"How alien can an alien get..." Topic

…before it becomes unmanageable for gaming purposes?

Looking into some of the recent input you find worm bodied types without any real structure so the designers stuck humanoid arms on them to make them manageable.

This is what drives me bonkers from a design aspect.

If you go too far away from center you end up with just weird and that tends to get a bit of human seasoning added to it to bring the flavor profile back towards center…to use human type weapons for example.

The puppeteers are an interesting one to consider. Trilateral symmetry, that in itself is good for me but to take the path set before them…they are weak, cowards, and paranoid. That aspect does not need to be explored, but some aspect would need to be reviewed…they have thin legs and would be a tough casting.

The Birrin are excellent in design but also tough to cast due to the thin legs.

So how weird can a design get before it goes over the edge?

I could see the thin leg types getting cast if bent to allow some overlap of edges…thigh to shin in a partial crouch kinda pose…trying to keep as many legs down for support or a slight kneel.

Anyway the tentacle types, the snake/worm bodies, thin legged, and other exotics are the holy grail of sorts.

What image or description do you find pushes the envelope without going over the edge?

I suppose a hyper-intelligent shade of the color blue is right out.

For gaming purposes, I don't think anything is necessarily too weird as long as it can interact or be interacted with (preferably violently, assuming we are dissussing typical tabletop miniature games) by other "creatures" on the board and be represented by some kind of miniature.

To really sell by the bucketload, I think the alien in fact can't be very exotic. Most gamers will want something that is either somewhat like something else but "k00ler", or something somewhat Di$neyfied so they can "identify" with it. It safest to go for either insectoids or dude-in-the-suit types which are "the industry standard" for aliens.

From miniature production POW, I'm not really qualified to answer but one would indeed think that very complex anatomy in general and thin multiple limbs in particular are difficult to realise in a cost effective way, especially for small prodcution runs.

As for pushing the envelope, I'd like to nominate the Altai from Defiance: Vital Ground. Tripedal, single-eyed with manipulative tentacles but still using recognizable technology (such as guns you can tell are guns) designed with at least a degree of biomechanical plausibility in mind.

Yep. I like the humanoid aliens already out, but we should start thinking outside of the box.

CC

There's absolutely a tension here. Really, genuinely weird designs have to be weird in some particular way, and that makes them less marketable than cat-people or dog-people or space orcs or space elves.

The competitive/cooperative dynamic almost certainly transfers across species boundaries. So I'm not afraid that aliens would be unmanageably unwarlike. Some species are likely to have techniques of war that transcend species barriers better than others. All fine and well.

The trick is that really alien aliens will live in alien environments. So if it's humans versus intelligent seafood living in an underground ocean on a Europa-like world, how exactly do they fight? WHERE do they fight? Or cryoenvironments like Titan. Or cloud-dwellers on a gas giant.

Or even creatures on an earth-like world that is still environmentally incompatible. For most of Earth's history, its atmosphere and environment has been radically different from what it is today. I could easily see alien life shaping their own biospheres completely differently. And where biospheres ARE compatible, I see the more important conflict playing out as microbe vs microbe battle: fungi and dust mites and algae and bacteria slamming into one another. The intelligent life's squabbles are almost besides the point.

I agree – if the aliens aren't at least on a similar order to us, we have little room for conflict. That means roughly the same "order of magnitude" in size, probably mobile, some way of manipulating their environment, etc.

"Weird animals" make good aliens to fight, and the hive-mind "bug" sort of enemy is a classic as well. You could do a "War against the Chtorr" kind of setting as a variety of "bug hunt" as well.

Another idea might be a crystaline life form that can move by "growing", and which has one or more centers of intellect that can travel along the crystaline structure. They could attack with electrical bolts, and could grow their structure during their movement phase. For gameplay, I'd say that each center of intellect is a separate "being", and if you destroy the part of the crystal network where they are, they effectively die. I'd let these intellects move at will anywhere in the network, but only act at their current position.

beast rabban – just what i was thinking!

The trick is that really alien aliens will live in alien environments. So if it's humans versus intelligent seafood living in an underground ocean on a Europa-like world, how exactly do they fight? WHERE do they fight? Or cryoenvironments like Titan. Or cloud-dwellers on a gas giant.

And my question is why do they fight?

My favorite alien has to be the Great Race of Yith- or rather the yellow cone-shaped bodies their consciousness took over. Maybe followed by Mi-Go and 'Elder Things'. Many Lovecraftian critters are extraterrestrial in the usual 'alien' sense (while some are 'mystical' or occult) and have material needs that could easily put them into conflict with humans.

I have three Yithians I use in Darkest Africa games, two have converted lightning guns depicted in one of the Cthulhu books.

HP and his buddies came up with some really oddball designs that don't follow the typical humanoid approach, and the weapons they used were generally hard for a human to use or even comprehend (visually and conceptually). Mi-Go 'guns' for example, which look like a funkified cross between a funnel cake and a French Horn.

RAFM makes awesome CoC figures, but they don't have weapons so they need to be converted. I'll try to post some pics of what I did.

EDIT: When I speak of weapons used by these critters, I'm talking about non-canon stuff found in the CoC game supplements.

'cause they're after our women!

This topic has gone round and round a few times. I'm pretty much right there when it comes to the main concern. The main issues that come up in these discussions revolve around difficulty of production and marketability.

28mmMan, check this out . . .

TMP link

CC

I think Ed has hit the nail on the head, if the aliens don`t need to eat us or use us as a breeding host. why fight us?

If the aliens in question for example were made of silicon and breathe sulphur dioxide, the only time that we would have an argument with them was if their planet(s) was hyper-rich in gold or some other really important element that we would want.

Using this example apart from mankind's aggressive nature and general probable xenophobia; most of our opponents would at least have to be oxygen breathers or have some other reason to get into conflict with us. Unless we have a go first of course LOL!

So "men in suits" humanoid(ish) aliens are at least credible to me as are machines that were made to exterminate their creators and from then by extension all biological life.

Dolphins and whales are probably more; if differently intelligent than us (just by going on brain size) but apart from our actions against them we would have no real reason to interact negatively or otherwise and they are the nearest thing to intelligent aliens that we have encountered on our world.

AS

Ed and AgentSmith, I agree in the big picture, but there is a potential for conflict.

The key reason would be competition over resources such as asteroid and cometary belts. Humanity is likely to spread far into a stellar system to exploit all its resources. Europans (to pick one example) would similarly spread throughout the system.

This is where I think transhumanist themes come in. Humans who are modified to live in Europa-like environments would come into conflict with them, while their pantropically modified translobsterist equivalents would be interested in the Earth.

Resources in space are so vast that it's unlikely to be a total war scenario, but that works for us as gamers: instead you see small-scale skirmishes between claim-jumpers on both sides.

Wow, I think that sort of over-simplifies things. Politics, religion, other idealgy can certainly come into play outside of biological need. If, for example, culture A has it's site set on carving out a territory that includes culture B, culture B is going to be a potential enemy, whether or not their world has anythign to offer. This is especially true if culture B was space-fairing.

-Eli

Even corals do battle, as they fight for real estate. Look at 40 seconds into this clip:

YouTube link

CC

Why can aliens not have guns – or have wepaons on them that are mind linked perhaps, or the aliens use mind powers – perhaps they build by telekenisis or something. Perhaps their natural wepaons are good enough – spit acid,breathe out toxic gas, flame – anything. we don't need them to have guns. Two of my favourite alien figures were kindly given to me by Dances With Words, from his excellent Doppleganger USA range, a Tri-oc (3 legs, 1 neck with big eye on top) and a cone like creature,small, atop lots of tentacles (no surprise there). In my games, the are companions of a female character. tri-Oc's eye emits a beam of sorts, and mr tentacle is superintelligent and manipulates computers etc,but has no real fighting talent.

Alien worms?
Are the Sathar making a come back?

Alien Surfer,

Depends n how realisticly you want to think about it. Thye might have mind controlled gear, but who built it in the first place. I do wish we would see tech using aliens that didn't have to use biotech or freaky alien tech to be alien.

Aliens are already among us. Look at Hanson's Walking Fish or the anatomy of cephalopods.

I think it was Arhur C Clarke who once said "Aliens are alien. That's why they are alien." Not to to get too formal in the logic but aliens are simply "Not-me".

All of which means that anything that makes you feel uncomfortable, uneasy or scared can be viewed as alien to your experience.

Having tentacles for genitals also helps.

emu2020 – I meant they may have as a species psychic powers, and as they have eveolved/progressed learnt to manipulate materials to make stuff using their mental powers :-)

Starkadder – I hope you mean from an alien point of view that helps, not that it would help us to have tentacles for genitals! ;-p

So how weird can a design get before it goes over the edge?

See, I think there's lots of unexplored design space that just isn't being used. Even 'worms/snakes with arms' is not being utilized currently. Neither is a centaur-oid body layout present much. Heck, even land-octopi are in short supply (outside of War of the Worlds cephlepods). So I'm not worried about designs going 'over the edge'- we're not even in sight of the edge yet.

-Will

"Having tentacles for genitals also helps"

Where does one sign up for this modification? :)

I REALLY like this one:

picture

Dan