MWP, the publisher behind the Marvel RPG, Dragonlance, Leverage, Smallville and Supernatural RPGs have added another TV show license to their roster of games today – Firefly.
The first releases for the Firefly RPG may be out in just a few months, in print and digital, using MWP’s Cortex system. The deal was struck with Fox Consumer Products who find the TV series continues to be popular a decade after it first aired.
MWP President Margaret Weis said;
“This project is a dream come true for me. I have been such a long-time fan of Firefly!”
“I look forward to working with my crew to take us all back out into the Black!”
We’ll have to find out whether the game builds on the world crated by Joss Whedon and lets players create their own crews or whether it puts the characters of Serenity and Firefly at the centre of attention.
Update: Don’t MWP already have a Firefly RPG on Cortex? They have a Serenity RPG written by Weis and Jamie Chambers. I’ve asked MWP for a steer between the two games and details aren’t yet plentiful. Firefly and Serenity are different licenses and the Firefly RPG will concentrate on the TV series.
I expect updates will follow in a few months.
Image by VChukhovich, inspired by Firefly.
Did… did I time travel? Did I go back several years ago? Because I could have sworn that Firefly was already released using the Cortex system before!
You’re not wrong – I’ve updated the post with what little extra info I’ve been able to unearth.
Like you can see from above they released a Serenity Game. Which could only use stuff that was in the Film. The Firefly Licence is from Fox and the Serenity Licence is from Universal. So now they can put out way more info on the ‘Verse. Also, I am not completely sure they still have the Serenity Licence. The Serenity Game and supplements seemed to disappear a couple of years ago. So I assumed the Serenity licence had run it’s course.
Echoing Koujow I’m getting a severe case of deja vu here. MWP brought out a Firefly game – using the Cortex System – with a handful of supplements and at least one adventure book, then it died. Are they just republishing this? If it didn’t really catch on the first time why do they think it will work this time?
Updated this post with some extra information – MWP don’t have much more to say except that Serenity and Firefly are different licenses. I’ve scheduled myself a reminder to chase them later.
Serenity RPG could only use material from the movie, and not from the TV show. With this new license, they can use stuff from the TV show.
Also, I believe Serenity RPG was a very early version of the Cortex system. Lots of improvements have been made in the mean time which couldn’t be added to Serenity RPG because they’d lost the license.
So this news means both better background material and better system.