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Nessus posted:Putting the slash in slash fiction, yes. Mt. Lookatthat is still my favorite. The Pak and the Puppeteers are both great villains/patrons and are interesting. For all Niven's faults, he at least created interesting alien species.
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Nov 21, 2017 08:31
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Humbug Scoolbus posted:Mt. Lookatthat is still my favorite.
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Nov 21, 2017 08:34
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Humbug Scoolbus posted:Mt. Lookatthat is still my favorite.
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Nov 21, 2017 08:36
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Humbug Scoolbus posted:Mt. Lookatthat is still my favorite. No doubt, speaking as a guy who grew up on Star trek's men in rubber suits it's refreshing.
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Nov 21, 2017 10:47
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Humbug Scoolbus posted:Mt. Lookatthat is still my favorite. The backstory is pretty good for those who don't know Known Space. Plateau is a Venus like world, completely uninhabitable. Except it has one giant Olympic Mons like part so elevated that the pressure and atmosphere drop to human tolerable. The name comes from the Captains interjection when they first reached orbit and were just begining to despair at the death world they'd come to when it suddenly hove into view.
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Nov 21, 2017 13:31
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The reason Bandersnatchi do not mutate, as a note, is because their DNA strands are the size of your arm. Apparently this prevents any form of radiation from being able to affect it because of wavelengths or something. Also: the dolphin with the most speaking lines in the entire series is a minor character from World of Ptavvs, which was a book about telepathy and Slavers. The dolphin is notable for swearing constantly, liking to talk about sex and being an rear end in a top hat prankster with a nasty sense of humor. This is basically how Niven views dolphins.
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Nov 21, 2017 13:43
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Mors Rattus posted:. TBF, that's an accurate depiction of dolphins, known rapists of the sea.
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Nov 21, 2017 13:47
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Some dolphins huff blowfish to get high off their toxins.
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Nov 21, 2017 13:59
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I love that even dolphins know about puff puff pass. I watched video of teenage dolphins sharing a pufferfish and then blissing out in a huddle.
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Nov 21, 2017 14:02
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A stranger at the next table over hails you and orders you all a round of The Deck of Encounters Set One Part 34: The Deck of Invisible Stalkers, Jackalweres, and Kuo-Toa 201: Difficult Doorman In castle ruins or the equivalent. Long ago, a wizard bound an invisible stalker to help people at the door. Now when you go through it tries to violently dusts you off and tries to remove your bags and outer clothes, throwing them around randomly once they’re off. It’s also supposed to guard the gate, so it will defend itself if attacked. (However, it’ll dawdle and not try very hard, since it’d love to be killed and sent back to the Plane of Air). Oh, and there’s a long sword +1 (ugh) lying around the courtyard. Short, sweet, and flavorful if the PCs figure out what’s going on. Keep. 202: Fierce Wind An orc shaman bound an invisible stalker to destroy his rivals, but it broke free of his control and is killed the whole tribe of 30. The PCs wander into this just after it finished, and it’s still lurking around looking for victims. They can find the large cracked diamond the shaman used to summon it, as well. I like that there’s nothing stopping the PCs from just saying “nope” and turning around when they see all the dead bodies, but curiosity will definitely make them poke around. Keep. 203: Sly Jackal In the desert, four jackalweres find the PCs. Two of them turn into humans, get gnawed on a little for effect, and come running in screaming for help. The two pursuers pretend to be scared off by the PCs’ camp, but are just going to circle back as soon as the two moles can gaze some or all the PCs. The card notes that the PCs might become suspicious because jackalweres usually move in groups of more than two (am I supposed to volunteer that information as DM, or do we assume the PCs have obsessively memorized the Monster Manual?), or because these two “humans” are by themselves in the middle of the desert with no equipment. Potentially brutal, but not boring. Keep. 204: A Dangerous Guide Probably happens in a city with a “sinister or treacherous” reputation. You know, where folk can’t be trusted! Not like the decent folks back home! (I’d probably have it happen in the biggest, most important “bastion of civilization”-type city, instead.) Anyway, there are jackalweres here who try to lure victims to quiet locations, gaze them to sleep, then loot and eat them. The PCs meet one such person, the guide Kanda. He’ll show them around to inns and taverns. He’ll try to separate one PC, but if that’s impossible he’ll just lead them into an alley where five other jackalweres are waiting, and try to gaze the toughest fighter quickly. The playability of an encounter like this really depends on whether the DM ever introduces NPC city guides who are not horrible monsters, and plays out tourism that doesn’t lead to an ambush. If it’s going to be that kind of game, then sure, keep. Otherwise it’s just more fuel for PC paranoia. 205: To Put Out the Sun In a shallow cave in a dungeon, in the dead of night, 10 unarmed kuo-toa show up and attack the PCs with their claws. "As a final gesture," (assuming he gets the chance), the leader throws a vial of fermenting fungus that causes a disease that kills within 2d3 days (save vs poison). OK - but most of the card is devoted to backstory that doesn't affect the encounter in the slightest. The leader is a crazy religious demagogue, claiming that his vial of water is enchanted, and they were going to use it to try to put out the sun so that the land-dwellers will die out. 2/3rds of them have died along the way, and they've lost all their useful equipment. For some reason they won't actually enter sunlight, but lurk around at night looking for land-dwelling humanoids to murder ("for these are the enemies of all kuo-toan life"). From a player’s perspective, it’s just that a bunch of kuo-toa attack, and then there’s a weird save-or-die parting shot that comes out of absolutely nowhere. Pass. 206: Ritual Hunters In “a deep dungeon far from the light of day,” there’s a group of 20 kuo-toa doing a ritual hunt for mind flayers. They’re not interested in the PCs (I mean, assuming the PCs are not mind flayers), but they’ll step up if the PCs are spoilin’ for a fight. There’s some description of the procession, which involves a big banner, drummers, a chanting priest, and a gagged drow who is “meant to be a lure for the mind flayer.” (Are elven brains extra tasty or something?) I don’t get it. Mind flayers are not dumb. These kuo-toa are making a poo poo-ton of noise and clearly indicating “HEY WE ARE COMING TO KILL YOU.” How do they think they’re ever going to find a mind flayer? Or maybe the idea is to ritually demonstrate their bravery while minimizing the risk of actually encountering any mind flayers. Actually, that makes a ton of sense and I kind of love it. Keep.
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Nov 21, 2017 15:23
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Dallbun posted:Or maybe the idea is to ritually demonstrate their bravery while minimizing the risk of actually encountering any mind flayers. Actually, that makes a ton of sense and I kind of love it. Keep.
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Nov 21, 2017 15:26
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Couple of notes now that I'm caught up in the thread. Adam Weishaupt wasn't just a member of the Freemasons, he was the founder of the actual, real-world Illuminati. Weishaupt and his followers were radical freethinkers who, rather than make a one-world-government, wanted to abolish government and religion entirely and get people to live in a communal state with nature. In order to gain more followers, he and his friends tried infiltrating the Freemasons in order to sway them to his cause. This not only didn't work, the notion of a (dangerous, anti-government) secret society infiltrating a secret society made the authorities so paranoid that they tried to stamp out all secret societies, including the Freemasons themselves. Weishaupt lived the rest of his life in exile. And a fun bit about Known Space. At one point, Niven was going to write a big cataclysmic ending to the setting. Among other things, the Tnuctipun were still around; the slaver thing was a hoax. So was the galactic core exploding: the Puppeteers were fleeing the Tnuctipun (and working for them). The Kzinti were an offshoot of the Tnuctipun that were abandoned and left to savagery. Luckily, Niven read up on Dyson Spheres and got the idea for Ringworld, and that kept his interest in the setting.
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Nov 21, 2017 16:24
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He has since contradicted all the Secret Tnuctipun backstory, pretty much, and it is now entirely irrelevant. About the time he did that he released the outline he'd written for it.
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Nov 21, 2017 16:49
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Ringworld just keeps getting better
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Nov 21, 2017 17:07
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Yeah, he threw it all out because Ringworld was much more interesting to him. I can't really blame him there. Down in Flames sounds like it would've been a mess, given it would've had to refer to a lot of old stories only to immediately say "But all of that is actually irrelevant because it was a secret Tnuctipun plot!"
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Nov 21, 2017 17:21
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The Tnuctipun are much better off as the dead saviors of the galaxy from Slaver tyranny, and simultaneously the cause of the death of most life in the galaxy.
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Nov 21, 2017 17:31
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I don't know much about Ringworld, but it does sound like a pretty perfect setting both for stories and for a RPG perspective. A huge artificial inhabitable world where the surface of the Earth is a small measure of its size and life from all over the galaxy was left to run amok for untold aeons? You could do pretty much literally anything there. Also missed the Tunctipun if they were in the previous writeups, but sounds like their Star Control equivalents might be the Ur-Quan, who instead had the misfortune to survive the experience.
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Nov 21, 2017 17:35
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They're pretty much entirely a backstory thing. There is, at most, a single living tnuctip in the galaxy, and if said tnuctip exists it's trapped in a stasis box, in which time doesn't pass. See, way back in prehistory, before the evolution of even the Pak, the galaxy was ruled by a race of telepathic reptiles, known today as the Slavers. The Slavers weren't very smart, and weren't very strong, but they needed neither, because their one evolutionary trick was telepathy and they were extremely good at it. They enslaved any other species they met with their telepathic powers, and the greatest of these were the Tnuctipun, a species of highly intelligent predators who became the favored servants of the Slavers for their scientific abilities. They developed telepathy-enhancers, for example, that let a single Slaver rule over an entire planet. They invented stasis boxes, which allowed anything inside the stasis field to exist outside of time, unable to act but completely immune to everything, until the field was interrupted. The trick was, the Tnuctipun were also rebels. They used their knowledge to subtly sabotage Slaver projects - most notably, when they were ordered to make the perfect food animal, they made the Bandersnatchi. The Slavers never realized these food animals were intelligent because they were made to be telepathically deaf and mute. Using Bandersnatch spies and coordinators, the Tnuctipun were able to organize a slave rebellion that reached a state such that the Slavers were forced to result to their ultimate weapon - a telepathic amplifier so powerful it could send a command across the entire galaxy. Now, it couldn't be a complex command, but the Slavers didn't need one. Their command, in fact, was a single word. Die. Every living being in the galaxy that had developed a backbone and wasn't trapped in a stasis field immediately perished from the force of the telepathic order, except the Bandersnatchi, but including the Tnuctipun and Slavers themselves. The Slavers hadn't realized, y'see, that it would work on Slavers when they hit the button, because again, the Slavers never needed to be very smart. At least one Slaver survived in stasis - his name was Kzanol and his reawakening is the plot of World of Ptavvs. Besides that, other poo poo has been found in stasis boxes across the galaxy - sometimes useful tools, like the Disintegrator (a slow mining tool that fires two beams which produces an energy current between their target points that causes all known matter except for the GP hull to lose all atomic bonds and dissolve into atomic dust), and some weapons (the Soft Weapon from the titular short story, a semi-intelligent Tnuctip device that can absorb energy and can convert matter to energy, which then self-destructs due to believing itself to be in enemy hands). I ]I]think[/I] there's a story where a Tnuctip infant is found in a stasis box but I don't recall clearly. What has been revealed of the Tnuctipun is that they were even more bloodthirsty than the Kzinti, that they were one of the most intelligent species ever to exist, and that they were probably involved in the creation of the Slaver's Final Weapon and its wide-band broadcast. It is believed that when the Tnuctipun rebellion really got going they had found a way to develop telepathy shielding, but not strong enough to stop the Slaver weapon. Oh, and they liked to eat their prey alive, and preferred intelligent prey.
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Nov 21, 2017 18:13
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Nessus posted:Niven and Doc Smith are the big sci-fi names I can think of who managed to actually nail "aliens as characters" - relatable, interesting, fully realized as characters but informed by their alien-ness. Maybe once we're done here I'll do GURPS Lensman. (Now THAT one has some issues, even if it's more one big, glaring problem rather than a lot of little edge weirdnesses that accumulate. e: Two, actually, on reflection.) Cherryh and LeGuin are two others who are good with aliens as characters, though their approach is rather different. I've never actually read a Lensman novel though I plan to read at least the first one eventually--but any super special magic space knight order that specifically excludes women for 1940s reasons has eroded a lot of my interest out of the gate. Reading a review of that universe through the GURPS lens (as such) could be interesting.
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Nov 21, 2017 18:16
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Isn't it a plot point that the Kzinti leadership secretly evaluate every Kzin child. Any male that shows a hint of psionic potential gets sent off to get hooked on Spice, and any female more intelligent than a doormat gets killed to make sure that women stay dumb? And that in the "feral" Kzin tribes the females are just as smart as the men? Cause that sure seems 80's sexism as hell.
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Nov 21, 2017 18:26
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In Myriad Song, the spider people have non-sentient males who are actually just the size of a large dog (they aren't even humanoid) and kept as cherished pets. I can't help but wonder if that was something of a response to the old 'their females aren't sentient' stuff.
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Nov 21, 2017 18:29
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Kurieg posted:Isn't it a plot point that the Kzinti leadership secretly evaluate every Kzin child. Any male that shows a hint of psionic potential gets sent off to get hooked on Spice, and any female more intelligent than a doormat gets killed to make sure that women stay dumb? And that in the "feral" Kzin tribes the females are just as smart as the men? Depends on who's writing. Most of that is Man-Kzin Wars bullshit; anything not written by Niven is a grab bag that is mostly poo poo. The canon: the Kzin Patriarchy is horrifically sexist in terms of its own females. Kzin females have been genetically selected to be unintelligent for so long that most Kzin believe that this is just how things are naturally. There are exceptions in certain populations (most notably, the Ringworld Map of Kzin), and several modern Kzin males that hear about it tend to find the idea of an intelligent female Kzin fascinating and arousing. (At least one of them, easily the most important Kzin in any of the stories, basically decides 'screw the Patriarchy, these are my people' when he arrives on the Map of Kzin.) The systematic oppression of female Kzin is not presented as a good, or indeed as natural - it's just...what the Patriarchy, comma, an imperialist empire of space cats that spent much of their past eating people, did.
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Nov 21, 2017 18:33
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Night10194 posted:In Myriad Song, the spider people have non-sentient males who are actually just the size of a large dog (they aren't even humanoid) and kept as cherished pets. I can't help but wonder if that was something of a response to the old 'their females aren't sentient' stuff.
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Nov 21, 2017 18:46
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Yeah Niven isn't like, a bastion of enlightenment or anything but I never got the impression that the Kzinti were intended to be a model for humanity to follow--they were just supposed to be alien. Granted, a lot of SF authors presented alien gender relations as some reaction to or magnification of 50s nuclear family norms rather than something that felt organic on its own, but I don't think the Kzinti are the worst in this regard either. You're meant to feel a bit disgusted by the idea, and when Chmee the Kzin finds the sentient females he's...not upset by their existence at all. His identity does not depend on the subjugation of females. It has been a long time since I read the books proper though.
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Nov 21, 2017 18:47
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Kurieg posted:Isn't it a plot point that the Kzinti leadership secretly evaluate every Kzin child. Any male that shows a hint of psionic potential gets sent off to get hooked on Spice, and any female more intelligent than a doormat gets killed to make sure that women stay dumb? And that in the "feral" Kzin tribes the females are just as smart as the men? Sort of. Telepaths are rare and valuable and are all conscripted into service, but they all get to have kids too since the Kzinti want more telepaths. The other type of psychic power the Kzinti care about is the ability to navigate Hyperspace, and if you can do that you're immediately adopted into the royal family. Telepaths aren't actually much different from a normal Kzin until you give them a brain enhancing drug, at which point they can exceed pretty much any human psychic and turn into a bedraggled addicted wreck. Human psis are rare, limited, and pretty unreliable in most cases; a famous exception being Gil the ARM, a UN detective (Ubersleuth, the coolest job description ever) who literally had an imaginary phantom arm he discovered when he lost one of his in a mining accident. It had a good sense of touch, and he could pick up a filled shot glass with it if he concentrated really, really hard. He could also reach into a person's chest and squeeze a heart valve.
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Nov 21, 2017 18:51
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My read was that Chmeee found the idea of talking females intriguing and sexy. He does basically appoint himself Patriarch of the Map by virtue of owning a stasis blade (take a stick, wrap it in a stasis field, have an impossibly durable sword), because he's a Kzin, but he's perfectly happy to have smart and talking females as wives and advisors.
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Nov 21, 2017 18:52
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Where did the bit about the Slaver suicide amplifier killing them too come from? I thought the Slavers died out because they'd become so dependant on a slave workforce they couldn't operate enough of their technology to feed themselves (which is what's depicted in World of Ptaavs).
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Nov 21, 2017 18:56
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I don't recall exactly where it came up. I wanna say World of Ptavvs talks about it but it's been a while since I read that.
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Nov 21, 2017 19:00
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I guess it's kneejerk backlash to scifi sexism to asume that some sexist alien race in a book is, in fact, author's True View on Women. E: like, are all races or societies in a setting supposed to be impeccably perfect to be considered good or at least neutral? Is there a limit in which way villainous or just alien they can be? Because that sounds kinda bad. It's like Ian M. Banks when he wrote that A-something book not in the Culture verse and he ended up with bad human government oppressing the good and noble AIs and the main villains of the book being religious fundies lead by a sociopath who didn't even believe it. JcDent fucked around with this message at 19:25 on Nov 21, 2017 |
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Nov 21, 2017 19:19
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Feinne posted:EDIT: It feels silly to start before we get to the section of the setting with Strangers but I'd totally be down to do the Xenoforms book. hey if you've got the time and inclination go hog wild. my pace thru the core book is best described as "glacial" so if you want to go over other material, feel free. I was intending to cover all of the Dark*Matter stuff eventually, but again, at my pace that would be some time in the distant future. JackMann posted:Couple of notes now that I'm caught up in the thread. This is a really great illustration of something I'd touched on earlier in my review: Dark*Matter tends to use the most boring and uninteresting explanation for anything that's happening. Their version doesn't mention any of this stuff; it's literally the sentence or two I included in my review about him and then that's it. I guess they were leaning hard into "well it's up to the GM to ultimately decide what characters / conspiracies are true in their games and to what extent they're involved" but it feels like they used that as an excuse to only offer the most bare-bones info on the myriad conspiracy topics. Maybe the idea was that the core demo for this kind of TTRPG already brings a bunch of knowledge about these kinds of conspiracies to the table? It sure doesn't make much of the information useful as much more than a "gee whiz" footnote if you're not already familiar with the stuff that's being hinted at.
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Nov 21, 2017 19:29
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Warhammer Fantasy: Paths of the Damned: Part 1: Ashes of Middenheim On Middenheim One really nice thing is that this is the first book where they put down how they were going to handle the big urban areas full of plot-hooks and possible NPCs. The entire Paths of the Damned campaign expects your PCs will take breaks from the main quest to go side-questing or run into trouble while they travel, and the books are also the setting-books for the great cities. Thus, they include the detailed history and places for the big cities, much like the Praag, Erengard, and Kislev writeups in Realm of the Ice Queen. Post-War Middenheim is actually a really good base for a campaign or adventuring arc, too. It's got enough going on, and enough people who can still pay you, and enough safe spots to serve as a home base; it's also surrounded by areas that might be infested by enemy remnants and the army is busy trying to chase Archaon down and beat him silly. Thus, you've got a lot of demand for resourceful groups of 4-6 people with a poor sense of self-preservation. According to local legend, Middenheim was founded by Ulric himself when he first manifested into the Old World. His divine fist punched a mountain and created a vast, livable plateau, with the dictate that this should be the place where his faith would dwell after his brother Taal gifted it to him. The great plateau is sometimes known as the Fauschlag, the Fist Strike, after the time their God punched a mountain because that's kinda metal. 2500-some years ago, the powerful raiding tribe of the Teutogens took a break from bullying the other tribes and got some help from local dwarfs to tunnel up through and around the Fauschlag and create a good path to the flat space on top, settling it as their new capital. They originally probably intended to use this as the fortified base from which they would try to conquer, rather than raid, but that got upset by a young Unberogen tribal chief named Sigmar. Sigmar killed the chief of the Teutogens in open single combat after Artur refused to join his confederation, and since then the people of Middenheim have grudgingly bowed to the Empire. The coming of Sigmar was originally a blessing for the cult of Ulric. He was a known follower of Ulric himself, and a great warrior; it was easy to say they had bowed to the chosen champion of their God. He also invested heavily in building roads and infrastructure during his 50 year reign, and set aside funds to build temples and begin building the forts and settlements of the tribes into cities. With this wave of urbanization, Middenheim grew in size and importance, as one of the best fortified and safest locations outside of Talabheim (which is a pretty amazing place, too, being built into a giant impact crater to give it natural walls). In 63 IC, after Sigmar had set aside his crown and wandered off to the east without giving a reason, the Ulricans began their great temple and its sacred eternal flame in Middenheim. The flame of Ulric has never gone out since, not once, nor has the city ever fallen to an outside enemy. As a stable power base and one of the largest urban centers in the north, as well as the center of what is traditionally the second-most-powerful cult in the Empire, Middenheim has more than once served as the anchor for civil wars and strife. It is not a coincidence that the Time of Three Emperors began when the rulers of Talabheim and Middenheim both refused to accept that they had not been elected Emperor or Empress; both commanded positions that would be very hard for even a unified Imperial army to take. Middenheim was also instrumental in ending the Time of Three Emperors in 2303 IC, though not by choice. When Magnus the Pious began to rally the Empire to Kislev's defense against Asuvar Kul, Middenheim refused to support him. The Ar-Ulric, the high priest of the cult and master of the Wolf's faith, denounced him as a fraud and a pretender who would bring Sigmarite dominion and crush the cult of Ulric if he could. It was only when Magnus entered the temple disguised as a common man, revealed himself, and then walked unharmed through the eternal flame of Ulric that the stubborn priests realized their God was quietly trying to say 'Yo, lads, gently caress Chaos.' and joined up. It seems to be a bit of a theme with Ulric, where he's much more chill than his often crazy followers, but doesn't bother correcting them unless it gets desperate. Ever since that happened, the priests have put barriers around the eternal flame, ostensibly to stop any other madmen from trying to walk through the fire to prove the God's favor. Middenheim was ravaged in the Storm of Chaos, but it held. Archaon attacked the city with everything he had, and did not bother trying to surround it or starve out the garrison. He simply ordered assault after assault on the walls, losing thousands of men a day for fifteen days and nights of hard fighting and failed attacks. Beastmen were activated to come swarming from the city and harry armies coming to the city's aid. Every cult in Middenheim received orders to sabotage the defenses as best they could, or open gates or create breaches. This has led to an impression the city was absolutely riddled with cults, when in fact the Imperial forces got almost all of them when they put down the more overt sabotage attempts. This paranoia is going to be important to the upcoming adventure and helps explain a lot of the more extreme reactions and suspicions that are coming up. Without a solid plan to deal with attacking a fortified mountaintop with huge walls reinforced by runic magic and narrow causeways, Archaon's forces simply couldn't make headway. The cult activations, occasional breaches, and Hellcannon fire caused serious damage, though, and the followers of Nurgle (along with Skaven saboteurs) still managed to kill thousands within the city. There are damaged buildings, cracked walls to repair, and abandoned neighborhoods all over Middenheim right now, and the rebuilding is every bit as busy as it is in Erengard. More importantly to the adventure, with the enemy driven off by the arrival of the Grand Alliance of men, dwarfs, and elfs (and the additional arrival of Manfred von Carstein, who then looked at Middenheim's still-intact walls, the still-intact Imperial army, and their allies and muttered something about 'I had hoped he'd do more damage' before running away as is custom) the Graf of Middenheim and the Ar-Ulric left with their most elite surviving troops to join the pursuit. They could not let Reiklanders and foreigners claim credit for the victory, and wanted Middenheim and Middenland banners to be part of the destruction of the Chaos remnants. This means the city is down to only its small-ish garrison and the local Watch, commanded by Ulrich Schutzman, who is also currently the commander of all military forces within the city. The Ar-Ulric left his trusted right-hand, Deputy High Priest Claus Liebnitz, in control of the temple of Ulric and religious matters while he is gone. Both of these people will be important NPCs in the coming adventure. Still, Middenheim is vulnerable while its best soldiers seek vengeance, and it's also currently full of disbanding mercenaries, refugees, mustered-out soldiers, and people who were pressed into the fighting and dismissed now that the crisis is passed, not to mention foreign warriors, mercenaries, and camp followers from the armies. The perfect place to put together a group of eclectic PCs! Next Time: The Government of the City.
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Nov 21, 2017 19:34
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The main reason the Illuminati are still remembered two hundred years later is both due to the sheer amount of paranoia involved (the Illuminati were being blamed for poo poo years after they were no longer a thing) and the complicated plot of a secret society that exists, primarily, to infiltrate other secret societies. Of course, in reality they were a bunch of gently caress-ups with lofty ideals and no real ideas for how to accomplish them. Another fun bit with the slavers and the tnuctipun, to tie it back to RPGs. When Charles Stross was writing D&D stuff for White Dwarf, he thought that the illithids were probably based on the slavers (since both were alien, telepathic creatures that enslaved people and had four tentacles around their mouths. He decided there should be a rebellious slave race like the tnuctipun, so he created the githyanki (stealing the name from a George R. R. Martin story) and the githzerai. Per Gygax, the illithids were actually just based on a book cover he saw (Brian Lumley's The Burrower's Beneath) that had a squid-headed humanoid. The other similarities were coincidental.
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Nov 21, 2017 20:04
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I'm still surprised to learn that G.R.R. Martin and Tolkien were famous long before I read them.
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Nov 21, 2017 20:11
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JcDent posted:I guess it's kneejerk backlash to scifi sexism to asume that some sexist alien race in a book is, in fact, author's True View on Women. There is definitely an unfortunate prevalence of alien races (and fantasy races) who are presented as some variation on Extreme Patriarchy, enough that when taken in aggregate, it does sorta feel like SFdom as a whole is trying to suggest something about the nature of gender relations. poo poo like the Ferengi, for instance--females are property and not even allowed to wear clothes? Yeah okay Star Trek writers, way to pander to the absolute worst elements of your fanbase. I don't care what they 'intended' to do with that, it comes off really badly. The book you're thinking of is the Algebraist and it also involves aliens who have either no gender or basically no dimorphism since they're a spawning species that releases essentially tadpoles into the wild and then hunts the surviving adolescents for sport until they reach adulthood. Once in adulthood they're very peaceful and largely uninterested hierarchy, wealth, territory, or any of the other things that the oppressive human government wants. They're not being presented as a utopian alternative to the human government, but they certainly aren't worse. I don't think the AI were necessarily good and noble either, they seemed to be present more to show how ineffective authoritarian suppression ultimately is.
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Nov 21, 2017 20:19
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As always, the important thing to ask is 'why is this here' and 'what does this add'.
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Nov 21, 2017 20:22
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Plus there are definitely scifi writers who really are giving their True View on Women. Or People of Color or so on and so forth. Jerry Pournelle for one. Orson Scott Card for another.
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Nov 21, 2017 20:40
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occamsnailfile posted:Cherryh and LeGuin are two others who are good with aliens as characters, though their approach is rather different. The sidebar basically says: "You can keep this as canon; you can completely ignore it; you can say it WAS canon but the restriction was removed after the storyline event."
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Nov 21, 2017 20:49
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occamsnailfile posted:There is definitely an unfortunate prevalence of alien races (and fantasy races) who are presented as some variation on Extreme Patriarchy, enough that when taken in aggregate, it does sorta feel like SFdom as a whole is trying to suggest something about the nature of gender relations. poo poo like the Ferengi, for instance--females are property and not even allowed to wear clothes? Yeah okay Star Trek writers, way to pander to the absolute worst elements of your fanbase. I don't care what they 'intended' to do with that, it comes off really badly. Remember that the Ferengi were initially created as a new "always Chaotic Evil" Race since the Klingons were now something approaching "Good Guys". But the test audiences couldn't take them seriously because they looked ridiculous. Which is why they brought back the Romulans and created the Borg. So "We keep our women as naked slaves" was just an easy tick in the 'evil' column for Roddenbury's good upstanding Federation to be mad about. I'm just glad DS9's writers were given a chance to do something with it.
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Nov 21, 2017 20:50
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Freaking Crumbum posted:hey if you've got the time and inclination go hog wild. my pace thru the core book is best described as "glacial" so if you want to go over other material, feel free. I was intending to cover all of the Dark*Matter stuff eventually, but again, at my pace that would be some time in the distant future. Cool, I'll probably do The Killing Jar first since I've actually run the adventure and can speak to the... interesting choices and how I dealt with them.
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Nov 21, 2017 20:51
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Comrade Gorbash posted:Orson Scott Card for another. I can't be the only person that read The Worthing Saga after being exposed to (and generally enjoying) Ender's Game in middle school, am i? because TWS is the lol-tastic, hacky, fan-fiction love letter to the Book of Mormon/LDS in the same way that the Book of Mormon/LDS is the lol-tastic, hacky, fan-fiction love letter to the New Testament. TWS is the physical manifestation of 
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Nov 21, 2017 20:55
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