What are you doing here?

I come to in Engineering. That's the Good. I was sure we were gonna to burn once we hit atmo.
The Bad - My drive unit, nicknamed The Love Machine, ain't givin' me no love.
After a quick looky, I find some vermin's yanked parts out of The Love Machine while I was out. Welcome to the Ugly. And now the Angry. Fee, Fi, Fo, who stole my friggin' parts!?

So began my first experience with the SERENITY RPG. I love this type of game. A small crew, just tryin' to get by. My first TRAVELLER games, 30 years ago, started with a small ship and crew working to make ends meet. Inspired by Han Solo and Chewie, I wanted that personal experience. In running STAR TREK, I've always run small ship and crew games. So what do you need?

A Captain, preferably played by the groups usual leader. A Pilot. An Engineer. A Doctor. A Security Officer. That's the core group. Don't leave atmo without them. In this particular game we had the first three and two other characters. They had interesting backgrounds, but I couldn't figure out what they were doing on the ship. I couldn't even tell what postion they held in crew.

The GM ran the game well, and I had a good time, but later, when telling friends about the game, these mystery characters kept coming up. This was a Convention Game and I've run a ton of Con Games. I always make sure that the pregenerated characters I hand out have three things going for them.
1. They have a reason for being in the adventure.
2. They have skills that help out in the adventure.
3. The combination of 1&2 give the characters reasons for going through the adventure together.

I didn't get why the GM put these two characters in the game. A friend of my helped me understand. I think like a screenwriter. I only create characters that are needed for the story. If I have 7 characters for an adventure, I make sure that they ALL have a place in the story. That way none of the characters look at each other and ask "What are you doing here?"