(continuation of post above)
All that made for a much better, a much stranger, adventure IMHO. There was no doggie specialist saying "Uh-oh! He wants to gain charisma by frightening us in front of his pack, so we should do this." or samurai pizza cat specialist saying "Just fight until you're scratched and it'll all blow over" or some starfish specialist saying "It's just an experiment, don't worry."
It was alien, not formulaic.
That's it then. Aliens IMTU were handled according to how human they were because, in the end, all aliens in RPGs are at least a little bit human.
Have fun,
Bill
1 - The same categories can be applied to fictional aliens for pretty much the same reason. In Niven's "Known Space", the Kzin might as well be human, the Puppeteers are only "somewhat alien", and the Outsiders are the "alien" aliens. The level at which we understand their motives and behavior places them in each category. Of course, understanding motives and behavior is central to how "playable" a RPG alien is. Cherryh's multi-species "Compact" setting is yet another example. The Chanur are simply furries, extremely well written furries, but furries nonetheless. The mehandosat(sic) are rubber suits, while the kiff are only somewhat alien, and the two hydrogen breathing species are wonderfully alien. I'd rather have the Outsiders and Cherryh's hydrogen breathers in my RPG games than the Kzin or Chanur(5).
2 - Why are Trek aliens "rubber suit" types? Before CGI was a glint in George Lucas' eye, let alone an option, budgetary constraints had something to do with it but the actual reason is that human actors had to play those aliens as they interacted with other other humans. You'll notice that when the stories featuring the CGI alien from the Voyager series changed from the "mysterious and potentially dangerous intruder/attacker" genre to the "we're talking with them" genre Species XYZ's appearance changed from that of CGI monsters to "Species XYZ wearing human rubber suits". The parallels with aliens in RPGs should be evidently obvious.
3 - One aspect of Aslan society that I feel should played up more in the cultural basis of most of their behavior. The Aslan don't act the way they do wholly because they're wired that way, they act they way they do because they choose to do so. They had a very nasty cultural purge a few decades after reverse engineering jump drive, there are still "heretic" Aslan fringe cultures both within the Heirate and beyond it in refugee states, and Imperial and Darrian Aslan don't behave exactly like their Heirate cousins. It's a choice, not a reflex. Males can handle money, females can learn to be a pilot, and all Aslans can understand that gender taboos shouldn't be extended beyond their species but their culture doesn't allow that to happen. The Aslan would be far more interesting and far more realistic if that fact appeared more often.
4 - While I did mess with his goal, I did not do so deliberately. I merely threw in the first Jgd-il-jgd encounter. He then tried to capitalize on it. He obtained authorization to go looking for the Jgd-il-jgd, he engaged in encounters when he did find them, used the extremely cryptic results of those encounters to gain more leeway, and eventually pestered the aliens enough to get shot at. The course of action was his and his alone.
5 - Sooner or later some bright graduate student in a comparative literature program is going to pen a superb paper on the co-evolution of GDW's Aslan, Niven's Kzin, and Cherryh's Chanur. The Aslan and Chanur are of roughly the same age with a slight edge going to the Aslan. Niven's aliens may be the oldest of the three, appearing in stories written in the 60s. However, we've learned much more about them in the stories written for the Man-Kzin Wars series which began in the 90s.
All three species show an eerily similar nature. Aslan and Chanur males are violent children guided and guarded by mercantile-savvy females during their interactions with others. (Chanur males aren't even allowed off-world!) Both the Kzin and Aslan received their setting's stardrive from other species; the Kzin hired as mercenaries by the interstellar Jotok whom are later enslaved while the Aslan receive TNS Pathfinder. (The Kzin stardrive is a "gravity polarizer" and not a FTL device.) The males of all three species also keep harems, albeit harems of non-sentients for the Kzin.
There are many other similarities I haven't listed and I'm not suggesting that anything like plagiarism occurred either. It seems that the various details associated with each of these fictional aliens somehow influenced the development of the others. I believe this to be especially true with the Kzin and Aslan stardrive stories as the Jotok story came well after the Pathfinder revelation. Niven's older stories mention a few Kzin slave species, the sonar-seeing Kdatlynto(sic) and others, but the Jotok are never mentioned nor is their previous role in hiring the Kzin or giving them stardrive technology. It seems that the Jotok story, which was written by a contributor to the series and not by Niven, is a direct riff on the Aslan.
All that made for a much better, a much stranger, adventure IMHO. There was no doggie specialist saying "Uh-oh! He wants to gain charisma by frightening us in front of his pack, so we should do this." or samurai pizza cat specialist saying "Just fight until you're scratched and it'll all blow over" or some starfish specialist saying "It's just an experiment, don't worry."
It was alien, not formulaic.
That's it then. Aliens IMTU were handled according to how human they were because, in the end, all aliens in RPGs are at least a little bit human.
Have fun,
Bill
1 - The same categories can be applied to fictional aliens for pretty much the same reason. In Niven's "Known Space", the Kzin might as well be human, the Puppeteers are only "somewhat alien", and the Outsiders are the "alien" aliens. The level at which we understand their motives and behavior places them in each category. Of course, understanding motives and behavior is central to how "playable" a RPG alien is. Cherryh's multi-species "Compact" setting is yet another example. The Chanur are simply furries, extremely well written furries, but furries nonetheless. The mehandosat(sic) are rubber suits, while the kiff are only somewhat alien, and the two hydrogen breathing species are wonderfully alien. I'd rather have the Outsiders and Cherryh's hydrogen breathers in my RPG games than the Kzin or Chanur(5).
2 - Why are Trek aliens "rubber suit" types? Before CGI was a glint in George Lucas' eye, let alone an option, budgetary constraints had something to do with it but the actual reason is that human actors had to play those aliens as they interacted with other other humans. You'll notice that when the stories featuring the CGI alien from the Voyager series changed from the "mysterious and potentially dangerous intruder/attacker" genre to the "we're talking with them" genre Species XYZ's appearance changed from that of CGI monsters to "Species XYZ wearing human rubber suits". The parallels with aliens in RPGs should be evidently obvious.
3 - One aspect of Aslan society that I feel should played up more in the cultural basis of most of their behavior. The Aslan don't act the way they do wholly because they're wired that way, they act they way they do because they choose to do so. They had a very nasty cultural purge a few decades after reverse engineering jump drive, there are still "heretic" Aslan fringe cultures both within the Heirate and beyond it in refugee states, and Imperial and Darrian Aslan don't behave exactly like their Heirate cousins. It's a choice, not a reflex. Males can handle money, females can learn to be a pilot, and all Aslans can understand that gender taboos shouldn't be extended beyond their species but their culture doesn't allow that to happen. The Aslan would be far more interesting and far more realistic if that fact appeared more often.
4 - While I did mess with his goal, I did not do so deliberately. I merely threw in the first Jgd-il-jgd encounter. He then tried to capitalize on it. He obtained authorization to go looking for the Jgd-il-jgd, he engaged in encounters when he did find them, used the extremely cryptic results of those encounters to gain more leeway, and eventually pestered the aliens enough to get shot at. The course of action was his and his alone.
5 - Sooner or later some bright graduate student in a comparative literature program is going to pen a superb paper on the co-evolution of GDW's Aslan, Niven's Kzin, and Cherryh's Chanur. The Aslan and Chanur are of roughly the same age with a slight edge going to the Aslan. Niven's aliens may be the oldest of the three, appearing in stories written in the 60s. However, we've learned much more about them in the stories written for the Man-Kzin Wars series which began in the 90s.
All three species show an eerily similar nature. Aslan and Chanur males are violent children guided and guarded by mercantile-savvy females during their interactions with others. (Chanur males aren't even allowed off-world!) Both the Kzin and Aslan received their setting's stardrive from other species; the Kzin hired as mercenaries by the interstellar Jotok whom are later enslaved while the Aslan receive TNS Pathfinder. (The Kzin stardrive is a "gravity polarizer" and not a FTL device.) The males of all three species also keep harems, albeit harems of non-sentients for the Kzin.
There are many other similarities I haven't listed and I'm not suggesting that anything like plagiarism occurred either. It seems that the various details associated with each of these fictional aliens somehow influenced the development of the others. I believe this to be especially true with the Kzin and Aslan stardrive stories as the Jotok story came well after the Pathfinder revelation. Niven's older stories mention a few Kzin slave species, the sonar-seeing Kdatlynto(sic) and others, but the Jotok are never mentioned nor is their previous role in hiring the Kzin or giving them stardrive technology. It seems that the Jotok story, which was written by a contributor to the series and not by Niven, is a direct riff on the Aslan.
