All purple and wrinkly!

How do you play the Droyne in your game?

Differently depending on the culture of each world. Part of the whole 'Somebody Else's Problem' field the race puts up as a whole is that they're supposed to be boring, unassuming, unambitious etc.

This doesn't wholly work in my campaign where ANY inhabited world in the area becomes a focal point for trade, politics, paranoia and adventure. What's more Udyuxsu's a full tech level higher than mainstream Terran of the time (12 versus 11), though the government the PC's are involved in only has an inkling of that.

Anyways - I do try to filter the Droyne personalities more top down than bottom up - ie. culture, then clan, then individuals, as opposed to starting with the background and working up like most NPC's are made. This 'dulls' or distills their personalities a little bit, while still allowing for some character. You have to pay attention, like naturalists that get to know individual lions of a pride they're studying over weeks of interaction, etc., before you pick up the nuances.

Then again, you can do what naturalists often do to differentiate. "This one has a scar, that one captains a starship', and their roles or physical features become their personalities - which actually fits well with Droyne.

In a few generations, they'll either go the standard 'dormant' Droyne mode, or they'll get all riled up by an ancients era AI into competing/expanding a little. (btw, you should check out Mongoose's latest two Secrets of the Ancients free pdf downloadable adventures. One lets the players play Ancients in a meta game spanning thousands of years - its really damn cool - even if the author screws up Oynprinth and Oytrip).