Scum & Villainy – Homebrew Xenos pt. 1

Scum & Villainy makes mention of xenos a.k.a. aliens but only provides one example (the aquatic Mem) and a few guidelines for designing your own for a playbook. Space Opera as a genre frequently focuses on the humans and humanoids (aka face make up, pointy ears, or weird foreheads). Depending on the world setting, there might only be these humans in a great galactic society, or at the other end of the specturm you will find humans as but one of the many exotic lifeforms and as we well know in the TTRPG sphere, playing something non-human is a pretty popular choice. The default setting for Scum & Villainy appears to be very human-centric but with room for xenos

In our first real session, as the Crew picked their contact, I asked what was unique or interesting about them, inviting them for some input on the setting. One of the players asked if their contact could be a walrus person, and thus did the first of our home brew xenos.

So far, the Crew has been mostly human but for an ur-bot mystic, a cyborg mechanic, and a mem stitch, but the NPCs populating our campaign have so far included appearances by:

• Memish (example given in the book) – Spiritual Aquatic Folk
• Norsicans (name dropped in the book) – Zen Lizard Mutants
• Usik – Gregarious Walrus Folk
• Vespen – Dark Dwelling Survivors
• Wrinlian (name dropped in book) – Mutli-armed Mechanics

Plus some non-player Xenos

• Sah’iir (briefly described as a faction) – Mysterious Robed Ones
• The Harmony – Parasitic Hive Mind

Overall, I wanted to create something unique and steer away from space orcs and the like. I also wanted players to be able to port in xeno special abilities into the already existing playbooks rather than the other way around (though I might still try that other way) but still able to do the xeno things as needed, making them more like features of their Heritage than playbook abilities. With this, I modified a few things in the Stress cost based on how much it impacted play and other mechanics.

• Minor (0 Stress cost) – largely cosmetic, present all the time but rarely affecting Action rolls (slightly improved senses, low or high gravity backgrounds, specialized non human body parts)
• Significant (1 stress or modifying cost) – requiring some effort or concentration, provides a reduced stress cost to push youself or reduce consequences
• Major (2 stress) – abilities beyond human, replacing special items from load out or ignoring harm and hazards as consequences

I can’t claim that any of the ones I’m going to post have survived extensive playtesting, at best being improvised in the moment and at worst as a feature of an encounter.

As this post is getting rather extensive already, I’m gonna break down each of the xenos as their own post and some of the reasoning with each one. Meanwhile, here’s a meme!