Non OTU: Alternate Traveller Settings

[whulorigan]

I don't know that it is necessary for players to understand the why- just that the ref does, and is consistent within the aliens' reality.

One minute they are handing over fist-sized pure iridium nodules for novelty dipping birds, next they are slaughtering every human on the planet- gives you the heebie-jeebies, lets everyone know they are not in Kansas anymore, and the player that can figure out the why gets untold riches being the only person able to deal with a whole race.

Some good examples of that kind of situation arise in some of Poul Anderson's Polesotechnic League stories with David Falkayn and Nicholas vanRijn.

 

[Adam Dray]

I like The Festival from Charlie Stross's Singularity Sky:

The Festival is an upload civilisation, originally intended to repair galactic information networks, that travels from system to system via starwisps, building the facilities it needs from local materials when it arrives. It usually prefers to interact with other upload civilisations, but any will do in a pinch. It asks for information it is unfamiliar with from those it visits, and will make any kind of payment in exchange.

No individual member of the Festival makes an appearance in the novel. Traveling in the Festival's vast spare mindspace are a number of other upload species that are separate from them but part of every visit.

• The Bouncers: The Festival's brute-force defence, used when "a big stick and a smile were all that was needed." During the novel three automated Bouncer ships take on the Lord Vanek and the rest of the New Republic's naval fleet; one of them is destroyed but the Bouncers' self-replicating robots eat all the opposing ships.
  
• The Critics: A matriarchal culture that instantiates their physical bodies, which resemble large mole-rats, upon arrival at a new system. Despite their appearance, they are descended from humans and share similar brains. They pay for their passage by providing high-level commentary and analysis of the visited civilisation. During Singularity Sky, one of them, Sister of Stratagems the Seventh, leaves their orbital perch and goes to the planet's surface to better assess whether the Rochardians are truly sapient.
  
• The Fringe: A subgroup of the Festival that uses the planet as a medium for art. Their projects range from the introduction of extraplanetary flora by the Flower Show to inducing solar flares to create aurora displays. They are considered potentially the Festival's most dangerous element, although this is more from their recklessness than design.
  
• The Mimes: An offshoot of the Fringe that in the past suffered bit rot from a solar flare and has become corrupted. On a visited planet, the Mimes turn those they encounter into cyborg zombies that attempt to do likewise to others they encounter. It may have been a misguided attempt to communicate.

(From Wikipedia about the book)

 

[Timerover51]

OTOH, an "alien" alien gives the players the opportunity to invent and express their own behavioral and moral standards without being judged according to human (or Western) norms.

If a player does start acting in that way, assuming that I would not judge based on my background, that player is in for a very big shock. If running the game, I fold my tent and leave, letting him/her/it deal with the rest of the group. If playing in the game, I simply get up and leave, and never play with that individual again.

 

[RandyB]

Then there are the moties....

Now there's your "alien" aliens.

 

[RandyB]

Heh , I fully expect we would run across aliens where they 'violate' genetically coded norms we didn't know we universally had and generate disgust we can't help but feel.

:coffeesip:

 

[whartung]

Aliens are like AI today.

When you don't understand it, it's AI. When you do, it's just a search algorithm, a data structure, or math with some distinct data set.

As long as the Aliens are kept distant, they remain Aliens. As you observe and understand them better, they become less "alien" and simply "different behaviors".

We have all sorts of "aliens" on our planet -- from insects, to monkeys, to fish in the sea and even other human cultures. But after years of study, study that has to be conveyed in human and local cultural terms, they no longer remain Alien, just "yea, they're different over there".

 

[kilemall]

Aliens are like AI today.

When you don't understand it, it's AI. When you do, it's just a search algorithm, a data structure, or math with some distinct data set.

As long as the Aliens are kept distant, they remain Aliens. As you observe and understand them better, they become less "alien" and simply "different behaviors".

We have all sorts of "aliens" on our planet -- from insects, to monkeys, to fish in the sea and even other human cultures. But after years of study, study that has to be conveyed in human and local cultural terms, they no longer remain Alien, just "yea, they're different over there".

Which is probably the difference between hick xenophobic polities and 'big city' cosmopolitan civilization.

Heh, cosmopolitan should come to mean something more in a space civilization.

Cosmospolitan? Astropolitan?

 

[Condottiere]

Taste, I suspect.

 

[Gray Lensman]

Which is probably the difference between hick xenophobic polities and 'big city' cosmopolitan civilization.

Heh, cosmopolitan should come to mean something more in a space civilization.

Cosmospolitan? Astropolitan?

Unipolitan? Multipolitan? Versepolitan? Galactopolitin? YEAH! Thats it. :rofl: