A Very British Serenity

[ffutures]

OK - one of the adventures I want to run in a few weeks will be a story of pioneering Americans heading off to the stars aboard their trusty spaceship, which may or may not be called Serenity. Their aim is to found a new American Republic in another solar system.

However, for game purposes America has been part of the Anglo-Saxon Empire and largely Anglicised for the last 150 years or so, and the gallant crew get most of their ideas of the romance of the Old West and America filtered through a very British lens.

So... I think that the Firefly crew would work for this, if suitably modified. E.g.
The Reverend Book (strict C of E)
Miss Inara Serra (of the Bombay Serras), a gentlewoman and adventuress
and so forth.

Anyone want to give me versions of River, Mal, Jayne, etc.?

Comments

[whswhs.livejournal.com]

(a) Why shouldn't the Anglo-Saxon Empire have established some combat units made up of women? There was already a demand for equal rights and opening up of more occupations to women in the 19th century. You wouldn't need to have full integration to have some sort of women auxiliary troops.

(b) Alternatively, if you want them to have met on the battlefield, women served as nurses in war zones from the Crimean War on. It would give a different set of occupational skills to Zoe, but she and Mal could have been through a war together.

[ffutures.livejournal.com]

Unfortunately there's nothing in the source material (a 1900 novel) to support the idea - women are presented throughout as decorative but pretty useless.

[whswhs.livejournal.com]

If you've got source material that specific, and on that point, I'm perplexed at your trying to adapt Serenity. You could just barely fit in Inara, maybe, but Zoe, Kaylee, and River are all capable in a nontraditional mode. Unless you want to just turn at least Zoe and Kaylee into men.

[ffutures.livejournal.com]

I think it's a challenge to do it, but I want to see if it's possible without straining the setting too badly.