is some discussion of where to head to find a medical facility where they can drop off Ruby. The ship shudders as a piece of shrapnel rips free. As alarms sound, Smiler quickly shuts the ship down… but not before all the fuel vents into space.

- END OF ACT TWO - COMMERCIAL BREAK -

Since they’re in the middle of nowhere, the prospect of assistance is not likely. Remy steps forward with another piece of unexpected knowledge: he’s seen situations like this before, and theoretically the frozen fuel can be sliced into dangerously explosive chunks and distilled back into a usable form. Smiler, Mel, and Swindon go EVA to salvage fuel and patch up the damaged hull. Remy checks in on Ruby, then works to assist Swindon in the young mechanic’s creation of a system to convert the fuel.

The group is able to process some fuel, but not as much as they were hoping. Smiler realizes he can pretty much point the ship somewhere and coast, but that may be it. So where to head? Edwards, who has been holding down the cockpit, has a possible solution: he’s been talking with the captain of a large freighter stranded in orbit around Tiangong, a moon of Shenzhou, which is generally in the direction Mel wants to head (toward White Sun and Persephone).

The freighter captain, JOHN WICKHAM, is willing to trade fuel and use of his fully-stocked med bay for mechanical help. Exactly what the ship needs? Probably too good to be true, but with few other options, Mel decides to risk it. Smiler points the ship in the right direction, and the crew collapses from exhaustion.

- END OF ACT THREE - COMMERCIAL BREAK -

Two days later, they arrive at Tiangong and are surprised to find not the large ship they’re expecting but a small life raft. After some tense negotiation between captains, Wickham admits that his ship is on the other side of the moon. Mel agrees to pick up Wickham and his crew (two hard-looking men named MISTER MEACHUM and MISTER YATES) in her shuttle. Crowded in, they head around the moon to Wickham’s damaged ship.

As they come around, they see immediately what’s wrong with the large vessel. There’s a smaller ship attached to it:

Reavers!

FADE TO BLACK

I can't express in words how much I appreciate that you shared this. I had wondered how easily this exact conversion would go. I have the Firefly RPG, but it would mean the group learning a whole new system, I actually really love this system, and was seriously considering running Firefly.

Was it fairly easy for your players to get the concepts and make characters in "the 'verse" using this system?

How did you account for the differences in weaponry? Just use the slugthrowers from the books, or re-skin blaster weapons with higher damage as regular guns?

I can't express in words how much I appreciate that you shared this. I had wondered how easily this exact conversion would go. I have the Firefly RPG, but it would mean the group learning a whole new system, I actually really love this system, and was seriously considering running Firefly.

Was it fairly easy for your players to get the concepts and make characters in "the 'verse" using this system?

I think it was pretty easy overall. I mean, Edge of the Empire really IS Firefly! It helped that all of my players are familiar with Firefly and some are big fans. It further helped that since 2002, our group has been rotating between two D&D campaigns and a Star Wars game that used the various WotC editions... so everyone was happy to do something where combat doesn't take four hours.

The new system was a bit of an adjustment (in part because we've become SO accustomed to d20). People really enjoyed the flow of the one actual (minor) combat, but there was some consternation that there was a lot more failure overall than we're used to. Basically, a bit of system shock for the first session, but I think it will be better moving forward.

With respect to character creation, it was very easy, because three of the players had a very specific role they wanted to play (eg, Pilot and Mechanic). Mel's player had a little more of a challenge because she knew she was going to be captain but didn't want to be combat heavy (she was a Jedi guardian in our Star Wars campaign) and also didn't want to be a "face" character (she does that in the D&D game she doesn't GM), so she went through a few different career possibilities before settling on Smuggler.

Some of the biggest issues have differences in "scale", which I'll address in a second...

How did you account for the differences in weaponry? Just use the slugthrowers from the books, or re-skin blaster weapons with higher damage as regular guns?

Oddly enough -- both!

This is going to be really obscure, but if you've watched Firefly, you may have noticed that a lot of the time, when they draw their weapons, there's a hum like a power source. Those weapons (which is most of what the three fighter-types from the crew carry) are apparently "powered coil guns." Although they look old-timey, they're actually high tech!

So, slughthrowers = regular guns (which are still prevalent in the 'Verse) and blasters = coil guns (but no stun setting).

With respect to equipment, I reasoned that most of the cheaper stuff probably has a Firefly version, but I did increase the cost of armor because it seems more prevalent in Star Wars. Healing and recovery is MUCH more difficult (which is intentional, to make the players a bit more cautious, in keeping with the setting) - Bacta doesn't exist, and stim packs are basically illegal drugs.

I needed to change the names of a few skills - primarily the Knowledge skills - and changed the nature of Astrogation a bit because there's no hyperspace travel, but system-to-system travel exists.

Career and Talent-wise, I've actually gone through an entire replacement using Oggdude's generator, and there were very few things that needed to change. Slicer became Hacker, and I renamed a few talents that didn't make sense (for example, I think "Galaxy Mapper" became "Out to the Black").

One of the biggest differences is species, of course. With only humans as an option, I offered the alternative of a "specialist" (a la the Corellians), but only one player took me up on it. Although I was willing to go with any skills, it was only the Pilot who was interested, so we actually have 3 Humans and 1 Corellian Human (or, rather, Kalidasan Human).

Second session:

Firefly: Wandering Spirits

SEASON ONE, EPISODE TWO (01x02) - MONSTROUS

October 25, 2015

FADE IN:

“You’ve just killed us all.”

Mel draws on Captain Wickham, leading to a tense standoff on the shuttle, with both crews pulling weapons. While Mel calls Wickham to task on his deception, Swindon studies the two ships and realizes that the Reaver vessel seems to be dead in the water (Wickham says that his engineers did that – before they both got killed) but that Reavers seem to be working on the bridge of the larger ship. Wickham says that he has “livestock” on the ship that he means to recover, and he knows it’s still safe because it’s in a separate “environment.”

Wickham’s plan to take back his ship doesn’t involve fighting the Reavers, but rather luring them into part of his segmented cargo hold, then spacing them. Remy admits that plan could work, and others add a few suggestions of their own. Although Mel still doesn’t trust Wickham, he has fuel and medical facilities that she needs… and she very much suspects that Wickham’s “livestock” is of a two-legged variety. She signals Smiler to take the shuttle to the rearward engineering section of Wickham’s ship, which seems to be safe of Reavers.

The engineering section is impressively high-tech, largely devised to support a crew with only limited technical expertise. While Mel, Edwards, and Yates load the promised fuel cells onto the shuttle, Smiler cozies up to Wickham to get information, learning that Wickham’s pilot is dead. Swindon and Remy work to refine the plan – the first step of which is busting one of the bridge’s view ports to evacuate as many Reavers as possible – while examining the “Prepackaged Solutions” section of the engineering deck. Remy also tries to hack the ship’s systems, but the computer terminal he’s interacting with is “dumb.”

When Wickham demands a few minutes of privacy, it prompts another verbal confrontation with Mel. These two captains are not getting along. Yates also has a moment of tension when Swindon recognizes that they’re probably from similar backgrounds, a fact that Yates seems to want to forget. Swindon and Remy work to put together a mechanical solution, but they’re interrupted when Meechum yells that there are Reavers at the door! Everyone grabs what they can and runs for the shuttle.

ACT ONE

Smiler sails the shuttle to the bridge, and since there are only two spacesuits, the decision is made that Swindon and Edwards will go EVA. Although panicked by the Reavers throwing themselves at the glass, Swindon is able to deploy a sonic tool to shatter the panel. The air evacuates, along with eight Reavers, one of who grabs Swindon, who keeps his head enough to turn his cutting torch on his attacker.

Inside, Swindon repairs the damaged window while Edwards protects him from one Reaver, but Swindon has to help Edwards close the bridge door to keep another out. In the process, Swindon attempts to hold off the Reaver with his cutting torch, and manages to briefly set Edwards on fire before they slam the door shut, severing multiple Reaver fingers.

Smiler docks the shuttle at the bridge airlock and the group moves in. Remy takes center stage, pulling out his keyboard, which is some sort of elaborate hacking rig, complete with lights and music, which serves as a nice distraction to the bloody-handed Reaver pounding at the door. Although Remy is unsuccessful at trying to access Wickham’s files, he is able to trap and subsequently space the Reavers roaming the cargo hold.

The group opens the bridge door slightly to shoot at the last remaining Reaver. Even though he’s shot multiple times, the Reaver has enough ferocity to force the door open and charge only the bridge. Everyone opens fire, with Mel and Meechum scoring headshots, killing the Reaver and bathing the bridge in gore.

ACT TWO

The two groups split up, with Meechum and Yates taking Swindon, Smiler, and Edmunds to the cafeteria, while Wickham takes Mel, Remy, and the injured Ruby to “the environment.”

The environment is a huge internal block in the cargo hold. Going through an airlock, Mel and Remy are met by “the Nurse,” a brick wall of a woman who takes them to the medical facilities through a strange, white, sterile environment. During the walk, Mel looks through the window of a few of the rooms they pass, confirming her suspicion that the Wickham’s livestock are of the two-footed variety: each room contains a well-groomed by forlorn looking child.

In the cafeteria, the two groups are tense but cordial. After a good meal, Meechum pours everyone a round of drinks – they did survive the Reavers together, after all – then he and Smiler settle in for an almost-friendly game of chess. Yates appears to take a nap, and Edwards has his eye on everything.

Back in the infirmary, Remy and Mel are locked in with the Nurse while they work on Ruby for a few hours. Realizing that there’s stack of paperwork, Remy distracts the Nurse so Mel can get a look. Mel is horrified by what she sees, and immediately indicates to Remy that they need to talk. They fake that they both have to use the facilities. At the bathroom, under the guide of making out, Mel whispers what she discovered to Remy, and he is equally horrified.

They realize the must take action as soon as they return to the infirmary. While Mel fakes a fall to distract the Nurse, Remy injects an intramuscular sedative directly into her vein. Still, the Nurse is a mastodon, and takes a swing at Mel, who, never having been disarmed, shoots her.

In the cafeteria, Meechum’s phone beeps twice. All the men understand what it means. Guns are drawn. Although Edwards as the drop on Meechum, Meechum tags him with two solid hits to take him down. Yates is a little reluctant to shoot these people, she he and Smiler settle for fisticuffs, but with Edwards out of the fight, things are not looking good for Smiler until Swindon manages to short out the lights, plunging the scuffle into darkness and saving Smiler from Meechum’s bullet.

ACT THREE

Leaving Remy to figure out how to get the children out, Mel heads for the bridge. It’s deserted, but the video feeds there, as well as the still-smoking cigar, tell her that Wickham has been watching everything. Knowing that she didn’t pass him on the way here, he’s not likely at the environment, so she heads for the infirmary.

In the environment, Remy manages to hack into the Nurse’s com-link and figure out how to open all the doors. Now, he has a different problem: one hundred kids in various states of shell-shock and stress. Remy convinces them he’s there to help, and manages to get some of the more self-possessed ones to wrangle the rest and make sure no one is left behind. Bringing the still-unconscious Ruby with him, he is able to hack the codes on the airlock and lead the children out of the environment and into the cargo hold.

At the cafeteria, Smiler gets the drop on Yates with a cheap shot to the genitals, then scoops up his gun to take down Meechum, but not before Meechum shoots Swindon, who has fled the room in a panic. While Smiler convinces Yates to surrender, a wounded Swindon hides in an alcove in the hall and hears a pair of footsteps approaching. When he identifies them as Wickham’s, he hides.

Wickham and Smiler fire on each other. Wickham tags Smiler, but is himself shot by Mel, who advances down the hall at him, a furious angel of vengeance. Caught in a crossfire between Smiler and Mel, Wickham isn’t able to do much but fire blindly. Mel strides up to him and finishes off her fellow captain with a shot to the head.

She moves into the cafeteria, assesses the scene, and looks at Yates. “You knew what was going on here.” When Yates doesn’t deny it, she shoots him, but it’s not a fatal wound. Smiler, not wanting to see the man murdered, cold-***** him with his own rifle, then steps in front of Mel.

She reveals the horrifying truth she learned in the infirmary: Wickham and his crew are abducting and selling children. In the infirmary, she saw paperwork where they were being categorized for how they would provide the best value: “They’re selling them as whores. And for their body parts. And to be eaten.”

Sickened, Smiler steps aside as Mel aims her gun at the unconscious Yates and pulls the trigger.

ACT FOUR

In the aftermath, Mel takes all the children on board her ship, crowded as it is. During multiple trips back to Wickham’s ship, they pillage the larger vessel for supplies that will help with the children, more fuel, and goods that they might be able to sell.

During one of the trips, Smiler decides that he wants Meechum’s guns as a trophy, but Meechum’s body is nowhere to be found. Instead, there’s a rough sketch of a King in blood on the floor, and one of Wickham’s shuttles is missing.

With the ship stripped of most valuables, the crew decides it’s a cursed vessel (already crippled and likely booby-trapped by the Reavers), so they blow it up.

Mel makes it clear that she plans to see each of these children home personally (except in the cases of a handful who were apparently sold to Wickham by family members). No one seems to object. Not surprisingly, based on the quality of his operation, the electronic and hard copy files they nabbed from the ship indicate that Wickham was not a solo operation, but rather part of something larger.

As Wandering Spirits starts the slow process of returning kids home, life goes on in the ‘Verse. The Miranda Broadwave becomes public, leading Remy to lock himself in his room for a few days, and to request Cortex access via the ship’s systems.

Mel has a conversation with one of her associates, DODGER, who says that Badger (who appears to owe the two of them some coin) has disappeared: “It’s getting so you can’t even trust low-life scum anymore.” And Badger’s not the only one. Dodger tells Mel that a whole bunch of their contacts, and other crews they know (the majority of them sympathetic to the Browncoat way of life) have disappeared, or worse, shown up dead. Mel realizes that the Alliance raid she saw at Birthday Cake space station was part of this purge. Dodger notes that it’s unfortunate, but it does open up all manner of possibilities…

Ruby Reyes wakes up, and although she doesn’t admit it, it becomes clear very quickly that she has amnesia, including not knowing her name, or the nature of the shipments she brought onboard Mel’s ship, although she seems to know about the damaged cybernetic implant in her head. With nowhere else to go, she seems content to linger on the ship for a time. Swindon is hot to check out the contents of the three crates he and Smiler brought aboard for her, so he asks Mel’s permission to start examining the junk inside them. Mel herself examines the other large crate, finding a big, empty wardrobe inside. Mel has the wardrobe moved to her room so she can examine it in her own time.

Mel speaks to Smiler, Swindon, and Remy, offering each a spot on her crew. She tells them all “I don’t take kindly to betrayal.” Each has a different reaction to her offer. Swindon accepts, but is afraid he’s done something to offend her. As he says “I don’t even know how to betray anybody!” Smiler says that he shares her sentiment and admits that he had his own crew once upon a time. He too accepts her offer, and agrees that he wants to see the children home safely.

The mysterious Remy has the most interesting reaction. Mel asks him a few pointed questions about himself, which he dodges, then offers a smaller cut that the others (which he guesses to be the case). He asks why he’s being offered eight percent instead of ten, and Mel says he’ll get ten if he shares his plans with her. “You asking everybody else all these questions?” Mel shrugs and smiles. “Nobody else had plans.” Ultimately, Remy decides to stay on the ship as a passenger for now.

With almost every part of the ship filled the children, the newly formed crew looks for ways to speed up the process of dropping them off. Mel is able to hand a some of them off to captains she knows and trusts, and they also meet with Captain Moses, an associate of Smiler’s, who is known for doing the right thing… for the right price. Moses agrees to take a few home as well, for some coin and fuel. With some of the kids starting to get sick from the close quarters, the resources taken from Wickham’s ship are dwindling fast…

By the time a few weeks have passed, about forty of the original one hundred children are gone, either dropped off or sent with other captains. Mel heads down to a small village with Edwards and two children, only to find the village completely deserted.

As Mel looks around, Edwards calls her over to the church, which seems to have served as town center. Nailed to the door is a notice that, due to the impending thread of Reavers in the Blue Sun System, the entire village is relocating to Persephone, thanks to transport offered by the Four Winds of Fortune Transportation Company.

Mel and Edwards look at each other and he says, “Just like the last two.”

FADE OUT