Bwaps and Vegan's on Nusku during ISW

[cdward]

Last year I was given GURPS ISW as a present and my eldest daughter has decided that she would like to take part in a game or short campaign in the setting (she's 12), she has roped in my other daughter and a friend and the characters they have designed are
A Bwap starship engineer, A Bwap starship captain, a Vegan doctor and a Terran Spy. The game is set in 2170 and the back story runs like this:

The 2 Bwaps were working for a Vilanii agency on Nusku while the Vegan was attending interspecies medical training when the terran invasion happened, they remained on Nusku after the end of the 3rd interstellar war and so after Nusku's admission to the Terran Confederation are (possibly) terran citizens, the three of them plus the human are now the crew of a free trader contracted to the bureau of colonization with the terran agent assigned as the co-pilot, they are going to journey to the terran worlds that you have to go through imperial space to reach (can't remember the names as I'm at work) with the spy detailed to set up "ship watcher" networks in the systems the pass through. First off they will have a "shake down" cruise that will take them to Loki where they will have an attack of "Pyramids".

Ok so does this seem resonable so far?

Chris

 

[Maladominus]

Ok so does this seem resonable so far?

Chris

So far it doesn't sound unreasonable.

Nevertheless, if you REALLY wanted to make it reasonable, then you should encourage the Bwaps to act like Bwaps were meant to be.

I hate to lecture you, as you might already know this, but in Bwap society, Order is everything to them. They are obsessed with order and propriety.

Guess what? The Interstellar Wars brought down the "Vilani order of things". It usurped the orderly (if stagnant and ultra-conservative) Vilani society. Unless the Vilani empire had purposely mistreated the Bwap race, chances are 100% that the Bwaps would have been EXTREMELY content and happy with the Ziru Sirka (the Vilani Grand Empire of Stars).

Suggestion: let the Bwap players know about this, and allow them (even encourage them) to act in a way that is not too "warmly welcoming" of the Terran takeover of things.

Vegans: The Vegans on the other hand.... it is well known that they were suppressed, mistreated by the Vilani Imperium. The Vegans do have a legitimate resentment of the Vilani Empire. The Vegans completely felt that they were oppressed and marginalized as 2nd-class citizens under the Vilani Imperium. It is written in the books that the Vegans literally welcomed the Terrans as "liberators". Make sure the Vegan players understand this, and are encouraged to roleplay with this in mind.

So you have a mixed crew of Vegan, Terran and Bwaps. It is possible that they might function well as a crew. But occasionally, their racial and cultural differences might divide them as well. That's part of the joy of role-playing.

 

[cdward]

Bwaps and Vegans

The stuff I have on Bwaps says they were one of the races that were happiest under the Vilani, I was trying to work out a reasonable back story that fitted with the characters the players wanted to generate versus the background without having too rely too much on "as referee I say you can't do that", which might well dampen their enthuisam. I was thinking of the Bwaps swapping their allegiance to a Nusku Vilani enterprise which would provide an island of stability in a suddenly changing environment.

I laid it on to the player with the Vegan character that the Vilani had nuked a Vegan world practially back to the stone age.

The terran character was designed to be able to pass as Vilani, indeed the only common language the characters have is Low Vilani.

Unlike the ref (me) the players are neither RPG vetrans or traveller afficandos so I want to go gently at first. I personnally would have prefered them to all to be Terran humans but the idea of pretending to be an alien is one of the "cool" aspects of the game in their eyes.

Chris