|
Cherryh is very good at making aliens (or other nonhumans) that are actually alien, without being incomprehensible.
|
#
?
Nov 21, 2017 20:56
|
|
|
|
| # ? Mar 22, 2025 15:48 |
|
|
Kurieg posted: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. 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? The population on the Ringworld did not have any gender intelligence imbalance. I think they were still something Chmeee called a Patriarchy, but he could have been laying his own ideas on the people who he basically storms and conquers with his Reddy Spacekzin Patented Super Armor.
|
|
#
?
Nov 21, 2017 21:04
|
|
|
Comrade Gorbash posted:Cherryh is very good at making aliens (or other nonhumans) that are actually alien, without being incomprehensible. Vernor Vinge has good aliens too in both A Deepness in the Sky (spider folk), and a Fire Upon the Deep (pack hive-minds).
|
|
#
?
Nov 21, 2017 21:08
|
|
|
Angrymog posted:Vernor Vinge has good aliens too in both A Deepness in the Sky (spider folk), and a Fire Upon the Deep (pack hive-minds).
|
|
#
?
Nov 21, 2017 21:09
|
|
|
The Ferengi are a great fictional culture not only because they're Capitalism except done correctly, by assuming that there are no rational or benevolent actors, but also because they still have stupid cultural hangups for no reason but historical inertia which they later overcome by playing to their strengths.
|
|
#
?
Nov 21, 2017 21:20
|
|
|
Dark Matter: The Killing Jar The Killing Jar is the one and only full module released for Dark*Matter. I also have actually GM’d this adventure. We’re going to start with the introduction for now, because while there's not much I can talk about without spoiling some of the crazy places this module goes I generally really like what's included in this part and want to have some good things to say about the whole thing.  We start with the standard guideline on appropriate parties. They suggest 3-6 characters of any level, though they also suggest you might want to add some extra enemies at times if the average party level is above 5. It then moves on to some super boring basic ‘hey here’s how you use a module’ which is kind of a nice inclusion honestly given the target audience of such things. The introduction then summarizes the plot, which I’m going to pointedly skip to preserve some fun surprises, so let’s move on to Getting the Heroes Involved. So the hook suggested is that one of the PC’s car is stolen with something important in it, then turns up again in West Virginia. The idea is to generate a situation where the PCs feel the need to actually go pick it up in person. They do note that this option does really require them to be in the general vicinity, and suggests some options for this. It does also have an alternative if you’d prefer not to be so railroad-y, where the PCs receive an anonymous tip about an abandoned car that starts the adventure instead. After giving the GM some text to use as part of the hook, it then moves on to the chain of events that leads to the PC’s car being stolen by, it turns out, someone connected with the adventure. I’m going to skip past this for now because again it spoils the plot. The majority of the rest of the introduction is the Lexicon, which is actually super handy because it lays out mechanically how the PCs could research concepts and people that come up during the adventure and what information is available from such research. Honestly it’s actually kind of good of them to give the GM some information on ‘hey what happens if after they learn this person’s name they try to search online for something about them’. There’s a sidebar on what to do if the PCs intentionally or accidentally get the authorities involved in the proceedings, and the introduction ends on a simply charming list of references. So I’ll mention this again but this module did in the way-back actually have web sites that were put up in support of it so that the players could actually do things like check a nefarious company’s web site or email a mysterious person’s address and get a reply. They’re not still up but it was kinda cool. Next time we’ll start digging into the meat of this in Act One.
|
|
#
?
Nov 21, 2017 21:37
|
|
|
Angrymog posted:Vernor Vinge has good aliens too in both A Deepness in the Sky (spider folk), and a Fire Upon the Deep (pack hive-minds). The skrode-riders too.
|
|
#
?
Nov 21, 2017 22:46
|
|
|
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.
|
|
#
?
Nov 22, 2017 00:02
|
|
|
Not to mention that Roddenberry was always an incorrigible hornball:quote:One influence on the Ferengi was what Herb Wright described as Gene Roddenberry's "sex fetish." In early first season discussions between them about developing the Ferengi, Roddenberry let Wright know it was his intention to make the species well-endowed. "He wanted to put a gigantic codpiece on the Ferengi," Wright stated. "He spent 25 minutes explaining to me all the sexual positions the Ferengi could go through. I finally said, 'Gene, this is a family show, on at 7:00 on Saturdays. He finally said, 'Okay, you're right.'"
|
|
#
?
Nov 22, 2017 00:14
|
|
|
Bieeardo posted:Not to mention that Roddenberry was always an incorrigible hornball: quote:He would have women walking from Bill Theiss’s fitting rooms through to his office in the skimpiest outfits so he could perv them. He was really such a sexist. I remember him telling me something and I thought, “Why is he telling me this?” Just personal kind of stuff I couldn’t really care to know about him. Disregarding people’s private space. I remember seeing him with Nichelle in his office, which is when I realized, “Oh, he’s been banging Nichelle.” But he moved Majel into an apartment just down the street so he could go for nooners. I don’t know why he had to be lecherous, looking after every woman. He came back from Japan with Majel and he said to me, “You know, Ande, you can go from the front to the back but you can’t go from the back to the front. Majel’s got a heck of an infection.” Again, why are you telling me this? But that was him: freaky-deaky dude.
|
|
#
?
Nov 22, 2017 00:20
|
|
|
Ugh, love of Christ. 
|
|
#
?
Nov 22, 2017 00:22
|
|
|
The series bible for The Next Generation, written by Gene, specified that Doctor Crusher should have "the natural walk of a striptease queen" and his initial vision of Deanna Troi was for her to have three boobs and possibly be a hermaphrodite. He also wanted Earth in Star Trek to be the Garden of Eden with men and women walking around naked in a lush jungle with tame tigers everywhere, and Risa to be nonstop orgy planet - men boinking women, men boinking men, women boinking women, naked and nonstop in the background of whatever was going on in the episode visiting the planet. Sci-fi writers tend to be weird, folks. And Roddenberry was still not as messed up as, say, Heinlein.
|
|
#
?
Nov 22, 2017 00:31
|
|
|
I'm fine with horny weirdos. Some of Roddenberry's stuff from the Seventies is charming, in part because of his permanently adolescent sexuality. Running all the girls through your office in their exotic getups, or telling somebody at random that you gave your squeeze a UTI by not wiping after going up the exhaust port is where I tend to draw the line. And oh god, Heinlein. Heinlein, Heinlein, Heinlein.
|
|
#
?
Nov 22, 2017 00:59
|
|
|
Something about Bob Heinlein seems to break people's brains. Like you don't see people citing Isaac Asimov or Arthur C. Clarke as if they were political philosophers.
|
|
#
?
Nov 22, 2017 01:03
|
|
|
Nessus posted:Something about Bob Heinlein seems to break people's brains. Like you don't see people citing Isaac Asimov or Arthur C. Clarke as if they were political philosophers. They didn't write a novel about libertarian STEM field people breaking away from an oppressive, ineffective regime. Arthur C. Clarke was gay, British, and didn't worship the military industrial complex. Asimov was a liberal too. It's no wonder Heinlein is usually popular among those types. EDIT: I'm pretty sure Marina Sirtis was in TNG because Roddenberry was aware of her work for Canon Films. RocknRollaAyatollah fucked around with this message at 01:20 on Nov 22, 2017 |
|
#
?
Nov 22, 2017 01:17
|
|
|
Cythereal posted:The series bible for The Next Generation, written by Gene, specified that Doctor Crusher should have "the natural walk of a striptease queen" and his initial vision of Deanna Troi was for her to have three boobs and possibly be a hermaphrodite. He also wanted Earth in Star Trek to be the Garden of Eden with men and women walking around naked in a lush jungle with tame tigers everywhere, and Risa to be nonstop orgy planet - men boinking women, men boinking men, women boinking women, naked and nonstop in the background of whatever was going on in the episode visiting the planet. It’s no accident that two of the three woman leads in TNG quit in the first season, and one came back only after Gene stopped running the show.
|
|
#
?
Nov 22, 2017 01:18
|
|
|
Only Heinlein's juvenalia is worth talking about. Although it's worth mentioning that even he specifically wrote a short story about how the lack of government is a bad thing and leads to whoever is the biggest rear end in a top hat gathering a gang and terrorizing everyone in reach.
|
|
#
?
Nov 22, 2017 01:19
|
|
|
 Starfinger Alien Archive Part 18: "Outsiders often find them cheerfully manic, noting a goblin-like flair for the ridiculous but none of that race’s innate malice." Got eight creatures that start with "S", so we're going to be a little more brief this time...
 Sarcesian Sniper (CR 5) and Sarcesian Cybercommando (CR 8) About a dozen feet tall, these are humanoids who supposedly once lived on the planets that became the Pact Worlds' asteroid belt. They evolved to live in a vacuum because apparently that's a thing that happens when your world explodes. They do this by "suspending their respiration" and emitting "wings made of pure light" that "catch currents of radiation". Despite that description, they just fly around in space normally in terms of rules. They have "creche worlds" made from asteroids with "arcane engines" that make them mini-paradises. Those who leave become snipers and scouts because... um... well, they do. Large! Low-Light Vision! Extra skill point! Fly in space! There's a table for their specialty sniper rifles. The sniper is built as an operative, and the cybercommando is an engineer. Next!  Scavenger Slime (CR 9) So entropy is a thing, but a mysterious race was offended by it, So, of course, they made a magic nanotech slime that could repair anything. But it developed sentience and stowawayed to other worlds (despite being described as sentient, the statblock has "Int -"). And so they rove around the worlds they end up on, repairing stuff that they know how to repair even though they may not know the technology because... anyway they sometimes gather up piles of technology and junk they defend because... anyway, they have eggs that might cling to a PC's boots and follow along even though they were invented because... some can turn organic targets into their own shells because... anyway, yeah, they usually build shells of technology because... anyway... Assembly oozes were so good an idea they did a remix I guess. Large oozes! They have a shell of energy resistance and damage resistance and guns you can sunder! Punching psuedopods!... not acid? Blunt damage! They shoot their guns! They can be made into equipment patching goo or gluebombs that punch their targets once! Done!   Sharpwing (CR 4) From the "Ice Wells of Large flying predators! Bite/claw/claw! Can see through the eyes of eggs they lay! Their eggs can walk around, not sure why! People made a level 4 cloak covered in sensors based on them that can make you unflankable! Complete!   Shobhad (CR 4) and Shobhad Warleader (CR 7) These are Playable as PCs! Large! Darkvision! Four arms! Fight for one turn before falling over! Bonus speed! Cold resistance! The basic one has a machine gun and sword, and the warlord has soldier stuff! That's a wrap!   Skittermander Whelp (CR 0.333) and Skittermander (CR 2) A client race of the vesk, this is a flighty race that doesn't understand the concept of ongoing authority - they understand having somebody lead a task, but don't really understand rank as a persistent notion. They let the vesk conquer them because they recognized the vesk were stronger and just got out of their way; they recognize them as large if not in charge. They let the vesk tell them what to do, but never really seem to recognize them as in charge. In short, they're kind of like cuter, nicer Once again it's worth mentioning spellcasters can summon skittermanders to fight and die for them for some reason, or "why wizards are awful part #1,305,698". Playable as PCs! Small! Grappling bonus! Low-light vision! Six arms! Can take an extra move action once a day! The whelp can attach with their "second mouth" and bite at you, the basic one gets some envoy abilities! Enough!  Surnoch (CR 9) A 15' worm that lives in asteroids and moons, which mostly feels on minerals. Its poop leaves behind some rare and unusual materials it can't digest, but it's all too glad to try and munch on technology and spaceships. Somebody might be controlling them for corporate sabotage, as well. Large animals! Immune to acid! Bite! Acid spit! Spines that are acid + piercing! Goes five times as fast in its tunnels (150' for a move action?). People make them into acid-squirting spears! Finished!   Swarm Corrovox (CR 3) and Swarm Thresher Lord (CR 10) Descendants of the kucharn, the same race that would produce the shirrens, this is an rapacious... well, they're the zerg, except they just scorched-earth worlds for lunch. They're only really intelligent collectively and can't be reasoned with. They have a variety of organically-designed weapons. There'll be more of these guys in future books. Corrovox: Medium humanoid! Claw! Acid cannon! Area effect psychic damage! Telepathic communication! Rerolls against mind-affecting effects when a pair or more! Thresher Lord: Large humanoid! Arm blades! Extra attacks! Flight! Same telepathy as the corrovox! And that's over!   Symbiend (CR 0.333) and Damoritosh's Arm Host (CR 6) Small aberrations that can sting and attach to people. While the text talks about the "impressive abilities they grant to hosts", the base one doesn't seem to do much but act as a parasite. There's also the "arm host" which grants a bunch of combat bonuses and some mental and social penalties, and we get a statblock for a human soldier bearing one. The "dream peddler" grants a bonus on Will and Wisdom checks, psychic powers, but penalty on physical actions and initiative. Finally, the "paragon" gives a bonus to saving throws, Charisma skills, and extra skill points, but reduces HP. Can you get one as a PC? Ask your GM, it says! And that's the end of the lightning round! No monsters that start with T, so we can move on to... Next: U is for Zombies. Alien Rope Burn fucked around with this message at 02:02 on Nov 22, 2017 |
|
#
?
Nov 22, 2017 01:40
|
|
|
Nessus posted:Something about Bob Heinlein seems to break people's brains. Like you don't see people citing Isaac Asimov or Arthur C. Clarke as if they were political philosophers. Libertarians are a special kind of Wonk, and it's no surprise their best source for their philosophy isn't from scholars but Sci-Fi writers
|
|
#
?
Nov 22, 2017 01:44
|
|
|
Alien Rope Burn posted:Sarcesian Sniper (CR 5) and Sarcesian Cybercommando (CR 8) I'm thinking someone on the Starfinger payroll read the Hyperion Cantos.
|
|
#
?
Nov 22, 2017 01:56
|
|
|
echopapa posted:It’s no accident that two of the three woman leads in TNG quit in the first season, and one came back only after Gene stopped running the show. I thought it was Maurice Hurley the producer that was the problem? Also Denise Crosby left because her character had jack poo poo to do. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kRbRuE3KWFg Kavak fucked around with this message at 02:14 on Nov 22, 2017 |
|
#
?
Nov 22, 2017 02:10
|
|
|
LongDarkNight posted:The skrode-riders too. They don't get a lot of direct screen time, but there's also the murder butterflies, and that poor whatever that's catching up on events via the equivalent of a very delayed usenet relay.
|
|
#
?
Nov 22, 2017 02:54
|
|
|
I thought they were giving a real big thumbs up and then I saw the dumb sword.
|
|
#
?
Nov 22, 2017 03:21
|
|
|
Scavenger slimes sound like an attempt at a sci-fi gelatinous cube that actually manages to make less sense than the original.
|
|
#
?
Nov 22, 2017 03:46
|
|
|
Personally I like the idea of a bunch of slimes that are just... how nanotech works out in the setting. Slimes are a constant in dungeons, and they're kind of endearing, so having a bunch of different grey goo scenarios as mildly annoying low-level monsters sounds like a fun take on the genre convention. That's not what this is, but, it's what it could have been.
|
|
#
?
Nov 22, 2017 04:37
|
|
|
I immediately assumed there'd be a neat junk dungeon in space a la something like the short film Magnetic Rose where everybody wants to loot something but can't make any progress because the slug swarm is so thick no sooner have you cut into a wall than its repaired and slugs repair armor so well that they preemptively over armor you to where a shot will land so a standard shootout is just a stalemate.
|
|
#
?
Nov 22, 2017 04:40
|
|
|
occamsnailfile posted:Scavenger slimes sound like an attempt at a sci-fi gelatinous cube that actually manages to make less sense than the original. And, as already mentioned, they already had a sci-fi gelatinous cube. They did that. There are interesting ideas that can be done, but they want to keep things so loose with each entry and not pin stuff down... I think they're trying to keep stuff open and flexible to interpretation, but so often it just makes the entries feel really wishy-washy and generic as a result.
|
|
#
?
Nov 22, 2017 04:43
|
|
|
Mors Rattus posted: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. Definitely seeing the inspiration for the Ur-Quan here (what with them being huge carnivorous centipedes), though clearly intended as more of a precursor race than an active one. Though Star Control goes for more identifiable alien races, with the Ur-Quan having a sympathetic backstory of having gone through massive species-wide trauma that's still with them on the genetic level, rather than Niven's rather alien aliens. And on slimes; some D&D editions have slimes be a result of spells gone wrong, if you're doing Space Not-D&D than rogue nanotech makes about as much sense.
|
|
#
?
Nov 22, 2017 04:44
|
|
|
Freaking Crumbum posted: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? I have no idea what the Worthing Saga is, but Enders Game was one of my favorite books growing up, and finding out his opinions has soured me on it somewhat. And cast several parts of Xenocide in a much different light. Inescapable Duck posted:Definitely seeing the inspiration for the Ur-Quan here (what with them being huge carnivorous centipedes), though clearly intended as more of a precursor race than an active one. Though Star Control goes for more identifiable alien races, with the Ur-Quan having a sympathetic backstory of having gone through massive species-wide trauma that's still with them on the genetic level, rather than Niven's rather alien aliens. Ahh yes, Living Spells. It's even better when you have two living spells eat eachother and you get the cloudkill prismatic spray.
|
|
#
?
Nov 22, 2017 04:49
|
|
|
Inescapable Duck posted:And on slimes; some D&D editions have slimes be a result of spells gone wrong, if you're doing Space Not-D&D than rogue nanotech makes about as much sense. The original gelatinous cube was also a deliberate creation by mages, a self-propelled dungeon cleaning unit that mopped up organic remains while leaving potentially valuable loot unharmed for retrieval. Kurieg posted:Ahh yes, Living Spells. It's even better when you have two living spells eat eachother and you get the cloudkill prismatic spray. Living Spells were an Eberron creation. Earlier versions of DnD tended to have various oozes and slimes as the result of various failed conjuration and transmutation spells.
|
|
#
?
Nov 22, 2017 04:50
|
|
|
occamsnailfile posted:Cherryh and LeGuin are two others who are good with aliens as characters, though their approach is rather different. Clarissa Macdougall, the Red Lensman, would like to disagree with you.
|
|
#
?
Nov 22, 2017 04:58
|
|
|
Humbug Scoolbus posted:Clarissa Macdougall, the Red Lensman, would like to disagree with you.  to look gross; indeed, to the point where you might fairly go "It would have been better had the topic not been raised at all."
|
|
#
?
Nov 22, 2017 05:32
|
|
|
Terrible Opinions posted:The typical response is "well they're the bad guys", which for the Ferengi prompts the follow up question "why do they look and act like Jewish caricatures then?" To be fair, it's hard to do 'evil merchants' or 'evil capitalists' without crossing over fairly heavily with anti-Semitic tropes, just because anti-Semites have associated basically all the negative aspects of capitalism and business to Jewishness. They did at least try to make the early Ferengi more obviously an allegory of capitalists in general in early TNG - their signature weapon is a whip, Data compares them to 'Yankee traders' - hell, even the name is derived from the Farsi and Hindi word 'farengi', meaning foreigner, but specifically applied to European traders during the colonial era. I think the problem was they never worked as antagonists, so the idea that they were meant to be an interstellar East India Company or United Fruit never came across right, and they ended up just being scheming, cowardly merchants.
|
|
#
?
Nov 22, 2017 05:36
|
|
|
Angry Salami posted:To be fair, it's hard to do 'evil merchants' or 'evil capitalists' without crossing over fairly heavily with anti-Semitic tropes, just because anti-Semites have associated basically all the negative aspects of capitalism and business to Jewishness. I'm guessing doing the Ferengi as a soulless interstellar megacorp would have been too on the nose.
|
|
#
?
Nov 22, 2017 05:45
|
|
|
Angry Salami posted:To be fair, it's hard to do 'evil merchants' or 'evil capitalists' without crossing over fairly heavily with anti-Semitic tropes, just because anti-Semites have associated basically all the negative aspects of capitalism and business to Jewishness. On one hand, yes. On the other, you know, it's easier to avoid that by not making the race look like a piece of crazy anti-semitic caricature. I suggest hypercapitalist libertarian space parrots, in bubble helmets.
|
|
#
?
Nov 22, 2017 05:48
|
|
|
Night10194 posted:
|
|
#
?
Nov 22, 2017 05:51
|
|
|
Carados posted:Please don't make them Jimmy Buffet stereotypes. "Did they say what their purpose was?" "They lost a supply of sodium chloride."
|
|
#
?
Nov 22, 2017 06:03
|
|
|
Carados posted:Please don't make them Jimmy Buffet stereotypes. Playing as hypercapitalist nuclear terrorist parrots with a resigned acceptance of their lovely, hosed up megacorp life because 'the man has dogs and nukes' was the most fun I ever had with Stellaris.
|
|
#
?
Nov 22, 2017 06:10
|
|
|
Angry Salami posted:To be fair, it's hard to do 'evil merchants' or 'evil capitalists' without crossing over fairly heavily with anti-Semitic tropes, just because anti-Semites have associated basically all the negative aspects of capitalism and business to Jewishness. It just requires the creators to think about why capitalism is evil rather than just thinking of it as an alignment brush.
|
|
#
?
Nov 22, 2017 06:24
|
|
|
|
| # ? Mar 22, 2025 15:48 |
|
|
Ferengi were a bit weird and confused given their society in some ways is more relatable and fleshed out than what Federation civilians actually do with their time, when they're meant to be the foil to the totally-not-communist Federation. Besides, the proper sci-fi metaphor for capitalism is probably grey goo. Generally I think a measure of a setting is whether you can imagine actually living an ordinary life there that doesn't involve being A Protagonist. Similar reason why things like Klingons become weird to examine, because a society needs tailors, farmers, janitors and band managers too. (see the band manager Kzinti character) I think Star Wars as a setting has stuck in people's heads so well because you see more of the mundanities of life; it starts out with an extended sequence of Luke the moisture farmer dealing with technical issues and buying second-hand hardware, one of the most iconic pieces of music is a band playing background music in a bar, and so on. It's a setting where things happen and life goes on when the protagonists and antagonists don't happen to be around.
|
|
#
?
Nov 22, 2017 07:11
|
|