[Space] Anyone Ever Run A Campgain Based Off Of Wild Life?

[Flyndaran]

I think the best way to stave off species based rebellion is to tweak with our Us vs. Them mentality. If you can get us to accept non-humans as Us, then we would rarely if ever rebel.
Imagine what aliens would have to do to make you rebel vs. what your second cousins would have to do to make you rebel violently.

[nerdvana]

Originally Posted by Flyndaran

I think the best way to stave off species based rebellion is to tweak with our Us vs. Them mentality. If you can get us to accept non-humans as Us, then we would rarely if ever rebel.
Imagine what aliens would have to do to make you rebel vs. what your second cousins would have to do to make you rebel violently.

I actually know of some situations where cousins would be rebelled against more violently and quickly than strangers/aliens would.

[Flyndaran]

Originally Posted by nerdvana

I actually know of some situations where cousins would be rebelled against more violently and quickly than strangers/aliens would.

True, but as a vague statistic, people are more likely to side with relatives than against. My country, right or wrong. My family, right or wrong.

I imagine that the first order of business is to reduce trouble rather than trying for perfection right out of the gate.

[RyanW]

It vaguely reminds me of the campaign I've been running recently (currently in a holding pattern while we hash out who is and isn't going to be able to be a part of it). Except that alien invasion occurs in 1938, and is taking place "in the now" rather than being part of the background. My invaders, though, are a cosmopolitan alliance of species, only a few of which the players have encountered.

Spoiler:  

My aliens have an obvious technological advantage, but they think they can terrify the primitives for a couple weeks before sending them an invitation to join the Super-Awesome-High-Tech Club. They have been getting quite a shock. If they had arrived twenty years earlier during WWI, they would have probably fled in terror.

[ericthered]

The real objection I have is that the subject races don't appear to have been tinkered with to make them more tractable. I can see the Qasuti being left alone and the Tarcaser slipping under the radar, but the ascended and Gustrogin still have will 10. Its possible that they started out with higher wills and selfish, but I don't think that really fits.

That said, I think this thread has inspired me to start a campaign loosely based on the setting. I plan on toning down the alien stats, changing the superscience to allow portals onto planets, and starting the story during the invasion (and in modern times), but otherwise the setting should be quite similar.

[Gold & Appel Inc]

Originally Posted by ericthered

The real objection I have is that the subject races don't appear to have been tinkered with to make them more tractable. I can see the Qasuti being left alone and the Tarcaser slipping under the radar, but the ascended and Gustrogin still have will 10. Its possible that they started out with higher wills and selfish, but I don't think that really fits. [snip]

Alternate stats for unmedicated Ascended and Male Gustrogins, both of which are tightly-restrained in this society, are given. The ones the average overlord has to deal with may be Willpower 10, but they were a lot more problematic "in the wild." The Willpower of female Gustrogins wasn't tampered with because they want to use them for soldiers and don't have a reliable way to give them -Will but +Fearless.

ETA: On a related note, I'd personally overhaul the Ascended build a lot if I was running this. Their natural mental Disadvantages make their native society completely unworkable as-described. At worst, they should've had a quirk-level Pride or Bad Temper and either quirk-level Uncongenial, Chauvinist, maybe both, or at worst Intolerance [-5] against everybody outside their core group, if they had a comfortable presence in space when the Shahar found them. That level of infrastructure simply does not get achieved by violently-introverted lone wolves; I consider their medicated stats excessive for a civilization at that level of technology that does not have access to genius superheroes who can make that stuff happen by themselves, let alone what they supposedly have on their own.

This is all relative to the average Human, of course, who might be much easier to get down to a typical Willpower of 9 because we started at 10 with no major universal antisocial flaws, which provides a plausible reason why they'd try to make us into the obedient little butt-monkies with keen eyes and clever little hands who do the technical tasks like powerless bosses. They probably would've tried to make half or all of us into their bureaucrats, too, if they hadn't conquered the Tarcaseru first, because we get along so well compared to everybody else in the setting.

[evileeyore]

Originally Posted by Gold & Appel Inc

ETA: On a related note, I'd personally overhaul the Ascended build a little if I was doing this. Their natural mental Disadvantages make their native society completely unworkable as-described. At worst, they should've had a quirk-level Pride or Bad Temper and either quirk-level Uncongenial, Chauvinist, maybe both, or at worst Intolerance [-5] against everybody outside their core group, if they had a comfortable presence in space when the Shahar found them. That level of infrastructure simply does not get achieved by violently-introverted lone wolves.

Well, it did take them a long time to just reach "orbital habitat" levels of space colonization.