Alien Creation Concept

[clarence]

I remember the first time I read the rules for alien creation in Traveller - I had so high expectations and was so disappointed.

 

Warning - Long Post!

 

So, now I have been working on my own system for creating alien life forms, and here is the first draft of it. Or rather, the fourth complete system. It proved to be much more difficult than I expected. First of all I wanted to avoid aliens shaped after earth's animals - quite easy to come up with, but very unlikely. Reading up on what we currently know about the principles of alien life (next to nothing), extremophiles, self-replicating systems and evolutionary concepts opened up way too many possibilities. Returning to some of my favorite sci-fi games, I found inspiration to trim away the surplus complexity. This is the framework that remains. All feedback is very welcome.

 

Rules updated and included in BRP Starships 2.2 (see Download section).

 

 

Universal life form parameters

 

1.

 

Strangeness: 1-10, where 1 represents Earth-like, 5 Alien and 10 Really strange. The strangeness parameter adds a good over all picture when interpreting the results in the creation process.

 

2.

 

Define something about the biosphere, and the universals that apply to all beings on the planet due to their hereditary to each other.

 

Environmental characteristics: Write down 1-3 main parameters in the ecosystem, either from a world already created, or make some up.

 

Biodiversity: Define how rich life on the planet is. Default is 1 sessile (plant) group, 2 motile (animal) groups. High biodiversity: +1 sessile, +1d4 motile. Low : 1 of each.

 

3.

 

Body plans: Working as a generic blueprints for all beings, with separate body plans for the different motiles and sessiles. Roll these five for each group:

 

- Size: Sub-1, 1-6, 7-15, 16-20, 21-30, 31-50, 51-75, 75-100, 100+

- Frame: Endo Skeleton, Exo-skeleton, No frame

- Symmetry: Bilateral, asymmetrical, radial, spherical

- Limbs: 0-100+. 0-10 zero 11-30 two 31-50 three 51-80 four 81-90 five to eight 91-00 1d100

- Segmentation: 1-4 segments. In body, limbs and/or organs.

 

 

Universals (1d3): Roll or pick some traits that are general to all beings in a body plan group. (Use Advantages lower down if more variation is needed). 

 

Fur

Intelligence

Defensive weapons

Flight

Sense organs (often close to the brain)

Stages of life, 1d4+1*

Sexes, 1d4+1

Mouth (for intake of energy)

Sun light or heat converted into energy

 

*=create one being for each stage (more or less similar to each other).

 

 

 

Life forms

 

With universals defined, the actual alien is to be detailed. It is recommended to create a handful of beings, filling different roles in the ecosystem.

 

 

Decide which body plan group the being belongs to, the primary motile group is probably the one most commonly encountered by characters. 

 

 

Define the role it plays in the ecosystem: Classification and habitat (forest trapper for example)

 

Producer (plant), Herbivore  (Grazer, Filter feeder) Omnivore (Gatherer, Scrounger), Carnivore (Ambusher, Chaser, Pouncer, Raider, Stalker, Trapper)

 

Habitat (roll multiple times for interesting combinations): 

Water/Pool/Lake/Sea

Stream/River

Shore/Reeds

Plain/Meadow/Open

Tundra

Semi-open

Bushes

Forest/Tree

Underground/Cave

Desert/Dunes/Arid

Wetland

Ice/Snow/Glacier

Mountain

Rocky

 

 

Size modifier: +/-1d2. Here on earth, elephants and mice belong to the same body plan group, with size being perhaps the most striking difference.

 

 

Advantages (1d3): These are the specifics that have kept the being alive through the ages. 

 

Perception: Choose 1d3 senses that are heightened.

Fast: High DEX and/or Movement

Flight: Gas bag, wings, glide

Camouflage/Hide/Stealth: Appearance or Skill

Climb: Natural ability (like sticky feet) or Skill

Second habitat

Second atmosphere

Tool user

Fine Manipulation: Fingers, toes, lips, ears, tails, tentacles

Sharp: Thorns, teeth, claws, beak, horns.

Armor

Poison

Builder

Communication: Simple, Complex (ape, whale, dolphin, bee), Language

Psionics/Psionic Immunity

Extra Sense: 1d3 extra. Heat, bacteria, movement, electricity, magnetism (compass), specific chemicals

High Intelligence

Art (the drive to tell others about their experiences in various forms)

 

 

Disadvantages (1d3): Some of the problems the being are struggling with, or that makes it more vulnerable. 

 

Immobile

Fragile

Slow

Rare/Vulnerable habitat

Hunted

Disease-ridden

Affected by pollution

Eggs/Cubs

Internal Conflicts

Hierarchy/Obedient

Missing one of the senses

Hibernation

 

 

Behaviour: In Harmony, Curious, Patient, Watchful, Suspicious, Hiding, Afraid, Easily Angered, Aggressive, Detached.

 

 

Social: Single, Pair, Small Group, Herd (small to swarm), Special (Parasite, Symbiotic). 

K-strategists or R-strategists (producing only a few off-spring and caring for them, or producing many and not caring for them).

 

 

Forms of communication: Sound, scent, sight (light, color, signs), tactile, psi, chemical.

 

 

Natural weapons (default damage):

Bite (1d6+/-db)

Claw (1d6+/-db)

Punch/kick (1d3+/-db)

Grapple (1d3+/-db)

Crush (1d3+/-db)

Throw (1d3+/-db)

Horn (1d3+/-db)

Sting (1d3+/-db)

Electricity (from Surprised to 3d6)

Poison (from rash to 4d6)

 

 

Base chance: Primary weapon: Easy 20%+DEX, Medium 40%+DEX, Hard 60%+DEX. Carnivores +10%. Secondary/Third weapons at 20-40%. 

 

 

Calculating characteristics:

 

STR: Roughly equivalent to SIZ. If fragile, half of SIZ. 

CON: Two thirds of SIZ. If fragile, one third of SIZ. 

SIZ: see above

INT: Animal 3-7, High 16+, Mindless feeder/producer 0-2

POW: Animal 10, Psionic 16+, Mindless feeder/producer 0

DEX: Slow 1-5, Immobile 0, Fast 20+

APP: >3d6 striking, awe-inspiring, beautiful. <3d6 ugly. APP is always at -10 at first contact. 

EDU: Animal/Plant 0, Intelligent primitives 5+, Organized society 10+. 

Movement: Normal 8-12, Slow <5, Fast 18+. Two values if the being can move in two different atmospheres (air and water for example)

 

 

Appearence (Optional):

 

Hopefully the above process has given enough insights to make it possible to conjure an image of the alien being. If further input is needed, roll or pick on the tables below. Start with descriptive terms for the whole being, and if needed, continue with specific body parts or even sense organs. Go through Posture and Surface in the same way. Keep the overall picture of the being (from the results above) in mind all the time, to find interesting combinations. 

 

Descriptive:

Massive

Slender

Pear-shaped

Long

Flat

Bent

Split

Bulbous

Hammer-shaped

Boxy

Ridged

Crystalline

Slithering

Fat

Wedge-shaped

Spindle

Retractable

Hollow

Bony/Angular

 

 

Posture:

Upright

Horizontal

Diagonal

Bent

Crooked

 

 

Surface:

Fur (short, long)

Skin (smooth, coarse AC 1-2)

Scales (AC 1-5)

 

Chitinous (AC 1-3)

Transparent/semi-transparent

Patched

Feathers

Ornamented

[Ethereal]

Clarence, I think under behavior an additional attitude would be Detached", similiar to how humans view ants, they exist, but as long as they do not become obvious to us or irritate us we do not think of them, otherwise we just do not care. Under natural weaponry you could add poison,(I know you have it under advantages, but it could also count as natural weaponry) and under communication you could add Tactile (touch). Just some things to look at. :-)

You obviously put a lot of work into this and I hope over the next three or four weeks I will get to try it out. I will be starting a future world derivative with a first contact scenario and will hopefully put this to use. Thanks.

[clarence]

Excellent additions, Ethereal! I will definitely add those. Poison should definitely be under natural weapons as well. "Detached" feels like the perfect behavior for intelligent/elitist beings and "Tactile" is a fine addition to the different forms of communication that I hadn't thought of.

 

I have had great fun developing various aliens with this system for the last two weeks for my own BRP Starships campaign (The Weaver). Creating several ingredients for an ecosystem at once, using a few universals, I think makes it so much more logical, believable and easy to create the aliens.

 

Let me know how it works for you in your campaign, and if you find any more omissions.

[fmitchell]

You could also tap Mutations and Super Powers for additional abilities.

 

That said, I tend to shy away from aliens that are functionally human with a few quirks or kewl powerz; I'm not producing a show with human actors and a low CGI budget.  I have a preference for the really exotic, usually created by random generator or tailored for a specific purpose.  So, fewer Vulcans, Narn, and Time Lords, more Vorlons and Elder Things.

 

Sine Nomine's Dead Names: Lost Races and Forgotten Ruins (for Stars Without Number, but generally stat-free) starts with determining the aliens' Madness -- the feature that makes a species alien -- and then fills in appearance and biology as needed.  Which is not to say they all have to be mysterious ancients; some of my favorite aliens in RPGs include the Dralasites of Star Frontiers, Hivers and Nunclees of Traveller, and Traders of GURPS Aliens, most of which can be (very odd) PCs.

[clarence]

Dead Names looks very interesting! I think I will have to buy it right away.

 

I agree, there are too many one dimensional aliens (and sci-fi shows are not helping in this regard). The problem to overcome with an "everything is possible" approach to alien creation, is the absurd complexity of the subject. We really need to free our minds from at least the worst predetermined images of living beings, but building the alternatives in a  good way without being overwhelmed is difficult. It's too easy just piling strange powers and weird looks on top each other, ending up with a patchwork not really relating to it's environment. Finding a good balance between randomness and structure I think is crucial.

 

I will take a look at mutations and super powers and see if there are any useful additions!

 

I'm also considering Art (defined very widely) as an advantage, inspired by the Swedish biologist Svante Pääbo. I heard him say that art might be the biggest difference between us and the neanderthals - and not intelligence as we traditionally like to think. Do you think that would work?

[clarence]

I made a few changes and clarifications to the creation process, and pasted the new text in the first post in this thread. Changes:

 

- Strangeness is now ranging from 1-10 and comes first in the creation process.

 

- Tactile, Detached and Poison added under various headings.

 

- Art added as an Advantage.

 

 

I'm still having tremendous fun with this system! I think it works quite well with the world creation rules too, for adding cultural aspects to the aliens, and combined with a planet generator (http://topps.diku.dk/torbenm/maps.msp) is my preference at the moment) it's quite easy to populate space.

[Atgxtg]

I went down a similar road with the stalled Bestiary project, and just a couple of things that might help with alien creation. Feel free to use or discard. If you like any of this I can probably help to break it down into point costs if you would like to do some sort of alien life form design method where you could buy things with "creature Points" or some such.

 

 

In real world physics muscle mass (STR) is 2/3SIZ + a modifier( Based on the creatures body type- i.e man-like, canine, feline, bovine, etc.) This is the "square-cube" law that gets mentioned a lot, and is why creatures of a given type can only get so big. After a certain point the STR of the muscles (or structural STR of the bones for that matter) won't be able to support the weight of the creature, and it won't be able to walk.

 

Note that since this is based on weight, the SIZ of creature would be reduced as gravity increases. So if you had the same sort of creature living on different worlds the one in the lower gravity would tend to grow larger, assuming all the other factors were the same. Basically every time you double the gravity you would reduce the average SIZ by about 8 points. Every time you halved the gravity the average SIZ would go up 8 points. So if colonist brought some cattle with them to live in a dome on the Moon (say SIZ 42 steers), over time they would evolve into something about SIZ 62.  . ...

 

INT and STR are have something of a relationship to each other. A smarter species will tend to have a lower STR that a less intelligent species of the same SIZ. The reason for that is because since both creatures are the same SIZ the both have the same amount of mass. If one of the species is smarter it would probably have a larger brain, so it has to get rid of some mass elsewhere to balance things out, and muscle mass (STR) is most likely going to be reduced.  

 

This is why a 200 pound chimpanzee would be stronger than a 200 pound human.   It also points out that other things that "take up space" in a creature's body would come at the expense of something else. So things like thick fur, claws and teeth probably come at the expense of STR. So you could probably get away with using STR as the "currency" to buy other abilities. 

 

DEX tends to be reduced as SIZ increases. The more mass to move the greater the inertia, and since STR doesn't increase as rapidly as SIZ, bigger creatures will tend to be slower and less agile.

[clarence]

Very interesting suggestions. Especially the connection between STR, INT and other traits. I will try to incorporate your ideas and make the part about characteristics a bit more agile.

I'm not so sure if I want a point-based system - or rather, I haven't even thought about it so far. What are the benefits do you think?

And what is that bestiary project you mention?

[Atgxtg]

The benefits are that it would be easier to design a creature, and the creature could be more realistic and scientifically accurate. You could get a number of creature points for each creature, based on STR plus a random roll (to give some more variation between other creature of the same SIZ) and assign costs to various abilities that a designer could pick from. It would also make it easier to add more abilities into latter, since the would already be established. 

 

The bestiary projuect was something that grew out of another form members desire to stat out more animals in BRP. I tossed off a few ideas such as correlating SIZ to actual body mass, and using the sqaure-cube law to extrapolate stat scores for similar animals. For instance, being able to work up stats for a Megalossaurus, T-Rexor Gigantosaurs   by scaling up the Allosaurus stats in RQ3 using the square-cube law and applying it to the mass. The gave us very good stats, and a method that anybody could use to generate creature stats that were consistent, reproducible and fit relative to the SIZ of other creatures. Oh, and something that could be automated to the point where anybody could name a creature, it mass, and body type (canine, large theropod, etc.) and it would spit out decent stats.  I did most of the crunchy math, and simplified it into BRP terms (such as for every change of 3 points to SIZ, STR gets adjusted by 2 points) and put in into a spreadsheet. My partner then collected data on some 1200 animals, and assembled it all into a database that spit out game stats. 

 

Later on, while doing more research for the project, I discovered that the method I used to extrapolate dinosaur stats is just what scientists use, only they don't do in in game stats. 

 

Unfortunately, the project is currently stalled due to work schedules, but most of the data we have is decent enough to use in play. Much of the underlying thinking, being based on real world physics, would apply to any realistic creature, and make it easier to design new creatures, too. 

 

For instance, if you know of the square-cube law,  and that it is the relationships between strength and mass, and that the SIZ table in BR is logarithmic,  you can work out out that making a creature twice as big would translate into STR+16, CON +16 and SIZ +24. Something that anybody can use to make realtic giant creatures without needing to do the power equation. 

[clarence]

I think I will pass on a point based system for alien creation (at this time at least), but the bestiary project sounds intriguing. Any chance you will make it public? It seems to be a very useful tool in almost every genre. And just by adjusting size, weaponry and perhaps add a chaotic feature, a steady stream of monsters can be created.

[Atgxtg]

Yeah, once we can finish it. THe problem has been finding the time. I relocated, which took up most of my time, and now work 3rd shift and still have very little time. My partner got a new job that has kept expanding and has kept him to busy to work on the project.

 

It's a shame it got stalled, as the majority of  methods we used, and "insight" we picked up while working on it actually hold up well in the stats and game play. For instance, I did up a SIZ class idea for animals that scaled up their natural weapon damage with their SIZ. Bigger animals tend to have more/bigger teeth. I did it up and then we started applying it to existing creature stats (mostly from RQ3, since that was the biggest source of RQ/BRP creature stats, and much to my surprise, it matched up fairly well with the existing creature stats. Thanks to SIZ class, diet, and ecological niche modifiers, great white sharks actually got the 3D6 bite, just like in RQ3.   

 

We had some problems, low SIZ critters were a pain, and I was working on a way to extend the SIZ stat down so as to differentiate between cat, rat, and mouse, and I still have to come up with a good MOV formula, but most of the stats were pretty close.  

[clarence]

I'm very much looking forward to this. I hope you find the time to finish it soon. How is it going to be presented? You mentioned a spreadsheet - will you make that public too or is it just a working tool? It almost sounds like you could turn this into a small app or program... 

[Atgxtg]

Ideally we wanted to publish the guidelines, our reasons for using them, and the stats for some 1200+ creatures as a standard RPG supplement, as well as one formatted for tablets. Some sort of creature design tool, as well as out database of creatures was going to be made available either as part of the supplement of as an add on. 

 

The spreadsheets we have now are sort of bare bones tools designed to crunch numbers and spit out game stats, and aren't very pretty. My partner's skill with databases also made most of my functional spreadsheets obsolete. While I can justly take credit for most of the science and number crunching formulas that automated the process, it was my partner who deserves the credit for setting it all up in a database and turning it into an "assembly line" that could spit out stats for 1200 critters at once.   

 

Yeah, it could be turned into a small app or program, assuming one of us had some software to code it in. In fact a couple of my spreadsheets were practically apps. I have one I dubbed" Critter Fitter" that was what we first used to automated the processes of scaling up/down animals. One of the early tests was to use the Large Shark from RQ3, and scaling it up  to get stats for for Megalodon, and down to get stats for a Mako Shark. The way it worked was that you would type in the stats for the base creature and then adjust the length, and the spreadsheet would use the square-cube law to determine the chance in mass (SIZ) and what the effect would be on STR, CON, DEX, hit points, armor, damage bonus, and bit damage die. 

 

To give an example, let's say we are using a White Shark as the baseline creature. If we assume that they are typically 5m long, as we assume that Megalon was 3 times that length, then Megalon would mass about 27 times as much as a White Shark, which would mean an adjustment of +38 to SIZ, and about +25 to STR and CON. It would also have about 32 more HP, and about +3D6 higher db, and 3 more points of armor. It's bite would probably do an extra die of damage, too.