so i've been toying with getting one of the whedon-themed games as a way to introduce my wife to role-playing games. has anyone gathered enough experience playing the Buffy, Angel and Serenity games to offer perspective? imagine if you are a complete novice and aren't comparing it to d20 or some other system - are any of these games worth the effort of learning? how irritating are they to people who do use d20? okay and also, that game master's screen is purty, there it's even a truly topical comment.

[ edited by Scotto on 2006-03-02 02:55 ]

Scotto | March 02, 04:42 CET

Buffy and Angel from Eden Studios both use Cinematic Unisystem, which needs a one-page character sheet, one kind of dice (ten-sided), and I've been able to explain the basics to people entirely new to RPGs as players in under ten minutes. The GMing advice is rock solid as well, and the Buffyverse is a setting rife with possibilities. Angel has more optional demonic powers and rules for organisations, and is the more "rounded" game, but Buffy does everything it needs to. There's an introductory "quickstart" adventure and rules sampler at BBC Cult.

Serenity from MWP uses a variant of the Sovereign Stone system, where skills and attributes go up by dice type rather than just a number - so it needs a whole lot of different kinds of dice. It has no quickstart, and there's no index, starting adventure or official character sheet in the rulebook, which is something of a mark against it for pick-up-and-play usefulness.

I ran Serenity okay for three months. I've been running Buffy solidly for three years. Much of this may be down to players, but I haven't run out of Monsters Of The Week yet.

(I haven't noticed them irritating d20 users, but d20 games often irritate people who gravitate towards "rules-light" systems like them...)

[ edited by Craig Oxbrow on 2006-03-02 04:40 ]

Craig Oxbrow | March 02, 06:40 CET

I've never played an RPG before...and yet I'm interested.

Gotta check it out.

UnpluggedCrazy | March 02, 07:34 CET

The Serenity RPG is pretty awful as far as RPGs go. But I want the poster anyway. ^__^

Ginny | March 02, 10:09 CET

The screen was £10 at my friendly local games store (Black Lion Games, Edinburgh). The poster is right nice, glossy, not particularly thick paper though. The screen's nice as well.

And the RPG's adequate (the way of getting Plot Points back by activating your own character's disadvantages is pretty clever, and it looks great). Shame about the index, character sheet, etc. etc.

Compared to the Buffy RPG, though... I'd take the latter onto a desert island.

Craig Oxbrow | March 02, 13:03 CET

posted by Craig Oxbrow:



Good news ~ An official Serenity RPG character sheet is in the works, and will be available for download through the website sometime later this month.

Also, a "QuickDraw" version of the game is in progress and hopefully will be available sometime in the near future. It will be both available for free download, and also for free at conventions. The "QuickDraw" was begun last year, but got sidelined in order to complete the main RPG.

There's lots of shiny things still coming. So glad you're playing and enjoying the game.

11thHour | March 02, 16:30 CET