The book is in full color and also includes biographies of the characters, in the words of Mal, and statistics of the crew. Each chapter opens with a narrative to give the mood and feeling of the setting. These narratives alternate between a crew created by MWP and the crew of 'Serenity'. There are many photographs used as illustration throughout the book, but all are sampled from the film Serenity as opposed to the showFirefly. This is due to MWP acquiring their rights from Universal Studios rather than 20th Century Fox. For this reason as well, the previously mentioned narrative text may come close to something that happened in an episode of Firefly but will diverge in some way to stay within the license purchased through Universal. The first chapter introduces the character and setting, giving a brief history of "The Verse" and the basic concepts of play. The next few chapters deal with character creation as well as details on Attributes, Skills, and Traits. Following the character creation chapters are chapters on more detailed play systems, additional setting information, equipment, and running the game, including profiles for many pre-generated non-player characters, a sample crew other than the crew of 'Serenity', several sample ships, and stats for some of the secondary cast of the film. At the end of the book there is an appendix which goes over Chinese as it is used in the setting and a short primer for those who want to insert it into their games.
Margaret Weis Productions, Ltd has also released a gamemaster's screen as well as specialty d2 die for sale on their website. Two more books were released for the Serenity RPG in 2008, with a third in 2009, and the first installment of the Echoes of War series for the Firefly RPG was also released under the rules for the Serenity RPG.
Serenity Adventures, a collection of short adventures and winner of the 2008 Origins Award.
Six Shooters and Spaceships, a ship and technology sourcebook
Big Damn Heroes Handbook, a rule expansion that won the 2009 Origins Award for Best Supplement
The Wedding Planners Cortex Classic Set, a part of the Echoes of War series for the Firefly RPG released using the rules for the Serenity RPG
In the run-up to the release of the Firefly Role-Playing Game, MWP produced an Echoes of War series of adventures:
The Serenity Role Playing Game was the first game to be produced under the Cortex System. It is a rules light generic roll-over system using polyhedral dice. Each of a character's attributes and skills is assigned one of these dice types, with larger dice representing greater ability, ranging from d4 to d12+d4. When a character attempts an action, such as piloting a spacecraft, shooting a gun, or punching someone, the player rolls the die for the character's applicable attribute and the die for their appropriate skill, adds the results together, and compares the total against a difficulty number based on the difficulty of the task being attempted The Firefly Role-Playing Game was produced under the Cortex Plus system, and the dice pool includes three basic sections; an attribute, a skill, and a distinction chosen from a list that may be rolled at d8 or rolled at d4 to gain a plot point. Each distinction comes with two possible traits, and starting characters pick two out of the possible six. Further there may be an asset used or a complication on the other party. Take the two highest for task resolution.
Reception
Serenity won the 2005 Origins Award for the Gamer’s Choice Best Role Playing Game of the Year.
