Just had this conversation with Del, which I thought might be useful to share with you. It was about retiring Sar and creating another character. Del wanted to create an alien character…

The thing about aliens is… they’re alien! Not just their physiology, but their psychology & culture, too.

That’s why I’m not allowing anyone to play a fully-fledged alien PC – yet. It would spoil the game if aliens were just humans dressed up in a funny suit. Real aliens are much more complicated. When everyone’s more familiar with the Traveller universe and has done a bit more in-character roleplaying (which I’m happy to see is starting to happen), then we can have Vargr, Aslan, Droyne etc PCs.

For now, I’ll allow you to create a minor or variant race human character (see the Wiki for a description of these) if you want to retire a character, or if your character gets… killed.

There are 3 options for these in the game (at the moment): Darrians, Nexxies & Jonkeereen (another three – Chokhari, Florians & Geonee – come with too many complications for now). You’d still need to do some research on these to roleplay a non-baseline human. Human minor races are different, too. They also possess different psychology, culture & physiology. This affects how they think & behave in the game.

Darrians – A minor race: control an independent confederation of worlds in the Spinward Marches, generally friendly to the Imperium.

• Tall, slim, golden skin, white hair, pointy ears. Low STR/END; high DEX/INT/EDU.
• Keenly interested in recreation, knowledge & art.
• Known for having achieved TL16 (higher than Imperial maximum) then lost it due to a series of disasters.
• Likelihood to join the party: possible.

Nexxies – A variant race, newly (last 10 years) geneered by Imperial Gentech for the Nexine Mining Consortium for survival on Nexine/Mora/Spinward Marches so that its undersea riches (gemores) can be mined without further harming the biosphere.

• Amphibious. Silvery scales, obvious gills, strange fish-like eyes (nictating membrane, polarised), ‘cast iron’ stomach, damage resistant (= subdermal armour).
• Driven, goal-oriented.
• Likelihood to join the party: very unlikely.

Jonkeereen – A variant race geneered 700 years ago for desert survival by SuSAG; their purpose is long irrelevant and they are one of the most alienated peoples living in the Spinward Marches.

• Over the last 20 years they have staged two uprisings against the Imperium.
• Significant populations exist on a few systems in the Spinward Marches.
• Tall, thin, dark-skinned. Independent, stoical, conservative.
• Improved ability to retain water, improved ability to reclaim energy from food, more efficient body cooling systems.High END; shorter lifespan.
• Likelihood to join the party: most likely of these three.

If you wanted to roleplay any of these I’d send you more info (4-6 pages) on them – players would need to know this info well before they could roleplay a variant or minor human.

NB: if you were going to roleplay an alien, I would expect you to read half of an entire book on them ;-)