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

[alex_greene]

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.

That's the point of Traveller - the joy of discovery, not just warfare and the trade game. Let your Travellers make the discoveries in their travels - an alien ship with a space folding drive, a new Major Race with a unique take on technology nobody's encountered before, a new sophont race untouched by the emotional baggage of Ancients and Imperium and hatred for the Zhodani.

 

[Sigtrygg]

I agree, there is a whole galaxy to explore.
The PCs just need to be facilitated with the means to explore it.

 

[Vormaerin]

Weirdly, many of the published Traveller campaigns for Mongoose Traveller are... exploration or discovery. Deepnight Revelation. The Rim Expeditions. Even the "Ancients trilogy" is, so far, about discovery and mystery. Granted, it sounds like it is heading towards some kind of war. "Whispers from the Abyss" sounds like a "discover new things" campaign, not a trade or war campaign. Prometheus is neither trade nor war, but I suppose it isn't really exploration or discovery either.

Skandersvik is a trade campaign, admittedly.

I guess if you squint, Pirates of Drinax counts as "trade and war", but I doubt that is what most folks think of when you say that.

Next year, we are getting a war thing. But we are also getting Singularity, which is a paradigm changing campaign from what it sounds like. And Pioneer, which is seems likely to involve exploration and stuff.

I don't understand this view that Traveller is narrow and constraining. Even the Charted Space setting isn't constrained. You can do all kinds of exploration and discovery in the setting. And if you want to go full warp speed, you can easily use different tech assumptions like Mindjammer does. No one playing Traveller is limited to the Charted Space setting.

 

[Prime_Evil]

I wish we got an updated version of Mindjammer for 2e.

 

[Vormaerin]

Yeah, not sure what is going on with them. I don't think they've put anything out for the line in the last 4 or 5 years, have they?

 

[Prime_Evil]

Yeah, not sure what is going on with them. I don't think they've put anything out for the line in the last 4 or 5 years, have they?

Sarah had some difficult times in her personal life and placed her company on hold.

 

[Vormaerin]

Ah, that sucks. She made some good stuff. Hopefully stuff works out for her.

 

[WingedCat]

I know that the odds of this happening in a new supplement are slim to none, but if one or more new 'Major' Races were introduced, what kind of civilization and type would you like to see? Is there a niche open in the Third Imperium setting that would be a good fit for a new Major power, so it wouldn't feel redundant?

I think a heavily roboticized or cybernetic-reliant civilization could work. For example, in the couple of non-TI games I ran years ago, I had a human-variant polity known as the Mechus Empire. Several disasters forced an exodus fleet to heavily innovate their AI. They succeeded tremendously and grew to be one of the most powerful factions in human territory. The human population remained small and either retired to live luxuriously on carefully tended and heavily defended garden worlds or uploaded their consciousnesses into a VR network designed to be a paradise. Their robotic servitors' purpose is to maintain their beloved masters' standard of living, and if that means being an expansionist power exploiting lesser human or alien polities, so be it.

For the Third Imperium, the founding humans of the Mechus Empire could simply be another Ancient transplanted branch of Humaniti, though them being human is not an important part of their backstory.

When researching 2300 AD recently, I ran across mention by one or two Referees liking to introduce the Kaefer into Charted Space. The Pentapods also seem to be a good choice, IMHO. Any opinions on this?

Does anyone have any homebrewed Major Races, or experiences with games introducing them, they'd like to share?

In some versions of post-1105 history (1200 and later), the Cyms - the sentient AI race that results from Virus entities that survive and become sane - arise as a new Major Race, according to the coyns of Droyne. I may be misremembering, but I think the Cym coyn replaces the K'kree coyn around that time in these timelines.

Given as the Lords of Thunder are taken over by Virus, one possible future timeline is that the K'kree - at least, those present in Charted Space - generally become dominated by Cyms (forcibly implanted by infected neural augmentation), so the Cym "race" includes both those Cyms and less-hostile ones in other hardware.

 

[Regnarts]

Intoduction of a cybernetic or AI based race would be risky, but has potential. It is possible to write it as a emergent Major Race without retconning the setting too much.
Given that Singularity is to come up this year, that campaign could even serve as a gateway for them to be introduced.

As to how it could be written, maybe as a Van Neumann-like system, that has achieved sentience upon contact with Ancient tech?
Or an AI, found in a lost research base, that achieved singularity upon countless iterations.
Given that we have avatar technology in the Robot Handbook one can even imagine Borg-like parasitic or symbiotic cyborgs.
Or a race of sentient spaceships given that we have Conscious Intelligence software in High Guard.

The question is, how playable would be such a race?

 

[ottarrus]

Intoduction of a cybernetic or AI based race would be risky, but has potential. It is possible to write it as a emergent Major Race without retconning the setting too much.
Given that Singularity is to come up this year, that campaign could even serve as a gateway for them to be introduced.

As to how it could be written, maybe as a Van Neumann-like system, that has achieved sentience upon contact with Ancient tech?
Or an AI, found in a lost research base, that achieved singularity upon countless iterations.
Given that we have avatar technology in the Robot Handbook one can even imagine Borg-like parasitic or symbiotic cyborgs.
Or a race of sentient spaceships given that we have Conscious Intelligence software in High Guard.

The question is, how playable would be such a race?

There already is one.
The Sabmiqys of Sabmiqys/Gimgir [Ant 2117] are semi-organic robotic ergavore race that are the remnants of a dead civilization. The world itself is Interdicted inasmuch as the Sabmiqys have reached TL 17, are severely xenophobic and no contact party has ever returned from landing on the world.
AAB /IE link below:

Sabmiqys - Traveller

wiki.travellerrpg.com

 

[G'Naakbusters]

The Sabmiqys are featured briefly, and statted, in the current Robots book. Complete with pleasingly goofy illustration.

 

[ottarrus]

Also, the Essuray are statted up in the MgT2e Starter Set. They are a bio-mechanical race, and they might meet your definition of 'cybernetic' [depending on if you're going with the science or science fiction fandom version].
You can get that information at drivethru without having to buy the whole set. The booklet is called 'The Fall of Tinath'.

 

[J Harper]

There already is one.
The Sabmiqys of Sabmiqys/Gimgir [Ant 2117] are semi-organic robotic ergavore race that are the remnants of a dead civilization. The world itself is Interdicted inasmuch as the Sabmiqys have reached TL 17, are severely xenophobic and no contact party has ever returned from landing on the world.
AAB /IE link below:

Sabmiqys - Traveller

wiki.travellerrpg.com

I just read the Sabmiqys’ entry on the wiki and it legitimately creeped me out. That’s one hell of a plot seed for gm’s. ‘The Sabmiqys are not interested in leaving their planet’… until suddenly they are.

 

[Sigtrygg]

I hope none of the scout ships that landed had a jump drive...

 

[ottarrus]

I hope none of the scout ships that landed had a jump drive...

One wonders how the Sabmiqys handled Virus.... A TL 17 Vampire Fleet would be pretty frikkin' nasty

 

[Sigtrygg]

It all depends on if they can tame Virus the way the Hivers did or if they are affected by it.

It may even be the event that triggers true self awareness in the TL17 synthetics.

 

[J Harper]

I hope none of the scout ships that landed had a jump drive...

Imagine if they examined a captured Jump Drive and refined its workings to develop Hop Ships.

The plots for a ‘Sabmiqys Break Out’ campaign practically write themselves.

 

[Sigtrygg]

Hop is not a guaranteed progression from jump. Each is a breakthrough discovery discovery according to T5.
So they could invent Hop without ever inventing jump, and reverse engineer jump.

 

[J Harper]

Fair. I was just rifting off of your post.

 

[Marc]

My two cents?
Something "Really" not Human but also not Hiver.
In the first issues of the TV show Babylon 5, they had a sentient race that looked like a giant Praying Mantis.
Bent into it's walking or standing posture, it was as tall as an average Human

To me, Vargr and Aslan are just different sized Human-stand in's
Yes, they have their racial specialities (dex claws, etc) and particularities...
But you can put in any 2-legged, 2-armed, single head model.

There should be a race that Humans look at and think, "That's just not right!"