Belgath Posted October 22, 2016 Share Posted October 22, 2016 (edited) With M-space out. Thought thought it would be fun to roll up some alien races from Alien section. Add whatever other info you think necessary to really give them depth. Some of the questions I ask myself so they don't feel flat or one-dimensional are? Technology lvl?Home planet gravity and conditions.Unique inventions?What are they look like?Their size compared humans?Motivations?Society norms?Most common societal structures?Most common habits?Family matriarchal /patriarchal /monogamous /do they raise there children?Courtship /mate for life /Mate and run /mate and get eaten / mate and die?how is the next-generation raised?Nutritional requirements?Habitable temperature range?Their view on other alien races?Natural instincts?Natural talents?Learned behaviors?Religious believes?what do they breathe?sleep cycles?Body support structure?Unique organs? Biological senses?Biological defense?Biological weaknesses?Biological cycles?Most offensive actions ?What is considered honorable and dishonorable?Most respectful actions?What crimes do they find most heinous ?Lifespan?Life cycles?There swearwords?How do they communicate?How aggressive or passive?Preferred type of government? And if there's more questions that would add interesting flavor when creating a alien race list those as well. Edited October 22, 2016 by Belgath 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
g33k Posted October 22, 2016 Share Posted October 22, 2016 A lot of embedded Terran- / humano- centric assumptions here (some of which may well be embedded in M-Space, which I haven't read (though it's on my "to get" list). Off the top of my head... Tech Level -- What if this varies widely from humans' tech (e.g. their chem/biochem/life-science is FAR ahead, their physics is far behind, and their geotech is just VERY oddly-different)? Family and Courtship -- What if they have 3 or more biological sexes? What if one of their genders is non-sentient? What if they have alternation of generations? Etc ... I mean, you have good issues raised, but not ones likely to lead to really-alien aliens (imho)... 2 Quote C'es ne pas un .sig Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Belgath Posted October 22, 2016 Author Share Posted October 22, 2016 (edited) Probably should have worded the question better. As I was holding no assumption or boundary of posabilys with each of the questions. To me for example the question you added under Family and Courtship and Tech, fit perfectly there. So as people look at the question, as g33k stated don't let questions holed you to humano- centric assumptions. Edited October 22, 2016 by Belgath Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
clarence Posted October 22, 2016 Share Posted October 22, 2016 Lots of good questions there Belgath. And good reflections g33k. Designing aliens can be tricky. To come up with interesting results, you need to shortcircuit your creativity a bit. Ask questions, apply some randomness, and accepting apparent contradictions is a good start. I think the system in M-SPACE provides a backbone to avoid too human-centric results, but it's not a replacement for creativity. What I would add to the questions in the first post, is one or several major conflicts. Just like humanity seems to struggle with similar issues throughout its history, other (intelligent) species will probably do the same. It's also a good way to make a species less homogenous and to include some scenario hooks at its core. 1 Quote FrostByte Books M–SPACE d100 Roleplaying in the Far Future Odd Soot Science Fiction Mystery in the 1920s Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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