Mutants, Uplifts and AIs, Oh My!
Ok so as we discussed earlier there’s no aliens. Also as we discussed most science fiction aliens aren’t really very alien at all. They’re more like strange looking humans with fur and over exaggerated egos. So what can we do to scratch that itch that all players have to play something weird…this is science fiction after all?
Well science fiction provides us with a whole spaceship load of ideas and for this setting I settled on three main ones, mutants, uplifts and artificial intelligences.
So you want to play the big walking rug with a heart of gold. How about a Cold Mod SIM[1], with shaggy brown fur and a large frame to better withstand cold conditions. Throw in a strength augmentation, train him up a little in pilot and primitive ranged weapons and you’ve got yourself a fair representation of the original walking rug from that famous movie franchise I don’t want to get sued by!
But that’s not the only way we can skin that cat. How about a Gorilla uplift. Not a perfect walking rug (hairs to short) but not bad. The point is that we can effectively create “that” alien either as a mutant or an uplift and the whole concept is easier to swallow than the walking rug who acts like a grouchy human. On the mutant these traits are only…well human. And a mutant is after all just a tricked out human!
The Twilight Sector Campaign Setting Sourcebook describes how to create mutants for the setting. The Traveller Core Rulebook describes the creation of uplifted animals (pg 42), and an upcoming as yet unnamed Twilight Sector Campaign Sourcebook will describe rules for playing artificial intelligences as well as other electronic based intelligences (Ghosts, Dups etc.). As a matter of fact that unnamed sourcebook due somewhere between January and March of 2010 will have greatly expanded information on mutants and uplifts as well. Please be looking for it.
To preview the basic concept of playing an AI it’s important to remember that in the setting the smallest sentient computer is still the human (or dolphin or chimp or gorilla, you get the picture) mind. An electronic intelligence can’t be contained in a computer as small as a human brain and so for a computer to interact with the physical world for the most part they need to download part of their programming into a robot or biocon.
This works well on a number of levels. First off an AI as a player character would have a number of advantages mainly a whole bunch of skills if they’d been around for any appreciable length of time. One way to combat that and even the playing field for non-AI PCs would of course to be to limit any PC AIs (wow that’s a mouthful) to be new/young AIs. But in my mind a far more elegant way to accomplish the task is to limit the number of levels of skills an AI can download into a mobile device (the robot of biocon). This makes the AI character make a choice every time they send themselves off as a robot to play with the rest of the PCs.
I’ll leave you this time with a look at a Belt Mod SIM and some Uplifted Dolphins (note their breathing filters).
[1] SIM stands of scientifically induced mutation. Those are mutants that have been created by medically modifying a person’s genes as opposed to a natural mutant which is someone who’s mutations occurred spontaneously.
