So I have finally played the firefly game and the game that it reminds me of most is Arkham horror. Which if you know my opinions on that abomination that should means your proberbly going 'oh dear' but it's not that bad.
It does not resemble each other because of mechanics or theme but because they both take ages, require a table the size of the verse, are massively random, and have a horrible tendency for those doing well to keep doing well.
What firefly does do is nail the theme. Arkham horror draped itself in the language of Cthulhu but never felt right to me. I winced when somebody said 'I'll shotgun the shogoth' when I played. Firefly however hits no such duff notes theme wise - and since I'm more of a firefly fan then I am Cthulhu purist that's not nothing.....
All of this is based on a single play though and It's possible we had a duff mission - but god damn that was hard and time consuming (unless we were doing something wrong and/or stupid - always possible). $7,000 cash to achieve the first goal? After two and a half hours of play I had just enough cash to do that - but was on the wrong side of the rutting verse..... However people were about to start collapsing at that point so the game was called before any could have achieved that first goal. I suspect I had a good chance at goal 2 and three in quick succession at that point.
The misbehaving cards are supper thematic - and honestly pulling a revear card that was just pure bad and suddenly spotting that I could progress on it because I had river tam and that was basically the start of the movie? Fabulous but a good example of just how luck driven the game is. Massive gun skills just reduced the card to a bad fail but having River Tam suddenly everything is golden. From drawing the right equipment and character cards, to drawing good travel cards, to drawing misbehaving cards that matched your abilities or were nice, to just getting the number you need on the dice - pure damn chance. Failure brings penalties - making it less likely you'll succeed next time and so starts a terrible feedback loop. Doing well makes you do well; doing badly makes you do badly.
I would play again - but I'm aware I might just have a terrible time and die alone, broke in a ship out of gas.... Which is without doubt utterly thematic since they always felt like they were one job away from disaster - but it sucks as a game mechanic.
So what would I change - because that's the point of reviewing things for me - looking for places to make changes and flex my design muscles
Firstly movement - just draw a single damn card - and have it present a problem/opportunity that costs movement rather then stops you dead. You'll get around the verse a damn site quicker and more predictably.
Secondly have everybody have a pool of plus points that they can use to add to dice. So you can punch through a bad dice roll - get that pool enhanced if you fail at something - so a failure at least feels like your moving closer to success.
Thirdly have success in misbehaving saved - so you can actually make progress on something. Rather then 2/3 doing it and suddenly bang back to square 1 you go.
Fourthly - have an action you can do at any time to get some sort of bonus in a later turn. Because from time to time you'll find yourself with nothing to do - and that's bloody annoying. It would also let you wind up to achieving something big. Then if your running without 'luck' that's your choice to run things close to the bone - rather then something random that happens. This and number two should probably be connected....
Fourthly - if you fail at a misbehaving you should get a chance to save the misbehaving so you can see what you'll need to do next time you try again rather then it being back to square 1.
Fifthly - make it so you don't need all three skills at a high level to succeed - two out of 3 should be enough to get you through.
Of these I suspect you could bring in 2, 3 and 4 as house rules of some sort, 1 or 5 would need a complete redesign of the game.......
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