I’m sure a sourcebook is well underway (and I’m equally sure it will be excellent 
), but in the meantime I wonder if others might share their thoughts about how Kaefers should be handled in an overall campaign arc?
The way they were originally written back in the GDW days, they had a tendency—like gunpowder or napalm introduced in a fantasy campaign—to kinda-sorta take over the game emphasis, and not in a good way. For wargamers, this was probably just fine. But it holds the danger of blotting out what most folks think are common components and expectations of a Traveller campaign.
Kaefers would/should be the sort of encounter that would totally ruin anyone’s day, but you therefore don’t want to encounter them every day. So something needs to keep ’em in check.
On another board someone was commenting Kaefers were practically designed to require a total genocidal them-or-us elimination, like if cockroaches suddenly became sentient and began helping themselves to our gun arsenals. So I wonder if that must be the final story arc for the things?
What would the Kaefer situation look like in 2400AD?
It’s pretty obvious the things were bio-engineered by somebody. Like the Ebola virus, they’re just a little too “good” at what they do to be of natural origin. So there’s that.
My own thoughts go something like this: They breed asexually. Because I really can’t imagine (and don’t want to really think about) Kaefers getting it on, nor does it seem in their nature to bond together in any non-lethal way. So: They breed like tapeworms or freshwater clam infestations, meaning it only takes one to stage a terrifying comeback. Their “kids” fall out of their carapaces like maggots, and are essentially on their own and fine with that. They also breed asymptotically when population controls are not otherwise in place, meaning that if you don’t manage to kill every last stinking one of them they will be back. In swarms. You just don’t know when.
There's a real them-or-us slant to the Kaefer way of thinking, too, so it's not exactly like the human defense can be non-affirmative, so to speak: Whatever we're too squeamish to do to them they are absolutely giddy to do to us. So it's fairly non-negotiable, and the thrust would be to find some way to take the "Mutually" out of the "Assured Destruction."
I would imagine their interstellar and manufacturing capabilities would be smashed pretty hard by any realistic effort to reduce their threat. Carpet bombing them into the stone age would seem to be an A#1 priority for any sensible military apparatus. And, really, is PETA or Greenpeace really gonna shed tears if their malevolent little breeding worlds are soundly irradiated? It doesn’t seem, by the nature of the critters intellect, they could easily climb back out of that bomb crater, technologically speaking.
I imagine, over the long term, their own response would be to burrow in on human settlements (which are more problematic to nuke) and scavenge human goods and equipment. Nests of these things would periodically erupt, things could get very VERY bad in some places, but—in general—Traveller style adventures could endure.
I’d like to hear the thoughts of others on this, mostly on how to keep these critters tamped down in a campaign. It seems GDW was not really interested in keeping a lid on them... kinda the opposite.
), but in the meantime I wonder if others might share their thoughts about how Kaefers should be handled in an overall campaign arc?The way they were originally written back in the GDW days, they had a tendency—like gunpowder or napalm introduced in a fantasy campaign—to kinda-sorta take over the game emphasis, and not in a good way. For wargamers, this was probably just fine. But it holds the danger of blotting out what most folks think are common components and expectations of a Traveller campaign.
Kaefers would/should be the sort of encounter that would totally ruin anyone’s day, but you therefore don’t want to encounter them every day. So something needs to keep ’em in check.
On another board someone was commenting Kaefers were practically designed to require a total genocidal them-or-us elimination, like if cockroaches suddenly became sentient and began helping themselves to our gun arsenals. So I wonder if that must be the final story arc for the things?
What would the Kaefer situation look like in 2400AD?
It’s pretty obvious the things were bio-engineered by somebody. Like the Ebola virus, they’re just a little too “good” at what they do to be of natural origin. So there’s that.
My own thoughts go something like this: They breed asexually. Because I really can’t imagine (and don’t want to really think about) Kaefers getting it on, nor does it seem in their nature to bond together in any non-lethal way. So: They breed like tapeworms or freshwater clam infestations, meaning it only takes one to stage a terrifying comeback. Their “kids” fall out of their carapaces like maggots, and are essentially on their own and fine with that. They also breed asymptotically when population controls are not otherwise in place, meaning that if you don’t manage to kill every last stinking one of them they will be back. In swarms. You just don’t know when.
There's a real them-or-us slant to the Kaefer way of thinking, too, so it's not exactly like the human defense can be non-affirmative, so to speak: Whatever we're too squeamish to do to them they are absolutely giddy to do to us. So it's fairly non-negotiable, and the thrust would be to find some way to take the "Mutually" out of the "Assured Destruction."
I would imagine their interstellar and manufacturing capabilities would be smashed pretty hard by any realistic effort to reduce their threat. Carpet bombing them into the stone age would seem to be an A#1 priority for any sensible military apparatus. And, really, is PETA or Greenpeace really gonna shed tears if their malevolent little breeding worlds are soundly irradiated? It doesn’t seem, by the nature of the critters intellect, they could easily climb back out of that bomb crater, technologically speaking.
I imagine, over the long term, their own response would be to burrow in on human settlements (which are more problematic to nuke) and scavenge human goods and equipment. Nests of these things would periodically erupt, things could get very VERY bad in some places, but—in general—Traveller style adventures could endure.
I’d like to hear the thoughts of others on this, mostly on how to keep these critters tamped down in a campaign. It seems GDW was not really interested in keeping a lid on them... kinda the opposite.
