Finding Serenity

With all due respect and apologies to Joss Whedon:

Take my love, take my land
Take me where I cannot stand
I don't care, I'm still free
You can't take the blue from me

I've been thinking about running a second game in addition to Delta Green, and have pretty much settled on a western. Not just any old horse opera, however, but something heavily inspired by Joss Whedon's most excellent and all-too-quickly canceled show Firefly. The necessary ingredients are roughly as follows:

• A ship called Serenity. In this case, a Mississippi riverboat.
• A bitter war with the main characters on the losing side. Obviously we're just taking back the American Civil War which Firefly borrowed.
  
• A collection of colorful and possibly dangerous places for the characters to visit. The Jefferson-Missouri-Mississippi river system is the largest in the USA, and if necessary, the heroes can always venture inland. Natchez Under-The-Hill alone is as wretched a hive of scum and villainy as a GM can hope for.
• Memorable characters. I believe I'm going to recycle Mal, Jayne and Kaylee into the game as NPCs, and I trust my players will come up with something interesting, too.

System-wise, the leading candidate is Boot Hill, 3rd edition. I've always liked it a great deal. Now, if only those books about riverboats would arrive from Amazon faster!