Vargr Worlds in the SM and TR

[Jak Nazryth]

I have a player that is running a Vargr Corsair. He is a first time Traveller player, and is making some rookie mistakes only 2 games into my new campaign. His background is a bit thin, since he is so new... he simply doesn't have the knowledge of the Travellerverse to create a well rounded background. That being said... He's running his character as if he's had very little contact with the Third Imperium, or any type of civilization for that matter. So it gets me to his homeworld and "area of Knowledge". My campaign is taking place along the Rimward edge of the Spinward Marches and the Coreward edge of the Trojan Reach. I've skimmed through the Alsan book, which covers the Reach, but I can find out any info of Vargr, other than they settled the area a 1000 years ago, and that they make up about 10% of the Reaches inhabitants.
Does anyone know of any "high Vargr populated Worlds" within the Trojan Reach, or the Spinward Marches?
I can simply assign a group of planets and say "This cluster has the highest population of Vargrs in the Reach". But if there's something out there that's already part of cannon, I can integrate that into my campaign and help my player round out his character's background a bit better.
Plus, he is REALLY wanting to drag the rest of the party into a life of piracy, at least part of the time. He's focused on the "Gaining Charisma" aspect of the Vargr culture. He's convinced that pulling off stunning pirate raids in the only thing that will grant him the requirements to increase his charisma. Any thoughts on THAT angle? I played a Vargr in the T20 system more than a decade ago, and I don't recall that aspect of playing a Vargr character... or at least, that's not how I played my character...

 

[GypsyComet]

Cultural Vargr tend to be very Charisma conscious, yes. Other races will frequently have a "stabilizing" effect on this, though, as those without Charisma often act, to the Vargr way of thinking, like they have very high and unassailable charisma. Vargr react to this by tamping down their own tendencies a bit, though never completely.

You could put his homeworld in either Foreven or The Beyond, neither of which is detailed. That area is a bit far from Vargr space to have a high pop world dominated by Vargr, but don't let that stop you.

 

[Condottiere]

Look at party dynamics and his fellow players.

If his motivation is to game the system and increase his charisma, see if you can let him discover other normal Vargr routes to improve that.

The other players, or at least the experienced ones should let their characters interact with his that good naturedily divert him from activities that might disrupt your vision from how the game should proceed, or from activities that they aren't too comfortable with.

 

[Jak Nazryth]

The experienced players have mentioned that they plan on killing the Vargr in his sleep… jokingly… I think…
Tonight will be the third game of my mini-reboot.
Almost 2 years ago I put my game on hold, restarting it recently.
The original characters were.. Noble, Marine, Corporate Spy, Scientist-turned Psi-cop, and Zhodani on-the-run.
The Noble stopped playing cause his wife laid down the law… lol
The character sheets for the Psi-cop and Zhodani were lost.
So I rebooted my existing game “back at the starting point” where the Baron dropped everyone off cause he was tired of travelling in the Trojan Reach with all it’s dangers.
So the two existing players, Marine and Corporate Spy, got back their ship shares.
The two older players created a Aslan Warrior and a Human Medic.
The brand new player new to Traveller created the Vargr.
He’s a good guy and a good rpg’er, but he’s mostly played D&D type games before.
He rolled up 5 ship shares. One of the other original players has 4 ship shares. The party as a whole has 12 ship shares.
But the Vargr player had been acting kinda bossy… “My ship.”… “I’m the captain”… “We are going to engage in piracy at least a few times so I hope you guys won’t have a problem with that…”
He was under the misunderstanding he was THE owner of HIS ship, simply because he had more shares than the others.
I’ve sent a couple emails, very subtlety and very neutrally defusing the situation a bit. He’s moderated his original tone so I hope everything goes smoothly from now on. I don’t think he’s meaning to come off like this, he’s just really excited about playing Traveller, but he may have had a wrong impression of how things in Traveller work. Anyway, 3rd game is tonight so we’ll see how things turn out. I’m sure it will be fine.
But.. in the mean time I’ve located a small cluster of worlds where it’s still predominately human, but the Vargr make up 40% or so of the population, with one planet that’s 50/50. That will give him a sense of “home”.

 

[Condottiere]

Personally, I think this is usually solved within the group.

This usually depends on what kind of campaign you want to run and what your players expect; I usually went through the routine of asking why they want to play that race and/or archetype, what their goals are, what they know of their racial traits, how they view their place in the universe, and so on.

If what he has planned is really disruptive, allow him to proceed and fall flat on his face, permit him some success without jeopardizing the rest of the group, grudgingly permit him success, and then at some point mention diminishing returns. In theory, that particular bugbear should have then run it's course.

However, everything tends to be specific to group dynamics and individuals, so the above may be counter-productive.

 

[Jak Nazryth]

I generally play the ref and let the players do what they do and chime in when I need to if the situation requires it. But I let my players make all the decisions of the game. The situation is already self-correcting a little now that the new guys is getting used to Traveller as a reality instead of his preconceived notions. But everyone seems to be having fun, which is ultimate goal after all.