Random Alien Tables 3: Dragon and Beyond

Posted: 2025-02-01
Word Count: 1856
Tags: cepheus ftl-nomad rpg

Table of Contents

To create alien species for a proposed ongoing science fiction RPG I tried three alien generators then “uplifted” randomly generated alien animals.

Honestly I was relatively content with the “Uplift” method of random alien generation. However, recently someone referred me to a Dragon magazine article from 1981. I thought I’d try it out for comparison, then conclude this accidental series with some thoughts on procedurally generated alien species in tabletop RPGs.

Species 4, “Make Your Own Aliens”, Dragon 51 (1981)

Roger E. Moore begins “Make Your Own Aliens” as follows:

One of the most frequently heard criticisms of the Traveller gaming system is that there is little provision for including aliens in the Imperial universe, particularly as player characters.

(From what I can tell, little has changed four decades later.)

Moore outlines criteria for playable alien species: compatible with human environments, on average no more or less capable than humans (that elusive “game balance”), possessed of manipulator limbs and locomotion on land, large enough to support a human-sized brain, and so on. Based on these criteria, he then offers about four pages of percentile tables.

Trial

  1. Primary Environment: Land Surface

  2. Symmetry: Bilateral

  3. Brain: One

  4. Body Arrangement:

    1. Head: Brain in head
    2. Tail: No tail
    3. Feet: Two feet
    4. Arms: Two arms
  5. Extremities:

    1. Digits: 3
    2. Feet: Plantigrade (human-like)
  6. Dietary Class: Hunter (omnivore)

    • Speed: Double
  7. Personality: (from Hunter)

    • Society communal
    • Initiative: high
    • Intraspecies: cooperative
    • Interspecies: aggressive
  8. Weight: 50 kg ± 12

  9. Natural Weaponry: No

  10. Natural Armor: No

  11. Body Covering: Hairless skin or hide

  12. Internal Temperature: Warm-blooded

  13. Reproduction:

    • Production of Young: Other (cloning, budding, etc.)
    • Sexes: Two
  14. Senses:

    • Primary: Auditory
    • Visual: Normal (human)
    • Auditory: Normal (human) Low-frequency bias
    • Olfactory: Normal (human)
    • Tactile: Cold Tolerant, Heightened sensitivity
  15. Location of sensory organs: Head

  16. Special Abilities: None

  17. Traveller Characteristics: (from Weight)

    Str Dex End Int Edu Soc
    2d6 2d6 2d6 2d6 2d6 2d6

Writeup

(Species 4) appear approximately human, with three fingers instead of six and a small, lithe build. Despite their homeworld’s chilly climate it’s volcanically and seismically active, so they are especially sensitive to subsonic sounds that indicate earthquakes, eruptions, and storms. Their ships are insulated against subsonic sounds; the sounds of human ships make them nervous.

Despite the apparent existence of two genders, modern (Species 4) reproduce through cloning. One gender acts exclusively as the hunter/warrior caste, the other as the apparent noble/scholar caste. (Most labor is automated.) It’s unknown how many bloodlines exist, or why they took such a drastic step.

Evaluation

Like Flynn’s, these tables tend to return “normal” results. The Reproduction result was a surprise – 00 on percentile dice – but most other results were 50% likely or higher. At least the tables were shorter; the whole process took 15-20 minutes, including typing up the results.

Aliens in Tabletop Role-Playing Games

The treatment of aliens in tabletop role-playing games could be described as ad hoc and haphazard. In Traveller/Cepheus, for example, an alien character generates their characteristics by throwing different dice (1D6+n, 2D6±n, 3D6, etc.), gains special abilities and inabilities, and in some cases has special or restricted career paths. Any attempt to “balance” alien characters against humans is, at best, hidden.

Games like GURPS, at least, feature point-buy systems so that, in theory at least, preserve “game balance”. Such systems, however, are not perfect. GURPS, especially, attaches concrete rules to “disadvantages” (unlike, say HERO), but the GM must take responsibility to enforcing those rules … or simply disallowing a blind and deaf telepath with spatial awareness.

For this reason, I’ve formulated my own rules for using aliens in TTRPGs. (The same rules apply for fantasy “races”, and then some.) There’s probably a longer article here, but I’ll try to be brief.

My Rules For Using Aliens

Rule #1: DON’T

Generally RPGs use humans as the default. Even fantasy RPGs define elves, dwarves, and the like in terms of humans. Unlike fantasy, general science fiction games have no standard alien species, ufology notwithstanding. Inventing plausible alien species and cultures from scratch is hard.

Therefore, if there’s no compelling reason not to use humans, just use humans.

Space games make this rule hard to justify. Fortunately fiction has given us several ways to justify humanity on far planets:

There’s a long tradition in Star Trek (TOS) and Doctor Who of populating far planets with beings indistinguishable from humans. (ST:TNG later gave them rubber foreheads.) So just do that.

Rule #2: Make Aliens Rare and Memorable

Many classic science fiction series like Foundation and Dune have no intelligent life forms not ultimately derived from Earth humans. That may seem restrictive or no fun, so the next best thing is to create only a few intelligent alien species, carefully tailored to the setting. Typical tropes include:

By creating these species carefully and revealing them gradually, a Referee can retain the mystery and otherness that one expects from beings evolved under another star.

Rule #3: Distinguish Playable From Non-Playable

The Star Wars franchise (and TTRPGs) has humans and non-humans rubbing elbows in cantinas and starports everywhere. A Referee who prefers this approach but doesn’t have system support has a problem.

Even if a sector or galaxy includes extraterrenes (i.e. non-human aliens), it doesn’t mean that a player can play whatever they like. The sanest approach would be to limit player characters to humans, or failing that to a few well-developed species that are mechanically close to human despite their outward appearance. Many players want their characters to look “cool”, regardless of alien powers. Small bonuses or penalties may be sufficient.

Classes of RPG Alien

In my planned settings (1) (2) for Stellagama Games’ Faster Than Light: Nomad I separate alien species into four classes.

  1. Human: The default in Nomad as in other games, players are free to make any character according to the rules for humans. Whether the character comes from Earth, a former Earth colony, or some far planet where human-like beings evolved in parallel doesn’t matter from a rules perspective.

  2. Playable Alien: Unlike Traveller and Cepheus, Nomad has clear rules for aliens: an alien template replaces the new character’s starting Talent and one skill point. Notionally, the template’s abilities justify the loss.

  3. Semi-Playable Alien: This category includes characters like robots and Synthoids which may be more (or less) capable than a human, as well as certain aliens (like the enemy Draconians) who would be hard to justify as player characters. “Humanoids”, variant (non-Synthoid) human species created by players, technically fall here, but in practice the Referee would work to fit them into the prior categories.

  4. Unplayable Alien: This category includes aliens, transhumans, and others who are flatly not allowed as player characters. They may have abilities or inabilities beyond those of humans or playable aliens. They may require environments incompatible with human life. Some come from powerful ancient civilizations, hive minds with no “individuals” as such, or other cultures incomprehensible to humans despite being physically comparable to humans. In my worlds this category covers the majority of alien species but a small minority within human space, by definition.

Alien Generator Wishlist

Having tinkered with a few alien generators now, I have a few vague ideas on how to make them more useful.

Generation By Differences

Rather than generate a creature’s whole biology from scratch, it might be quicker to derive how it differs from the baseline human standard. Most of these generators take humanity as the “average”, anyway.

Alien Culture Generator

Perhaps this is a big ask, but I’d like to see these random generators help with the alien’s psychology, culture, and political structure. Arguably beings with general intelligence / sapience / whatever you want to call it have the same mental flexibility as humans, with the same diversity of psychology, culture, and politics. Certainly biological determinism isn’t a good look in the 21st century.

However the fallback position, in most cases, is either a very broad trope, e.g. Warrior Race, or a thin and sometimes insulting analogue of an existing human culture. Beings from another star will have a different mindset and history from us, and injecting a little randomness avoids the overly optimistic or pessimistic assumptions that turn alien tropes into alien cliches.

Multiple Starting Points

It would be nice if these generators had multiple starting points for those Referees that already have a vague idea of what they want. Starting points may include:

Levels of Detail

Flynn’s Guide takes Referees through a long process to detail an alien’s whole biology. The Pyramid article provides only vague (and ultimately repetitive) hints of the alien’s biology, psychology, habitat, etc. The Dragon article starts with appearance and Traveller characteristics but only touches on ecological niche and “personality”.

Ideally the random generator would start at a high level and eventually drill down to details. Combined with Multiple Starting Points this means the Referee can start with a Cultural Concept but leave the body form unspecified, or vice-versa.

Final Thoughts

Random generators should primarily spark creativity, and then aid the Referee in translating the idea into game mechanics. Flynn’s and the Dragon article above required a lot of dice rolls for very little inspiration. The Pyramid article required few dice rolls, but with only 216 combinations its ability to inspire quickly wears thin. Dead Names had a promising start, but quickly generated too much noise to sort through.

Of the approaches I tried, uplifting non-sapient creatures generated from the target system seemed to work best, but four of six generated creatures ended up on the cutting room floor, and the two I picked seem stereotyped by their abilities.

Obviously no perfect random generator will ever exist, particularly in the tabletop world. I just wish the ones that did exist would optimize for efficiency and inspiration rather than biological completeness.