Thoughts on introducing stock Traveller aliens to new players

[Murphy]

I have an ongoing campaign mostly confined to Regina subsector.

It started with 4-player free trader crew, but our numbers have grown since, and it has shifted to become a mercenary campaign with 7-8 players at the table. I stick close to OTU history-wise and we got from 360-1104 to 272-1105 so far. Enough conflicts around to get by, but here comes the thing...

My players have no prior Traveller experience, and so far we only played humans. I want to run a few adventures featuring aliens as major NPCs so that the players could get a "feel" of them and be able to play alien characters later.

Okay, it should be easy with Vargr. Typical Aslan, on the other hand, would not travel with humans so I'd need a specific adventure featuring a group of friendly Aslan, like that one from Live Traveller. When it truly becomes ugly is when you want to introduce Droyne...

 

[Hemdian]

When it truly becomes ugly is when you want to introduce Droyne...

A bird-like Droyne Sport shouldn't be too difficult to introduce (on an errand for their oytrip or engaged in espionage). Or a Droyne free trader (with a crew of 6) might be encountered on a common run.

Plus Chirpers could be common on some worlds ... a bit like the riff-raff in the cantina in Star Wars IV: hustling for quarter-credits and free drinks.

 

[BytePro]

Thoughts on introducing stock Traveller aliens to new players - don't! :devil:

Seriously (though, yeah, that was my first thought), since the party is Mercs it seems that you would have all sorts of opportunity to inflic.., er, introduce alien NPCs to the gang.

 

[Murphy]

It is not common knowledge that Chirpers are related to Droyne, right?

 

[Whipsnade]

Exposing your players to the Aslan may be easier than you think, especially when you remember that the Toons love to hire out as merc units.

Make the next ticket your players hire on a large one involving several merc units. One of the other units will be an Aslan unit and, due to the nature of the ticket, liaison officers will have to be swapped. Make one liaison an experienced older female and the other a younger male with a level or two of the Toon's special "tolerance" skill.

Once the liaison officers give your players a taste of the Aslan, have the players' unit work with the Aslan unit for a few days. Having both units patrolling and/or defending the same settlement would give the players a chance to see how the Toons deal with sophonts who don't share their cultural precepts.

Good luck. My players never asked to play aliens, I rarely used aliens in "speaking NPC" roles, and I firmly believe our campaigns suffered for it.

 

[Murphy]

Well, I'm in love with Mongoose's Secrets of the Ancients campaign. Felt wrong to start it with completely new players, but I totally want to play it after they get the grasp of Traveller Universe better.

Perhaps after an in-game year or so of mercenary swashbuckling I'll have them send the NPC personnel on leave and come to Regina, then drag them into the course of SoTA events. They ought to know what Vargr, Aslan and Droyne look like by that time

 

[Hyphen]

Good luck. My players never asked to play aliens, I rarely used aliens in "speaking NPC" roles, and I firmly believe our campaigns suffered for it.

I had the opposite problem. What with a male Aslan merc-type, a crazy Vargr engineer, and two buggy Droyne, it was more a case of "spot the Human" (NPC)!

(Keeping two teleporting Droyne under control is an interesting exercise, let me tell you...)

 

[shield]

There is a mongoose living traveller adventure with several aslan you might want to use - investigation type adventure. The other one for Vargr is the Traveller Adventure - bits a big and very good trader campaign with 1 major vargr NPC/PC and several others as well as some of the 3I's more weird aliens.

Cheers
Richard

 

[Dragoner]

I have an ongoing campaign mostly confined to Regina subsector.

It started with 4-player free trader crew, but our numbers have grown since, and it has shifted to become a mercenary campaign with 7-8 players at the table. I stick close to OTU history-wise and we got from 360-1104 to 272-1105 so far. Enough conflicts around to get by, but here comes the thing...

My players have no prior Traveller experience, and so far we only played humans. I want to run a few adventures featuring aliens as major NPCs so that the players could get a "feel" of them and be able to play alien characters later.

Okay, it should be easy with Vargr. Typical Aslan, on the other hand, would not travel with humans so I'd need a specific adventure featuring a group of friendly Aslan, like that one from Live Traveller. When it truly becomes ugly is when you want to introduce Droyne...

There is a module on the CT disk, alien realms I think (I'm on a school computer right now so I don't have it at my fingertips), there are a lot of adventures/hooks with the Traveller aliens, many in the Spinward Marches as well.