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Only recently have I began getting traveller 2300 products, looking to convert them over to the EABA system, and my most recent acquisition was the kafer sourcebook.
I love hard Science Fiction, with believable, plausible and interesting aliens. While I would certainly not like to have them for neighbors, I must admit the kafer are some of the best designed and well thought out aliens I've ever seen, certainly worthy of the coveted title "Hard SF".
The kafer sourcebook is a fairly complete and definitive guide to understanding and using the kafer, their origins, their physiology, their psychology and the society it produced.
Kafer are certainly an alien species, not just humans with a few tweaks. Their evolution on a world larger and drier than earth, orbiting a hotter, bluer star have made them physically larger and tougher than humans, and their environment lead to the rise of their most fascinating feature: Short term intelligence.
Kafer are physically quite impressive, far large and stronger than a human and armored with a carapace to boot. They rarely needed any sort of physical enhancement, such as provided to humans by adrenaline, in a crisis. Rather than becoming briefly stronger or faster, kafer needed to become more intelligent to deal with sudden crises and challenges.
Evolution provided them with a gland that, under stimulation, produces a secretion released into the kafer brain that rapidly and notably boosts their intelligence for a brief time, say half an hour after the crisis ends. During this time a kafer's mental facilities rise sharply, from an I.Q. equivalent to about 40 in human terms, I.E. profoundly retarded and largely incapable of intelligent action, to roughly the human norm.
In game terms, when not stimulated by combat a kafer would be treated as a "green NPC" or perhaps a zero level NPC with low intelligence.
Within 1d6 combat rounds a kafer rises to a veteran NPC status, or say a 5-6 level character in terms of ability.
Kafer only truly feel intelligent, active, and fully alive when facing fear, pain, challenge or death. This has molded every aspect of their lives and culture.
Kafer civilization depends on violence. Indeed, the father of kafer civilization decreed that violence is the lifeblood of the people. Kafer seek stimulation, be it in simple brawls to gladiatorial combat to war. Kafer feel no fear, or rather they feel something like fear but they enjoy it. Likewise kafer medicine is quite primitive, having never developed painkillers, which kafer would find unthinkable.
Kafer culture is an intellectual aristocracy, because not all kafers are of equal intelligence, and there are indeed kafer geniuses. Also, kafer who survive for notable lengths of time find their average, at rest intelligence rising over time due to the repeated stimulation cycles having a permanent after effect, like exercising a human muscle.
I found the evolutionary and cultural history of the kafer to be interesting and plausible, and to created a consistent alien civilization worthy of being considered hard SF.
Kafer interaction with humans was later described, and as one can surmise it was not peaceful.
There were some tiny problems in the kafer sourcebook.One was that it did not mention whether or not kafer slept, and if so how much. Lacking contradictory information I assume they do sleep, and about as much as humans, maybe a little less, say 1/4-15 the time.
Likewise the kafer lifespan was unmentioned. One can assume that dying of old age is seldom a problem for kafer, but still, traveller had aging rules for humans, one would have expected similar for kafer.
Lastly, the complex and gruesome kafer mouth was described in great detail let never portrayed in anything like adequate graphic terms. A could head shots of the kafer mouth with the parts labeled would have been a great addition to the book.
If anyone redoes this remarkable work I hope they correct the trio of small detriments to it's otherwise sterling quality.
I find the kafer sourcebook to be of exemplary quality and a standard by which alien species sourcebooks should be judged by.
BTW, I would have liked to classify this as "Hard SF" in the review, but rpg.net did not have that category. Perhaps it could be added for hard SF game products.
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