Customer Reviews

Out in the Black (Serenity Role Playing Game)

5 star:		(2)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

This is a fantastic addition to the Serenity RPG. It is half adventure and half sourcebook. If you are a browncoat but not an RPG player, I still believe there is a lot you can get out of this work. One of the favorite recurring characters from Firefly is central to this adventure and it is great to see what sorts of complications she can work up in a different setting. I particularly enjoy the appendix on the authentic old-west card game Faro.

I love this book the serenity RPG is the closest thing at this time to a new movie or series and is full of adventure. RPGs are not infantile as much as the other review says search After Serenity and The Signal in iTunes Podcasts and you will see that I am right

A good adventure. There's a whole lot of detail here and a lot of options for the characters. The writing style is very much in the firefly style and the little historical notes they give show how much research was put into this. It helps with the realism.

Now, the bad parts.
This is a challenging adventure for a DM to run. Right in the middle it loses it's linear flow (Right when the crew gets to frisco) and branches out all over the place. It gives the players a lot of options but it requires the DM to flip through the book at lightning speed.

The organization of the book is a little lacking. It seems good at first glance and is ordered logically but "Logically" doesn't help when you're playing the game. The book is split into two sections, the adventure and the town layout. Right in the middle though, you need both so right off the bat you need to have the book open in two places. Additionally the buildings in the back are numbered up one side the street and down the other. So if you start at the spaceport end of the street on the characters left is location 1 and on their right is location 30. Naturally in the book, location 1 is at the front of the town section and 30 is at the end with 15 pages or so in the middle. Now, the plot is set up so the first time the characters enter the town they'll walk from one end of the street to the other and back (my players did) so you have to flip back and forth through the town section, oh, and naturally, the special encounters section is then after that.

It all feels very natural and organized when you read through it. It's not until you play it that you realize that you need to have the book open to four places at any given time and none of them are next to each other.


There is a well known and interesting character from the main show in this adventure. As a warning, this character is an absolute bitch to play properly. (And really, any DM will want to play the character properly as the character is incredibly entertaining.) It's just not easy.

Finally, the overarching plot isn't well integrated with the rest of the story. There isn't anything that really hooks the players into the Lucias Newberry and lets them believe they might actually find it. My players basically said `Our characters hear of a mysterious lost treasure ship? Who's going to pay attention to those old rumors?' The story turned into three adventures rather than one overarching one.

All that being said, I give this adventure 4 stars because it was incredibly fun, I only knocked a star off for the organizational reasons. A lot of the weaknesses presented above are actually strengths as well. This adventure does NOT try to lead the characters around by the nose, it presents interesting and well developed NPCs, it gives those NPCs realistic motives and a clever backround plot. All of this gives the players a lot of options on how they want to proceed. However, as the old RPG adage goes, the more options the players have the more work the DM has to do.

Adventure idea was solid and has a great deal of potential for fun. The way the module is put together is disjointed and hard to follow at times. Novice players will have trouble GMing it. Loved basic idea and history it had. Not finished running through it but look forward to my next session.Firefly - The Complete Series

This is a good adventure for Browncoats who RPG. Love the verse and love the game.