Zhodani Team Summary

Production-wise, we should ditch the bio-wolf in favor of a Zhodani Intendant Noble. For the sheer fact another huamnoid wil be easier than a dog humanoid production-wise. wont it? Have incredibly hot Zhodani ladies been taken out of consideration?
Science Fiction in general could use a new Princess Aura or two.

these guys should also have a technical upper hand or a resource upper hand. Maybe a verrry nice ship full of fighters (a common zho setup) and merciless warbots (another common sho setup)

Sort of like what you have going on on farscape, except the good guys are armed. The zhodani would be the Peacekeepers.

Hey I am all for ditching the dog in favor of incredibly hot Zho girls - good looking women are a necessary part of comic culture.
Seriously it does speed up the process to have all humanoid characters but I am not averse to illustrating aliens at all we will need them in there to keep the traveller feel but may just not as part of the main crews.
Also how big do you think the Zhodani crew should be & what type of ship? I quite like the idea that there is a lot of them (superior numbers of them means we can kill off a few & get some real grudges going).

In broad strokes, and from what I know of zho background, these guys should represent relentless order. They are individuals, but they work towards a common goal of getting the Cortex Crown and imposing the Zho mindset on the rest of known space. They may not need to have superior numbers, they may just be badass psionics with badass tech backing them up. The superiority can come from many sources.

The largest of which can be a "home field advantage" over the hero crew... the Zhos can setup several traps and pitfalls for the characters thru other zho and alien agents on the worlds they visit, to soften them up for an attack by the Main Zho team.

Maybe the hero team has an advantage as they are able to make decisions and moves on the fly, while the Zho team sometimes has to wait for a go signal from superiors before they can move, or maybe they are simply just more rigid in thier thought processes.

I personally have found in my research that the most hide bound members of Humaniti are the Vilani, the Zho are more about helping you find out where you can serve with the most value added.

They aren't so much relentless as trying to get everyone to get along...ok, so everyone getting along in the Zho fashion. *grins*

Oh and remember also that of all Humaniti, the Zho are the only ones with genuine distaste and minor incompetence regarding untruths between them and others. They really are the shiny happy people of the Traveller universe thanks to those fine folks at the Tavrchedl.

In this, because of the comic format, they may have to represent a more villanous aspect of Humaniti. They might have the best intent for using the Crown to place Zhodani-style order on the universe, but the Crown is the random factor. It takes out the question of intent. IT is unsure if it has its own motives, or what it is exactly.

The Zhos just may have to be the bad guys for the sake of story conflict, and for the sake of Action. We have to be careful not to fall into too much "gray-area" introspection and stick to "Indiana Jones" as best we can. The comics will be a lot easier to write and plan in the long run. This is not to say we "dumb it down" to the point of incoherence, but we have to give each installment a lot of Punch due to the format.

OK, so you caught me, I am a secret Zho sympathizer! It's a fair cop. * using the revolving door of Justice*

Fine, and they are off in the wild and whooly frontier of both polities...maybe they have gone native, hmmmm, which means they can lie and cheat....ick.

I admire the Zho setup in some ways too. They know how to build some wild lookin' ships. I tried to start a T20 all Zho game where the PCs were Judge Dredd like Intendants/ Psionic Cops. It is probably still on Coti. I'll find it and send you an link. Lot of players found the conforming character background too restrictive, and so the game vever launched.

Baron Saarthuran wrote:They know how to build some wild lookin' ships.

They do indeed, any ideas on what size ship here, do we go for the small inconspicuous team with the Yetsabl Courier or Zdebr Trader or lots of them with a heavily armed Shivva Frigate?
I vote the small team - makes it more personal and underhand.