Sabredog,
How did I use aliens in my games? That depended on the alien.
Broadly speaking
Traveller's aliens fall into three general categories: "rubber suit" aliens, "somewhat alien" aliens, and "truly" aliens. All the Major Races, all of the Human Minors, and nearly all the non-human Minors fall into first two groups. The Aslan, Vargr, and Human Minors are in the first group with the Droyne, Hivers, and K'Kree in the second. Only a few canonical Minor Races fall into the third group.
If we sort
Traveller's aliens by the ease in which they can be
played as PCs and NPCs, they'll fall into the same groupings. That's the Achilles' Heel of any RPG alien;
playability(1). If you present an alien species, most GMs and players will want to use that species as either a PC or NPC -
regardless of whether they should or not. Simply put, the more a species and it's thought processes are non-human - the more they are alien - the more poorly suited they are as PCs and NPCs.
Dave Nilsen spoke the truth about this and was savaged for that truth (among other things). If you actually believe you can play an alien PC or NPC, you're lying to yourself. Make-believe is one thing, believing in make-believe is something else entirely. Using two gaming analogies here; the fact that I routinely win as the British in
Afrika Korps doesn't mean that I'm a better general than Erwin Rommel and doing well in any one of the myriad first person shooter games doesn't mean you'll be able to lead a foot patrol in Iraq without getting your ass shot off and your squad butchered. Similarly, playing an alien in a RPG doesn't reveal anything but your human nature; no matter what you're still just a man in the rubber suit All this means is that
Traveller is a game and we shouldn't read too much into it.
When "rubber suit" aliens appeared in my games, they were used in much the same way aliens are used in
Star Trek; i.e they're essentially humans with plumbing supplies glued on their faces(2). The Vargr were somewhat flighty, easily influenced extroverts continually backstabbing and backbiting those above them and "peeing on the peons" below them while the Aslan were moody, touchy, grouchy, potentially violent paranoids constantly worried about "face" and constantly pretending ignorance of certain topics due to social taboos(3). In other words, the Vargr and Aslan were essentially human and their "psychology" was essentially human, albeit with certain aspects emphasized. While both were present as both PCs and NPCs in my games, fortunately IMHO, none of my players ever expressed interest in adventures or campaigns that featured either solely or in the majority.
When "somewhat alien" aliens appeared in my games, they appeared as NPCs only. Sometimes they were part of the plot on one level or another, but most times they were "scenery". Aside from the problems with actually playing a Droyne, Hiver or K'Kree, there are also "logistical" issues involved. While a Droyne sport can very plausibly be away from its oytrip(sic), the "reins" are short as it will eventually have to report back to its leader. While a lone K'Kree is by definition insane, besides also certainly being suicidal, and thus not the best candidate for a PC or even a long term NPC, a stable K'Kree is just one part of a huge family group containing dozens of members. While a lone Hiver outside of the Federation isn't rare at all, they'll usually have some sort of an entourage too - whether the entourage knows it or not. Too short a "leash" and/or too many "spear carriers" slows the game rapidly. When the Droyne, Hivers, or K'Kree had roles beyond that of "scenery", my players rarely worked "for" or "against" them. That is to say, while the PCs' "business" may have intersected or impacted whatever "business" the Droyne/Hivers/K'Kree had, the PCs' "business" was never the same as the aliens' "business". None of my players ever asked about playing either a Droyne, Hiver, or K'Kree and, if they had, I would have argued against it.
"Alien" aliens in my game was the kind of aliens I very much preferred because those aliens are easier to "fit" into the flow of the game. The role of these aliens in the game was that of an "event"; i.e the PCs would sight a sublight Jgd-il-jgd vessel or receive a wholly cryptic message from them that needed to be passed along to the authorities. These aliens were "events", very vaguely akin to rolling for an earthquake on a travel table. Sometimes the alien event was nothing but "scenery", sometimes the alien event held a clue, sometimes the alien event was simply unknowable. The last type was one of my favorites. I've always felt that things are too pat, too certain, in most RPG adventures. The PCs eventually learn all there is to learn. Adding a little mystery, especially mysteries that can't be solved and are never meant to solved, only adds to the "reality quotient" IMEHO. Let me spin you an example:
I've written several times about a fairly successful IISS active duty campaign I ran. I rolled up a stack of scouts in various points of their careers and had the players choose which character they wanted to play. The group of 4 to 5 then manned a scout/courier in the Trin subsector for 24 months of game time. What little "plot" there was involved the group's "captain" who wanted to be knighted; the PC had a SOC of 10 already, and his increasingly desperate attempts to make a big splash during his tour aboard the courier created lots of tension and plot hooks. anyway, they handled all sorts of odd jobs and then I threw the Jgd-il-jgd at them.
The first encounter was just an "event", just a little bit of "scenery" I set down to ginger things up a bit. The tuft hunting captain blew it all out of proportion naturally and began volunteering for missions that would give him better chances for more contact. I played along, having the same Jgd-il-jgd ship contact them a few more times and even allowing them to transfer some "trade" goods. The captain began trumpeting his "experience" in "contacting" the Jgd-il-jgd, so I pulled the rug out. He kept trying to interact with them, but their use for him (whatever it had been!) was now over. Eventually, I had them shoot at the courier to get the point across.
You will ask what was the "psychology" behind those encounters. The answer is: None. There were "events" I used to play into the captain's assumptions and mess with his goals(4). The Jgd-il-jgd did what they did. Period. There's no comprehensible "reason" for it because they're
alien. There's no Jgd-il-jgd chargen or psych profiles or any of that rubbish. They're aliens. They first contacted the courier for alien reasons and most likely didn't even realize they were "talking" to the same courier later on. When the courier became annoying, they scared it off. There's nothing more to the story. It was alien, it was unknowable. (continued)
