OK. So the quick-mode teach. Please refer to the Big Damn Rulebook for more details.
Each player has a leader and a ship. This won’t change during the game. The details of what you’ll do to win vary (with Story Card), but broadly speaking it takes the form of getting jobs, hiring on crew, buying gear for them, and doing harder jobs.
Turns are in fixed player order, and on your turn you take two different actions out of the four available: Fly, Buy, Deal and Work.
Fly: decide whether you will Mosey or Full Burn. Mosey takes you one sector (space). Full Burn takes you up to your Drive Core range (5 on a standard Firefly), but you have to pay a Fuel to start it, and for each sector you enter you have to draw a Nav Card. That can be good but is usually neutral or bad, and can cut your move short. (And if you’re stuck in deep space for your second action, you generally can’t do anything.)
Note that there are three colours of space on the map: blue in the middle (Alliance Space), then yellow (Border Space), then on the outside red (Rim Space). The Alliance Cruiser patrols Alliance Space, which is fine unless you’re an outlaw ship – with wanted crew, or carrying contraband or fugitives, or with a warrant. In Border and Rim space, you get Reavers. What you really want for them is not to be there, but failing that a Pilot and a Mechanic can get you out of a Reaver encounter with a Crazy Ivan, burning a fuel to get away from them. Otherwise it’s bad.
Buy: you do this only at a Supply Planet, the ones with decorated names below them on the map: Meridian, Regina, Osiris, Silverhold, Persephone, Space Bazaar, Beaumonde. You have two options: (1) pay $100 per crew member to give them Shore Leave, removing everyone’s Disgruntled tokens; (2) actually go shopping. You buy fuel for $100, parts for $300, and each supply planet has its own deck. You shop with a Consider 3 / Keep 2:
- take 0-3 cards from the discard pile
- if you took fewer than 3, make it up to 3 from the draw deck
- buy 0-2 of the cards you now hold
- put all the cards you didn’t buy on the discard pile
Crew cost $0-$300 to hire, and you have to pay them that again after each Job or they get Disgruntled. If they get Disgruntled twice they instantly jump ship. Moral crew also get disgruntled if you do Immoral Jobs. Gear is more expensive, but it’s a one-off cost. Most Crew can only carry one Gear, though you can keep spare Gear on the ship.
supply_reference.pdf (67.6 KB)
Deal: you do this at a Contact Planet, with a decorated name above it: Lord Harrow, Mr. Universe, Niska, Patience, Badger, Amnon Duul, Higgins, Fanty & Mingo. You can also get jobs from Harken on the Alliance Cruiser. You Consider 3/Keep 2 jobs from that contact’s discard pile and deck; it doesn’t cost anything. You can hold up to 3 jobs that you haven’t yet started, and 3 that you have.
Work: either start a new Job or continue one that you’ve already started; for example, a Shipping Job means Flying to planet A, Working to load the goods, Flying to planet B, and Working to unload them again. The more hazardous it is, the more you get paid. Some jobs are Immoral; others are Illegal.
If the job is Illegal, you’ll have to pass Misbehave cards; typically these have two options, often with skill tests on them. Some of the consequences for failing tests can be quite bad. I like to have about 4 points in each skill before I try them, but I don’t always manage this.
Skills are Fight, Tech and Negotiate; characters have 0-3 in each. To do a skill test, add up the points for each character on the job (usually your whole crew) and a d6 (which rerolls and adds on a 6: “thrillin’ heroics”). The card that defined the test will tell you what happens.
There are also Keywords on crew and gear (like Pilot, Mechanic, Companion, Grifter, Firearm, Fake ID). These become relevant in Misbehaves and Nav cards: sometimes you’ll have an extra option if you hold a particular keyword, like Crazy Ivan if you have both Pilot and Mechanic.
(Or there’s Makework, where you just collect $200.)
There’s also bounty hunting, but I’ll go over that when it comes up.
I think that’s the core of it. Two-page summary:
fireflykalidasarules.pdf (59.1 KB)
Any questions?
fight, 
tech, 
negotiate.)