Vargr and Aslan alien books worth getting?

nats

nats

Banded Mongoose
I was thinking about getting a hold of the Vargr and Aslan MgT alien books and was wondering if they are any good?

I remember my IISS Ship Files book for CT had some lovely Vargr and Zhodani designs in there (IISS is still one of my favourite Traveller books of all time, shame Mongoose didnt follow that format - especially the paperclipped new snippets that gave you game ideas - lovely idea). The Vargr one was a right mess of a design with bits of ship all over the place that neatly represented the anarchic Vargr way of life. Whereas the Zhodani ship had a separated place for the psychic adept to sit which again was a really neat idea considering their place in Zhodani society.

Do Mongooses alien books show anything like this kind of imagination at all? If I play a Spinward Marches concentrated campaign what alien books would you suggest I get? I am not really that much into the Traveller aliens, because I always thought they were very unimaginatively designed, so I never got any of the CT alien books before. But I do kind of like the idea of the Vargr and Aslan books as I think my kids will enjoy some of them in their campaign.
 
The Aslan one is very useful....at least I found it so.

Thing is, people who 'know' about Aslan culture, manners, duelling, etc, etc, probably don't need another book on it. I did, because I didn't. An encrypted formal note we....err...acquired? during a pirates of drinax game purporting to be written by (so far as we could figure out) an Aslan (presumably an ambassador or something) living somewhere in the Imperium called "H'soli'ko" (or however it was spelt) didn't mean much, until we noticed something in the sourcebook and may have said a few bad words when we figured out who that actually meant.

There are still plenty of encounter tables and as many alternate careers as you'd get in something like mercenary or high guard. The ships are nice - the artwork very nice - but I'd imagine that aside from the odd trader you probably wouldn't encounter them too far beyond the trojan reach. Ihatei aren't especially welcome at the border, after all.
 
Personally I like all of the Alien Modules except "Sword Worlds".

I never played CT, and started Trav with MgT, so I have found these modules excellent introductions. Someone with more 3I experiece will be able to tell you how well these supplements fit with earlier material. Would definately recommend "Aslan" and "Vargr", some good background and nice ideas. As ever, we modified some things, but more for the particular MTU feel of our 3I than because of weaknesses in the book. Both contain a complete Sector, so if you want to wander out of the Spinward Marches, two more interesting destinations.

On the topic of alien races, I know they are not to everyone's taste, but I like the 3I's races and the rationale behind them. (Though one of our players rolls his eyes and makes yipping noised everytime Vargr are mentioned!). They fit within the setting they were designed for.

Egil
 
nats said:
I was thinking about getting a hold of the Vargr and Aslan MgT alien books and was wondering if they are any good?

I remember my IISS Ship Files book for CT had some lovely Vargr and Zhodani designs in there
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You cannot compare the Mongoose Alien books with the Classic Traveller magazine articles. It's a world of difference. The Mongoose Alien books are great sourcebooks in addition to the major races they describe.

If you end up not using the race in your game or don't care for sourcebook material, you will not get your monies worth, of course.
 
I like both Aslan and Vargr. I'm a Vargr fan from "way back", but until the MgT Aslan book, I never really cared one way or the other about them. The Aslan book changed my opinion.

With the Aslan character generation rules, I'm itching to run an Aslan campaign. Of course it probably would need to be one Male with a Female crew, but that would be fun also - the Male leading and calling the shots, the Females doing the real work and quietly "handling things" when the Male makes disastrously bad choices, etc. One choice might be to make ALL players the female crew, and have the Male crew an NPC. That could be useful for a funnier campaign where players didn't mind railroading. "Listen up ladies, we're going to XXX to avenge a discourtesy paid to my house by YYY. There's some sort of techy hoo-haa guarding the base which needs to go, and some sort of treaty of whatever, but I don't have time for those details, just get my plasma rifle ready!"

Vargr was good but some how not quite as inspiring as Aslan. The "in fighting" Charisma rules are a must for a Vargr centric game though, and seem like the'd bring a fun and distinct dynamic to such a game. Everyone would be working to help each other faithfully, but watching for the opportunity to take over the pack.

The down side to the Aslan book is artwork. Aslan starts off with a long "they're not lion men!" description, and then proceeds to put the most lion-man like artwork I've ever seen all over the book, ignoring previous Aslan artistic depictions.

Vargr is a little better, though I don't like the shaded, curvy style they use for their ship images. (What do you call that? Ink shaded? Darn my lack of formal art education!)

If you're not planning on running Aslan or Vargr centric campaigns, the books can still be useful to help you flesh out NPCs.
 
hdan said:
The down side to the Aslan book is artwork. Aslan starts off with a long "they're not lion men!" description, and then proceeds to put the most lion-man like artwork I've ever seen all over the book, ignoring previous Aslan artistic depictions.
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I just say that even though they look like Earth lions, they evolved on their own. Just like there are lizard races that look like Earth lizards.

But for Aslan(s), I've seen them drawn as men-like and not-so-men-like. But then the writer should have screamed, "They're not human-like, either!"

The writing for the Aslan race was just bad from the beginning in 1980. Probably to keep from getting sued by sci-fi authors.
 
While the text of Mongoose's Aslan is generally good, the artist shows a preference for Kzinti. The OTU Aslan have a different hand structure (three fingers and a centered thumb) and the artist missed it completely. Art-wise I preferred the DGP era Aslan, but their version of Aslan culture was way too Japanese. In the end you find a happy medium that you can wrap your brain around and go with that.

The Vargr are such a chaotic and variable race that it is hard to completely describe them. Sort of like Humaniti, really.
 
ShawnDriscoll said:
The writing for the Aslan race was just bad from the beginning in 1980. Probably to keep from getting sued by sci-fi authors.
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I wish Marc had been gutsy and dropped all the races from T5 and gone with new ones myself: upright dogs, the aslan lion, centaurs, psychic humans, elves and the obvious 'weird alien' - they are all very unimaginative. I am surprised he didnt have any orcs in there jsut to complete the set!

I really wish Marc had been brave and introduced compeltely new takes for them all for T5. But it doesnt look like he has from what little I have seen. I think the lack of imagination puts me off using them at all. They all have intersting histories and cultures but its just the naff look and naming of them all.

I wonder if Marc has really missed a massive opportunity with T5 to do something new and cool with Traveller. I cant help thinking T5 will end up like MT and T4 - I didnt even bother with those versions. CT and MgT are the only Traveller versions I have liked.

Anyway no doubt we will all see over the coming month.
 
nats said:
ShawnDriscoll said:
The writing for the Aslan race was just bad from the beginning in 1980. Probably to keep from getting sued by sci-fi authors.
Click to expand...

I wish Marc had been gutsy and dropped all the races from T5 and gone with new ones myself: upright dogs, the aslan lion, centaurs, psychic humans, elves and the obvious 'weird alien' - they are all very unimaginative. I am surprised he didnt have any orcs in there jsut to complete the set!

I really wish Marc had been brave and introduced compeltely new takes for them all for T5. But it doesnt look like he has from what little I have seen. I think the lack of imagination puts me off using them at all. They all have intersting histories and cultures but its just the naff look and naming of them all.

I wonder if Marc has really missed a massive opportunity with T5 to do something new and cool with Traveller.
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All of them? Sure, "Vargr" is close to the Swedish word for wolf, but "Aslan" is just the human term. They call themselves the Fteirle. "Zhodani" is the Galanglisized version of "Zdotlas", and the Centaurs call themselves K'kree. "Hiver" is also a human name for silent manipulators of Glea. As for the Vilani, their language doesn't even have a "v". Amongst themselves they are the Bilandin.

As I've already noted, the Aslan have suffered from artwork issues since very early. So have the K'kree.

Have you read any of the other recent SFRPGs? Other than Diaspora, none of them are getting much traction, and Diaspora gets a lot of its traction from being FATE based, which is fashionable right now. If "new and cool" were that easy, everyone would be doing it.

Traveller's foundation is the tropes of space opera. There is really no way around that unless you go completely homebrew *and* manage to avoid those tropes. Good luck with that.

Also, you may have missed some of the essays on alien races in Traveller. The "guy in a rubber suit" effect is difficult to escape in alien design and still have them be playable. The specific form of the rubber suit doesn't matter as much as the fact that it is there, and why it is there.

Finally, the races you mention are just the big guys. There are dozens of local races that remain undefined on purpose, some mentioned (such as in Deneb) and many not. If you feel constrained to stay in the Third Imperium setting, pick a spot where the background noise races (humans and vargr, for example) are not too objectionable, and go to town writing up the locals. You may find those unimaginative tropes you wanted to avoid a lot harder to escape than you think, but if you do manage, SHARE!
 
Hey nats, as a followup to your statement about alien races, what would you be looking for in an alien race? Also on an "alien-ness" scale do you feel the 2300 races (Ebers, Pentapods, Sung, Xiang, Kafers) are sufficiently alien for your taste?

As GypsyComet points out, the 3rd Imperium Major Races fall into the tropes of "Imperial SF" genre. This implies that their mindset/culture needs to be sufficiently recognizable to interact with or against on a regular basis. If they are "too alien" one can't play them well on a constant basis and are better just being NPCs or antagonists.
 
Nathan Brazil said:
Hey nats, as a followup to your statement about alien races, what would you be looking for in an alien race? Also on an "alien-ness" scale do you feel the 2300 races (Ebers, Pentapods, Sung, Xiang, Kafers) are sufficiently alien for your taste?

As GypsyComet points out, the 3rd Imperium Major Races fall into the tropes of "Imperial SF" genre. This implies that their mindset/culture needs to be sufficiently recognizable to interact with or against on a regular basis. If they are "too alien" one can't play them well on a constant basis and are better just being NPCs or antagonists.
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I dont really know just something a bit more than upright dogs, centaurs, humans, elves and lions I guess - things from Earth are not very alien - although the explanation of the Vargr, Zhodani and Solomani at least makes some sense. I think the Vegans and Droyne are the best alien species in Traveller although the Hiver arent bad, albeit a bit predictable.

I think the best aliens I have seen to date anywhere are Giger's, Predator's and District 9's aliens. All of the Star Trek ones are rope and The Babylon 5 ones were pretty unimaginative as well, but these obviously resulted from the low budgets and necessity of human shapes. Some of the Star Wars ones aren't bad - the Gungans are probably pretty playable as characters.

I havent seen any of the 2300 aliens - not being into that game at all.
 
ShawnDriscoll said:
shadows3 said:
What happend to the Solomani book that was released last year?
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Mongoose deleted that page. Email Matthew to see if the book is still in stock. The PDF is on RPG Drive Thru.
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I have already have a copy. I was just wondering if its out of print?
 
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