Favorite 2300AD Alien Race

[Secrect Cow Level]

Hello one and all! While I like all the races in 2300AD, I like the Pentapods best of all. I'm wondering which race or races other people on these boards like or don't like. What races have you used in your campaigns and which ones will you never use? Has anyone added any new races in their games and if so, what are they like?

 

[kafka47]

Got to like them Yili. A race of bio computers and the last of the Ancients. The other race that was cool was the paranoid psionic planet from one of the Adventures.

In terms of adding races, you mean other than the Vilani...

 

[Sven2300]

Petapods are cool

Kafers are unforgetable too

 

[Rodina]

I think they were all bloody masterful. The Sung and X'iang I thought were cool, especially the post-Slaver War Sung who demand the rights of the conquered. "Uhhmmm... okay, you guys beat us... that's cool, but where's our stuff?"

 

[TWILIGHT]

I LOVED the Kafers!...the Eber's too. Ranger went down a storm with my group. As for adding races, when I ran Bayern I had the PC's attacked by a newly discovered Droyne colony while on 'shore leave' on their way to the Pleiades. The Droyne thought they were the Vilani exploitation ship that 'pillaged' them the week before. My players had never played MT and were absolutely fascinated as to why/how humans had made it out that far from Earth. They had no idea they werent from Earth! hee hee....

 

[aramis]

Kafers Goood. Beat kafers. Make them Smaaarrt! Spare the Rod and you stymie the kafer!

I've had fun with players new to the setting trying to figure out the kafers. At first they see them as lobotimized klingons... until they capture and interrogate one.

Overall, however, I dislike any race being presented solely as a "NPC only" set of templates without any links to the CG mechanics. Unfortunately, the aliens in 2300 are ALL done this way. And most of them are even worse, presented without sufficient material to make them "Alien" in thought.
(For the Traveller people out there, yes, I DESPISED H&I for copping out of making a decent alien module.)

I've never been a big fan of the pentapod techno-genegeneering. Yeah, it was a way to get some really cool "naturalistic" looks on common items. Yeah, it had some neat ideas. (The food tester... And, in an emergency, it too is food....) We know a lot about what they sell hummans, but we don't have enough material to make any good judgements on what they are like as sophonts. At least the kafer are playable froma GM standpoint.

 

[tanstaafl2300]

It would have to be the Kafer, played correctly they can really tear up a bunch of cocky players. Caught with their pants (intelligence) down they are easy to beat, but once they "get smart" I run them like ninja/green beret/SBs (Sneeky Bastards). I run a lot of espionage scenarios and it is a bit hard to run covert or inside ops against the Kafer (unless the disguise skill level is reeeely high).
I have used a few of the old "Challange" magazine alien races in 2300AD, less of a chance the players may have inside info on them like the Traveller critters.

 

[Gallowglass]

Pentapods, or possibly the medusae from Nyotokendu. Whilst Kafer's were fun for a while, they are a bit of a one-trick pony IMO, like the Kif in Cherryh's Compact books: once you have seen through the illusion, it becomes too obvious. The 'pods on teh other hand are full of endless possibilities without ever having to confront the players with the BIG secret.

But all the races are fabuluous well thought out. I just feel that teh 'pods are teh most versatile from a referee's POV.

 

[Secrect Cow Level]

'Pods rule!

 

[Crimson Cat]

Kafer!

You can mess with players minds with them so easily.

 

[GameBuddah]

The Pentapods are my favorite race. As a matter of fact, the alien races were one of the reasons that I approached Marc Miller at the 1997 Origins about buying the intelectual property of 2300AD. Unfortunately, the price Marc mentioned for a "license" without any real ownership of the property was more than 1) we thought it was worth, and 2) we had seeing as how TSR had just fallen-over on us.

 

[aramis]

Originally posted by Crimson Cat:
Kafer!

You can mess with players minds with them so easily.

And, once you start thrashing on them, watch out!

It is so much fun to watch players get grustrated with the docility of captured kafers... until they start torturing them!

 

[bodai]

the pods because you can play them naive.Naive aliens are sooo much fun.Have the humans explain to the pods the concept of war and tell them about warships,then build a pocket battleship with the pentapod starship design rules from DGP.
It was the size of a human destroyer and could take out a fleet of kafer warships.

"Admiral whats wrong?"the aide asked."the wars over ,the kafers are beaten.Why do you look so unhappy?"I'm concerned about the future of the human race.It took us years to explain to the 'pods what war was and why we were fighting the Kafers.I was just wondering how much they actually learned about the negotiations after the war is over,ala versailles.The worst is how I'm going to have to explain to the earth public that we,the human race are now under the protection of the pentapods,but the absolute worst is all the hand holding im going to have to do with military higher ups of 20 countries describing this absolute monster of a living ship and that the 'pods will be making more.I'm sure there will be a rush on the psychological services for everyone over the rank of colonel/commander".

To the best of my recollection:
pentapod battleship-human destroyer size 25000?(i cant remember exactly,ill have to dig it out)
Armor factor20(a 10 still penetrates)8-1200hps warp2.5 (the armor 10 version goes3.5)screens-3,200-400 lasers and it still had room for hundreds(1000s) of mines or missiles,small pentapod ships suck- big ones rock .

The only thing worse than someone upstaging you is an alien culture with a higher learning curve that beats you first try,and its only gonna get worse as time goes by.

If you want the design get in touch with me(ill dig it out) and and you can use it if you credit me.Be warned its a campaign killer,it can destroy a fleet of kafer battleships,I see it holding a system from all attackers because it is the defintion of high survivability,statistically oyu scrapethe hull of all screens ,weapons and screens b4 you kill it.you cant fly, you cant see and you cant shoot but your still alive.I also see this ship in a tourney run by 2-5 people against as many people as you can dig up

 

[Ganidirsii O'Flynn]

Ok, I'm weighing in with the "Kafer-Uber-Alles" crowd, but Ebers were a kick in the pants too. The "Ranger" adventure was alot of fun. But to be honest, I was always disappointed that the American Arm didn't get it's own aliens.

 

[kafka47]

My favorite Alien Race in 2300 are the humans that are now adapted to alien landscapes. Seriously, though, I always thought the Sung were cool, with their mentality coming into conflict with humanti early on. It is a pity that the mystery surrounding the Kafers was so quickly explained. What the alien races in 2300AD really need is more mystery, such as did the Ebers invent the Jump Drive?

 

[Gallowglass]

Originally posted by thrash:
For me, the number of intelligent alien species within easy reach of Earth was the weakest point in the entire background -- especially when it began to seem that every second adventure module was adding a new one. Fermi's Paradox: if intelligence is that common and FTL travel that simple to invent, why aren't they here already?

Because the Inhibitors wiped them all out and when the AGRA Intelligence sens word to them, they'll come for the latest crop in this part of space...

 

[Balbinus]

Hi there,

Can anyone point me to a list of all the races? I know the major ones, plus the Nyotekundu beings and the guys from Energy Curve, who else was there?

Also, inhibitors, AGRA? I don't recognise those references. Can anyone explain that bit of background?

Thanks.

 

[Gallowglass]

Originally posted by Balbinus:
Hi there,

Can anyone point me to a list of all the races? I know the major ones, plus the Nyotekundu beings and the guys from Energy Curve, who else was there?

Kafers, Ylii, Ebers, Sung, Xiang, Klaxun, Pentapods, Meduasue, Enemy, Little Guys, AGRA are the only ones I recall from GDW material

Also, inhibitors, AGRA? I don't recognise those references. Can anyone explain that bit of background?

Thanks.

My Bad. The Inhibitors are nothing to do with 2300; they come from Alastair Reynolds Revealation Space / Redemption Ark books (and are an answer to Fermi's Paradox... a VERY scary answer...). AGRA is mentioned in Bayern (as are "the Little Guys"), my favourite 2300 module (and one of the few I haven't managed to replace yet...)

 

[Balbinus]

I've read Alastair Reynolds, cool stuff, I should have got the reference. Oh well.

Can you describe the Bayern aliens for me? I don't know them at all.

 

[GJD]

The little guys were four armed...little guys, stuck on a declining moonbase fighting against their own clapped out robots. They had declined technologically following a massive nuclear war and were the last of their race, if memory serves.

AGRA (the initials stood for something but i'll be buggered if i can rememebr what) was a vast galactic conciousness alien that was fiddling about with the stars in the Pleiades, much stellar architecture and multidimensional shennanigans. The players were only really peripherally aware of them, and only if they were really luck (or unlucky, depending on your point of view).