What Would You Want to See in a New Major Race?

[Vormaerin]

OK, going all the way back to the OP here...
If I ever decide to do a Not Charted Space Traveller game, the Pentapods are DEFINITELY gonna be part of it. Including the Kaefer would really depend on how gun happy the PC group is. I'm hoping that the upcoming 2300 Invasion boxed set will expand on the wonderful work of The Kafer Sourcebook instead of just condensing it as the Aliens of Charted Space series does.

If I were to ever design a Major Race, I have more of an idea of what I DON'T want than what I do want:
- No human in a fuzzy suit tropes
- No 'hawt' bimbos with blasters
- A culture that isn't based on historical Earth tropes [aka 'Aslan = Thundercat samurai']
- A culture with enough depth that they have to be taken as they are, not as a meme, trope, or StarTrek/Wars equivalent

All this is based off of several previous attempts to introduce minor races in Traveller games that players weren't interested in learning about. I don't know, maybe it's a lack of imagination on my part but I've come up with ideas in the past that I thought were worthwhile and other PCs though were dumb.

The core problem with playable races is that they have to be playable. That makes it very hard to move them far from the human mindset, because they are being played by humans. NPC only races are much easier to make inhuman, because the author or Referee only needs to play them in short bursts and, generally, in scenes that they are somewhat expecting.

A player playing a genuinely alien race has to be able to be in that mindset all the time, in every situation. That is extremely difficult. Which is why you have races like the Aslan get turned into Thundercat samurai, when that is not at all what they were written like originally. Even if you don't give an alien a 'hat', players will tend to do so so they have a grasp of how they are supposed to act.

 

[WHULorigan]

How do we know about Florian biology? is this in the JTAS Vol 4 that I haven't got round to reading?

It was specified at length in GURPS Traveller: Humaniti, and was otherwise touched on prior to that (I believe) though I do not remember the particular references off hand. It is in MgT2 JTAS Vol 4.

 

[WHULorigan]

The core problem with playable races is that they have to be playable. That makes it very hard to move them far from the human mindset, because they are being played by humans. NPC only races are much easier to make inhuman, because the author or Referee only needs to play them in short bursts and, generally, in scenes that they are somewhat expecting.

A player playing a genuinely alien race has to be able to be in that mindset all the time, in every situation. That is extremely difficult. Which is why you have races like the Aslan get turned into Thundercat samurai, when that is not at all what they were written like originally. Even if you don't give an alien a 'hat', players will tend to do so so they have a grasp of how they are supposed to act.

That is always the issue. You can pick a truly alien race to play as a challenge, which becomes a somewhat "mechanical" experience as you can't really "get into" the character, not being able to identify with it and its motivations on a personal level. On the other hand, the "aliens" that are the most enjoyable to play as a long-term PC are the ones that you can identify with in some way, which means that they are not all that alien.

I have always thought that the Hivers are a really interesting and well thought out alien species because of how different they are based on their psychology and drives, but I wouldn't one to play one as a long-term personal PC (maybe at a convention as a one-shot, perhaps). OTOH, the Aslan are one of the most enjoyable alien species as a PC-choice in my opinion, but also one of the least credible from a harder-science standpoint in terms of snapping my belief-suspenders. They are just "too like us and our culture" (and vaguely "great-cat like" to boot).

 

[Nelphine]

Yeah, thats why i specifically designed a major race, that is not meant to be playable. They are there to be different, to be alien, to challenge the accepted norms.

But i wanted one where that was true not just of individuals, but also of society. As different as they are, the imperial navy doesnt react differently to the aslan, to the vargr, to the florians. But more, the megacorps treat them the same as well. Trade is trade is trade. And, in some ways, trade is the core of the game - its the reason the 3I exists. So to not make it feel different, i think is a lost opportunity.

The k'kree i think are the best attempt at this in the OTU, but they are hobbled to the point of ineffectiveness, and ignored by most. Of course, thats justified - people playing a game often dont want alien, dont want different. And making believably different without radically upsetting the balance of the 3I, is very difficult - arguably far more difficult than playing a truly alien character, let alone playing one for only a single session.

 

[ottarrus]

The k'kree i think are the best attempt at this in the OTU, but they are hobbled to the point of ineffectiveness, and ignored by most. Of course, thats justified - people playing a game often dont want alien, dont want different. And making believably different without radically upsetting the balance of the 3I, is very difficult - arguably far more difficult than playing a truly slien character, let alone playing one for a single session.

I thought that Aliens of Charted Space had some good ideas [the Patriarchy skill, etc.] but I really thought they glossed over some of the deficits of the species.
Any introduction of a Major Race is gonna bugger up the balance of power in Charted Space one way or another. This is why I suggest having you own sector away from Charted Space to do your own thing.

 

[Nelphine]

I'd like to see zhodani with no concept of credits, its all a universal telepathic-block-chain of activity-justifies-services-and-goods. Buy a pistol by letting them read your mind to see if your life services warrant owning a pistol.

Aslan that do everything with land titles and no currencies, and every day is filled with taking care of the land they own, no natter how far they are from that land. To buy a pistol, your land titles must justify you owning a pistol: demonstrate that your land produces things both worth something to others, and that your land hasnt already promised that produce to another.

Vargr who have millions of currencies, all backed up by individual vargr, and in turn, is really the trade of services - each currency means that vargr and their pack will literally back it up on individual merit. If you buy a pistol from them, they owe you a pistol, but may have to 'obtain' it first.

Hivers that do everything in currency - when you buy a pistol from a hiver, it hands you.. currency. If you threaten another hiver with it, the hiver reacts as if it were a pistol. Threaten it with a real pistol, and it laughs in your face.

K'kree have no sense of trade at all, they have the purest forms of dictatorships. You either already have a pistol or your herd lord will give you a pistol - you never buy it. The herd? It either makes the pistol, or it acquires the pistol. But 'trading' doesn't exist.

 

[tzunder]

It was specified at length in GURPS Traveller: Humaniti, and was otherwise touched on prior to that (I believe) though I do not remember the particular references off hand. It is in MgT2 JTAS Vol 4.

Thanks, I have it and have read it. It's over a decade since I last read it!
I have also read JTAS Vol4 from Mongoose and have a good overview.
They don't fully agree, especially on physionomy, and as such I am comfortable to start MTU with various alternate hypotheses and let my players explore and discover through play what is correct.
Apologies for my bit of threadjacking.

NOW.. a new Major Race..

Well I loved the Pentapods and regretted that they were never well developed. I can see a potential conflict between them and the Hivers.. one manipulates societies and the other manipulates biology.. so I might place them Trailing of the Hivers and even bordering the K'Kree. Fully organic space ships, maybe with a very variant way to access jump space.. but not breaking the core parameters.

Kaefer are IMHO are a bit of a one trick pony, and I can't see them having developed jump capable space ships. Indeed maybe they are am abandoned Ancients bioengeered army that has woken, maybe even from a pocket dimension ...

My favourite candidate is definitely a Machine People. Not from Humaniti, maybe from another alien culture that the Ancients crushed (how about the snail ship aliens from SoA)? They can also state that they are a Major Race since they developed jump capable ships for their masters before they rebelled, but other might argue that they were dumb non sentient computers then ...

 

[Sigtrygg]

There is a pentapod supplement for 2300AD in draft form available on the FFE cd.

 

[WHULorigan]

Thanks, I have it and have read it. . . .
I have also read JTAS Vol4 from Mongoose and have a good overview.
They don't fully agree, especially on physionomy, and as such I am comfortable to start MTU with various alternate hypotheses and let my players explore and discover through play what is correct.

That is always a great option to have. Isn't the rumor-mill wonderful.

 

[WHULorigan]

NOW.. a new Major Race..

Kaefer are IMHO are a bit of a one trick pony, and I can't see them having developed jump capable space ships. Indeed maybe they are am abandoned Ancients bioengeered army that has woken, maybe even from a pocket dimension ...

The basic underlying" volatile intelligence" dynamic of the Kaefer was later used to flesh out the Hivers in Charted Space. It would be interesting if they both were species that evolved on the same world (Guaran), but the Hivers either evolutionarily outcompeted them, or the Ancients removed some of their ancestors prior to their extinction or marginalization.

 

[WHULorigan]

NOW.. a new Major Race..

Well I loved the Pentapods and regretted that they were never well developed. I can see a potential conflict between them and the Hivers.. one manipulates societies and the other manipulates biology.. so I might place them Trailing of the Hivers and even bordering the K'Kree. Fully organic space ships, maybe with a very variant way to access jump space.. but not breaking the core parameters.

It would be interesting to see how the K'kree would react to them . . .

 

[WHULorigan]

NOW.. a new Major Race..

My favourite candidate is definitely a Machine People. Not from Humaniti, maybe from another alien culture that the Ancients crushed (how about the snail ship aliens from SoA)? They can also state that they are a Major Race since they developed jump capable ships for their masters before they rebelled, but other might argue that they were dumb non sentient computers then ...

Perhaps as a machine-race they did not find it necessary (or were intellectually constrained within certain limited thinking patterns) to develop a Jump drive (since travel time was relatively meaningless to them), and only adapted the Jump drive to their needs later after they were exposed to the Ancient's version of it or were given specific directives to research along such lines of thought by their former Masters.

 

[alex_greene]

So, to create a Major Race, it has to (a) have evolved on its own; (b) independently developed the tech for Jump before its First Contact moment with any other alien species.
And to be playable, the tendency is to make them a Lumpy Forehead Humanoid species so they can be played by human players.
Some recent new species turned up in Star Trek: Strange New Worlds. One of them was a species whose homeworld was something out of Ursula K LeGuin's "The Ones Who Walk Away From Omelas." Not going to spoil it for you. Read it. Come back here when you've done so.
Another species created by Ursula was the beings of Gethen in The Left Hand of Darkness. We could create a species with the same sort of philosophy and physiology for Trav. It would open up whole fields of gaming based on identity - something we touch upon when psionics gets involved, except psionics has taken away that whole identity thing and it's just "superpowers and Ghostbusters."
But the most interesting Strange New Worlds species was one which had been living among humans for millennia, and which only came out to Una Chin-Riley - the Lanthanides. A species of people like Flint from "Requiem For Methuselah" capable of living for virtual millennia, all but immune to aging.
Oh, and let's have a Major Race like the Illyrians, too - a species which experimented with genetic manipulation for centuries, abandoned it, and yet the entire species is all Augments, just because the changes they wrought on their own genomes bred true down the generations to become their species' signature Traits.

 

[WHULorigan]

.. so I might place them Trailing of the Hivers and even bordering the K'Kree. Fully organic space ships, maybe with a very variant way to access jump space.. but not breaking the core parameters.

Any introduction of a Major Race is gonna bugger up the balance of power in Charted Space one way or another. This is why I suggest having you own sector away from Charted Space to do your own thing.

On the original hand-drawn map of Charted Space (found in the files of the MT CD from FFE), there is on the far trailing edge of Hiver Space what appears to be the coreward edge of another polity about a sector in size (from the edge of it that can be seen - it could be much larger) in Kolire Sector. It would be interesting to place something "out there" that maybe the Imperium isn't entirely familiar with (or which the Hivers don't really want anyone else to know about) that might be a significant polity or species. They still might not be "Major" in the technical sense:

• Maybe they got their Jump drive from another Major Race or one of its subject races (such as Hive Federation traders).
• Maybe they expanded by STL means (generation ships or sleeper ships) and have an STL (but otherwise very advanced) empire.
• Maybe they have immense lifespans (and different perceptions of time) and do not need or care about FTL travel within their territory.
• Maybe they have developed an alternative form of FTL (perhaps inferior to Jump * , perhaps not) and therefore are not "technically" Major, since it isn't a Jump drive.

* - Perhaps an inferior form of stutterwarp that operates at 1/100 the efficiency of the stutterwarp of the 2300AD Universe. This would make it inferior to Jump-1 in terms of travel time, and the tunnelling-distance "drop-off" in the outer system would be so severe as to still require a secondary maneuvering-drive for in-system travel. But it still would allow interstellar travel at pseudo-velocities far superior to high-speed relativistic transits or light-speed. ​

 

[Sigtrygg]

Which file has the hand drawn map? I can't find it on my disc.

 

[WHULorigan]

Which file has the hand drawn map? I can't find it on my disc.

It is an independent file in one of the folders on the disc.

If you own one of the very first issues of the CD (which was FFE's very first CD publication - ~2005 I think), it doesn't have it. Later releases of the CD had additional files on it (that I discovered the same way - someone saying there were one or two neat files on the CD which I could not find on mine). I eventually got an updated copy of the CD to get them (and no, the updated CD case doesn't look any different than the first-issue CD case, adding to the confusion).

(EDIT: It is the map with the names and locations of real-world stars identified, with Right Ascension values noted at the Rimward/Spinward/Coreward/Trailing axial points and a note stating a Declination value of ±10º for all shown stars in the margin at the bottom. Deneb is shown at its correct distance on the far Corespinward side of the Consulate, and "Troy" is noted as a prominent world just within Imperial borders within the Trojan Reach in the Coretrailing Quadrant of the Sector).

I think the later CD also has improved scans of some of the MT books as well.

 

[Sigtrygg]

Looks like I will need a new cd then.
Many thanks for the reply.

 

[ottarrus]

On the original hand-drawn map of Charted Space (found in the files of the MT CD from FFE), there is on the far trailing edge of Hiver Space what appears to be the coreward edge of another polity about a sector in size (from the edge of it that can be seen - it could be much larger) in Kolire Sector. It would be interesting to place something "out there" that maybe the Imperium isn't entirely familiar with (or which the Hivers don't really want anyone else to know about) that might be a significant polity or species. They still might not be "Major" in the technical sense:

• Maybe they got their Jump drive from another Major Race or one of its subject races (such as Hive Federation traders).
• Maybe they expanded by STL means (generation ships or sleeper ships) and have an STL (but otherwise very advanced) empire.
• Maybe they have immense lifespans (and different perceptions of time) and do not need or care about FTL travel within their territory.
• Maybe they have developed an alternative form of FTL (perhaps inferior to Jump * , perhaps not) and therefore are not "technically" Major, since it isn't a Jump drive.

* - Perhaps an inferior form of stutterwarp that operates at 1/100 the efficiency of the stutterwarp of the 2300AD Universe. This would make it inferior to Jump-1 in terms of travel time, and the tunnelling-distance "drop-off" in the outer system would be so severe as to still require a secondary maneuvering-drive for in-system travel. But it still would allow interstellar travel at pseudo-velocities far superior to high-speed relativistic transits or light-speed. ​

The one in Leonidas Sector? I believe that's the approximate location of the Dynchia.
There's some 'give' in the location of Melantris [Dynchia homeworld] because two 'official' sources put it in two different spots.

 

[WHULorigan]

The one in Leonidas Sector? I believe that's the approximate location of the Dynchia.
There's some 'give' in the location of Melantris [Dynchia homeworld] because two 'official' sources put it in two different spots.

No. Beyond the Trailing edge of the Hive Federation, in Kolire Sector. It is off the edge of the Charted Space Map.

Here (Kolire Sector): https://travellermap.com/?options=891&p=235.377!-102.859!3.2 .

On the hand-drawn map, the border of a polity beginning in the spinward region of this sector is in evidence that extends off the map to trailing. It is almost the entire length of the sector measured coreward-rimward in roughly subsectors B, E, F, I, J, M, and N before it truncates due to the edge of the paper. What it does beyond the edge of the paper is unknown. It could be the spinward quarter of a simple sector-sized polity. Or it could be the leading edge of something as large as the Hive Federation itself. There is just no way to know. Obviously, it did not make its way to the eventual canonical map of Charted Space that was eventually published.

(Note that on the hand-drawn map, the only approximate subsectors that are showing for Koilre Sector are A, E, I, and M, before the Sector-grid goes off the edge of the paper).

 

[Prime_Evil]

A new major race should contradict some of the established lore, opening up space for ambiguity. Traveller is at its best when it leaves space for individual gaming groups to interpret contradictions in ways that suit their needs.