How common are aliens IYTU?

[kaladorn]

This whole discussion brought up one thought:

Everyone says Vargr, Aslan, etc. are humans in funny suits (likely true to a point). Yet I'm quite certain that things like Vargr pack behaviours and other similar things could be culled from the world of animal biology and produce something different enough from humans to be interesting.

As for arguing about how realistic a particular alien is or how likely - that's a rather funny religious conviction. As far as I know, other than some microbes, we have no real clue what any other aliens are like.

It's possible (no idea how likely) they'll be quite similar to us - maybe the precursor situations for life tend towards certain designs? Some days I hear 'no habitable planets' out of the astrophysics community, then some days 'way more than we ever thought, probably more habitable' - the wisdom on that changes regularly.

I guess it boils down to two things:
1) We don't know anything about real aliens if they exist. So any comment about how likely or unlikely aliens are to be bipedal, etc. is a bit silly in that vein.
2) Aliens *in a game* serve a role - is it to act as a foil for some human characteristic by exaggerating it? Hmmm. Is it to let someone try to wrap their mind around playing a PC who operates on different assumptions and rules than an average human? Hmmm. Both of these have some value, even if they are furry suits. And I can sure tell you that Rear Admiral Arrgh, the Vargr Engineer, was a long term survivor of several human dominated campaigns - he got laughed at on occasion, harrassed for his ethnicity (and player decisions), but he was a survivor. And memorable. And that's what makes a good game.

Jgd Jgd are great. But they're generally not easy to interact with and the amount they can contribute as interactive partners is minimal, so they'll always be a sort of odd NPC... never quite understood, never fully explored. This is true of most of the 'truly alien' races.

Of course, IYTU, YMMV. :0)

 

[Gnusam Netor]

Hmm, perhaps also I should respond on topic...

Aslan - they are an interesting and a somewhat realistic(?) variation on humans, with their hardwired gender roles and so on.

Vargr - (or as we Swedes think of them, Wolf-r) cool, chaotic variations on standard humans. But perhaps less "realistic" than Aslan.

Hivers - Have most alien-feel of the species around, scary in a non aggressive kinda way. I do wish they would be more dominating and advanced in the canon TU.

K'kree - don't like them as a concept really. Kafers are better for filling the "scary-civ-destroying-dudes" role. That's how I see K'kree atleast.

Zhodani - Cool as humans that Humans(tm) don't understand, if you get what i mean. More of those types, the alien humans.

Various uplifted species, like Chimps and Dolphins... Oh yeah! I like it! Likewise with gene-modified humans of course.

So, based on this i would say. Humans do dominate the central setting, some Vargr or Droyne will be there, but as soon as the characters drift from "the Shire" they will encounter more strange humans and aliens. The further - the stranger.


And what is really the visual-difference between the Syleans, the Vilanii and the Solomani? That is something i always wanted to know.

 

[Golan2072]

Depends on the TU. In my old TU, I had almost only humans, but with some very wide varieties in culture, technology, and cultural approach to technology. I had, for example, the Matriarchate - independent belter-clans with a posthuman culture, freely augmenting themselves in cybernetics and biotech to make them more adept at their tasks, or simply for aesthetic reasons; they were also against planetary colonization (terraformation in particular) and preffered to live in space habitats in planetoid belts instead. The main group of real aliens were the Inheritors - scavangers evolving in the ruins of a previous alien civilization. But most encounters were with humans.

In the OTU, I'd probably use alot of human variants (Solomani, Vilani, Mudbloods, biomods and so on) and uplifted Earth animals (I like the Rim), as well as the staples of the Rim - Aslan and Hivers.

And I think that, if played right, Aslan are far from being "men in rubber suits" - they key to playing them is understanding the main differences between them and humans and playing up these differences. They'd still be close enough to Humans to be consistently played, but their reactions to many situations will greatly differ from those of Humans.

I think that the key to successfully play an alien is to take some of the most significant alien aspects of that alien (such as the Vargr pack mentality and "Charisma"; the Hiver emotionlessness and couriosity; and so on) and play on these aspects consistently.

 

[stofsk]

Originally posted by kaladorn:
Everyone says Vargr, Aslan, etc. are humans in funny suits (likely true to a point). Yet I'm quite certain that things like Vargr pack behaviours and other similar things could be culled from the world of animal biology and produce something different enough from humans to be interesting.

Vargr and Aslan are social creatures, like humans. Saying they're humans in funny suits is disingenuous. There are differences between the races, but they have an underlying similarity that is construed as creatively bankrupt when it's not. Social creatures will behave like social creatures.

As for arguing about how realistic a particular alien is or how likely - that's a rather funny religious conviction. As far as I know, other than some microbes, we have no real clue what any other aliens are like.

This is true, but it's also close to an appeal to ignorance - we don't know what the real story is, so anything goes? - in truth, we can extrapolate from real-world biology and speculate on that basis.

It's possible (no idea how likely) they'll be quite similar to us - maybe the precursor situations for life tend towards certain designs? Some days I hear 'no habitable planets' out of the astrophysics community, then some days 'way more than we ever thought, probably more habitable' - the wisdom on that changes regularly.

It's a good bet to say that if there are aliens, and if there are diverse forms of alien life, then the only alien life that really matters to an interstellar civilisation dominated by humanity is that which we can closely relate to and bargain with. Try communicating with a methane breather who has no sense of self-identity. If communication is even possible. Try communicating with an alien that evolved from pack animals and thus evolved society and verbal language - one of the reasons why we even have language and culture is because we're social animals.

I guess it boils down to two things:
1) We don't know anything about real aliens if they exist. So any comment about how likely or unlikely aliens are to be bipedal, etc. is a bit silly in that vein.

We don't know what alien life, should we ever discover it (don't hold your breath), would be like but there's that appeal to ignorance again. We do know that the ability to stand upright was evolutionarily advantageous to our early ancestors, and that's why we're bipedal today. Based on that, I don't see why bipedal aliens are 'humans in zip suits'.

You have Hivers, who are alien aliens. Given what I've read of them, Hivers have highly individualistic attitudes to where communication for them is wildly different to communication for us is. Like I said above, we evolved communication because we're social animals. The Hiver are not. They don't even have the ability to speak IIRC. Thus, I have their subordinates do all the talking. A Hiver IMTU is nowhere without a protocol droid like C3PO.

For K'Kree, they're herd creatures. They will literally sicken if separated from their herd - that says a great deal about them. Although I dislike the whole Centaur motif - and it took me forever to even accept it let alone begin to like it - it makes sense given their evolutionary beginning.

Droyne are a tough nut to crack, but they're essentially all the same pre-coyn casting. They remind me of Moties to be honest, with Sports acting like Motie mediators.

 

[Whipsnade]

Originally posted by Gnusam Netor:
Aslan - they are an interesting and a somewhat realistic(?) variation on humans, with their hardwired gender roles and so on.

Gnusam,

Aslan behavior and gender roles are cultural. They are not hardwired in any real sense.

The Aslan launched a great 'Cutural Purge' within a few generations of recieving jump drive from TNS Pathfinder. There are heretical(1) Aslan states rimward and spinward of the Heirate proper. There are other heretical states across the Great Rift and far to spinward.

Furthermore, Aslan in the Darrian Confederation and Imperium do not automatically behave like their Heirate bretheren.

Aslan behavior is a choice and not a biological imperative. This makes them the Traveller alien with the biggest 'zipper' on the front of their rubber suit.


Have fun,
Bill

1 - heretical in the sense that they do not hold to Aslan cultural precepts as dictated by the Tlakhu(?) and the various historical cultural conclaves; i.e. 'furry' Councils of Nicaea.

 

[Whipsnade]

Originally posted by stofsk:
It's a good bet to say that if there are aliens, and if there are diverse forms of alien life, then the only alien life that really matters to an interstellar civilisation dominated by humanity is that which we can closely relate to and bargain with.

Stofsk,

That's a model I can live with. The Vargr, Aslan, etc. interact more with Humaniti because it is easier for Humaniti to interact with them.

With Humaniti weilding the biggest population and technology 'sticks' in Traveller's Charted Space, the only aliens you'll see either off or any distance away from their homeworlds are those that can best 'fit' in with Humaniti. Truly alien species are Red Zoned or marginalized somehow. The only truly alien species seen 'travelling' around are those species who activities are somewhat benign or who can defend themselves or whose real estate Humaniti isn't interested in, i.e. the Jgd II Jagd.

Try communicating with a methane breather who has no sense of self-identity. If communication is even possible.

Cherryh gives it a try in her Chanur novels and, IMHO, does a pretty good job. The T'ca, Chi, and Knnn are fully 'part' of Compact Space. While in the case of the T'ca/Chi it's because the oxy-breathers have been able to communicate just 'enough', in the case of the Knnn it's because the oxy-breathers have no real choice.

The oxy-breathers don't understand the T'ca/Chi symbiotes on even the limited level they understand each other however, after a good deal of time and effort, they've been able to get simple ideas across. The T'ca/Chi trade with the oxy-breathers after a fashion and even safely share stations with them.

The situation with the Knnn is far more interesting. It seems to the oxy-breathers that the T'ca/Chi can interact with the Knnn on about the same level they interact with the oxy-breathers. Again after considerable time and effort, this has allowed the oxy-breathers to impress upon the Knnn that their seemingly random 'thefts' of ships, sophonts, and other items they somehow desire is 'okay' if the Knnn also leave something in return. It isn't 'trade' and it's not even really communication, but it is a glimmer of understanding and it provides a little safety. That is probably all the understanding that will ever exist between oxy-breathers and Knnn.

That's the kind of aliens I prefer and any player who believed they could actually role-play that is fooling themselves.

Try communicating with an alien that evolved from pack animals and thus evolved society and verbal language - one of the reasons why we even have language and culture is because we're social animals.

We do know that the ability to stand upright was evolutionarily advantageous to our early ancestors, and that's why we're bipedal today.

Just because it was advantageous for our ancestors, it doesn't necessarily follow that it would be advantageous for all ancestors. You live in Australia so you have evidence all around you that similar biomes do not produce similar creatures. You red kangaroo is my antelope after all. Given the differences that a few million years on the same planet can create, imagine what differences a few billion years on different planets can do. Evolution doesn't follow some master blueprint, bipedalism may be part of our rise to sentience but it isn't even part of chimp or cetacean sentience on our own planet.

Based on that, I don't see why bipedal aliens are 'humans in zip suits'.

I didn't say that. I said the Aslan and Vargr are humans in zippered suits. The fact that they have two legs is irrelevant. The Virushi might as well be human too.

Like I said above, we evolved communication because we're social animals. The Hiver are not. They don't even have the ability to speak IIRC.

Good Sweet Strephon. You don't think the Hivers aren't social animals because they don't speak? Since when does speaking have anything to do with whether an animal lives in a social grouping? Ants don't speak and yet they're classified as social insects.

The Hivers are so hyper-social that they maintain a constant Hiver genome across their entire Federation; unlike Humaniti there are no Hiver minor races, not even great differences in eye coloring and skin tones. The Hivers also spend all their time attempting to 'trick' each other in order to gain social stature. The prefix "M" for "manipulator" is the highest accolade a Hiver can strive for and it is awarded by the Hiver's social group as a whole. There's even a topical club that does nothing but certify manipulation claims. How can you see all that as somehow not being the actions of a social animal?

I can't think of a single sophont in Traveller that is not a social animal. Even the Jdg II Jagd interact with each other.


Have fun,
Bill

 

[veltyen]

You live in Australia so you have evidence all around you that similar biomes do not produce similar creatures. You red kangaroo is my antelope after all.

The similarities between kangaroo and antelopes are quite striking however. Especially when you look at the factor that they are convergent, many of the shared traits are not from common ancestry but from existing in a similar niche. In this case it is very easy to tell that they are convergent, marsupials and mammals split a long long time ago.

Similarities
Social herd structure
Chemical and molecular digestion (grass eating adaptions)
Rapid flight, bursts of speed and agility to escape predators
Similar detection and warning systems, involving a couple members of the herd (or mob in the case of roos) being on watch (head up in the case of antelopes, standing upright in the case of roos) while the rest graze.
Larger males with defensive tools (antlers/horns vs disemboweling claws)

Physically, yes they look a little different. Socially they are incredibly similar.

There are even better convergent examples in Australias history. They're all gone now. Specifically I'm thinking of the larger carnivores which (while being basically an angry possum) could be mistaken for great cats.


What does this mean for traveller? Well its a good example (and counter point) for those who feel the aliens are wearing furry suits. While biologically they are quite different, and surface morphology is somewhat different, the similar niche has pushed all of the sentients to appear to be from the same social mould.

 

[TheEngineer]

Hi !

Well, even kangaroo and antelopes share perhaps 99% of their genetic blueprint.
Guess things start to get really interesting, if the basic biology is completely different.

Would be fascinating to know, how strong the shaping force of environment is ...

regards,

TE

 

[Fritz_Brown]

OK, come on, it wasn't that big of a tangent, folks...

Originally posted by Fritz88:
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)?

Answers, anybody? Anybody made these decisions before?

 

[kaladorn]

I can't say about the World Tamer's Handbooks (GT?), but the World Builder's Handbook (MT) had some rolls to determine the presence of indigenous life... I don't recall if there was a separate roll for minor races or sentients. It would be easy to add. I can't recall the factors involved.... Someone around here must have one handy...

 

[Whipsnade]

Originally posted by veltyen:
The similarities between kangaroo and antelopes are quite striking however.

Veltyen,

You've misunderstood my point.

Stofsk was suggesting that bipedalism equated sentience. Because humans are bipedal, other sentient sophonts would be bipedal also. That's something straight out Star Blecch Biology 101.

I pointed out that very different organisms with common ancestors inhabit similar biomes and ecological niches right here on Earth; i.e. kangaroo and antelope, so one 'body plan' isn't necessary for 'success' in a certain niche.

As you pointed out they both are herbivores and share some behavioral similarities. What they eat, how they get it, how they procreate, and other characteristics all play into that. However, even an organism's biological niche has limits on how far it can 'shape' an animal's behavior as opposed to it's body plan.

Dolphins and sharks inhabit essentially the same ecological niche, yet behave very differently from each other. The same can be said aboard baleen whales and basking sharks.

Just here on Earth where all life has a common ancestro, we have animals which inhabit the same ecological niche with different body plans and similar behaviors along with animals which inhabit the same ecological niche with similar body plans and different behaviors.

Given that variety on a single world, does anyone want to seriously argue that sentience will 'require' bipedalism or binocular vision or the other old tropes that get trotted out?


Have fun,
Bill

 

[toddaroo]

The real beauty of all of this is that we really have zero point of reference and zero certainty. Does bipedalism equate to sentience? Most likely not... but maybe it does? I mean, for a while there, it seemed the Sun not moving around the Earth was unreasonable, you know?

Regardless, as of right now, we have nothing to go on but our own and other's ideas and opinions. Oh, and lots and lots of Science Fiction.

 

[Malenfant]

Originally posted by Fritz88:
[QB] OK, come on, it wasn't that big of a tangent, folks...

Originally posted by Fritz88:
[qb]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?

Well I'd look at a few things, which may be in the UWP or other data, or you may have to decide for yourself:

Age of the system: is it old enough to have had time to evolve complex life? Macroscopic life has been around on Earth for about 0.6 to 1.0 Ga (giga-annum, i.e. a billion years). That's out of a total earth age of 4.6 Ga. So for the majority of the planet's history, there was just microbes. So if we assume that Earth is normal, then we can say that you need about 3-4 Ga to get complex, macroscopic life. Our intelligent, technologically advanced species has only be around for a few hundred thousand years IIRC, our civilisations for only about 10,000 years, and we only got industrial about it in the past 200 years or so. So if they're like us, intelligent aliens might be just a blip in time there.

Otherwise, look at the physical aspects of the planet - does it have water? An N2/O2 atmosphere? Clement temperature range and environmental conditions? environmental niches for life to occupy? a stable main sequence star (that rules out a lot of M V flare stars, for one)? Is it tidelocked (not being tidelocked is probably better). If you want earthlike life, look for earthlike planets.

Or you go the Europan route and find an ice world with a water ocean under the icy shell, kept warm by internal heat or tidal heating. Maybe life can evolve there, but it'd be pretty alien - no light, no warmth save around the hydrothermal vents, pressures that would crush humans to pate... it's unlikely that you'd get anything more than microbial life there because of the lack of energy to support it, but who knows.

Or maybe the planet was earthlike once but isn't anymore (but then, again you're likely to find microbes).

Realistically speaking, it seems likely that microbes are all over the damn place in the universe - they seem pretty easy to form, maybe even a natural side-effect of having water and energy on a planet at the same time - but intelligent complex life is a lot rarer...

Also, how do you determine how much of a population is alien (not on homeworlds, necessarily)?

Dunno. Depends on what your conditions for immigration and extraplanetary interference are. If they don't like outsiders, maybe they're all the indigenous population. If they're conquered maybe there's a lot of outsiders, maybe they've even almost wiped out the locals.

Basically, it's up to you .

 

[veltyen]

G'day Bill

You've misunderstood my point.

I think I understand and agree with your point. I was just commenting that the niche (non-sentient social grazing herbivore) created a very similar creature, but not in the ways of physical structure.

What this implies for a sentient alien is that the same niche requirements need to be met, but they don't need to be met in the same way. The problem we are going to butt up against is that we have only one clear example of that niche (sentient niche creator) here. Whereas we have multitudes of grazing herbivores, pouncing hunters, solitary scavengers to work with.

You wouldn't say that a jackal and a shark have many similarities, but they do fit into the same niche. They are both garbage collection scavengers/opportunistic predators, and apart from the aquatic/terrestrial difference their adaptations are strikingly similar. Constant movement and migration, extremely good sense of smell, remarkably tolerant of bacteriological contamination and so on.

This is one of the things that I have always liked about traveller, the classification of creatures by niche rather then name or type.

So the tough part is determining the adaptations needed for sentience.

Depth perception is probably on the list. As is social behaviour and tool use. I've had long discussions about aquatic sentience and technology, basically it comes down to whether you need fire as the basis for technological advancement. I lean towards aquatic technological societies being possible, based on resins and other solutions, but YMMV.

Note however that it is social behaviour, rather then speech. Tool use, rather then hands. Depth perception rather then binocular vision.

So, other near sentients to work with on Earth, that we could use as partial examples include elephants and octopi. I lean away from dolphins as I think that their limited intelligence has been overly romanticised.

Enough for now.

 

[stofsk]

Originally posted by Bill Cameron:
Stofsk was suggesting that bipedalism equated sentience. Because humans are bipedal, other sentient sophonts would be bipedal also. That's something straight out Star Blecch Biology 101.

Excuse me? I never said bipedalism equated sentience - I'll even quote myself:

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),

From the bottom of page two. I never said that you HAD to be intelligent to be bipedal. I said that it was an evolutionary cornerstone, which makes it an advantageous adaptation to have. Which is why I don't think it's a big problem to depict aliens as bipedal. I'm saying that if it was good for us, why wouldn't it be good for alien life? You're saying it doesn't necessarily follow that it would work for all species and the evolution doesn't follow a master plan - you're right, it doesn't follow a master plan, but nor is it blind or random either. Advantageous adaptations are selected and kept as the generations go on. I haven't said ALL intelligent life must be bipedal - but if it were bipedal I wouldn't be surprised, and if it WASN'T bipedal, if it was something else, I'd wonder what their evolutionary course was.

I concede the point about Hivers, I was wrong there. The Hivers actually do have an extremely sophisticated non-verbal language which I had read about but completely forgot when I composed that post.

 

[Ptah]

Originally posted by Fritz88:
OK, come on, it wasn't that big of a tangent, folks...
</font><blockquote>quote:</font><hr />Originally posted by Fritz88:
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)?

Answers, anybody? Anybody made these decisions before? </font>[/QUOTE]I origiannly randomly assigned them, 1 in 20 for higher forms of life then thought hard about the vac. world results. I've rearranged things a bit since then. I enjoy a fair number of aliens IMTU, and since I don't have to pay for make-up and special effects they can be substantially non-bipedal, but almost always with a manipulative organ seperate from locomotion organs.

 

[Fritz_Brown]

I don't think I have either of those handbooks, Kaladorn. Anybody here have info from those that would answer the question?

Originally posted by Malenfant:
Basically, it's up to you .

Oh, gee, thanks, Mal. Big help.
Actually, you make good points, and I need to consider them. But, what got me thinking was some of the systems I've created (in MTU) have been things like exotic atmospheres with low-TL populations, or even low-TL societies on vacuum worlds. So, I began the justification process with wondering (in some cases) about alien lifeforms.

Then I began wondering about how I would "know" if a regular-seeming world held aliens. Which led to thinking about the planets in OTU that had mixed pops.

Ptah, did you randomly assign them after or before you did the pop/gov/LL/TL rolls? The T5 generation stuff actually has homeworld characteristics involved, so I could just search for worlds with those stats, then assign as necessary.

 

[kaladorn]

I found my World Builder's Handbook. The basic roll is pretty easy, but includes a fairly wide variety of modifiers and only tells you if there is indigenous life. I don't think it tells you if it is sentient or not, though. I think that's still a GM decision. If you are curious about this as an example of the content of WBH, I can probably crib the paragraph that outlines this one wee roll as an example of 'critical review' or 'fair use'. Let me know if you are interested. The WBH is a great book and well worth hunting down.

 

[Fritz_Brown]

Yeah, kaladorn, I'd like to see a sample of that. I will have to look and see if I picked up that one from DriveThru. (That's a negative, evidently.)

Edit: Oh, where would I pick that up, if I wanted to? I can't find it on DriveThru or eBay. Is it on the MT CD? end edit

 

[sinbadsam]

You might want to check out Atomik Alienz here is the link to their website
http://www.meta-earth.com/atomik/alienz.html

It is available via Drivethru and RPGnow.