"Get a crew. Get a job. Keep Flyin'"

The Serenity game kicked off on Sunday. Four players and I set out to adventure in the Jossverse.
The game opens with Brian, the pilot and captain, winning a Firefly-class spaceship in a card game (along with some shiny guns and other valuables) on Unification Day Eve, Year 4 after the Unification War. Brian, not believing his good fortune, heads to the Persephone Evestown Docks to claim his ship.

The boat, the Kitsune, turns out to be a lovingly-maintained older specimen of a Firefly-class survey variant. The current crew decides to foillow their captain off the boat. After being sure that only the former crew and their luggage leaves Kitsune, Brian gets a read of the manifest. A family of five is already aboard as well as a young woman passenger named Jerika. As Brian gets to know his new boat, the rest of the Alliance is getting ready to celebrate Unification Day, a holiday commorating the victory of the Alliance over the Independent Faction at Serenity Valley five years ago. While Alliance politicians once again hoist the bloody shirt for all to see, word shoots across the Cortex (think of it as 'verse-wide Internet) that "Iron Hand," an ex-Independent war criminal/hero (depending on weather you fought on the winning side of the U-War or on the right side), was captured by Alliance Federal Marshals near the docks on Persephone. Unlike untold thousands other Browncoats like Mal Reynolds and Zoe Allayne who were taken in arms by the Alliance at the time of the Independant's surrender following the Battle of Serenity Valley, Major Mongo "Iron Hand" Freeborne was not covered by the blanket amnesty given to Independent rank and file troops because he deserted from the Alliance military to fight for Independance.

As ex-Independant troublemakers conspire to free this notorious freedom fighter / terrorist, Brian goes about hiring his crew: a mechanic who literally ran onto his ship while running away from her deceased mentor's creditors and a combat medic from the war who was helping Iron Hand's buddies get him out of stir. The mechanic finds some problems with the intraship ventilation filters; she cannot get any more of the correct part here, so she has to improvise with rags and duct tape. The Chin Family, meanwhile, has its own problems. Pappa Chin is beating his daughter, a (pardon the word, but no other really fits) striking teenager who looks about nine years old. After the crew led by Brian put this abuser in his place, Jerika (herself an abuse victim) took the malnourished Xi Chin under her wing.

Brian finds plenty of work -- passengers (the Chin family plus eventually Iron Hand and the leader of the team that sprung him from Alliance custody) and some goodly cargo (especially one interesting one marked "Organic Pest Control" that is being kept chilled at 5-10 degrees C). Next session: the trip to Jianying.

This session went very well. Lots of good roleplaying and nary a bar fight (something I had planned for, being U-day and all) and little (compared to my D&D games) overall violence. We had WW-friendly Pick Up Stix chow for dinner. Rules light, roleplaying heavy game.