Timewaster's Guide Archive
Games => Role-Playing Games => Topic started by: Spriggan on December 28, 2006, 01:44:37 AM
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http://arstechnica.com/journals/thumbs.ars/2006/12/27/6408
Being done by Margaret Weis Productions (same people that did serenity)
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Not sure how well this will work since the new Battlestar Galactica isn't very action oriented. It also has a rather fixed cast and plot line. The writers do an amazing job of bringing flexibility and originality to what ought to be a basic "the world is over and we are all doomed" set-up.
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I've seen the Serenity RPG in action. It felt much like a rip-off of savage worlds, with extra dice.
And both games suffer from the intristic problem; their settings totally revolve around the events of the show, and there just isn't enough information to stray too far from the show's premise (traders in space! or whatever). Especially with a military Sci Fi, you run the risk of the PC's being constantly overshadowed by the main cast, which starts to annoy after a while.
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I think Battlestar will be better then Serenity for the sole reason that the show lasted longer thus more material to work with, however how good it will be will really depend on how well the GM is allowed to go outside the realm of the show. I have to give it to Wise for trying to get RPG books out while the show/series is popular but I wonder if the properties she chooses are popular mostly because of how narrowly focused they are which hurts the RPG. Could you imagine a Heroes or Lost RPG? Both those are along the lines of Firefly and Galatica but a little more to the extreme of the point.
The only licensed property that I think worked was Star Wars (even if the 20 game fell flat twice) not just because the war covered just a large area (several galaxies) but because there was so much development of the setting outside of the movie/main characters which is key.