[TML] NEW SFRPG - Thousand Suns

[Richard Aiken]

On Feb 12, 2008 11:59 AM, Michael Taylor <michaeltaylor1329 at hotmail.com> wrote:
> > "Most important tips: 1) The story is the heart of a Serenity
> > adventure. 2) The rules serve the story, not the other way around. In
> > other words, if it comes to a fight between story vs. rules, shoot the
> > rules."
>
> Of course there are rules like this, but in any case where the GM is retroactivelly hosing the players by changing the rules out from underneath them could easily be argued to be ruining the story rather than making it.

Then somebody is misinterpreting what the sort of story should be
told.  If you join a Serenity game, you should expect to play the game
as a low-life criminal sort.  If not a career criminal, your character
will at least be someone from another social class (such as a Preacher
Man or a Registered Companion) who for reasons of their own
(voluntarily or not) are currently pursuing that life-style.  This
means that the "spirit of the game" will most likely involve various
criminal capers and similar by-the-skin-of-their-teeth escapades.

Have you seen "Breaking Bad" (AMC's new limited series)?  A
straight-arrow chemistry teacher decides to start cooking meth,
because he's been diagnosed with terminal lung cancer and doesn't want
to leave his family in debt when he dies in six months.  He's finding
that this isn't simple or easy, like he thought at first.  This would
make a really good - if rather short - Serenity-type game.

Now, if one of the players in such a game figures out a way to avoid
these sorts of very risky situations for his character, he *should*
realize that he's violating the spirit of the rules.  He therefore has
no legitimate complaint coming if the GM fixes whatever loophole he's
discovered so as to bring play back to that sort of game.

-- 
Richard Aiken

"Never insult anyone by accident."  Robert A. Heinlein