Andrew Boulton
The Adminator
You mean divorce attornies?</font>[/QUOTE]
No, they're stoatally different.
Back in the day when I ran adventures it was really locus dependent, though most of our adventures were typically human centered and oriented.Originally posted by Black Globe Generator:
When I first learned to play Traveller, I was something of a xenophobe - I ran a strongly humanocentric game and rarely used other sophonts in my adventures.
Working on the demographics for my new game, I decided to include more aliens and minor humans than in years past - I sat down with the various aliens books and magazine articles, figured out what kinds of worlds would be amenable to different sophonts, and made a list of candidates.
I find that the majority of sophonts IMTU are still humans, but I've added distinctive Vilani and Solomani populations alongside the generic "assimilated" Imperial citizens, and I've introduced quite a few more alien and minor human populations to the mix: Bwaps are found on worlds amenable to their climate needs, particularly alongside the Vilani; Githiaskio and Doplhins are frequent residents of wet worlds; Vargr and Geonee are common everywhere, the latter particularly on high-grav worlds; K'kree trading stations are found on Imperial worlds that would qualify as steppeworlds within their own realms; a couple of planets have Chirper populations; and Hiver tourists and traders (with Ithklur and Gurvin in tow) may be found on Imperial worlds that qualify as fascinating at home in the Federation - even the occasional Aslan trader or solider in Imperial service and a handful of Zhodani scientists and spies knock around my Gateway. Then there are the various Judges Guild aliens as well: the Sydymites, the Danin, the Krmyia, the T'tnaree, the Zaris, and others.
That said, most Imperial worlds are still dominated by humans, particularly Vilani, Solomani, and their assimilated brethren. I prefer alien sophonts to be a spice rather than a main dish, though I'm definitely seasoning MTU much heavier these days.
So, do starport bars in your Traveller universe look like a cantina in Mos Eisley, or does your starship crew look more like that of the U.S.S. Enterprise on its five year mission, with plenty of human diversity but the aliens (other than the resident half-Vulcan) relegated to weekly guest appearances?
When our guys were in Vargr space, then Vargr were dominant. When on a busy Class A starport on the border of some alien frontier, then it was a big mix of aliens, with the two dominating pwoers having the highest presence.
For me - and IMTU - playing with the diversity of the human race itself was always one of the most interesting aspects of Traveller. We never needed a lot of aliens, the human nations of 11,000 different Imperial worlds are alien enough (not to speak of the Solomani)...
Tribal societies, wearing filter masks because of their local tainted atmosphere.
Caste-based star nomads.
The possibilities are endless (uups, this was a TORG-quote, I'm deeply sorry). You just need a ref with a twisted enough fantasy to describe the humans MORE alien than the actual alien races.
Tribal societies, wearing filter masks because of their local tainted atmosphere.
Caste-based star nomads.
The possibilities are endless (uups, this was a TORG-quote, I'm deeply sorry). You just need a ref with a twisted enough fantasy to describe the humans MORE alien than the actual alien races.
toddaroo
SOC-9
I also pilfer minor aliens from everywhere - from Star Wars, to other RPGs, to movies and books, and my own imagination.
Robots, IMTU, are much like the Droids of KOTOR & KOTOR II - they are capable of developing artificial intelligence if they are left to their own devices.
And as an aside, IMTU almost all starship computers are artificially intelligent to a greater or lesser degree as well.
Humans are by far the most common alien IMTU - and some of them are every bit as alien as any of the aliens.
BGG,
IMTU aliens were fairly common, but they were common in the same way furniture or scenery is common. (Robots IMTU are common too, but you're all aware of my robots as toasters opinion so robots as humanoid, bipedal, machines with a face were very rare indeed.)
I never had a group member who played an alien. I never anyone who even wanted to play an alien. All anyone ever played were humans. If I'd had a player who wanted to play an alien, I'd have tried to talk him out of it. I wouldn't have forbid it, but I would have argued against it. There's a personal reason for this.
I happen to loathe the Star Blecch/Star Bores presentation of aliens as nothing more than humans in zippered suits or humans with plumbing supplies glued to their foreheads. (Don't even get me started on Star Blecch's various 'crossbreeds'; half-human/half vulcan, etc. Those are right out of D&D and just as silly.) A player playing an alien character is nothing more than someone in a zippered suit.
Aliens should be alien. It should have alien motives, alien feelings, alien thoughts. If not incomprehensible, it should be only barely comprehensible and then in the broadest of brush strokes. Complex interactions on complex subjects between individual humans and individual aliens should be next to impossible, the idea of exchanging religious and philosophical beliefs for example is ludicrous. Face to face communication, even with the aid of computer translation, should be limited, halting, and fraught with error. Trade should be just above the level of barter as ideas and beliefs regarding currency are far too complex a subject.
C.J. Cherryh's Chanur setting is a good example this. While she falls into the trite, silly mold of Star Blecch/Star Bores aliens with the 'Hani' species(1) in those books, she more than redeems the setting with her depictions of the Kif, Stsho, and especially the methane breathing Knnn, Tc'a, and Chi. Those species are actually alien.
The species I've listed in the Chanur setting are about as close to aliens as we're going to get until we meet some. Among Traveller's Major Races, the K'kree and Hivers come closest to matching them as aliens, while the Aslan and Vargr are nothing but zippered suit stereotypes.
In my opinion, you can't realistically or even unrealistically play an alien in a role-playing game without it turning into a satire or stereotype of certain aspects of human behavior. If the group isn't interested in satire, the best that can be done is for the GM to handle an alien as event.
YMMV.
Have fun,
Bill
1 - The Hani might as well just be the Alsan and, seeing as Cherryh's book postdates Traveller, they might very well be the same.
IMTU aliens were fairly common, but they were common in the same way furniture or scenery is common. (Robots IMTU are common too, but you're all aware of my robots as toasters opinion so robots as humanoid, bipedal, machines with a face were very rare indeed.)
I never had a group member who played an alien. I never anyone who even wanted to play an alien. All anyone ever played were humans. If I'd had a player who wanted to play an alien, I'd have tried to talk him out of it. I wouldn't have forbid it, but I would have argued against it. There's a personal reason for this.
I happen to loathe the Star Blecch/Star Bores presentation of aliens as nothing more than humans in zippered suits or humans with plumbing supplies glued to their foreheads. (Don't even get me started on Star Blecch's various 'crossbreeds'; half-human/half vulcan, etc. Those are right out of D&D and just as silly.) A player playing an alien character is nothing more than someone in a zippered suit.
Aliens should be alien. It should have alien motives, alien feelings, alien thoughts. If not incomprehensible, it should be only barely comprehensible and then in the broadest of brush strokes. Complex interactions on complex subjects between individual humans and individual aliens should be next to impossible, the idea of exchanging religious and philosophical beliefs for example is ludicrous. Face to face communication, even with the aid of computer translation, should be limited, halting, and fraught with error. Trade should be just above the level of barter as ideas and beliefs regarding currency are far too complex a subject.
C.J. Cherryh's Chanur setting is a good example this. While she falls into the trite, silly mold of Star Blecch/Star Bores aliens with the 'Hani' species(1) in those books, she more than redeems the setting with her depictions of the Kif, Stsho, and especially the methane breathing Knnn, Tc'a, and Chi. Those species are actually alien.
The species I've listed in the Chanur setting are about as close to aliens as we're going to get until we meet some. Among Traveller's Major Races, the K'kree and Hivers come closest to matching them as aliens, while the Aslan and Vargr are nothing but zippered suit stereotypes.
In my opinion, you can't realistically or even unrealistically play an alien in a role-playing game without it turning into a satire or stereotype of certain aspects of human behavior. If the group isn't interested in satire, the best that can be done is for the GM to handle an alien as event.
YMMV.
Have fun,
Bill
1 - The Hani might as well just be the Alsan and, seeing as Cherryh's book postdates Traveller, they might very well be the same.
I don't see what the big deal is, and I certainly don't see how one way can be classed as realistic or unrealistic. There are good reasons for intelligent aliens to be upright and have a similar physiology to us (for example, being upright was an evolutionary cornerstone of our development), and if they have a similar physiology to us then it stands to reason that the mental gulf in understanding can be reached with time and study. This idea that 'aliens must be enigmatic and alien and can never be comprehended' doesn't sound remotely scientific to me - that is, anything can be comprehended if you work hard at comprehending it.
Aliens with strange biologies will also have strange mentalities. That said, in an interstellar civilisation like the Third Imperium, the only aliens that matter are the ones that can interact and be understood by humaniti. Wars and Trek have a variety of stupid aliens, though Wars never takes itself seriously and Trek is quite clearly the worst offender of the two. I don't think Traveller has a good record either, with the annoying number of uplifted races and terran subspecies. (the vargr are enough as far as uplifted races go, and only because I look at dogs as man's best friend - there is absolutely no reason to uplift apes or dolphins, unless you're that retard David Brin.)
Aliens with strange biologies will also have strange mentalities. That said, in an interstellar civilisation like the Third Imperium, the only aliens that matter are the ones that can interact and be understood by humaniti. Wars and Trek have a variety of stupid aliens, though Wars never takes itself seriously and Trek is quite clearly the worst offender of the two. I don't think Traveller has a good record either, with the annoying number of uplifted races and terran subspecies. (the vargr are enough as far as uplifted races go, and only because I look at dogs as man's best friend - there is absolutely no reason to uplift apes or dolphins, unless you're that retard David Brin.)
toddaroo
SOC-9
To me, men-in-suits type aliens are fun, and allow aliens to be an active part of the atmosphere and the game. In my humble opinion, if all aliens were incomprehensible and enigmatic, anywhere they were found would be considered a Red Zone and contact would be extremely rare; and most likely lethal due to an inability to simply communicate.
As an aside, I do whole heartedly agree with Bill - half alien/half human hybrids are quite loathsome.
Half alien/half human hybrids don't even make sense. I've often argued that Spock would have been a better character if his human mother was actually his surrogate mother.
Trekkies would scream and gnash their teeth over that though. Which is one of the reasons I've stopped liking Star Trek.
Trekkies would scream and gnash their teeth over that though. Which is one of the reasons I've stopped liking Star Trek.
TheEngineer
SOC-14 1K
Hi !
IMTU I differ between "Earth seeds", meaning all the stuff picked up, modified and spread by the ancients and the "real aliens", e.g. the Hivers.
I don't really like the first group. Guess I could live with "seeded" humans, but I really hate all those uplifted animals, bipedal human mutations or those aliens, who appear as such (e.g. Virushi, K'Kree or even Aslan).
Well, I have to admit that perhaps genetic far future science is able to create that mess ...
But they really belong to the TU, so it would be hard to get rid of them
I love Hivers, something like the Jgd II Jagd or any other aliens, who appear to be a creation and not a modified copy, though its definitly hard to play or deal with those in a convincing way.
Regards,
TE
IMTU I differ between "Earth seeds", meaning all the stuff picked up, modified and spread by the ancients and the "real aliens", e.g. the Hivers.
I don't really like the first group. Guess I could live with "seeded" humans, but I really hate all those uplifted animals, bipedal human mutations or those aliens, who appear as such (e.g. Virushi, K'Kree or even Aslan).
Well, I have to admit that perhaps genetic far future science is able to create that mess ...
But they really belong to the TU, so it would be hard to get rid of them
I love Hivers, something like the Jgd II Jagd or any other aliens, who appear to be a creation and not a modified copy, though its definitly hard to play or deal with those in a convincing way.
Regards,
TE
Gnusam Netor
SOC-13
Blasphemy!!!
Liam Devlin
SOC-14 5K
Blasphemy!!! </font>[/QUOTE]Gesundheit!
Liam Devlin
SOC-14 5K
Now, in replying to the topic instead.......
MTU has aliens within it, but few would play them. Like other posters, they tend to be passing through scenes 95% of the time: Hivers, Ithklur, Ztach, Gurvin, Bwap of course; the uplifted Vargr, Droyne (uplifted Chirpers), Aslan- Hierate raised, Darrian-raised, or Imperial (My jury's still out on whether they're uplifted Lions or not). Most of the aliens tend to humans from the polyglot of Zhodani-Vilani-Solomani-Sylean major groups, interspersed with the geneered Luriani, Mermani, Nexxies, Jonkereen, and so forth.
I tend to follow the Cherryh standard of aliens to avoid the ST & SW Zipper suited humans with fur, whatever tentacle-pseudopod-appendage or Muppet-look happened by at the time by removing one or two human traits from them.
I do borrow MTU version of the Pak Marra from B5, as we have the ravagers, [pillagers, warrior races aplenty, why not a scavenger race for junk, since the Hivers tend to eat decaying (ed) food?
or a race that never has known war among their own kind; a race that has no concept of Love? a race that knows no concept of hate? A race without the concept of greed that shares everything? A race that has never killed, or known murder? these are the kinds of thingsI tend to work in as a facet to an "alien" type of encounter.
YMMV as always!
MTU has aliens within it, but few would play them. Like other posters, they tend to be passing through scenes 95% of the time: Hivers, Ithklur, Ztach, Gurvin, Bwap of course; the uplifted Vargr, Droyne (uplifted Chirpers), Aslan- Hierate raised, Darrian-raised, or Imperial (My jury's still out on whether they're uplifted Lions or not). Most of the aliens tend to humans from the polyglot of Zhodani-Vilani-Solomani-Sylean major groups, interspersed with the geneered Luriani, Mermani, Nexxies, Jonkereen, and so forth.
I tend to follow the Cherryh standard of aliens to avoid the ST & SW Zipper suited humans with fur, whatever tentacle-pseudopod-appendage or Muppet-look happened by at the time by removing one or two human traits from them.
I do borrow MTU version of the Pak Marra from B5, as we have the ravagers, [pillagers, warrior races aplenty, why not a scavenger race for junk, since the Hivers tend to eat decaying (ed) food?
or a race that never has known war among their own kind; a race that has no concept of Love? a race that knows no concept of hate? A race without the concept of greed that shares everything? A race that has never killed, or known murder? these are the kinds of thingsI tend to work in as a facet to an "alien" type of encounter.
YMMV as always!
Fritz_Brown
Super Moderator
And, now for a topic-tangent....
How do you decide which worlds have aliens on them (particularly homeworlds) when you do a random generation of a sub/sector? Do you look for certain qualities in a system? Do you randomly assign them?
Also, how do you determine how much of a population is alien (not on homeworlds, necessarily)?
I want aliens (though not too many), and am going to use the T5 race generation playtest info to do it (with some tweaks, of course), but I don't know how to place them (though some spots are obvious).
How do you decide which worlds have aliens on them (particularly homeworlds) when you do a random generation of a sub/sector? Do you look for certain qualities in a system? Do you randomly assign them?
Also, how do you determine how much of a population is alien (not on homeworlds, necessarily)?
I want aliens (though not too many), and am going to use the T5 race generation playtest info to do it (with some tweaks, of course), but I don't know how to place them (though some spots are obvious).
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