RogerBW's Blog

A seven-, then five-player games session with some larger games that don't come out often enough. Images follow: cc-by-sa on everything.

Seven-player Firefly first, with four novice players. I set things up before people arrived. A new trick: make a stack of $2,000, two parts and six fuel per player, and then put $1,000 on each standard Firefly, $200 on Esmeralda and nothing on Jetwash. Then each player takes the standard stack plus the money on their ship, and doesn't have to worry about paying for starting upgrades. (Assuming you aren't using The Browncoat Way setup, of course.)

The game was a modified version of It's All In Who You Know; rather than playing with a limit on the number of jobs done, we had a hard deadline for lunch. I took Atherton in the Interceptor at Meridian, and built up a pretty solid crew (a bit short on Tech, but you really can't argue with Fight 10 and bribes on all Negotiate tests).

There was a lot of Reaver activity (and bribery), and some action from the Corvette. We were still in the mid-game when lunch was called, but I managed some last-minute (perhaps beyond that - I don't wear a watch, and nobody at the table would tell me whether we'd actually reached the specified deadline time or not, so I kept playing) piracy for Niška plus a Mr Universe add-on to give me three solids and the win.

After lunch, down a couple of players who had to leave for other things, we tried the modern edition of Fury of Dracula.

This was sometimes highly frustrating, but satisfying nonetheless. We tracked down Dracula as he moved from Italy to Spain.

But even with all four of us in the fight it wasn't enough to kill him.

Eventually we had to spread out again, and chasing him meant we didn't nail the other encounters – so we lost.

This is a game I tend to feel like playing once or twice a year, and while I think it may slightly overstay its welcome it's still one I'll be glad to go back to some time.