iHatei!...The Campaign?

[bklokis]

To avoid the risk of this post sounding a bit JMISBEST-esque, I'll say straight away this idea did NOT come to me in a dream:

In my current Drinax campaign, we've just started iHatei! and it so happens that two of my PCs are Aslan who for one reason or another left the Hierate to become adventurers. One is male (a landless second son) and one is female, and so as the PCs thought about their approach to the situation, someone proposed that the male Aslan player use his landless position to act as their own iHatei leader and try to usurp the role of warlord that those gathering on Kteiroa are looking for. This is all before they arrived in-system and were promptly made to feel ridiculously out of their element and woefully under-powered.

However, all of that led me to consider the idea of an inverted Pirates of Drinax campaign:
This campaign would have all the PCs as landless Aslan located in the Hierate who need to form an iHatei Warband and conquer the Trojan Reach for themselves before the free worlds are gathered under the auspices of a rejuvenated Drinax. (This may be the direct result of my not too long ago playing in both sides of the Hell's Rebels & Hell's Vengeance Pathfinder campaigns.)

I wouldn't have time to run, play, or write such a campaign, but I was interested to see if others would be into such a campaign...or if Mongoose has considered writing for an Aslan-based band of Travellers.

 

[Old School]

Welcome to the sandbox, where your players are free to try to lead the Ihatei themselves, or to kill all the Ihatei by accelerating a ship into the planet they are gathered on, or anything in between.

Its an interesting campaign idea, although I think it would be tough to develop and run a campaign in which the players goal is something that is morally unacceptable in our current (real world) culture. Beyond that, its really just a large scale mercenary campaign, with the reward being land instead of credits.

 

[paltrysum]

Great idea, bklokis. I've run both "Ihatei!" and "Prodigal Outcast" so I'm all in on the Aslan lore and roleplaying. After running the two adventures, one of my players became intrigued with the Aslan and suggested the idea of running a strictly Aslan campaign, in which all three players take the roles of landless ihatei. Initially the player mentioned wanted to play Aslan from the Glorious Empire, but the other two players who were up for this idea were uncomfortable with the idea of being involved with slavery. I can't say that I blame them, though I do believe there are ways one can adapt the Glorious Empire setting that do not involve the players owning human slaves.

In any case, what I did do was have them create Aslan characters from Reaver's Deep. We got as far as generating characters, developing some pretty good backgrounds for them, having one of their clans assign them an Ihateisho-class scout, and selecting the starting point for the campaign: Hrike in hex 0530 of the sector. We haven't gotten around to running it yet, but after I knock out a few projects I have going, it's high on my list.

You bring up some great points, Old School. While the Aslan are arguably the least alien of Traveller's aliens, their culture engages in activities that many players find reprehensible. The players would have to fully immerse themselves in the idea that from the perspective of the aliens themselves, what they're doing isn't reprehensible at all.

 

[Old School]

I was going to write “if anyone is going to design that campaign, it would be paltrysum”, but I didn’t want to speak for you.

I get that it would be fun for some players, but I would not enjoy roleplaying an Aslan male within their accepted culture as a player character. I prefer them as the foil. To each their own.