To be honest, I thought Billy would survive more playtests. More than Miriam, at least. But as it turns out, if you make a character that can take players' agency away, they will really want to kill that character.

Billy Wei may be unassuming compared to the more body-horrific characters in Warped Beyond Recognition, but he can become a huge danger to a boarding party very quickly, as my players can attest. Here's a video about creating him, and some thoughts:

Billy's key power is controlling people. When the PCs board the Fidanza, he is toying with two marines under his thrall, and he can quickly take control of (non-android) player characters as well. This can go sideways very quickly, and the quickest way out of this situation is to take him out ASAP.

It probably doesn't help that the primary need motivating him is affirmation, and he will manipulate, control, or suck up to PCs to get it. It makes sense in the context of his backstory (he was horribly rejected – and betrayed – by his parents) but it doesn't exactly make him an endearing character. I gave each of the test subjects a basic drive motivated by their history – it's listed above their Sanity chart.

These desires are meant to serve as a kind of guiding star for the Warden roleplaying the test subjects, and as something the players can discover and use to their advantage. I've found it very helpful in running characters to explicitly lay out for myself what they want in the simplest possible terms. I love when adventures help me out in that regard, so I wanted to do that here.

Anyway, Billy gets killed a lot. I'd love to hear about a Warped run where the players spare him though!