The first adventure written for the award-winning Serenity RPG game is out, finally. Had a few months of delays, some confusion over contracts, and I received an e-mail from Amazon saying they were canceling my preorder because they weren’t getting it the same day Margaret Weis Productions announced it was available.
All is well, I got a copy, and eagerly dove in.
“There are lots of stories about the final days of the Unification War. Some tell about lost treasures of uncountable wealth. Some tell of curses and damnation. Others still tell of mutiny, treachery, and pirates. But only one legend combines them all, a story that leads to Frisco — the most dangerous, lawless mining town in the ‘Verse. Here it will take fast-thinking, careful diplomacy, and a steady gun hand to walk away breathin’. Everyone in the town has an agenda, even the little red-headed school marm who seems awfully familiar…”
I’m not going to go into detail — don’t want to spoil any webmaster surprises, if you’re a player — but this is a well-documented game with intrique, action, double-crossing, triple-crossing, a hidden treasure, and more unique characters than you can roll a die at (including an oracle who only speaks in Shakespearian verse). Plenty of plot to use or leave alone as you see fit, based on real happenings in Beaver County, Utah. And fully half the book is made up of maps, charts, diagrams, and lists so you can have everything at your fingertips.
There’s so much stuff there, in fact, that it can be a little daunting at first since multiple versions of some events are provided for you to match up with your players’ histories (characters who fought in the war will have different memories to draw from than those who didn’t, for example) and care is taken to make the game equally playable by the Serenity crew, the crew of the Aces & Eights (the sample crew provided in the Serenity RPG manual) or a crew your players have rolled up. I strongly suggest reading completely through it first and deciding which elements you want. There are a lot of threads running through this one, you’ll need to spin them out smoothly to draw your players in.
That’s also why this is very much in the feel of the show, and there’s no higher compliment. “Out in the Black” is written by Tracy and Laura Hickman, with a cover by 11th Hour.
Order it from Amazon, order a signed copy from serenityrpg.com, or even download a PDF from DriveThruRPG.com