Random Alien Tables: A Test

Posted: 2024-07-29
Word Count: 2756
Tags: rpg setting space

Table of Contents

Introduction

When evaluating Confederation Space so far, one notable gap was sapient alien species. Sure, I had the four aliens from Nomad – Insectoids, Gekkonids, Greys, and Reptilians – and my concept for Confederation Space was heavily human-dominated (despite Earth being in another octant). But I wanted more.

One of the things I admired about Babylon 5 was that instead of an alien a week they started with about 20 alien species in the background, and brought them to the foreground whenever necessary. Granted, their aliens were actors in makeup or masks, but hey, it’s a TV series. In an RPG we can go weirder.

So I started looking through my game PDF archives looking for random alien generators and found three. I decided to take each for a spin.

Species 1: Flynn’s Guide to Alien Creation

(Available here.)

Flynn’s Guide to Alien Creation is specifically for the Cepheus (Traveller) system, but I figured, hey, close enough, right?

The method seems to be to start with a homeworld generated using Cepheus, then roll on a (large?) number of charts to produce a full sapient alien species. During the process, the tables generate Alien Traits with mechanical consequences, in addition to additional facts for color.

So, I made up a planet, using some “average” assumptions, then started in on Flynn’s charts. Below are the results.

Trial

World Characteristics

Alien Characteristics

Alien Traits:

Writeup

(Species 1) dwells in the frozen mountains of (Planet 1). Their four limbs have adapted into handlike manipulators to climb up and down the high peaks. If placed on a flat plain they could drag themselves along no more than a couple of meters a round, but they climb up and down the mountains with barely an accident. They are a tall (or long) and thin people who mature quickly and age slowly.

Evaluation

The text said I could give the species two legs by GM fiat, but I declined just to see what would happen. So that’s on me.

After spending the better part of an hour rolling dice – maybe it wa simple inexperience – was a creature suitable for one of those “alien of the week” results rather than a likely spacefaring species. With all those tables, none gave me a hint as to the culture of these creatures, nor how they would get into space. Even with all the “average” results I ended up with niche mountain-dwellers.

Perhaps I should give this one a few more spins, maybe leaving out the Cepheus-specific bits and hope for better results, but all that dice-rolling was a bit offputting.

Species 2: Dead Names

(Available here.)

The subtitle of Sine Nomine’s Dead Names is “Lost Races and Forgotten Ruins”. The expectation, therefore, is that the alien species generated are dead or dying species, doomed by some flaw in their culture. Stars Without Number, the system for which Dead Names was written, has its own human-dominated cosmos.

Still, Sine Nomine puts out good stuff, so I thought I’d give it a whirl.

Trial

Madness, Type of Lost

Appearance

Name, History, Cultural Traits

Writeup

Ugh. I can’t even.

Evaluation

No, seriously, the results are just too random. They contradict each other, despite some initial synchronicity. How can a species have “zealous missionaries” and a policy of killing all strangers? Why do winged creatures live in subterranean tunnels? I should have rerolled some of those results, or just picked, but I let them stand just to demonstrate what a firehose of unhelpful results this generator gave me.

Maybe if I’d rolled less and used what I rolled as a springboard, I might have gotten something usable. But I plugged and chugged like I did Flynn’s, and look where I got.

It certainly lives up to its purpose: dead and dying alien species doomed by their own madness. As a general alien generator, though, it falls short.

Species 3: “Alien Starting Conditions”

(From Pyramid #3/35, Sept. 2011, also available here.)

I vaguely remembered an alien generator from Pyramid magazine that generated a bunch of aliens quickly, one of which, the Onyx Giants, I’ve been longing to put into a game. (Admittedly they are also more alien-of-the-week than a reliable background species.)

Memory plays tricks, however, and when I dug up the article I was less than enthused: only three parameters, each with only six possibilities. Also the names I came up with (listed below) must have come from a Web-based name generator to which I’ve lost the link. Still, at least it was fast, so I’ll give it two tries.

(I’m going to quote the results in full, since every possibility has its own paragraph. Hopefully this still puts me within Fair Use …)

Trial #1: Random Roll

Homeworld Characteristic: Erratic Temperature

Some planets just don’t know what to be. Whether it’s a highly ecliptic orbit, a very slow revolution time, or some other reason, inhabitants of these worlds need to be able to handle a range of temperatures, often switching between them fairly quickly. In other words, they are extremophiles. High or low, they can handle them both. In fact, they are often uncomfortable in the middle. If races like this mix with other races at all, they generally do it from inside an environment suit of some kind. However, despite this, these races are generally able to converse and relate to many other races, able to handle extremes of personality as well as extremes of temperature.

Species Adaptation: Subordinate Biome

Just because a homeworld is defined as (say) fluidic or high radiation, doesn’t mean that there aren’t areas within the world that differ from the norm. A “waterworld” could have islands, a radioactive world low radiation zones, etc. Races that have evolved to inhabit the subordinate biome live on these fringes. They are different from the vast majority of beings on their planet, and used to it. Any race that makes it to space on a non-dominant biome is a race that has proven at least once they can react to the world around them; they are an adaptive species. Adaptive species are the scroungers of the universe; they can find anything anyone needs, whatever the rarity … but always for a price. Some simply know the value of their product and seek to recoup their expenses; some go for a healthy profit.

First Spaceflight: Happenstance

The universe can be an odd place, full of strange events and coincidences. Every once in a while, chance contrives to send some piece of technology somewhere it was never intended to go. This technology can be anything from a data-storage device to a waste-disposal unit to a full spaceship. Whatever the technology, if it lands on a planet, the species there are quick to turn it to their own ends. Fortune like that tends to make a species optimistic in the extreme. After all, chance favored them once, so why would it not continue to do so? These species are well-known for phrases like “it will turn out all right” and “don’t worry about it.” They remain positive even if things are at their blackest, which at least makes them encouraging travel partners.

Writeup 1

Deep within a trench that mitigated the extremes of their homeworld, (Species 3A) received a fortuitous gift of a wrecked spaceship. Puzzling over this artifact for centuries, they eventually learned how to leave their world and its eccentric orbit behind … but were astonished at how intolerant of temperatures the rest of the galaxy is. Thus they found themselves doing the muckiest job in temperatures too extreme for the rest of the galaxy. Still they remain hopeful that their fortunes will change.

Trial 2: A Combination I Haven’t Seen

Homeworld Characteristic: Wispy Atmosphere

Homeworlds with wispy atmospheres don’t have much between themselves and the vacuum of space. Their planets are often more barren and rocky [than] Earth-like planets. The natives feel quite at home both there and in space. They are vacuumphilic; great lovers of vacuum and vacuum-like environments. Vacuumphilic races are rovers of space; they can often be found in space stations and other non-planet-based installations. Naturally distrustful of planet-bound races, they are accepting of people who adopt their style of living.

Species Adaptation: Noncorporeal

These beings do not have solid forms, as such. Rather, they are comprised of energy, whether that is psychic, electrical, or some other form. They generally do not affect the world around them in the same way as their solid counterparts; while they can do many of the same things other races can do, they are so different in their methods as to be totally incomprehensible to the galactic community at large. For their part, the noncorporeal races do not understand many of the actions of the intergalactic community, as they are totally non- materialistic. They do not draw any power or satisfaction from having most material things, and will generally stay aloof from most conflicts involving other races. The exception comes when the struggle is too great for any being to ignore, or when something truly important is at stake.

First Spaceflight: Uplifted

Some races take an interest in those less advanced then themselves. Whether for altruistic purposes or to advance their own goals, they help races' technology to reach the point where they can achieve spaceflight, often much faster than the uplifted race could have otherwise. These uplifted races are often at a lower TL overall compared to other races (there’s no reason they couldn’t be TL6!) and could be covetous of other races’ technology. They will often go to great lengths to gain as much knowledge as possible about the other races and what their technology can do; their own technology will quickly become a hodgepodge of TLs from other races; anywhere from a little below their own to two or three levels above.

Writeup 2

Human explorers found the psychic entities known as (Species 3B) on (Planet 3B), a barren rock with almost no atmosphere. After the natives made psychic contact with the surprised explorers, members of the two species conceived of a partnership: the humans would take (Species 3B) to the stars, and humanity would get their telepathic services. After the explorers ensured that (Species 3B) got their required sustenance – a mix of light frequencies and particle radiation characteristic of their home star – representatives of (Species 3B) became fixtures at Atalais stations. One can see them clanking around in their containment suits, greeting surprised visitors with a telepathic “hello” … and subtly probing visitors for signs of ill intent.

Evaluation

Well, it’s certainly fast: throw one d6 three times (or 3d6 with different colors). But with only 216 combinations, it’s hard to use this one as more than a springboard for your own imagination. That’s fine if all you need is a small bit of grit around which your pearl of an idea can grow. If your imagination is completely depleted, though, you’ll need something else.

Conclusions

Flynn’s gave me a lot of detail, but a lot of it was irrelevant to a Nomad game. I had to make up the starting conditions off the top of my head, and I ended up with a boring planet. That may be why I ended up with a boring alien species. Perhaps I should have rolled up a Cepheus planet first?

Dead Names … where do I start? Too much detail, too many contradictions. I probably should have stopped halfway through. It’s a supplement for defining dead or dying alien species, perhaps to explain why humans dominate Stars Without Number space, and I guess it does that well. (Evangelizing yet xenophobic … yikes.) As far as living alien species that aren’t ludicrous … well, not so much.

As fondly as I remembered “Alien Starting Conditions”, I was surprised to revisit it and discover both how lightweight (in the bad sense) and how wordy it was. As you can see in the Appendix I got one really good idea from it, a few OK ones, some really tired ones, and two useless ones.

In retrospect maybe I should have rolled up some Xenofauna from the back of Nomad and “evolved” them, or maybe created a Synthoid using Synthoids and reskinned it. Both would have been at least Nomad-compatible.

Appendix: “Alien Starting Conditions” First Attempts

This is from a document I wrote over a decade ago. I’ve done a little reformatting, but the text is pretty much as I wrote it back then.

(Obviously I had a much better name generator back then than I do now.)

Onyx Titans

☆☆☆

High Radiation, Inorganic, Lone Inventor

To survive the radiation of their planet, the Onyx Titans “evolved” into immortal inorganic bodies fueled by radiation with a heavily shielded quasi-organic brain. (Mollusk → shell → articulated body → more complex brain → assembly without mollusk secretion) Their staid culture altered forever when a “cracked” inventor created gravity nullifiers and jump drives.

Astral Dragons

☆☆

Erratic Temperature, Noncorporeal, World Effort

Unfettered by matter, the Astral Dragons’s astral bodies range across the baking or freezing surface. Alarmed by repeated human “invasions”, the entire population pooled its psychic power to open interstellar gates and send chosen emissaries to various galactic powers. (Even psionics obeys the speed of light, and immaterial beings can’t generate a standard Jump field.)

Heptapods

☆☆

Fluidic, Opposable Digit, Happenstance

The inquisitive and technologically inclined Heptapods stayed relatively primitive on a liquid world where little burns … until they reverse-engineered a crashed starship and left their world, if not its water, behind.

Neodroids

☆☆

Extreme Resources, Inorganic, World Power

With dwindling food supplies, the organic System Creators built metal soldiers and servants to supplement their declining population. The nation that pioneered the Neodroids quickly conquered the others, then its makers, then planets and stars in their sector. Survivors of the Neodroid apocalypse, organic or not, remain on the home-world to sabotage the Neodroid war machine.

Grims a.k.a. “Squats”

☆

Extreme Gravity, Subordinate Biome, Recovered Knowledge

Humans evolved or engineered to survive crushing gravity clung to oases in their new arid home. The Grims descended into barbarism then rediscovered the secrets of space flight to become the galaxy’s pre-eminent engineers, mercenaries, and salvage experts.

Thermal Dancers

☆

Erratic Temperature, Opposable Digit, Uplifted

The highly eccentric orbit of the Thermal Dancers’ home-world changes the quick-witted Thermal Dancers into slow and dull scavengers during the long winter. Creatures who remain conscious but consume far less resources proved useful to the galactic community, so a little genetic tinkering turned them into the ideal STL crew.

Star Watchers Of The Mirror Universe

∅

Extreme Gravity, Superior Vision, World Effort

Beings from a low-gravity world who see across the EM spectrum become natural astronomers and space travellers.

Omnibugs

∅

Wispy Atmosphere, Hive Mind, World Effort

The Omnibugs survived their nearly airless world through cooperation, first as isolated communities and now as a worlds-spanning single mind.