There's only one Gil Gerard, Browder, and it ain't you!

My good friend Chronoglide is a big fan of Farscape. Personally I have always thought of it as "Buck Rogers meets the Muppets", only with truckloads of added tedium, as Buck Rogers and the Muppets together in reality would be brilliant. But he likes it. Bless. So it was inevitable that at some point he was going to want to game it on the tabletop. As I had yet again failed to provide anything for us to play, I reluctantly agreed to this misguided scheme. So that's what we did.

Here he is setting up his little show, while in the background Wakey fills himself full of Caffeine in order to stay awake. He's obviously seen Farscape before!

Chrono's rules set of choice for the evening was something called 5150, which I had heard Sci-Fi nerds on TMP jabbering on about in the past, but I was totally unfamiliar with it myself.

We were to have only one character each. Ooh, very RPG. This type of thing is all the rage these days, what with .45 Adventure, Gloire and all that. Thankfully, neither the preposterous Wookee Klingon nor any of the Muppets would be taking part in this adventure. But three of the heroes of the show were to land on a lawless planet in order to procure much-needed spare parts to repair their damaged mother ship, Moya.

(That shuttle pod of theirs looks familiar. If it is a consular ship, then where is the ambassador, eh?)

A picture of Moya, just so we know what we're all fighting for. At least I think that's the right Moya. I wasn't sure so I used Google Images.

Hmm. Is that right? Tell you what, why not check for yourself?

So, the characters involved: As I said, it wasn't the complete cast, just enough for us to have one each. Sickers played pale Buck Rogers imitation, Crichton, human astronaut suddenly propelled into a frightening new Muppet-filled galaxy, or something. In our gang it is the law to refer to him as Gil Gerard, or just Gil, though this really does a great disservice to that truly great actor from the 80s.

Wakey was playing Chiana, a sort of light grey alien lass with Halle Berry's cast-off hair from X-Men.

While I played sultry ex-Peacekeeper turned renegade, Aeryn Sun. I can tell you want me. Stop staring at my right boob, you lecherous dogs!

So there we were, newly-arrived on planet Numberwang, in search of a second-hand de-nobbulator or Gayon-frottage-attachment or something. So we set off for the market district, but unfortunately fell foul of the local culture. Apparently there are very strict rules of behavior between the various guilds, gangs and other factions here, and the locals police themselves without recourse to any official law enforcement. But unfortunately for us anything goes as far as outsiders are concerned.

So we were soon set upon by the local riff-raff.

So the dice were soon rolling, and laser blasts (or whatever they call them in Farscape) were flying about all over the place.

Here's me, shooting a hoodlum, and blowing most of the special effects budget in one go.

After a brisk firefight, we had dealt with the delinquents. All either dead, retired hurt or run off. A few polite enquiries told us that we needed to speak to a trader known as Honest Jangwed who had a warehouse full of Moya bits on the other side of town.

So off we went. Here's a part of the game that was rather cool. We immediately stepped into the next episode, all ready set up on another part of the table. Having a game made up of several small vignette encounters like this is something new to me, and I like it. You tend not to get bored so like with a big old fight dragging on all night all across the big table (that's a terrible indictment of our attention-spans these days, ain't it?). This kind of thing would fit in sweetly with .45 Adventure and Gloire I reckon. Don't know if it is part of the whole 5150 thing, or if Chrono made it up himself, but it is a refreshing new thing to me. I like refreshing new things.

Later, on the other side of town: We found the area of Jangwed's warehouse, but unfortunately there were lots of unfriendly-looking security types around.

It was decided that I would approach them openly, and try to negotiate an audience with Jangwed. In case things went awry, the others would sneak around the side, ready to launch into action at a moment's notice...

Predictably, things did go awry, almost immediately. Aeryn is used to getting her own way, and the guards, thinking she was a Peacekeeper, weren't really in the mood to cooperate. This combined to create an atmosphere of tension and mistrust. Talks broke down, and they ordered her to drop her weapon and lie down on the ground.

Her response?

... Predictably violent.

Chiana chimed in, too. She might as well, as she hadn't done much up to now.

This resulted in one guard taken out, and another one grovelling in a puddle of his own wee. More guards turned up, but they weren't up to much, and eventually scarpered, leaving their boss in our clutches. We held him upside down and shook him until the shock absorbers or brake pads for Moya fell out.

Back to the landing pod then. But what's this?

Bad guys, hanging around outside our ship?

Oh no! Peacekeepers! Led by a PVC-clad lady Peacekeeper armed with a dangerously low-cut top and fully-loaded cleavage! This isn't good. We'd been fighting cowardly nobodies up to now. These baddies were the real deal. And they were after us! I had totally forgotten that we were wanted renegades! How could that slip my mind?

As they advanced, Gil Gerard, hero that he is, hid in a tent. Chiana hid behind a tent, only Aeryn (that's me remember) was brave enough to face these fearsome soldiers.

Or stupid enough. Aeryn was promptly shot, and went down in a heap.

The lady peacekeeper came over to gloat and then... A-ha! Aeryn had been shamming!

The very last of the special effects money went on this shot, as you can probably tell. Aeryn brought the chief baddy down, and she wasn't shamming. She was, though, still alive.

With their leader gone, most of the rest ran off, the remainder were ruthlessly gunned down. So our heroes made it back to Moya, complete with a sexy prisoner, who Aeryn took charge of.

So what happened next?

Well, this year Moya made it to the Quarter Finals of Roland Garros before losing to Rafael Nadal, Gil continued his regular guest spot on Sesame Street: The Next Generation, while Chiana had to give Storm her hair back in time for X-Men: The Last Stand. And as for Aeryn and the Peacekeeper chick? What of them?

In the immortal words of Stu and Rich ... And then they Lez Up.

****

In some ways the game was a triumph (which is odd, as Chronoglide was running it), short bursts of excitement make for a good gaming experience and we all took to 5150 pretty well. It's a nice system, all the reaction checks are lots of fun, and I certainly wouldn't mind playing it again.

But this is exactly where it all fell down as a simulation of Farscape. Where was the headache-inducing tedium, eh? (Seriously, Farscape almost always gives me a headache). Where was the despair, irritation, the turning over halfway through to see what's happening in (God forbid) Hollyoaks?

So in short, the experiment was a complete failure. If we are to try and do any more Farscape gaming in future, may I suggest we use a game system that is known not to produce fun, such as DBM or Phoenix Command?