Thanks to Mark Cook and William Timmins, who pointed out the problem of
lung strength in CFC breathing with large animals; that was a facet of the
research I hadn't been aware of. Sorry for the mixup.
Steve Kellogg: I have many Hiver NPCs in my current Traveller game, including
a fellow whose nickname eludes me at the moment who took over the operation
of Radio Free Terra in 1117 after Near Miss shut it down. I have little or
no difficulty running Hivers--- they represent, as a species, the way I like
to handle parties that get too uppity with me. |-> The K'Kree have been run
as NPCs in my campaign in the past; I find them more aggravation than they're
worth. Droyne are kind of fun as patrons, Aslan make for a nice change of
pace, and Vargr--well, as anyone who's read the Near Miss stories or played
with me and Bhyarrvouf on the PBEM can attest, they're my favorite alien race
in any SF genre of any kind, period. My wife and I refer to our marriage as
"A Vargr kinda love;" we never get bored with each other. |-> In practice, the
original idea was to populate the spinward galaxy with races that would be
easy to roleplay, and the trailing part with tougher ones, thus allowing groups
of players to expand their abilites in a controlled manner, according to the Gthink team that created the major races in the late Seventies.
On the acceleration of history and technology: one of the players in my game
got very annoying with his insistence that humanity should have long ago shot
upward into the black hole foam, with all the attributes of godhood. My response
was, "How do you know they didn't? Shut up and play the game." Suspension of
disbelief is a stapl,e for games like this; we just have to learn to accept
the fact that a future society would be impossible to roleplay enjoyably if
we made it totally alien to our own.
metlay
PS. Has anyone SEEN MTJ2 yet? I live in terror of missing it before it's
out of print.