[Galactic] Aien types

[Zaidaco]

Hey all,

For the last year or so, I've had an idea bouncing around my brain for a Sci-Fi role playing game. Now, it's my intention to allow the player to be able to create any type of alien they can imagine and so far I've come up with a few broad categories for the different alien types. I'm looking for a little feed back on what I have already, and what I might want to add or take away.

Alien Types:

Humanoid
Insectoid
Amorphous
Machine
Weird

Thanks,
Merrick

[TonyLB]

First, the question I'm not going to ask.  I could ask "What benefit does a player get from playing an alien?" and then you could talk about their different abilities and the political factions and all like that.  A valid question, but not the one I like.

My question is this:  "What (if any) benefit does a player get from playing an alien to the hilt?"  For instance, do your rules make a distinction between these two players:

[*]One who says "I want to play an insectoid" and then never mentions anything about insect again and, [*]One who is constantly clicking their mandibles, etching designs on their exoskeleton and worrying that they're not spending enough quality time with their thousands upon thousands of mindless larval offspring?[/list:u]The answer to this will help inform what I can recommend to you.  Plus, I'm just plain interested.

[Nathan P.]

A couple off the top of the ol' Noggin -

Gaseous
Energy
Vegetable
I personally would say Anthropomorphic rather than Humanoid. It's a more alieny, less humanocentric word.

I also eagerly await your response to Tony.

Though, speaking of "building your own alien", it makes me think of having a bunch of lists of different cool alien parts that you can mix-n-match, and then define it afterwards - like, everyone chooses a core biology, different limbs, skin substance, mental processes, cultural and moral attitudes, etc. I mean, I obviously don't know what you have in mind, but that would be cool.

Hope this helps,

[GregS]

Heh.  I have visiions of the Anthropomorphic Rabbit alien having a love/hate relationship with the Vegitable Carrot alien.

Some other to potentially add:

Crystaline
Hive/multiple organisms functioning as one
Reptillian
Composed entirely of small, tasty peppermint candies

[ErrathofKosh]

First, the question I'm not going to ask.  I could ask "What benefit does a player get from playing an alien?" and then you could talk about their different abilities and the political factions and all like that.  A valid question, but not the one I like.

My question is this:  "What (if any) benefit does a player get from playing an alien to the hilt?"  For instance, do your rules make a distinction between these two players:

[*]One who says "I want to play an insectoid" and then never mentions anything about insect again and, [*]One who is constantly clicking their mandibles, etching designs on their exoskeleton and worrying that they're not spending enough quality time with their thousands upon thousands of mindless larval offspring?[/list:u]The answer to this will help inform what I can recommend to you.  Plus, I'm just plain interested.

I'm currently working on a fantasy game with the "different" races.  I'm working on giving each their own culture, idiosyncracies, steorotypes, and issues.  I'm attempting to give each race a set of premises to work with.  I think that's what Tony is getting at here.  (Correct me if I wrong...)  Check out  the Cheap and Cheesy fantasy Game by Vincent Baker for a good example of what I'm referring to.

Cheers
Jonathan

[Sydney Freedberg]

....One who is constantly clicking their mandibles, etching designs on their exoskeleton and worrying that they're not spending enough quality time with their thousands upon thousands of mindless larval offspring....

Don't forget the recurring nightmare about waking up one morning and discovering you've metamorphosed inexplicably into Franz Kafka.

[Zaidaco]

"What (if any) benefit does a player get from playing an alien to the hilt?"  For instance, do your rules make a distinction between these two players:

[*]One who says "I want to play an insectoid" and then never mentions anything about insect again and, [*]One who is constantly clicking their mandibles, etching designs on their exoskeleton and worrying that they're not spending enough quality time with their thousands upon thousands of mindless larval offspring?[/list:u]

The game is in the Narrative style, and as such, the player who is going "to the hilt" will definitely gain bonuses for good role-playing.

Right now, I'm not sure what effect the different categories may have on actual play, but I do know that I want the alien type categories to be very broad.
For example:
The Humanoid / Anthropoid category could cover almost every alien ever seen on Star Trek.
The aliens from "Aliens" would almost certainly fall under the Insectoid group, with a bit of the Other category in there as well.
For the Machine category you might consider the robot from "The Day the Earth Stood Still".

So based on what we've seen so far, the type categories now include:
Anthropoid    
Machine   
Insectoid (Includes multi organism hive minds)
Vegetable   
Amorphous   
Energy
Mineral   
Gaseous   
Other

I'm almost considering that some of the categories may be secondary descriptors something like: Energy / Machine, Anthropoid / Vegetable, Amorphous / Gaseous.

[TonyLB]

Well, one way to go about it is to give objective behaviors that the player can do to gain advantage in the game-mechanics.

For instance, an insectoid character can get a predictable benefit every time it clicks its mandibles, the same way a character with a Guns skill gets a predictable benefit every time he fires a gun.  The GM doesn't have to subjectively say "That clicking of the mandibles was good roleplay", because it's right there on the character sheet.  "Click Mandibles:  2d6").

Also, if bonusses are objective then game balancing is a numeric exercise in making sure that every race is roughly as interesting as every other (i.e. that they have as many fun behaviors to benefit from).  So that's entertaining and cool at the same time.

[ADGBoss]

Hey

I am going to take a slightly different tact on this and throw 2 options out.

Option 1

(To steal an idea) Write a 50 word description of the Alien.  You would need to include body type, locomotion, respiration, as well as some stuff about their society and home world.

From this stats could be produced in total or as bonus points to attributes or skills.

Option 2

Each Attribute (ie for System) has an associated physical, mental, emotional, or social connection and requires description.

Example:

Alien from Tau Ceti III

Strength 2 - TC3 have many limbs but poor skeletal support and high gravity tends to make them weaker.
Movement 4 - Even at low gravity the TC3 has 6 legs and tends to move quickly
Intellect 6 - Over the millenia the TC3 have evolved towards being more intellectual and technological as opposed to physical and low tech
Technology 6 - TC3 have developed many time and energy saving technologies to help them in every day life


Just a few ideas...


Sean

[Zaidaco]

Each Attribute (ie for System) has an associated physical, mental, emotional, or social connection and requires description.

Whoa! You're getting a bit ahead of me here Sean. Eventually I figure that each PC alien should have some sort of weakness, either social or physical. That could mean a specific atmosphere, or gravity, maybe an ingrained aggression. Again this would be specific to the players idea of what they want their alien species to be like.

Here's an example of one of the species a playtester came up with. The alien was from a very wet/warm/swamp like planet. The star was dim so their wasn't very much light on the surface, but the stars radiation combined with the constant rot of organic materials kept the temperature at a fairly high level. The dominant species of the planet are a semi-telepathic race of luminous spheroid's with a skirt of short tentacles. These creatures are physically very weak, but they a very high intelligence. They player was actually pretty good at playijng a mass of brain tissue that rarely left the ship. The alien would speak directly into the other crew-members heads, and it was also the pilot using direct neural I/O devices.

[Vaxalon]

...The star was dim so their wasn't very much light on the surface, but the stars radiation combined with the constant rot of organic materials kept the temperature at a fairly high level. ....

You DO know that scientifically, this is baloney, right?  I don't mind pseudoscientific gobbledygook as long as folks know that that's what it is.

[Zaidaco]

You DO know that scientifically, this is baloney, right?  I don't mind pseudoscientific gobbledygook as long as folks know that that's what it is.

Science has no place in science fiction.

[Zaidaco]

You DO know that scientifically, this is baloney, right?  I don't mind pseudoscientific gobbledygook as long as folks know that that's what it is.

It sounds pretty convincing though. Almost.

[Nathan P.]

I think this is something worth pointing out in your game text, if you're not doing planning to already - a big part of the fun of scifi is that you get to make up random shit about the universe, so make shit up! Emphasize that the game is about making and playing really neat aliens, not explaining how they actually work and such.

Also, a comment about "bonuses for good RPing" - what bonuses? How do you get them? What do they apply to? Is this up to the GM, or are you hardwiring a reward structure for playing out how cool and creepy your alien is into the game? These are all questions I think you should ask yourself. I think this is what Tony is talking about - by having objective mechanics that reward you for using your aliens neat bits, your coding a reward for play behavior into the rules.

[Andrew Martin]

Created creatures as opposed to creatures that have just evolved; either organic or more typically robotic/mechanoid creatures.