Been a couple of days since I’ve done any serious posting due to a particularly nasty little flu bug I picked up over a week ago.  Without further ado:  Big Damn Heroes by Margaret Weis Games for the Serenity RPG line.

I was a bit too broke to buy the book, itself, so this is a review of the .pdf version of the book, purchased at DriveThruRPG.com .  It is my understanding the new sourcebook is hardback, as was the core book, and for me, that is a welcome change from the paperback bound Adventures and Six shooters and Spaceships, which I might review tomorrow.

First, it’s a good Acrobat file, complete with page previews and bookmarks at the chapter headings and table of contents.  (It’s also a hefty file at 42ish mb.)  The artwork is comprised of screencaps at the chapter headings or a places in the text, or middling quality artwork you would expect from role playing game books.  (The bar got lifted for me by Eclipse Phase which is simple gorgeous to look at…)

Chapter 1 is concerned with character creation and is a rehash of the original Serenity rules (Cortex 1.0), but adds ideas for creating the crew of your ship collectively by including built in relationships, and rules to cover these.  Over the years, I’ve found it’s a good idea to build the characters for a campaign at the same time and to give them some ready-made hooks for why they’re together — similar motivations, romantic or filial relationships, similar duty postings, what have you…  This chapter details rules to try and aid the GM and players in establishing solid characters with relationship webs similar to what we see onscreen in Firefly and Serenity.  For some gaming groups, this won’t be necessary.  For others, it will be a big help.

Chapter 2 brings in new Character Traits, as well as a means to use the Cortex 2.0 (Galactica and the new Cortex core rules) trait mechanism of a die, rather than die steps based on whether the trait is a minor or major trait.  Also, there are guidelines for transferring your game from the old step-based triats to the die based ones. (One of the first things I did for my campaign with the BSG rules came out.)

The new traits are setting-specific in their name to aid in the flavor of the game, and will help give players interesting role playing hooks for their characters.  The new die-based traits give them more impact, macheanically, through the use of a third die (rather than modifying either the attribute or skill die.)  This give the player at least an extra one to a test roll.  If you’ve had a chance to use Cortex, this can matter a great deal, as the difficulty ratings for Easy to Hard tasks ranges from 3 to 11; an extra +1 or more almost always assures you hit an average and guarantees an easy result.

Skills and attributes are also better explained than in the core book, and modified rules for how to use skills are included.  In many ways, you can think of these chapters as a new, improved “Player’s Guide” for Serenity with enhanced rules to bring it in line with Cortex 2.0, but also to make it more house-rules friendly.

Chapter 3 is more of the “GM Guide” for the system, with a great deal of material on dealing with failures, botches, and degrees of success in tests.  There’s suggestions for how to use plot points, which are supposed to be given freely in the Cortex system, and used heavily not just for modifying your rolls, getting out of death, but also for tweaking the storyline itself.

It adds new material on aerial and space combat — something that was missing in Serenity, but in many ways that oversight fit with the setting.  In Firefly, there was almost no space combat, and the sense was that the weaponry of the Alliance, coupled with the enviroment (space) made combat a monumentally bad idea.  Serenity brought us big space battles, and Big Damn Heroes tries to build on this with some success.

There are rules for mass combat (the main reason I wanted the book), but they are a bit disappointing and feel like an afterthought.  Despite this, I could see some of the lines of thinking the authors had, and a few messed with house rules I had established for large-scale combat in our Galactica campaign.  A more elaborate set of rules could be cobbled together and still have the loose, story-driven feeling they are going for.  (It would make for an excellent .pdf extra on the website, Mr. Chambers & co!)

The chapter includes rules for modifying your spacecraft, equipment, and even building the same from scratch.  There’s more on combat, healing, etc. that brings Serenity in line with Cortex 2.0.  Essentially, this is the Cortex 2.0 version of the corebook to this point.

Chapter 4 is a delight (for me.)  It is a massive collection of pre-generated NPC archetypes that you could meet, including heroes and villains from both the movie and the original Firefly series!  Finally, we get to see numbers of Badger, Saffron, Niska, Jubal Early, etc.

Chapter 5 is another GM-oriented chapter going into tips for storytelling int he ‘Verse, including allowing players to gain Traits and Complications (or buy them off.)  There are suggestions for using, giving, and interpreting use of plot points, as well as suggestions for types of campaigns, and adventure seeds.  There’s about 6 pages of charts to help randomly create moons and planets of the ‘Verse and their communities, how they will react to the characters, and the like.  This could be very handy in pick-up games, or on weeks where you just didn’t have the time to cobble together more than a basic idea of what the players were going to get to do that session.

Chapter 6 goes into the Chinese culture, legal and governmental ideas, and includes some guidelines on how players might get into government.   There are some ideas on how Chinese culture might manifest on some of the worlds of the ‘Verse, and of course, there is information on the Tongs, including some of the gangs and their primary figures.  Lastly, there are a few more pages of Chinese slang and terms for the players to use.

This is a useful sourcebook, even if one chooses to stick with Cortex 1.0.  The new traits are set up for either iteration of the system, and for GMs it’s worth it just for Chapter 3 and 4.  This product doesn’t feel as rushed and unpolished as previous books for the Serenity line, and for this I give the style a 3.5 out of 5.  It’s only due to the average art quality that it doesn’t get a higher mark from me.  The substance is tops, however: 4 out of 5.

If you’re playing Serenity, the .pdf is definitely worth the $25.  The hardcover would be a bit pricey for what you get at $40, but if paper and binding quality are on par with the original corebook, I would suggest “buy it.”