What usually works OK is:
1. Let the players do what they want.
2. The players piss of someone powerful by being themselves.
3. That someone is now the Big Threat to them.

Quote from: dragoner;898870That works until it walks up and plugs itself in.

What movie/TV show is that from?

Quote from: Nikita;898775I have used a pseudo threat that isn't in my current science fiction campaign.

The idea is that there is a rumour of AI while actually the "threatening software" is far less intelligent (and making errors that are really stupid when you look those activities in hindsight). Thus players believe there is AI threat and have their characters talk to experts about possibility of AI making some kind of world-ending viral attack come across as idiots. This rises tension in PC group and makes them search the elusive AI even more desperately...

Something along the lines of "it's too stupid for such an advanced foe, therefore it has to be a brilliant tactics only pretending to be stupid, and we're not gonna fall for that, mwahahahahaha!"? Overthinking is a powerful trap, indeed.

Quote from: S'mon;898805Grabbing an appropriate monster stat block out of the 5e MM. Sometimes the 5e version is pathetically weak, eg the lemures in book 1 of SS. A bit of variation is ok but a whole dungeon level of trivially weak critters got the players complaining. So I hit em with an ooze/hellhound combo and nearly killed one of them, they shut up then.
In general running SS in 5e has been far far easier than running Crimson Throne with Pathfinder. Paizo's tendency to include obscure monsters from Bestiary #5 without bothering with a PF statblock is annoying, considering how much space they waste on other stuff. Eg the Fiendish Seugathi in book 2 has no parrallel in any D&D creature. But this is still a minor issue compared to the brain-scrambling effect of trying to run a 3-page 3e/PF stat block off the page in Pathfinder rules.

Well, they have to justify their 99$ worth yet-another-monster-pack books somehow.

I think I've seen a fanmade attempt to create enemy tables for PFRPG, 3,5 some OSR (I don't recall its title) and most recently 5th. It was a huge Excel spreadsheet where you could select a creature from one system and see some "close enough" alternatives for other systems. Wasn't perfect, but worked just fine. I wonder whether the project continues...

Quote from: Doughdee222;898807They've reacted well to it, we're having a good time. The players are only vaguely aware of some of these threats. The lizardmen are mentioned on a map I made and in a rumor or two but nothing has been done with them yet. One of the PCs is from the Viking land so they are not perceived as enemies, yet. One adventure thread did deal with the nomads. The southerners haven't even been noticed yet, but I know they are there. Since it's a Runequest 6 sandbox they are free to pick and choose what interests them. (One PC rolled up a slave. He's just happy that he has won his freedom and is now chasing riches. Soon I might have them meet up with some women revolutionaries who are working to free their kingdom from a tyrant. They will work for the "Salation Liberation Unter Terre.)

SL... My, my, that's preposterous and degrading towards females.

Anyway, the threat is there, but it's slow to move, and people are mostly oblivious to it. Are you keeping the track of events happening in the background (for example "month #3, Vikings invade a few villages, small tension in northern border arises"), or are you leaving everything as it is and plan to develop everything "prior to the session"/"on the fly" the moment PCs enter relevant territory?

QuoteUnfortunately I don't have any of my records from the Robot Warrior campaign. That was in the late 80s and was long ago lost in a move.

Too bad about that campaign. I hoped to find some nice re-usable elements. Oh well...

Quote from: Caesar Slaad;898844Well, it wasn't in my plan per se. My primary purpose for the Necromancer is to be a mood setting edifice. Vut if they wanted to make a campaign of it, I'd let them. As long as it sounds like a fun game. Just like Zothique, powerful characters that get overconfident are ripe for a fall.

I see. Reasonable. One more thing... There's a free game called "Zothique". How much your setting resembles it?

Quote from: jeff37923;898857If a Big Threat appears in my games, it is due to Player Character involvement. I usually do not like using The Big Threat because it has been overused so much in published adventures. My Players like it when I pull some thing from their character backstory and use that as the antagonist. So not so much The Big Threat, but several of The Little Threats.

Yeah. Well, I think it's not the problem of "the Big Threat" (or plenty of other tropes for that matter) being overused, but that GMs don't put much heart into their originality. It's not impossible to run "Save the World" campaign in such a way that players won't realize that until the very end.

Quote from: dragoner;898863Mostly it is just self indulgent pretentiousness, I think too much, so I just took chunks of pre-existing canon and rearranged them into something that gives the enemy motivation for what they are doing. The sides aren't exactly black and white, however.

I see. Still, quite uncommon. Sure, no galaxy is a stranger to religious conflicts, but it's usually on a local scale only. I think it might be partially because full-scale crusade/Jihad requires a good set of beliefs and GM are kind of dismissive about introducing them, since there's a prospect of religious discussions in the future, and defending/pushing a set of beliefs you don't actually like/follow/know... Well, it's hardly any fun.

Then again, I might be wrong.

QuoteThe players can interact with it on any level they chose, currently they are satisfied to travel around space and get into space battles with the enemy, occasionally to stop, investigate strange stuff, grift a bit like smuggling. They do have a good ship, with some interesting weapons, as well as the alliance is fooling around with using a weaponized life form called a "Meta-Cym", short for Metastasizing Cymbeline Entity, an electronic virus that wreaked havoc once before across charted space. The alien crusaders haven't encountered this life form before, so they are somewhat defenseless against it.

I see. I take it, so far they don't plan to become heroes that's gonna save the universe.

As for the virus - does it attack alive entities or just electronics?

Quote from: JesterRaiin;898903Yeah. Well, I think it's not the problem of "the Big Threat" (or plenty of other tropes for that matter) being overused, but that GMs don't put much heart into their originality. It's not impossible to run "Save the World" campaign in such a way that players won't realize that until the very end.

Based on the context you used in describing The Big Threat, I thought you meant that it had to have a focus - like a Big Bad. Now with the context of Save The World, it seems like you are talking about some threat that is unfocussed, diffuse, or pervasive.

Now, lets touch upon Virus in The New Era of Traveller as an example of "Save The World". Virus is an electronic program disease that threatens to destroy the infrastructure of interstellar civilization. A pretty widespread and diffuse threat. How do the Players combat it? By keeping that infrastructure alive - flying their starship around and ensuring that their civilization keeps on chuggin'. However, as threats go, it is too unfocussed. Yes, Virus infected ships may threaten the PCs, but when those ships get destroyed then the overall problem still remains because you are just treating the symptoms. That can become very unsatisfying for Players in a campaign because the threat can never be truly destroyed.

A Big Threat should have a focus in order to be good for adventuring.

Quote from: JesterRaiin;898903Well, they have to justify their 99$ worth yet-another-monster-pack books somehow.

I think I've seen a fanmade attempt to create enemy tables for PFRPG, 3,5 some OSR (I don't recall its title) and most recently 5th. It was a huge Excel spreadsheet where you could select a creature from one system and see some "close enough" alternatives for other systems. Wasn't perfect, but worked just fine. I wonder whether the project continues...

I generally just pick the closest with similar CR. So eg I use 5e Black Pudding stats where the PF adventure says Gray Ooze, because 5e Gray Oozes have a crappy CR and 5e Black Pudding has a similar CR to PF Gray Ooze. Last session PCs fought a Cave Giant 'CR 6, see monster book XX' - I just looked for a 5e giant with similar CR and decided the 5e MM CR 7 stone giant was close enough for my 5 PC, 5th level group. I could have used hill giant stats if my group was weak.

I think in future I may just substitute entire monsters, eg that CR 8 Seugathi could have been any old demon or devil of similar CR. The trick is to select a monster of similar-ish CR, rather than one that looks the same but is vastly weaker or tougher.

Quote from: Daztur;898897What usually works OK is:
1. Let the players do what they want.
2. The players piss of someone powerful by being themselves.
3. That someone is now the Big Threat to them.

Reasonable.

Unless those bastards find something I, THE NARRATOR (cue drums) wouldn't enjoy.

Quote from: Bren;898794Depends on the setting.

I see. Circumstances-depended as usual.

QuoteNot sure what you are asking here. I think the nobody from nowhere is usually some version of a hero's journey. Frodo is an atypical hero whose heroism is focused on morality and martyrdom. I don't think that sort of situation, with that sort of hero is very common. The growth (literally and figuratively) of Merry and Pippin is more typical of the progression seen in most RPGs than is Frodo or Sam.

I'm talking about slightly modified "simpleton saves the world" scenario, in which the fate of the world doesn't rely on any single hero/group/force, but it's a mutual effort. You know, you're not merely a grunt, but you're not a hero either, because there are no such person. In such a story "saviors" aren't required to become especially strong, so there's no "from 0 to hero", and if the group manages to grow in strength, it's just a byproduct, not a prerequisite.

I'm not sure if I'm explaining it properly, so just for the sake of clarity, the emphasis should be put on "there are NO protagonists". The group will gain some recognition, but it won't be called "the heroes". The catch is that no one else will gain this title. So, Frodo, but not quite.

QuoteIt looks like you are finding some ideas that interest you. So that's a win.

Hell yeah! While I have no problems with twisting and evolving any single idea, I'm very slow to finding it. A gentle push in some direction is often all I need.

QuoteI find those sorts of solutions unsatisfying. They seem like a cheat. "Oh yeah the big bad that was going to destroy the world...well news of the world's destruction was greatly exaggerated. Nothing really to worry about."

Same here. It's more "the last resort" kind of card, one that works well only if played well. Still, some might say that even crappy solution is better than no solution at all.

QuoteI think that the more expansive the setting is the more difficult it is for the players to care about any particular aspect of the setting. I think there are a lot of reasons for this. Too many options is one problem. Lack of focus is another.

If player A may cares about the Baroness NPC in World-1, while player B cares about this family that runs the Blue Bottle tavern in World-2, while player C cares about the Queen and his pal, the captain of the Queen's guard over in world-3 it is going to be difficult to get the players to focus on anyone of the three worlds, much less brand new World-4. And you need them focused and motivated to more or less work together on the same thing...whatever that thing might be. Narrowing the focus for a while on one of the worlds or even one city on one of the worlds might help alleviate the overabundance of options and possible lack of focus.

We're facing (I assume we are) kind of reverse situation. It seems that some of my players are afraid to sail on open waters and they prefer to stay in safe distance to the port, so to speak.

For example - rather than find/develop separate worlds (Domains), they formed an agreement and now they co-rule one world. I think that some begin to feel a bit bored with that, but they are a bit clueless about what to do.

QuoteI've never done a cataclysmic ending. I've always put games on the shelf, as it were. Several have been picked up again after a hiatus of one or more years. Call of Cthulhu we've been playing on and off since the 1980s with a large stable of characters and a world shared by 3 regular GMs (Keepers if one is into silly names for the GM) and several occasional GMs. I'm certain we'll pick that up again once someone (possibly me) temporarily runs out of inspiration or enthusiasm for H+I. I don't see a reason to end a campaign – it seems like Doyle's decision to kill Holmes and we know how well Reichenback Falls actually worked. Although I do think it is nice to have the characters in a somewhat settled place or position while the campaign is on the shelf – oh yeah he is the Baron of Black Serpent Tower, he is the steward of the castle, she is a lieutenant with the Black Wolves mercenary company, he's the champion for the King of the Skellani tribe, etc..

I'm not sure I explained it properly. It's not that players demand specifically for their worlds to end and their characters dying alongside it, no. They are more interested in some sort of epic, world-is-about-to-end campaign where they attempt to save it. If they succeed, they assume their characters retired and live to the end of their lives as heroes. If they fail, then their world died with them. In either way, a closure of sorts and a blessing to abandon this setting and those characters without any remorse.

This might sound funny, but I recall a few instances of players feeling guilty about some PCs they left behind alongside of some "let's just stop for a time being" campaigns years ago.

Side note: I witnessed plenty of "what are fun ways to kill my character" threads and I'm always strongly against it. For some reason I can't stand such an option, coming obviously from video-games.

QuoteIt sounds like the players are interested in the setting. Maybe you just need to focus on the part of the setting where the PCs have power and influence to expand and protect.

I didn't decide yet. I'd prefer to make them move their asses and explore the possibilities offered by the setting and "threat that forces you to travel a lot" seems to be the most obvious choice. Still, it's not that local problems are mutually exclusive with long voyages.

QuoteI seldom run games where the PCs are adventurers, though they nearly always are adventurous. One might ask, what's the difference?
(...)

Interesting. I knew it intuitively, but I didn't ever bother to define the difference. Come to think about it, it's logical - you (your character) might dislike adventures, but be forced to lead such a way.

Hmmmmmmmmmmm...

Quote from: JesterRaiin;898903I see. Reasonable. One more thing... There's a free game called "Zothique". How much your setting resembles it?

Um, a little? What I assume you are talking about is the free d20 setting book at EldrichDark.com. It has lots of d20 translations of Zothique gods and creatures. Honestly, I'm not that concerned about actually being Zothique, but building stories in the same vein (as well as more Conan-esque stories.) So I'm not really so concerned about whether the god Mordiggian is in my setting so much as if I could tell stories like Isle of Torturers, Empire of Necromancers, and the Charnel God. But there were lots of other stories swimming around in my head I wanted to make a game out of. Ultimately, I think I distilled the mood I wanted out of:

Zothique Stories (especially Empire of Necromancers, the Charnel God, and The Death of Ilalotha)
Conan stories (esp. The People of the Black Circle)
Conan Movies (the originals)
The Scorpion King
The pre-Cudgel Dying Earth stories (esp. Tsais and Mazirian the Magician)
"Den" and "Taarna" from Heavy Metal ("The Lok-Nar is mine, you stupid bitch!")

Though I didn't use D&D for my setting, the D20 Zothique PDF sort of hit some of the same notes in how it trimmed down the D&D experience. In the Zothique D20 pdf, Barbarians, Rogues, and Fighters were the bulk of characters, with uncommon spellcasters, and classes like Paladin and Bard vanquished. And humans the only playable race.

In my case, I wasn't using D&D but Fantasy Craft, a D20 variant that is a less steeped in many traditional D&D elements. I had to do a lot less trimming of classes because Fantasy Craft didn't use core classes that were so setting informed as Paladins and Bards. Such things became the province of specialties and expert classes, and thus much more easily excluded while leaving more options for character creation.

I did trim races, but went mostly with humans plus the non-D&D races of Fantasy Craft: Saurians (highly customizable lizardman like race) and Unborn (constructs.) I created backstory elements to explain these. Saurians were refugees of a world destroyed when its solar system has a brush with ours (tapping into the far future/Dying Earth feel.) Unborn were the last surviving remnants of an ancient empire (tapping into the feel of both the unhuman empire outliving its creators in Empire of Necromancers as well as the tradition of protectors in Taarna.) Also, for this purpose, I really dig that Fantasy Craft humans are a lot more varied than D&D humans due to the Fantasy Craft talent mechanic, which allowed me to keep a lot of race options open to the players even in the face of significantly paring back the playable races.

Quote from: jeff37923;898898What movie/TV show is that from?

Virus - the one from 1999 year. Not particularly good, but like the majority of "B" movies, might be suitable for RPG scenario.

Quote from: Caesar Slaad;898925Um, a little? What I assume you are talking about is the free d20 setting book at EldrichDark.com. (...)

That's the one.

Thanks for the explanation.

Quote

• Do you know/play some settings void of such a threat?

More or less. The "big threat" tends to focus on a kingdom, or area. Nothing completely earth-shattering. Never, ever ran anything where the party has to take on the Gods or anything. We DID have one arc that had to do with elimination of a species via a magical virus, through a revenge plot. But we never finished it.

Quote

• Do your players/yourself enjoy them as much as ones with such a feature?

I think they like having an ultimate enemy, but it doesn't have to be a "save the world" situation. We've had plenty of drama with smaller, more personal adventures.

Quote

• Did you develop some clever alternative to the Big Threat - a thing familiar to your world's inhabitants, that motivates some (PCs) to move their asses and travel across whole world and beyond? A word of explanation: The One Ring from tLoTR setting doesn't match the criteria, since it serves the purpose of getting rid of the Big Threat. The quest to seek Holy Grail would be the better example of what I have in mind. While it might be used as a morale boosting icon for any ruler or general, its purpose isn't to counter any specific Big Threat whatsoever.

Recovery of a broken sword to legitimize a royal claim, in order to prevent civil war. In the process of looking for the broken sword, the party found a lost heir to the throne and brought her back with them.  

That storyline was interesting.  The new heir assumed the mantle of Queen. Meanwhile, the Knight that recovered the sword was implicated in a plot against the crown while he was off bringing back the heir (I don't remember the details of all this). Ultimately, the knight had to do a "Lt. Worf," and accept discommendation and exile in order to "save" the kingdom from civil war. He sacrificed his honor for his people.  

In the end, the sword thing was this lure to get them to find the lost heir. They were also expecting that the Knight would somehow turn out to be the heir. But all the clues that applied to him, also applied to the heir. So, a red herring, in a way, but it led to a fitting conclusion. Said knight had lost almost all his friends in the campaign, including his closest (it was a lethal campaign, in the end). He ended up with nothing, though he did the right thing. The character's narrative became the launch point of the next campaign, in which he set out to recover his honor. Unfortunately, this was a school group. Everyone graduated and that was that.

Quote from: JesterRaiin;898659Side note: I find the differences in the way people explain same settings/lore very interesting. It's actually damn awesome to see same world remade according to alternative power structure.

I take it, your campaign involved The Big Threat, but PCs weren't absolutely crucial to deal with it?

If I may ask, he joined as a NPC, DMPC, full PC?

Interesting. How PCs approached the challenge? Did they focus on food, or attempted to fix the world, or...?

1: Same here. Even if some peoples interpretations come across as a bit crack-headed or like they never read the material at all.

2: Up until near the end of Hoard the PCs were unaware there was a threat. They were just investigating a cult and trying to find out where all the treasure was going. They came very close to haulting the threat without being fully cognizant of the scope. Part two covered attempts to stall or outright stop the threat from ever happening. And then the final showdown. The party was part of an overall operation. Chance and their own scheeming placed them at the front of the line. Where they DID NOT want to be. heh-heh. They would have been perfectly happy to let someone else handle the final showdown.

3: All of the above. Some were player characters who were introduced via getting beat up. Quite a few were NPCs. One started as an NPC and then was adopted by a player when her character got vaporized.

4: We tried alot of things to slow down the famine. The first big hurdle was convincing the bureaucracy to do more than hole up and hope they dont get eaten. Then trying to organize the various OA casters to combine forces. But we discovered quickly that it was just creating little islands of hope in a sea of suffering. OA lacks the "Create Food" spell of AD&D and Create Spring doesnt do any good for the present. (Did though speed up long term recovery.) And Quickgrowth had simmilar problems due to limitations. We had to deal with a Wu Jen who was using Cloudburst to irrigate his town. Which was accellerating the problem for the surrounding towns as that spell draws on natural moisture in the air. We went searching for a Wu Jen with Control Weather only to find out that it cant fabricate good weather without something to work with. And its very short lived. argh! That took about 7 months of weekly sessions to resolve. Grim would be an understatement.
Then came the plague - as a result of of the famine. I forget the particulars. But the next years event was an ambassador from another country visiting. During the ongoing plague. For over a freaking year too! argh part 2. On the bright side all our efforts to help while desperately trying to keep the ambassador alive impressed her so much that on return home she sent the kingdom alot of aid and became a recurring NPC.
And all of it was just simple natural disasters. No demon plot, no mad wizard did it. One of the things we had to deal with was finding proof that the hengeyokai didnt do it as everyone and there brother was accusing them of being the culprits. And then started pointing at a neighboring kingdom when that proved wrong. argh the 3rd.

Quote from: JesterRaiin;898761Care to name some? I feel like revisiting some old places, so to speak.

Wilderlands, Greyhawk, Forgotten Realms, Harn, Runequest, The Fantasy Trip, Dragon Warriors, Bushido, Traveller, Space Opera, Star Frontiers to name a few I can recall.

Quote from: Xanther;898986Wilderlands, Greyhawk, Forgotten Realms, Harn, Runequest, The Fantasy Trip, Dragon Warriors, Bushido, Traveller, Space Opera, Star Frontiers to name a few I can recall.

Star Frontiers had the Sathar. But they were more a problem amongst problems rather than an overarching threat. Even in Knight Hawks they just swept in and then left and after that resumed being a threat amongst threats.

Quote from: JesterRaiin;898911I'm not sure if I'm explaining it properly, so just for the sake of clarity, the emphasis should be put on "there are NO protagonists". The group will gain some recognition, but it won't be called "the heroes". The catch is that no one else will gain this title. So, Frodo, but not quite.

What you described in those two paragraphs sounds a lot like real life.

Closest to that style or tone in an RPG would be Call of Cthulhu where the protagonists are often oddballs, but still ordinary people with the same kinds of skills, levels of skills, and hit points as anyone else. Runequest/Glorantha is sometimes close to that. I ran a campaign in Glorantha where the PCs were fairly ordinary members of a clan and there were no heroes with a capital H to be seen, just various ranges of skilled and less skilled farmers, clan warriors, thanes, etc.

QuoteWe're facing (I assume we are) kind of reverse situation. It seems that some of my players are afraid to sail on open waters and they prefer to stay in safe distance to the port, so to speak.

What is it that they are afraid of?

QuoteFor example - rather than find/develop separate worlds (Domains), they formed an agreement and now they co-rule one world. I think that some begin to feel a bit bored with that, but they are a bit clueless about what to do.

Might be worth asking them if they are a bit bored. Also if they'd like a change, whether they would be more interested in having to defend the world they co-rule from some sort of threats or in exploring new worlds.

One option might be to threaten the world they rule with extraterrestrial or extradimensional threats. Then put the McGuffin they need to understand/defeat/counteract/dispel/whatever the bad guys on some other world so they have a reason to want to go there, explore, and find the McGuffin. You could even set it up something like the Argonautica (story of Jason and the Golden Fleece) where they have to go to world A to learn more about the threat. On world A they learn something about the threat and they hear about someone who can tell them how to defeat the threat. This someone lives on world B. The person on world B bargains with them to go get some other McGuffin he/she/it wants or needs from world C before he will tell them how to stop the threat. They get the other McGuffin, he/she/it tells them the secret of the threat and that they can stop it with the Big McGuffin, which is on world D...hopefully you get the idea....

QuoteIf they succeed, they assume their characters retired and live to the end of their lives as heroes. If they fail, then their world died with them. In either way, a closure of sorts and a blessing to abandon this setting and those characters without any remorse.

Next time I'm ready for a change, I should probably ask my players if they'd find that preferable.

QuoteThis might sound funny, but I recall a few instances of players feeling guilty about some PCs they left behind alongside of some "let's just stop for a time being" campaigns years ago.

It doesn't sound funny. It'just not my preference or default idea. I see what you described as being like a story where the protagonist dies or if he succeeds it includes some "happy ever after" resolution. Whereas I see what I described as being like a book series with the same protagonists and where the next book in the series hasn't been written yet.

Quote from: JesterRaiin;898903SL... My, my, that's preposterous and degrading towards females.

Anyway, the threat is there, but it's slow to move, and people are mostly oblivious to it. Are you keeping the track of events happening in the background (for example "month #3, Vikings invade a few villages, small tension in northern border arises"), or are you leaving everything as it is and plan to develop everything "prior to the session"/"on the fly" the moment PCs enter relevant territory?

A bit of both. I do have some notes on what is happening in the background but I'm trying not to be too detailed or expansive with it. Also, I'm rather lazy and delaying things, including game writing, far too much in my life.

(And yes, SLUT is preposterous, but also good for some laughs. I was in some used book stores in New Hampshire last summer, the kind of places that have 100K+ books. You can find some interesting old series in them. Back in the 60s there were series of soft-core porn novels with names such as "Lady from L.U.S.T" (about a female spy who tends to solve her cases with sex.) Stupid and comical, but there ya go.)

http://spyguysandgals.com/sgShowChar.aspx?id=568

Quote from: jeff37923;898898What movie/TV show is that from?

Quote from: JesterRaiin;898929Virus - the one from 1999 year. Not particularly good, but like the majority of "B" movies, might be suitable for RPG scenario.

Yes, though I think Traveller originally to it from the comic where the movie is from as well, except it sort of became a deus ex machine plot device apocalypse to reset the setting, way too heavy handed.

Good point about B movies though, I often cite Alien: Resurrection as the perfect Traveller adventure for that reason.

Quote from: JesterRaiin;898903I see. Still, quite uncommon. Sure, no galaxy is a stranger to religious conflicts, but it's usually on a local scale only. I think it might be partially because full-scale crusade/Jihad requires a good set of beliefs and GM are kind of dismissive about introducing them, since there's a prospect of religious discussions in the future, and defending/pushing a set of beliefs you don't actually like/follow/know... Well, it's hardly any fun.

Then again, I might be wrong.

Mostly in that I don't have much to say about religion, I'm not particularly religious. If I was, maybe Buddhism? Hell, I can't even spell it right. As far as the "big threat", the players could leave the area to where it isn't a big threat, turn full pirate, or even join up with them. They have also sold a nuke to terrorists, if that shows where their morality is at.

QuoteI see. I take it, so far they don't plan to become heroes that's gonna save the universe.

See above. I think the just want to go around and shoot stuff, not exactly murder hoboes is spaaace! But, sort of. Traveller is very grifty of a game, usually. We had a joke about another campaign I was player in, as it was "Mustered out as Murder Hoboes".

QuoteAs for the virus - does it attack alive entities or just electronics?

Electronics first, then uses constructs or machinery it has taken over to attack people, it is a viral AI basically. It isn't like the exsurgent virus from Eclipse Phase that takes over people physically.