"Designing Alien Races" Topic

Its seems to me that it has gotten to the point where evry game system/minis line has the same races:lizards, bugs, demons, gree/blue skinned humanoids, robots, and the occasional feline species. I was just wondering if any of you guys had come up with your own, slightly more original species, or just had any interesting ideas. I was also wondering what you name them, as I am having a hard time of naming some of the species I have come up with, without sounding stupid/corny/repetitive.
Thanks,
Jim

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One of the wing commander novels had a race of giant parrots. Also in the Star Wars universe the are lots of four legged sentients.

Creating aliens for a miniatures game is difficult. On one hand you want to make them different enough that people see them as aliens and not men in rubber suits. On the other hand, you do have to connect them to humanity (even the darker side of humanity) in a way that players can identify with them enough to want to play them.

Best thing to do is to start with the thought of what kind of place your alien race comes from? What made it special enough to dominate its planet? Then the rest of its properties will come a little easier.

Don't be afraid to make them a little like us, few in the world can think of truly alien races, and in that case they may be too alien to be marketable.

It isn't the look of the aliens that makes them alien, it is their psychology. Most game systems' aliens are nothing more than the Hollywood man-in-a-rubber-suit, regardless of how original they actually look. The tough part is to think up game mechanics that reflect an alien psychology.

An example might be that all alien units do not necessarily get to go each turn. The "leader" may have a certain number of command points that he allocates to activate units. So, if he had 3 command points and 4 units, he might end up with three units taking their turn and one remaining stationary, or even three remaining stationary while one activate three times.

How do they react to losses? Do they stop and feed when one of their comrades gets toasted? Or do they totally ignore all incoming fire unless their squad leader get hit? Do the squad members all go berserk when the squad leader dies, attacking the nearest target (including their own squad mates)?

Assigning armor stats for chitin, or rolling 3 dice for leadership because they're cold-blooded, or having supremely high (or low) morale ratings are all superficial and could be characteristics of any troops. No, what makes aliens interesting on the tabletop is not what their stat lines are, nor the goofy names of their bio weaponry, nor even the cleverly unique models (although those latter do add interest, I'll grant). It is how they act and react differently from standard human troops that make them really "alien".

I've been wrestling with that one for a couple of years now. The best literary example I can think of is CJ Cherryh's Chanur novels, featuring several species with interesting psychologies: the dark lizard-form? Kif, scheming ape-form Mahendosat, lion-like Hani. The Hani are the most human, and the stories are told from their point of view. Then there are the real aliens, and what you're looking for: the stsho with managerial talents and fragile personalities; the snakelike methane-breathing t'ca, who have dual brains and communicate in matrices; the chi, as bundles of yellow-green glowing sticks, who are associated with the t'ca but are otherwise enigmatic; and the knnn, which seem to be totally incomprehendible in terms of psychology, breathing methane and describes as multi-legged hair balls.

I believe that the kif have already been done as miniatures; at least, I've seen them. Can't say about the rest.

I've always had a soft spot for giant floating gasbags, with dangly tendril thingies for grabbing hapless earthmen from off the ground.

When you shoot at them, they gradually lose altitude as the gas leaks out. Sometimes they explode, too.

You could make them intelligent, with weapons technology and an all-controlling Queen Gasbag, and all sorts of other jazz too, if you really wanted.

Wasn't one of the old Medea Project races a gasbag floater?

Traveller has one (at least) but they prefer gas giants, and aren't particularly warlike. The setting also has at least one aquatic octopoid.

The D&D 3.0 "Oathbound" campaign (Bastion Press) had a jellyfish race that could also live out of water and move about via TK/levitation.

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tinyurl.com/9knkb

That episode on TLC where they did a mock-documentary on sending probes to an alien planet had interesting aliens. Ultimately our concept of what life is seems to limit us
(until we meet something new).

"The best literary example I can think of is CJ Cherryh's Chanur novels…"

A number of her series or separate works feature very "alien" aliens: "Serpent's Reach", the Faded Sun trilogy, "40,000 in Gehenna". And she's at her best when she has humans trying to interact with them.

Allen

Hey Charles Morgon,

I love the Chanur Series of books, I always saw the
humans as being the aliens in the story.

There was that unfinished sf series about the Chtorr (Sp??). Were they giant worms? All I really remember is that there never seemed to be an explanation of their motives or their intelligence.

Al

The people who create the best aliens are reproductive biologists, or so says Larry Niven, who with Steven Barnes took the ideas from one Chicago University biologist and created the grendels from "Legacy Of Heorot".

I have been fiddling with a race of combined crab/spider forms who have a tripartite sex system; They have three "genders" determined by dominant and recessive genes, and they produce males, high-fertility females and low-fertility hermaphrodites. The hermaphrodites produce fewer offspring, but they pass more of the mates genes along when they do, that is, a female has more female offspring from a hermaphrodite partner that with a male and vice versa.

This creates the neat thing about them; Depending on what gender has the most success and can choose their mates with a bias, as they control wealth or power in social groups, the gender ratio becomes skewed in their favour. Unless the mating is totally at random, as in nature or an equality-based society, in which case it evens out. After several decades of interstellar travel, there are three major factions among this race – The Matriarchs, the Patriarchs and the Eqalitarians, who are at loggerheads with each other for almost purely biological reasons with political overtones.

Imagine how the first contacts went with humans, who can't really tell individuals of this species apart, let alone gender and politics . . .

In our Distant World battles army lists we tened to name our Alien races their common human 'slang' name.

Really interesting points being raised here guys, they've certainly given me a lot of food for thought.

Unfortunately, when I first read the title of this thread, the impression I got was firmly one that involved Dick Dastardly jumping around and singing; 'Stop the Pigeon, Stop the Pigeon, Stop the Pigeon Now.."

Sorry…

Yea I was thinking about that too, rudy nelson. We've got some good ideas goin guys, lets keep this up!

Oh, and Covert Walrus: i was thinking of a race along those lines, but w/out the sex issue, lol! In my galaxy the Humans call them the Pact, and they're a religious union of 3 races. So basically we're talking a scorpion/crab/spider jihad against everybody else. I also had an idea for actually feasible "orcs in space", where they have 4 arms, tails, and are savage and feral to the extreme. They figured out that races that place high value on their own life will give the orcs a ride to another system, at least at gunpoint. The problem is that more religious/dedicated/impossible to communicate with races won't do anything for them. After a while a few smart Flucz(the orcs) figure out how to operate the ships and teach the other guys. But they still can't make their own ships, so their fleets are rag-tag collections of other people's trash (aka badly protected vessels), with a few decent ships mixed in.

I always liked the mullusk aliens from Brunner's "The Crucible of Time". They were interesting and believable little land snail things with lots of biotech and some chemical emission issues.

Vinge's "Fire Upon The Deep" pack-mind aliens are interesting also, though in game terms they'd just be a very smart pack of dogs that lost smarts as their members were killed, and with a minimum "safe distance" for each unit. (Their "hive mind" works sonically, and getting two packs too close caused their thoughts to get confused.) Given some high-tech commo gear, they'd be quite effective, especially at combined attacks.

I like the aliens in Star trek, toss a bump on the forehead and pooof your an alien.

I liked the alien 'Kafer' race from the old Traveller:2200 system. In a nutshell, they evolved from beetle-like scavengers; they weren't very smart because they didn't need to be in order to find food. Humans get a burst of adrenaline as a reaction to stress, making us physically more capable to deal with emergencies, but the Kafers' physiological response to stress was a release of hormones into their system that made them temporarily VERY smart. The Kafer Sourcebook is worth picking up if you can find it; I'm using it to adapt them to StarGruntII.

Here is the link to "Alien Planet":
link

Barlowe's Guide:
link

This one is amusing:
link

CC

If you believe in evolution by natural selection, which I do, then any alien specieshas got to have evolved from something simpler. It's no good dropping a super-complicated and impractical species into a game and expect it to be plausible if quite reasonably it could be argued that a simpler variant could have evolved that would have been more evolutionarily "fit" in that environment. Tri-sex species need to show there is a benefit from the that 3rd sex!

Cornelius – you dead right about natural selection, but there have been computer simulations run that consistently come up with the result that 3 sexes are the best bet. New Scientist reported some by British Telecom aeons ago. It just depends on the selection pressures that you are applying, and the inheritance mechanism involved.

I believe that Linus Pauling proposed that DNA was a 3 stranded molecule before Crick & Watson worked out its real structure. If he had been right, then you could get 1 strand from each parent and have 3 sexes.

And there are several 'almost' 3 sexes situation on Earth: like ants with their castes – fertile females, sterile females and fertile males. Or lemmings and various other rodents with their XX females, XY females and XY males.

Biology will impact other ways. For instance an intelligent race of pterosaurs will invent spear and arrow based aerial combat in the stone age, and their fortifications will have a very strong ROOF as well as strong walls.

If your enemy has a good sense of smell, then you'd better be able to disguise your scent as well as being stealthy and camouflaged.

CJ Cherryh's kif are colour blind, but they can see well in very dim or murky conditions. in conditions where humans would be cursing that the batteries on their night vision gear have just run out, the kif would be quite happy.

JLA105 – I never "got" the kafers' increased intelligence. I could see how they might think FASTER as the hormones started surging. But I never understood the logic of them not knowing what something like "point this side toward enemy" meant at the start of a fight, remembering half way through and forgetting again afterwards. Surely those memories must be stored somewhere??? If they are not and they are learning on the job every time, they'll get massacred.

In fact, they would have all got massacred long ago, the first time a pride of lions charged into a band of stone age kafers.

Roar!
Duh, what are those roaing things?
Growl! Snarl! Chomp.
Why does my arm hurt? Why has Bob's head fallen off?
Chomp, snarl, chomp.
Eureka! They're lions. Maybe we should have thrown our spears at them, or built some camp fires to keep them away…
Chomp, chomp, chomp, chomp… burp.

One good example for evolution of a species, look at Star Wars Wookies, their large powerful creatures because they wouldn't survive otherwise. Their cities are built in the upper reaches of trees because the surface is to dangerous, they probably evolved from a much smaller mammal living on the surface into a much larger mammal able climb the giant trees and to build dwelling in a safer area. Most planets with life will have dangerous creatures hunting on them, simply because otherwise a creature will evolve to fill the niche.

I quite like the idea of gas bags, you could imagine bubbles connected to each other via limbs, like some sort of sea wead. Possibly have the ability to eject two reactive gases to produce a napalm flame and a retardent liquid to stop back burn. Rather than just being bubbles with an outer skin, it could be layered and self puncture healing.

Heavy G planets would make things have a lower to ground centre of balance, with strong limbs.

No-one has mentioned crystaline structures, like stones have shear angles (think diamond) which determine it's shape and limb movement. It's brain and nervous system could work something like the way logic works on silicon chips. It could secreat acids which disolve then re-bond itself.

Just thinking aloud….

Good Points all, especially about the wookies. Another of my ideas was a species called the Muan, who are short, furred bipeds with a head like a bird and long, thin wings. They live on a planet with High gravity, so when they need to escape predators they fly. Since its HG, however, the problem is getting up INTO the air. Once they do that, they have no problem using their wings to glide through the air. Since they need a lot of momentum to get a good push into the air, when they walk or run, even in a completely safe condition, they throw most of their weight forward on the foot that is stepping. They are also hunched like a frog (or gollum, whichever you prefer ;) .) The Sirens, tall, skinny humanoids with pale skin, long limbs, very strong fingers and toes, and that run like a rabbit, on the balls of their feet. They evolved on a rocky, mountainous world. They use their long limbs and strong fingers/toes to climb. Once they get on the snow-covered plateaus, they use their feet to run, taking long strides through the snow. Let's keep this going guys, its starting to get really interesting.

"Or lemmings and various other rodents with their XX females, XY females and XY males."

You know that happens with humans as well? Being XY but female is not as uncommon as you'd think.

Viable humans patterns include

X (female, sterile, 1:5000)

XX (female)

XY (male)

XY (female, often fertile – this was first noticed when the olympics started gender testing and the results weren't what people expected… most XY females never know about it. between 1:2000 and 1:20000 [1])

XXY,XXXY (male with some female characteristics, usually sterile, 1:1000)

XYY (male, often very aggressive, 1:2000)

XXX (female, often symptomless, an amazing 1:700)

XXXX and XXXXX are much rarer, but possible.

XX (but male, about 1:20000 incidence)

[1] It's one of those funny things about medicine. The incidence of conditions seems to get less precise the more it's examined…

"Life's Solution: Inevitable Humans in a Lonely Universe", Simon Conway Morris, 2005

He postulates that not only is life pretty much inevitable, it'll be based on DNA, and much the same coding scheme we use.

I'm not 100% convinced, but he makes some interesting arguments and it's a good collection of data.

Well…in the 'SERENITY 'verse'…Humans and 'earth-based' DNA are 'it'…If there was any other 'life' on those worlds…the 'terraforming' eradicated it.

In Star Trek…it was the 'humanoid/nose-job/forhead ridge' of the week club'…where other than some facial differences…almost every species in the 'verse was 'humanoid'…(other than notable exceptions like the Sheliak Corporate…telepaths in Spectre of the Gun, etc)…

Truly 'non-humanoid'…non-terrestrial, INTELLIGENT/Sapient? life…might NOT be out there…but if it is…it might be so 'different' as to be un-recognizable as such…or so different in thinking as to be impossible to relate to/with.

But for gaming/RPG purposes…it's the 'man/woman in rubber suit mentality'…we/they are 'competitors' for resources/dominance…(or we're/they're 'food'…as in 'V'???, War of the Worlds-TC, Cthoor?)…or 'Ming vs Flash'…

The HIVE mind concept as in SST works too…but they dont' HAVE to be 'insects'…? Then of course there's the NEW 'Cylons' in BSG too???

Inquiring Carbon-based units want to know…8-)

Lt DWW

If the universe is infinite in size, then surely there must be infinite possabilities of 'life'. Especially when there are universes outside our percieved dimensions and known laws of physics.

The definition of life is "The property or quality that distinguishes living organisms from dead organisms and inanimate matter, manifested in functions such as metabolism, growth, reproduction, and response to stimuli or adaptation to the environment originating from within the organism."

Something else to think about.

There was one Star Trek episode which explained that all humaniods came from an ancient race seeding the galaxy with there dna, not sure about the logic of that but at least they came up with a reason for so many humanoid species.

Yeah, I remember that Star Trek TNG episode. And then the Klingon say, "If she were not dead I would kill her myself."

Personally I like the Babylon 5 approach to aliens. We do get to see some non-humanoids like the Shadows. But the majority are humanoid if slightly different in the way of boneheads, snakeheads or extra genitels.

I have come to the conclusion that no matter where you go in the universe the laws of physics are the same. Well I don't know what makes any one think the laws of nature would be any different. Sure we've found bacteria in super hot water and in extreme cold climates, but notice how the growth of changes in such life has been stunted by it's very enviroment. If it's been around for billions of years bacteria near volcano fissures have nothing to show for it except that they're still there.

Now I know people say the human form is not the most suited form. While this maybe true, we have developed a brain and the ability to think and reason that far out performs the strongest animal. A lion can kill a man, but the human form combined with it's mind and the lion is no match.

So I don't think it too improbable that an alien life will have some kind of humanoid features, 5 or 6 digits on their arm or arms, an upright biped, triped or quadped posture. Any kind of natural ability an alien has may retard their technological development in some ways, if a speices could fire darts from it's forearms of what need would there be for the bow and arrow?

The primary criteria for designing an intelligent alien species is to determine how it would invent and use tools, then grab a pencil and paper and start doodling (the weirder the better.) Once you have an idea what it looks like, everything else will follow….

Serious scientiests (I should really look up some names as I have forgotten them) have indeed speculated that the human, or at least highly humanoid, form is the only one possibile for intelligent species. So if we ever encountered an alien, it would be at the wildest something like a "Grey", but more probably more along the lines of a "Red Martian", or a "Space Elf".

Also, Richard Dawkins has speculated lately that evolution indeed has some "guiding princinples" that would inevitably lead to the developement of such features as photosensitive eyes. Which would pretty much be the final nail in the coffin of the aforementioned Barlowe aliens as they have neither eyes nor yet conventional jaws.

These are undoubtebly scientificly viable arguments, but boooooring (-;)

There are several interesting and marginally viable alien species in science fiction literature, but very few have made it to the games I believe (not really up to what's been done in roleplaying games tho). As to a miniatures game featuring aliens that are nonhumanoid and/or not just guys in rubber suits, see Defiance: Vital Ground. Unfortunately the minis for the Meraxilla and the Altai are taking a long time to materialize (and of course may never appear).

KatieL – no, the rodent thing is something different to chromosome abnormalities in humans. Basically lemmings and some other rodents have 2 different types of X chromosome.

First a normal X like the human one, which is "outranked" by the Y if it is present. So XX is female and XY is male.

But the second kind (I'll call it X2) outranks the Y, so X2-X and X2-Y are both female.

So the lemmings end up with about 3 females born for every one male. I think there is one type (X2-Y) that can only give birth to daughters, because of complications in producing Y chromosomes in an ovum (or something).

That would have all sorts of implications for an alien society as it evolved.

tnjrp – one of the serious scientists is Jack Cohen, who uses the same evidence then takes the exact opposite view from Simon Conway Morris. i.e. aliens won't look humanoid at all.

He takes the view that things like eyes are inevitable (because of the laws of physics and vision being so useful) and because they have evolved dozens of times on Earth, they'll have evolved dozens of times on other planets. But features like an internal skeleton has only evolved once properly on Earth (vertebrates), so might be unique or very uncommon in aliens.

Also, although the reason the vertebrates were mega-successful once they got onto land was their skeleton, the reason that the proto-vertebrates were successful in the sea might have been their immune system which is just soooooo superior to what the invertebrates have got. So even if there are alien worlds out there with proto-vertebrates, if they have a crappy immune system, they may not survive long enough to become fish, and instead just get consigned to the history books. (Or should that be palaeontology books??? :-D )

Sargonarhes said [Any kind of natural ability an alien has may retard their technological development in some ways]

The opposite can be argued too. For example, because our ancestors were apes they could swing by their arms UNDER branches and do the Tarzan thing swinging from liana to liana. Squirrels and monkeys have a different type of shoulder joint and can't do this well or at all (depending on the species).

That shoulder joint means that you and I can throw overarm. We can fast bowl at cricket and we can hurl a javelin a long distance accurately. A bipedal squirrel can't. So squirrels would find it easy to invent thrusting spears and play bowls, but not to invent throwing spears and play cricket.

And then you have to ask if you need to have invented a spear for throwing before you have the psychology to conceive of inventing a bow or a gun or an ICBM or a Saturn 5…?

Irish-
[Very Good, but "NOBODY HAS LOST ANYTHING" thats the whole point. The left is still upset they lost 6 years ago, and thats it!]

Irish, When you say that you're just spouting off knee-jerk bile. Your statement dismisses earnest concerns by others (whether or not you agree with them). To dismiss them as sour grapes says far more about _your_ biases!!

Fred

Bill – the bug is baaaaaack! Or Sargonarhes has come over all strange…

I know that Jack Cohen and Ian Stewart, among others, have the "weird view" on evolution of life on other planets (well displayed in an entertaining form in their hardish scifi novel The Wheelers, for example — has "floating gasbag" aliens in it BTW).

But was it really Simon Conway Morris who had the opinion that an intelligent alien would be "a human with weird colour skin"? Apparently when he appeared on Channel 4's What We Still Don't Know he said: "[W]hat [alien intelligence] will be out there will be so different, so strange, so weird, that I don't think we'd possibly know how to deal with it" (according to the program's site). However he was talking about superhuman intelligences I believe, so it might not apply to his view of the physical but rather cultural evolution.

I'm making a game called Phoenix Eon which is based in a Science Fiction setting. I got some alien races there which might be interesting:

The Skhera:
These creatures are tripedal and have two tentacle clusters which they use to manipulate their environment (as alternatives to hands, you might say). Their bodies are basically triangular in shape, with no separation between the head and the main body (no necks or torso). They have 6 eyes, blade-like spines growing out of their back (which grow wickedly long as they age) and each egg hatches 8 individuals which share a personality bond that might resemble that of human twins (sort of collective intuition).

The Taelogen:
The Taelogen are originally subterranous beings, who sport over sixteen legs. These beings have no eyes and thus rely on fine internal organs to 'feel' gravity. In this manner, they define their existence as well (space to them is like hell, because they go 'blind' there). Their written language can often appear in three-dimensional 'holes' inside solid objects (they can feel discrepencies within objects). In Phoenix Eon, their 'empire' is known as the Webworlds, as they are technologically advanced enough to establish powerful 'foldspace' portals which allows them to colonize other worlds without ever having to make a spaceship.

I can extrapolate more on them, but this is just an example of how I thought when I developed my alien races in the game.

Master of Orion pc game has humanoid, cybernetik, saurian, ichthytosian (aquatic I think), etherean, geodic (silicon), insectoid and harvester (parasite) species.

Funny, I don't remember writing any of that? Just what the hell is all that statment under my name supposed to mean?

Who the hell is Irish and Fred?

Sargonarhes – Irish and Fred haunt the Current Affairs board. The post is one in the never-ending series of rants on left-wing versus right-wing politics in the USA.

Presumably you have equally confused them by your post on aliens popping into their thread.

tnjrp – Simon Conway Morris gave a lecture at the British Science Fiction Association's annual convention and stated that intelligent aliens would look very human. I know he's not the first famous biologist to do so, but I can't remember the name of the guy who did so in the 40s or 50s.

the Starfist series has a few interesting alien races:

The Skinks; kind of reptile, but they are more toward the looking of a salamander.

The Bird Race (i cant think of their name right now); well a race of intelligent yet primative birds.

How did my post get there? I haven't even been in there?

To make aliens interesting change there command structure, or do they have one are the communists or nazi. Dont get bogged down in psycology but hinting at a different hierarchical societyis interesting. Look at failed societies or pree globalised non western societies for different ideologies.
E.G. would a communist race have any leaders or would they just be conscripts or each unit without a leader based on a seperate social unit.
Would a fascist unit be based on a powerful leader.
Start witht the basics the humble squaddie/ trooper to u yanks, how is he different in general work out the following to decide his psychology.
Does he like wat hes doin, is he convinced he is gonna die, is he disciplined, and what does he want

all leaders are only extensions of the bassic society that creates them