It Came From the Tabletop! - Firefly: The Game

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Thank you Gentlemen for an excellent listen. Though I have had the game and all its expansions for years, I hadn't played it.
My oldest son has become interested in the Firefly 'Verse and we have completed four games while he has been home over the holiday break. Loads of fun, enhanced by viewing all the episodes in between games. Quite a few stories will be told about the events in those four games.
We had not been using the Kalidasa expansion due to table size, but I think I will bring in a card table for card piles and tokens. We also did not use the Pirates and Bounty Hunters expansion for the reasons you discussed. It is a difficult game without the other players gunning for you.
Firefly: the Game has quickly become a favorite!

On a side note, do you have opinions about the fan-produced, "Local Color" expansion?

Awesome, glad you got the game to the table and that you enjoyed it.

I only just came across Local Color yesterday when I was looking on BGG for any good variants to speed the early game up. Haven’t had a chance to look into it but I will be.

Speaking of variants, I came up empty handed on my search. I forgot to mention on the epsiode, we do not start with the reshuffle cards in the decks even though the expansion rules tell you to do so. I’m not sure if that’s the right move since we never reshuffle the bigger decks, but that’s how we do it. I guess you could bury it in the last 1/4 of the deck and you could be alright.

I do think that some adjustment should have been made to the shop decks once the expansions came out and bulked them up. I think an easy fix would be to have a bigger starting discard pile, maybe 6-9 cards instead of 3.

Great episode covering a great game. Your observations on it being both pick-up-and-deliver and adventure and that entangled relationship were really insightful and I’ll lean in even further — Firefly’s pick-up-and-deliver is not merely enhanced but uniquely defined by the source material. Delivering isn’t just a challenge in Firefly, it’s hard. It ain't Merchant of Venus by any stretch. Firefly executes the concept in a very different way than what you expect when you first open the box. It's not about delivering, it's about delivering and making it stick.

Al, the next time Josh uses the trite phrase "overstayed its welcome" smack him. An appropriate level of negative feedback will break him of such bad habits, and you guys can't redefine the genre by sounding like everyone else.

It lasts longer than it needs to?

Josh Look wrote: It lasts longer than it needs to?

Much better.

I'll listen to this but boy did I dislike the game.

That’s because you didn’t play it with us.

I enjoyed the Firefly TV show. I'm not one of the die-hards who think it was a masterful piece of brilliance untimely ripp'd from the broadcast screen, but it was fun.

The times I played Firefly, it wasn't fun, it was a slog. It was just moving, looking at cards, moving. Having the cards be something I also once saw on a TV show wasn't enough to excite me. And, in fact, coming across things like missions I'd automatically fail unless I have River (the character I disliked most on the show, by the way) was demonstrably un-fun. Seeing nonsense like the incredibly overpowered Jayne's Hat (which of course you HAVE to have because lol Jayne's Hat) just wasn't fun.

For me the game represented the absolute worst excesses of IP games. If I want to watch an episode of Firefly I'll watch an episode of Firefly. I don't want to play a game and have things be unbalanced or frustrating because "that's how it was in the show". I don't want to recreate something that already happened. (This is a large portion of why, almost as a rule, I avoid IP-based games, even if I like the IP in question. The temptation of the designers to value fan service over solid play is too tempting, mostly because the fans will almost always prefer the former. But my anti-fandom in general rant is for another day.)

Basically, in Firefly I guess I felt like the things which other players might enjoy were intrusive and shackling. And that navigating around them just got me to a pretty humdrum adventure/puad. I've got Xia coming to me soon and I think I'd rather that then see a card that reminds me of a thing on tv.

Finally was able to listen to some of this today while waiting for my son in the Dentist office. We usually play the alternate rules for a "Full Burn" which is that you roll a die and can ignore flipping over travel cards for that many spaces of a full burn. It made the first few plays go faster while learning the other ins/outs of the game. Have you guys ever used this rule or, since flipping the cards is something you really enjoy, something you never bothered with? (Also, I got all the custom dice colors as a Christmas gift a few years ago, so everyone has their own dice to roll instead of any passing around). Also, you mentioned the paper money, have you guys opted for the over sized paper money add on?

WadeMonnig wrote: Finally was able to listen to some of this today while waiting for my son in the Dentist office. We usually play the alternate rules for a "Full Burn" which is that you roll a die and can ignore flipping over travel cards for that many spaces of a full burn. It made the first few plays go faster while learning the other ins/outs of the game. Have you guys ever used this rule or, since flipping the cards is something you really enjoy, something you never bothered with? (Also, I got all the custom dice colors as a Christmas gift a few years ago, so everyone has their own dice to roll instead of any passing around). Also, you mentioned the paper money, have you guys opted for the over sized paper money add on?

Yeah, we really enjoy the card flipping so we never tried it. Plus, with my luck, I’d consistently roll a 1 or 2.

Oversized money? That’s really a thing? Doesn’t the game take up enough space already?

I think the game would stand on its own without the IP, as long as you understand that the heart of the play is your shit going wrong. You gotta plan for failure.

My first couple of encounters I was frustrated until I realized they were par for the course. Granted that won't appeal to some people. But I enjoy it.

We play this as an adventure game, not a competitive game. Got an afternoon or evening to kick around the stars as the captain of a dinky, little transport ship? This is great. The open world, choose your own path, narrative style of this game is fun. Sure, someone eventually “wins” the game, but this is a game to play for the ride.

I think the variant movement rules would only work for me if the Big Black cards are removed.

Yea, "big money" is a thing. 100 prop sized bills with extra 5k bills. Look super awesome but, along with big hero's, one of the few add ons I said No to. Need to play this again soon, been way too long. Funny how you you guys agree no pirates and bounty hunters but others swear by it.