[Space] How alien are your aliens?

[Aldric]

I don't see why NOT killing every alien that shares a room with you would be a disadvantage.

[Flyndaran]

Allergies are immune system glitches that are easily corrected in most ultra tech societies. Though one episode of Enterprise mentioned a character taking injections to deal with one of his many food allergies.

Though neither Star Trek nor any other popular sci fi show I can think of has problems with humans and non-humans just chowing down on each others food.

[awesomenessofme1]

Originally Posted by Flyndaran

Allergies are immune system glitches that are easily corrected in most ultra tech societies. Though one episode of Enterprise mentioned a character taking injections to deal with one of his many food allergies.

Though neither Star Trek nor any other popular sci fi show I can think of has problems with humans and non-humans just chowing down on each others food.

It's not a show, and I have no idea of the scientific accuracy, but that exists in Mass Effect. There are two different types of amino acid chiralities that a species can have, and eating food (or certain other things) based on the other can cause a lethal reaction.

[ericthered]

I like alien aliens. When I look through all my accumulated ideas for games, there is a large pile of physiologically distinct aliens intended for use as player characters. They have radial symmetry, live in trees, breathe with gills and swim, or even live in tunnels. They may use different senses. One species is the equivalent of an entire anthill. I generally like the emphasize different physiology and let the psychology differences flow from that.

Despite all this, I never seem to actually use them as Player Characters in games I run. Many of the space games I've run have been extremely human eccentric. Boarders from Earth threw TL8 human recruits into a space opera war. Space Merchant was about reconnecting the remnants of humanity after aliens (who never appeared on screen) tried to wipe them out. Lawmen of Borlo had the only known alien artifacts in the galaxy as a recurring form of McGuffin. Lost in Dreams has had episodes in space or on alien worlds, (we have one right now), but the characters are very much modern earthlings.

So I'm in a weird spot, liking the idea of alien aliens, but almost never setting up games where the Players actually have the option of playing them. A lot of player-intended aliens do show up in games I run, the players just never got the option of running them because of the game setup.

I suspect that in many cases players if given the option to play very alien aliens they'd come up with requests. I'd probably do that in game, and when I tried to run with genetic engineering in a game the most popular template was the Tiger people one player requested and two more players used. To be fair, gaming is a joint creation effort, and it was a very fun template.

[Black Leviathan]

My players are ruthless starfish hunters. They will kill you in a hot second if you can't write with a pen or flip a bird at someone. If you want to have a civilized interaction with my players you need to be at least 80% forehead and that last 20% better be weird anatomy because if you don't speak fluent Allied Planets English they will torpedo you just as soon as try the translator software. I'm not sure where they got the massive distrust of weird aliens from but it is fierce. Two-arms-two-legs-English-accent you're A-ok for a cat-alien-person. If they see a tentacle or have to figure out how your gender works, you are clearly evil.

[Fred Brackin]

How alien an alien can be depends on how much the GM intends to do with it.

If the alien is only going to wander in, do something inexplicable and then wander away again the sky's the limit for alieness but actual interaction with near-human PCs is limited to near nothing.

If the alien is intended to interact with PCs (or even NPCs) it needs to be aircar and cantina compatible. If it can't ride in the same vehicle as the PCs it proabably can't go on the adventure. If it can't socialize with the PCs while eating, drinking or playing cards that pretty much torpedoes non-adventure interation. The alen might as well stay onboard it's own ship and send the PCs text messages with fractured syntax that show how alien its' ming is.

[evileeyore]

Originally Posted by awesomenessofme1

It's not a show, and I have no idea of the scientific accuracy, but that exists in Mass Effect. There are two different types of amino acid chiralities that a species can have, and eating food (or certain other things) based on the other can cause a lethal reaction.

Yeah, and one of the things I liked about that series was the explanation (if you romanced the right alien) that bodily fluids could cause a deadly reaction...


As for my games, PC aliens are pretty much just humans in costumes with a few personality dial settings tweaked up or down. NPC aliens can be wildly inhumane, but then my favorite two alien races to date were the Memer and Saret from 2e GURPS Aliens and the Polyglot from a friends homebrew game, which is a sentient/sapient memetic language.

But if a Player really wants a completely alien alien, and I think they can rp it well, I'll let them go to town.

My favorite alien to play to date was a homebrew parasitic alien, they look vaguely like moray eels and they interact by boring through the skull of another creature, eating the 'unnecessary' parts of the brain, and then using the remaining brain bits to puppet the host body. In the two games that I played it in the GM (two different GMs at that) liked to joke that at some point my current host would "need to be killed so the party would have the dilemma of which other PC needed to be trepanned so my character wouldn't die".

My answer was always, "I don't need to eat their brain, but really, removal of the lesser personality is usually a vast improvement..."

[Sunrunners_Fire]

Originally Posted by RyanW

For those of you who have run SF campaigns, do you find there is a sweet spot on how alien you tend to make your aliens (assume "playable race" sort of alien species)? On the one extreme, I find rubber forehead aliens too unrealistic to be really satisfying. On the other, really alien aliens can be very difficult to play.

The most obvious limits to the theoretically possible in favor of the playable is that they should be of a size and sensory range that allows deep interaction with the rest of the PCs.

I don't take playability into account when creating alien species (anymore). They either serve a necessary role within the setting or they don't exist. If they do exist, a player is interested in playing one and the player can sell me on the alien character ... they can play it. But, no, I've not found a generally applicable sweet spot. Sometimes we have catboys and bunnygirls. Sometimes we've talking animals and household appliances. Sometimes we've hegemonizing swarms composed of nine-legged, seven-winged arachnoids who use their mouthparts as dexterous manipulators. Rarely all at the same time though.

[AlexanderHowl]

The Chanur series of C.J. Cherryh has some really interesting aliens, ranging from humanoid animals to things that make starfish seem human by comparison. The Mahendo'sat are humanoid apes while the Knnn, for example, are completely alien.

[Flyndaran]

Personally, I like the irony of a vaguely humanoid alien being psychologically less human like than another less human looking species.