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Firstly,

OMG SPOILERZ LULZ XP

When I heard that Serenity was getting a role-playing game, my first reaction was "Yes! Hot damn! Eden Studios got the rights to another Joss Whedon rockout!" But then it turns out that Eden's plate is a mit full and Serenity was git by someone else.

Well, I'll admit I was rather hesitant/horrified at first, but really, it'd be unfair to lump in everything a director's done with one game company. But Cinematic Unisystem just seems the system to beat when it comes to dramatic human-to-low-superhuman level dramatic action, and, well, I like it. Amply. And Serenity's system is similar to CiniUni, so comparisons are likely inevitable.

Can a scrappy underdog system hope to compete with its siblings from another company? Will a game with conspicuous omissions still manage to make the grade? Will my knuckles crack unnervingly loudly again? We'll find out after the line break.

Take me Out to the Bla'ack, Take Me Out to the Crowd. Buy Me Peanuts and Cracker Pax, Tell 'em All That I Ain't Comin' Back.

And we're back. The knuckle-crack thing ended up a "no."

The book is about as big as its older sister and brother, and is laid out in a similar manner: big flashy title, lots of cast photos, upfront attitude and what have you. (Should comparisons to the Buffy and Angel games come up later, they'll be abbreviated B/A.)

Flipping through one can see it's a smallish page count, and more to the point, one can see there is neither an index or a character sheet, but rather an ad for a Dragonlance novel that makes me want neither a Dragonlance book nor that weird totally blank last sheet of paper. We'll discuss this later.

While such a glaring omission would turn off some readers entirely, the book's size means a lack of index doesn't cripple the whole work.

The actual page layout is nice, easy on the eyes, with earth tones and some fairly cool fonts. It's full color, with screenshots from Serenity forming the majority of the illustrations, and some decent art where a screenshot wouldn't apply. Many soon notice there aren't any shots from Firefly, or any quotes from Firefly, and, in fact, that all references to Firefly are smuggled in the text like contraband lacquered frogs from Mexico. This is due to a cluster-bang of liscencing issues I'd really hate to reiterate.

Welcome to the 'Verse, Here's Your Four Page Intro.

The book opens with the chapter "Here's How It Is," and "Here's How It Is" kicks off with straight-from-the-presses summary of "Roleplay Whatis!". Good for Serenity fans just discovering roleplaying games, a little stock for the rest of us.

After a stately photo of the cast of Serenity comes the crewe of this crazy craft. Here we get a nice and firm look at the system, a servicable package deal ala B/A and World of Darkness. There's six stats, Agility, Strength, Vitality, Alertness, Intelligence, and Willpower, and if you've played RPGs at all you have what they do encoded into your very soul. Skills and stats are rate not in numbers but in dice size. It's not a new thing, but it's still a fun thing, as it makes for some weird cool die pools.

The character descriptions are cool and thurough, and most of them seem accurate. The characters are arranged by rank, not alphabetical order, so we get Mal, then Zoe, Wash, Jayne, Kaylee, Inara, Book, Simon, and the everlovin' River Tam. River Tam is the only hiccup in the stats, because River's stats are limited to the Big Damn Hero point total (more on that later). Thus, River, who is described as being leagues ahead of her bro Simon, is a mere +d2 higher than him.

(A sidebar reccomends dividing a d6's roll to get a d2, or numbering a blank d6 with only 1s and 2s, but never bring up that a coin is the traditional two-sided die. How odd.)

Admittedly, the author notes that River's just not as hard-core in the game as the movie so that she can keep up with the others. A set of "let's take the kid gloves off and get to face smashing" stats'd be nice.

"Well, my days of not taking you seriously are certainly comin' to a middle."

-Mal

And now comes character creation.

Chapter 1: Find a Crew gets to the point quick. I like that. There's three levels of power: Greenhorn, Veteran, and Big Damn Hero, each stronger than the last. Somewhat inconveniently the point totals mentioned don't include how many Skill Points you get, although it's easy to remember (your basic stat points +20) and mentioned in the Crew Creation sidebar. That you can't be a tentacle-studded monster or anthropomorphic whatsit is mentioned politely under "Race."

The attribs are typical, and the point costs are easy to calculate. Health is an odd point with me, as I'm wondering if characters have too many hit points. Seeing as how characters in Serenity tend to not die in one shot unless hit by something, like, say, a Reaver harpoon bolt. Ahem.

Traits and Skills are in Chapter 2, creatively titled "Traits and Skills." Traits are divided into Assets and Complications, and are divided into two levels. The minor level always costs or gives back 2 points; the major level, 4. Some are always Minor (Amputee, weirdly) or Major (Blind, understandably). The point costs are pretty easy to remember, and given that funky superpowers in Serenity are about limited to super-awesome-kickassery and reading (both are covered), there's no need to complain about the mainly mundane assets/complications.

Curiously, the only traits that require GM approval to take are Reader (understandable) and Registered Companion (also understandable). This, despite the Wears a Badge trait seeming like a candidate for goddess, uh, trouble, especially if everyone else is a rapscallion of some kind.

Skills are well-handled in the game--there are 23 broad-ish skills and they're quite well-described. Players are encouraged to find new specialties, and I did my first within minutes of making my first character, a vengeful chemist. Thanks, Medical Expertise! Some sucker in the future is gonna get mega-tox't with my Horrible Horrible Poisons specialty.

"Captain, can I have some money for a slinky dress?"

-Wash

Chapter 3: Money and Gear covers the equipment of the 'Verse and the convuluted moneys theirof. Hey, Credits AND platinum coins! How retro. The price lists are actually fairly useful--you can really play a penny-pinching crew of starving fellows drifting through space, just like your heroes Mal, Spike, and possibly Gene! (I'm not the only one that likes Gene, right? ...right?)

Yay, the laser pistol is here and it's totally illegal but soooo affordable! It' the most damaging small arms weapon around, about as much as a shotgun. Exactly why does a sniper rifle only deal d8 damage, though? That's... puzzling.

If you want your own love bot, that's here for an affordable 1,960 creds, and an illustration of the heartbreaking OMG MR. UNIVARSE IS DEAD T_T scene, vastly out of place. Also, a guide to Newtech! Certainly you want a Gravity Cane, right? I mean, it's a cane you can fly with! You'll be like Mary Poppins, but Indian style. Cuz Mary Poppins didn't have a Gravity Cane in one hand and an assault rifle in the other.

Chapter 4, Boats and Mules, handles Boats and also Mules. The ship you travel with is treated like a character, baby yes! You can design ships just as easily as you create spiffy characters. I like a lot. Lots of premade ships are available, including a basic model Firefly and the Serenity itself, for you who want to find the original crew, explode them, and procede to Mary Sue your way to king of the 'Verse alongside Queen Inara. Or if you'd rather not, you can set up in the Aces and Eights... or, if you're really eager to kill your favorite characters, hitch a ride on an Alliance patrol boat!

"I like smackin' 'em."

-Jayne

Unleash you punch arts upon the world in Chapter 5: Keep Flying. The other chapters open up with fiction about the adventures of the doods from Serenity and the Aces and Eights; this is about Margaret, Sean, Jim, and Renae goin' all outs. Good times!

Quite simply, to do stuff, roll your dice together and add 'em up. Roll high. Handling things is about what you'd expect. We also get Plot Points, which are both XP and drama points, which you can spend to amp up rolls and what have you or to affect the story. While there's not a lot to play with, and you have to spend multiple to do really big things, they're perfectly servicable.

Combat favors skill about as much as weapon damage, which is nice. Uh, okay, that's about it.

It's an immensely average system on, well, average. Nothing you can do with this that you can't do with a variety of other games.

The only complaint I have mechanics-wise is that vaccum damage is treated as instant death, and a reccomended mechanic for actually measuring the damage sustained is taking up all the dice at the table and rolling them together. Which is weird, because Serenity is mildly hard science fiction and people probably don't explode into tomato paste upon exposure to vaccum. Aside from reading up what happens in a vaccum, you're set, mechanics-wise.

"Dear Diary: Today I was pompous and my sister was crazy. (flip page) Today we were kidnapped by hill folk, never to be seen again. It was the best day ever."

-Also Jayne

The Game Master's chapter, Out In the Black, is a good guide to doin' a Firefly-style game; clearly the writer knows his Fireflyry. Besides the average gaming advice and a full clip of stock characters and some old friends and foes. Wanna fight the Operative? You can! Although it might not be a smart idea to make that your first big goal.

Rounding out the chapter be's some premade characters, perhaps inoppertunely placed.

Chapter 7: A Brief Guide to the 'Verse is, uh, a brief guide to the 'Verse. It's a pretty thurough guide to the background and a visual guide to some of the Alliance planets. Oddly, Miranda is given a big presence in one of the astro-maps.

Rounding ot the book itself is an appendix o' Chinese, accents, and other such things. It's good times for everybody. I swear to God I will learn and use some of these. It's my duty to swear at people in a way that they can guess I'm swearing at them, but have no clue that I'm comparing their stew to a pool of pig droppings (joo fuen chse).

Dragonlance C'est Une Hu Li Jing

-I didn't nearly fail French for nothing. Il fait chaude! Il fait froid.

There's no index.

There's no character sheet.

There is a fairly large advertisement for Dragonlance: War of the Brothers, which I'm aware is a new download over at RPG.net. Sadly, it has been soured on me because it took the space of a character sheet and apparently cannibalized the Index for food between the printer and the store shelves.

To be fair, I wasn't always into character sheets--but baby, after photocopying some B/A character sheets one lazy day after school, I've had a hard time going without them. They're just so damn cool. They're like a sheet! For your character!

"Here we go! Final strike!"

-Why the hell am I quoting Megaman X Command Mission?

The book is a well-put-together piece of work. It's pretty. It's readable and decently layed out, and for the most part is well-illustrated. A solid 4.

While a good introduction and guide to Firefly and Serenity on top of a servicable system, I'd have to say that leaving out the index is pretty bad and leaving out the character sheet is kind of missed. A 3 system, a 4 for information, and a 2 complete lack of index averages out to 3.

If you like Serenity, dive in! It's fun and it does what it sets out to do. If you prefer B/A but love Serenity, conversion is a snap and the information is pretty useful.

It's not a must-own--but if you have it, you won't regret it.