A question about Firefly/Serenity & Traveller

[Rover]

I'm surprised no one has mentioned the fact that Wash, in practically one of his very first lines (not counting the dinosaur dialogue), says "hold on travellers" as he darts the ship away from the baddies.

Actually I mentioned it in the other firefly thread yesterday.

http://www.travellerrpg.com/CotI/Discuss/showpost.php?p=337893&postcount=34

But well worth repeating. I don't think there can be any doubt that Firefly was heavily influenced by Traveller. I got a heavy Traveller vibe from the first TV commercial I saw for the show before it even aired.

I think some people don't get the same vibe as me is because they have a very specific, focused idea of what Traveller is and for the OTU setting is a big part for many not to mention no FTL communication, certain aliens, jump space, I could go on. Not saying that such a focused ideal is a bad thing, it is not. You like what you like. YMMV

R

 

[PathfinderAP]

Actually I mentioned it in the other firefly thread yesterday.

http://www.travellerrpg.com/CotI/Discuss/showpost.php?p=337893&postcount=34

But well worth repeating. I don't think there can be any doubt that Firefly was heavily influenced by Traveller. I got a heavy Traveller vibe from the first TV commercial I saw for the show before it even aired.

I think some people don't get the same vibe as me is because they have a very specific, focused idea of what Traveller is and for the OTU setting is a big part for many not to mention no FTL communication, certain aliens, jump space, I could go on. Not saying that such a focused ideal is a bad thing, it is not. You like what you like. YMMV

R

Hey, no, wait a minute, I play Traveller in a setting with no aliens, just as it was written in the original basic Traveller boxset, that does not make it any less OTU,

For all that the basic game was, that IS Traveller, the rest is extra material,

 

[kafka47]

Firefly also had a whole notion that shotguns will probably in the foreseeable future will do more damage than any handheld laser. It also had the idea that the universe does not have an alignment or prime directive (missing from many SF shows); and that you gotta work, beg or steal to earn your keep in the universe otherwise you will starve; and finally psionics was given a fairly intelligent treatment... all these are Traveller themes.

 

[Rover]

Hey, no, wait a minute, I play Traveller in a setting with no aliens, just as it was written in the original basic Traveller boxset, that does not make it any less OTU,

For all that the basic game was, that IS Traveller, the rest is extra material,

Well maybe I am mixing my definitions but I thought OTU meant Official Traveller Universe, which includes aliens, but I am not married to that definition.

The point I was trying to make was the Similarity between Firefly and Traveller depends on what things in Traveller people identified with. I think there was a thread on this recently and there as a wide divergence of opinion.

R

 

[FreeTrav]

[...]the universe does not have an alignment [...]

It most certainly does have an alignment - Chaotic Perverse. Murphy's Law is the embodiment of the universe's alignment.

 

[rancke]

Hey, no, wait a minute, I play Traveller in a setting with no aliens, just as it was written in the original basic Traveller boxset, that does not make it any less OTU,

You're conflating rules and setting. It may not be any less Traveller, but it is very much less (as in 'not at all') the OTU.

Unless you mean a place in the OTU where there are no aliens just there, but they're out there in other parts of the universe.


Hans

 

[Putraack]

Regarding Mal's & Zoe's piloting skills, the TV show & movie are set seven years after the war, so they each should have a term (or two) of Free Trader after their military term(s).

 

[aramis]

Actually, I suspect it's more like a term of "rogue," and they are in their first term as merchants, but boy howdy they got lucky on the cash tables.

 

[Whipsnade]

I think some people don't get the same vibe as me is because they have a very specific, focused idea of what Traveller is...

Rover,

Or perhaps because they actually remember what Traveller is?

Here's the second sentence of the first paragraph of the first page of text in the first book:

"The major problem, however, will be that communication, be it political, diplomatic, commercial, or private, will be reduced to the level of the 18th century, reduced to the speed of transportation."

Communication reduced to the speed of transportation. That was part of Traveller well before there was any setting, OTU or otherwise.

It's also why Firefly - as good as it is - is Traveller-inspired and not actually Traveller. As others have suggested in both threads, Firefly is an ATU or a homebrew. Considering Mr. Whedon's skills as a writer and television producer I am not surprised he took the game, plus the other sources he mentioned, and modified them all to suit his needs.


Regards,
Bill

 

[Sturn]

On Mal's pilot skills-

I just watched the first episode again ('Serenity', the one intended to be shown first by the author). At the end of the episode, Walsh goes off for some 'business' with Zoe. Walsh asks Mal to take over at the controls. The ship, piloted by Mal, blasts off into space as the credits roll.

From the start the author intended Mal to have at least some basic pilot skills (skill 0 seems a good interpretation). As has been said already, a few years have passed since Mal's, "Army terms". As owner of the Serenity, a Traveller interpretation might have him taking a term or two of Merchant and picking up pilot, broker, etc.

On Traveller and Firefly -

From the first commercial I saw I wondered if Josh Whedon was a Traveller fan. I took note again today when watching the author's first episode (the studio played the wrong one first) of the reference about "travellers". It was very early on in the very first episode. Also, the statement does seem a little odd and out of place (why didn't he say "passengers" or "guests"?) unless you go along with the author giving Traveller a plug because of its inspiration.

 

[sabredog]

I missed Firefly when it first came out on TV. I just don't watch much TV and hadn't heard of the series until I saw the ads for the Serenity movie - and I missed that, too. Yeah...I need to get out more.

But one morning last summer I saw the Train Job episode on the SciFi channel and was blown away: I ran that scenario in Traveller...except the twist was that the players were caught after boosting the container by the crew of another hijacking team that was originally going to steal the cargo for the guy who was the boss of the guy who hired the players. It got complicated....but it had the mag-lev train (which the players originally thought was a little hokey), the players zooming along in a pinnace trying to lower one of their number down on the cargo container to fasten the winch to haul it off the flat car....minor differences, but it felt so strangely familiar that I thought "Hey, I ought to steal this for a game."

I went out and bought the whole set after the episode was over so as not to ruin the experience by risking watching it out of sequence. And it really felt like I knew those characters... as players of NPC's. I love the lousy personal lasers (Crap! I forgot to recharge this thing!), horses in the colonies (yeah, I always did that, too...cheap transport that replicates itself and you can eat it in a pinch for a bonus), and the characters having to always stay once system away from the authorities (oh, how many times have I heard players say, "Well, that's another planet we can never go back to"?)

Yeah, it's Trav, no doubt about it. Though I've never been able to find anything that says Whedon drew it from the game, though. Has anyone ever read anything to that effect that came from Whedon?

 

[Spinward Scout]

And it really felt like I knew those characters...

There's a reason why you recognize the characters.

Malcolm Reynolds - Robin Hood
Inara Serra - Maid Marion
Shepard Book - Friar Tuck
Jayne Cobb - Little John

The others get fuzzy for the archetype (but then how many other Merry Men can you remember off the top of your head?), but basically, it's Robin Hood in a Space Western with Serenity (or the Black) standing in for Sherwood Forest. The War for Independence/Unification is equivalent to the Crusades - also the U.S. Civil War with the Border/Rim Planets being the Frontier in America, the Reavers being the 'bloodthirty Indians', etc... There are archetypes of both in the storyline.

 

[kafka47]

re: Wheldon's Traveller cred.

When Serenity and T20 was all abuzz. I was on Mutuant Enemy's (Joss' production company) forums and he** indicated that he was interested in Traveller but no his work was not directly inspired by it. I suggested to Hunter that he would send a copy of the main rulebook. I don't know if Hunter did or not. But, some time later the Serenity RPG came out written by people directly inspired by Classic Traveller. Lots of fans of both see things in the series and the movies that directly link back to Traveller - whether this is Joss' vision or tricks that the production team (set designers, costumers, grips, etc) added to loan authencity is an unknown. So, Joss being Joss is aware of RPGs but I doubt he has played them for a very long time. The same debates are involved with the Call of Cthulhu community who see Buffy as the ultimate paradigm for a group of Investigators.

**Whether, it was him or his publicist answering/participating in forums and using his voice again is again not certain.

re: Robin Hood

You are right, of course, and I am stunned that I never saw the connection. I had seen too many bad Westerns and a few good ones so I was blinded by that. But, essentially Traveller has for a long time also been "Yanks in Space" with MgT that is somewhat changing as different writers are bringing a different sensibility to the game (much as we non Americans always have). So, however, you look at Firefly/Traveller it is through the lens of the American Experience/Interpetation of history. And, Americans see the world in a rather particular and peculiar way.

 

[Andrew Boulton]

The War for Independence/Unification is equivalent to the Crusades - also the U.S. Civil War with the Border/Rim Planets being the Frontier in America, the Reavers being the 'bloodthirty Indians', etc...

The show was originally inspired by JW reading a book about the ACW, and wanting to tell the story of people on the losing side.

 

[Spinward Scout]

re: Robin Hood

You are right, of course, and I am stunned that I never saw the connection.

Now after doing a little research, I'm even surprised.

From Wikipedia:

In the Jeu de Robin and Marion, Robin and his companions have to rescue Marion from the clutches of a "lustful knight"

Wouldn't that be the episode Shindig?

o:

 

[Sturn]

There might be some Robin Hood fans that would be upset over comparing Maid Marian to a (quoting Mal), "whore".

 

[aramis]

Yeah, it's Trav, no doubt about it. Though I've never been able to find anything that says Whedon drew it from the game, though. Has anyone ever read anything to that effect that came from Whedon?

He's never publicly named which game, but he has specified it started in a "well known science fiction roleplaying game" when he was in college. That puts it mid 1980's... he graduated college in 1987. The well known Sci-Fi games of the era that did space-opera include: FASA-trek, Star Frontiers, Spacemaster, Space Opera, Star Wars, and Traveller. The second string included Starships & Spacemen, Other Suns, Mekton, Mechwarrior, Robotech, Mechanoids, Star Hero, and GURPS Commonwealth.

Running down that list,

• FASA-Trek, Starships and Spacemen are military mission type games, and hile both could do merchant games, they are also zapgun*
• Spacemaster, and Space Opera are zapgun type games*
• Star Wars is both zapgun* and very late in the period
• Robotech and Mechanoids are mecha games**, and lack ships of the types seen
• Mekton and Mechwarrior are also mecha games**, and hie they can do the ships, and the general tech level is right, they still focus play in ways not seen in FF
• Star Hero*** could do it, but unless someone was intentionally emulating that space-western feel on purpose is unlikely to generate the feel, and further, is very late in the period
• GURPS Commonwealth is fairly stylized, lacks the right kinds of drives and ships, and is late in the period.†
• Star Frontiers lacks the diversity of technological levels, psionics, and gravitics†
• Other Suns is rather funky - lots of aliens was its trope
• Traveller is right tech level and spread of levels, has the gravitics needed, has the firearms focus, has the small worlds with breathable atmospheres, has the "honest crooks" mode of play

* these rulesets have strong elements of blasters/phasers/lasers as personal weapons.
** giant combat walkers....
*** 1st ed Star Hero as a standalone, and really, the feel looks to be aimed at trek and niven.
† Both SF and GCW have very stylized ships that do not include anything like the serenity.

Say, has anyone else noticed that serenity looks like a miniature of the Galactic Queen of the TTA books?

 

[PFVA63]

Hi

He's never publicly named which game, but he has specified it started in a "well known science fiction roleplaying game" when he was in college. That puts it mid 1980's... he graduated college in 1987. ...

Running down that list,

• FASA-Trek, Starships and Spacemen ...
• Spacemaster, and Space Opera ...
• Star Wars ...
• Robotech and Mechanoids are mecha games...
• Mekton and Mechwarrior are also mecha games ...
• Star Hero ...
• GURPS Commonwealth ...
• Star Frontiers ...
• Other Suns ...
• Traveller is right tech level and spread of levels, has the gravitics needed, has the firearms focus, has the small worlds with breathable atmospheres, has the "honest crooks" mode of play

...

Didn't Traveller:2300 come out mid 1980's?

Regards

PF

 

[sabredog]

Yup, right after or around the time Aliens did. Which could be why it resembles it in so many ways.

 

[sabredog]

He's never publicly named which game, but he has specified it started in a "well known science fiction roleplaying game" when he was in college. That puts it mid 1980's... he graduated college in 1987....

Traveller is right tech level and spread of levels, has the gravitics needed, has the firearms focus, has the small worlds with breathable atmospheres, has the "honest crooks" mode of play[/list]

Yeah, that's all I've ever read as well...and I came to the same conclusions. But in some episodes of Firefly the weapons change in the way they sound and seem to operate - sometimes clearly like firearms, and others more like something else, but not sure what. I tended to just put it down to some continuity errors in the effects dept.

But the way some of the weapons are designed and seem to function do tend to point in the direction of at least a gauss weapon (plenty of ammo but no obviously huge magazines, and they make buzzing-snapping sounds when fired) - take Mal's pistol:

The pistol has a "clip" that is loaded form the bottom forward of the trigger (as seen in "Serenity") that looks too small to be anything but a battery, and it has a hammer which Mal is seen cocking on numerous occasions through the series. So, what the heck is that all about? Sure it's a cool looking gun and all, but in some episodes it sounds and behaves like a CPR revolver and in others more like something more advanced.

Jayne's LeMat revolver has extra "scale" added to it to make all zoomy, but it's still obviously a revolver with the hundred or so Hollywood rounds in it (and it has to be cocked, too) - but Vera's ok...just a monster assault weapon that looks like it was worked up from a Saiga or Ak receiver. And it is seen to fire CPR slugs ("She needs oxygen to fire.", Jayne in "Our Mrs. Reynolds").