I had occasion to play the Firefly board game with Paula and Bek yesterday. It was a lot of fun – although we actually played it a bit wrong – but I am kind of miffed because the whole thing is quite obviously stolen from the Firefly card game that I started to develop some years back – Plyin’ the Black.
Now, obviously I kid. I do not actually think Gale Force Nine are stealing my thoughts. The fact that a good 75% of the mechanics and ideas in the board game are the same as in my card game is a fascinating example of congruent evolution, and clearly the result of people experienced with a large range of existing games working from the same source material. It’s just downheartening to realise that the time and effort I put into my system has been wasted, because even were I to dig it out and finish development Plyin’ the Black would forever look like blatant plagiarism.
But hey, the board game is really well done and I’ll be buying a copy as soon as I have collected the requisite funds. And the master Plyin’ the Black rulebook is signed by Jewel Staite and Summer Glau, so let’s see Gale Force Nine match that! đŸ˜‰
Later: Hmmm, maybe I could create a mashup of both games and create a boardless version. Something to think about…
