Is it possible to have aliens in a sci-fi RPG that are neither generic "orks/elves/Earth animals except humanoid IN...

I'd love to see more imaginative aliens, especially in games. Most game designers take the safe route and just pick forms people are familiar with.
There's just this problem of the human body being geometrically and mechanically perfect. There is not many ways in which you could improve it, without creating hidden flaws in some other areas.

Human body sucks, octopi superior

Well, the issue is the requirements for a species to dominate and thrive in its environment. Large brains capable of complex reasoning, in a comparatively small body is one requirement. Humans have one of the largest brain to body ratios in the animal kingdom. This means that relatively little of our brains' mass is devoted to the functions of our body, freeing up resources for developing complex thought. So any space-faring races would need to have large brains in small bodies.

Another feature of ours is our opposeable thumbs. Appendages with which one can manipulate their environment is essential to the invention and use of tools.

Our forward-facing eyes give us a narrower cone of vision, but phenomenal depth perception, which is important for my next point.

Humans can throw things. It seems petty, but one of our biggest advantages over every other animal is that even an untrained human can throw things with more force and accuracy than any other animal. This makes spears, slings, hatchets, and thrown rocks viable weapons for us. That capability to use ranged weapons, coupled with our other advantages, allows us to not only compensate for our other shortcomings, but even overcome the advantages of other large predators.

Other animals possess these features as well, but only humans have all of them. The octopus actually has more than most, and only lacks the ability to communicate complex concepts, which means that each generation has to relearn everything from scratch. If they ever developed a language, they could quickly become as dominant in the oceans as we are on land.

I build aliens using a list of things that are likely to evolve or would otherwise assist in further development, while avoiding things that may inhibit a development to a technic society. The list can be mixed and matched, since not even humans check every box, but it's essentially just a list of general guidelines.

Firstly, your alien needs to evolve on land, or at least on a planet with a solid surface. Gas giants or totally aquatic races are mostly off limits, because developing writing and fire is nearly impossible in such conditions. Your alien race needs access to land for metals and solid materials, as well as fire.

Next your alien race needs fine manipulators. These should be boned or otherwise rigid and jointed limbs. Tentacles lack the lever action needed for fine manipulation and tool making.

Your alien race will most likely have a predatory past. Predators are almost always smarter than their prey, as a predator that can be outsmarted by its meal will die hungry. This is a driver for intelligence, which is obviously needed to make a civilization. This also means your species needs a natural way of hunting and killing, which can be seen in humans to some extent. (forward facing eyes, endurance running body)

Your alien will most likely be omnivorous, capable of eating flora, fauna, and anything inbetween those broad classifications that may exist on their homeworld. A wider diet makes starving due to a bad few years less likely, and allows more advanced brain development. How far your alien is on the predator/scavenger/grazer scale is up to you, but it should be able to eat meat and plant alike.

Your alien needs a communication organ capable of highly complex information transfer. Human vocal speech is highly complex, but necessary to facilitate communication. It can be anything, from vocal speech to color displays to radio transmission or anything else, so long as it can do it biologically and is good enough to develop language.

Shoutout to my boys on kashyyyk, who resembles dogs, bears and apes yet manages to look like their own thing. Good example of animal-like alien design in my opinion.

user, octopi communicate concepts. It's not the lack of a language dropping them. Its the fact that parents die off in the birthing and raising of eggs, preventing languages from being formed in the first place.

If we can fix octopus parental mortality, they could easily be on the right track.

Wasn't proved that they don't communicate with eachother but can learn by example from other octopi very easily?

Depends on your definition of communicate. Color displays are used as threat displays and in mating rituals, which I would count as a basic form of communication. Any more than that I don't know about.

>That seems like two points that contradict each other to me.

The races include Taidaren, which are long, six legged serpentine creatures with four fingered zygodactyly arranged hands used for both walking and manipulating. They primarily see through echolocation using a series of long, thick whiskers along their head, which is covered in protective, bone-like plates that are largely used for emotional display, and a single, underdeveloped eye that can only see detail at close range, and is used mostly just to detect motion and light sources when navigating. The males are born in triplets, and their culture considers said triplets to be a sum of one person, often sharing a name, while females are nearly twice the size, with legs that are unable to support their girth for long, forcing them to historically settle semi-permanently, relying on her mates for food and protection. They communicate via whistle and click noises made using a proboscis shaped beak made of a kind of bone similar to a hardened finger nail or scale, which is used to inject acid into food to break down into a liquid, which is then sucked back up to feed. They evolved as a scavenger species, using intellect and careful maneuvering of a male triplet to siphon food from the kill of another predator, which has shaped their mindset to value cunning and security over pride or showmanship. They naturally prefer to live off the leftovers of other races, and see other races more or less as the apex predator they are mooching off of, while humans see them as good for nothing filthy space hobos.

I do know that octopi are practically asocial loners.
But they also seem to be able to socialise fairly well. Octopi in captivity are know to have humans they like to interact with and ones they don't. A favorite human may be greeted by the octopus climbing up the tank and reaching out to be picked up. Meanwhile I read of one octopus who took a dislike to one person and would spit a jet of water at him whenever he came around, even doing so when the guy had been gone for years and came back looking very different.

All of which I think is pretty interesting for a species that doesn't really engage in social interactions in the wild beyond mating and avoiding each other.

Learning from example is close enough to communcation if they dont have that generational dieoff.

Dromaeosaurids were among the most intelligent dinosaurs. Figuring out how to use tools, and making tools that work with/for their form, instead of against it, would be believable.

Pick your favorite dromaeosaurid dinosaur(en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dromaeosauridae), and try to figure out how something built like a theropod would make tools and modify their environment to suit them.

By communicate concepts i mean something like
>Hey junior, come over here. See those fishes? Those can eat us, avoid them. Those red ones? Nah, they talk a big game but only munch on coral

Not

>Go away, you!

or

>Eyy bby, u want som fuk?

I suppose their medium is a pretty good one for transfering complex information as opposed to making sounds but until they develop the need for more complex communication and evolution selects for that over the old model, i don't see it happening.
There is always that video with the octopus learning how to solve a problem by example. You can feel the little guy's exitement as it tries again and succeeds.
Also, they can lear to recognize symbols and to assign them a meaning. So they can do abstract thinking, too

The Valen, which are semi-aquatic predatory creatures that look like a large, almost building sized shell covered in tubes similar to a naturally grown pipe organ that they use to communicate. Their eyes and mouth hang under the water, with their underside covered in gills and two, long, crane like arms that serve as natural fishing spears, using large claws to quickly pluck food from the water bellow. They have four long tongues that can help snare food, which are used to help operate tools, along with the mouth itself, which is a large flower shaped collection of muscular flaps holding a vast array of barbed teeth, similar in design to the interior of a penguin's throat which uses rings of muscles lined with teeth to shred and chew as its swallows food. They are highly social, historically living in large pods that float across the shallow seas of their homeworld, and have a natural disdain for spaceflight due to their physical size and body structure, but have developed a number of advanced technology to allow them to efficiently perform tasks that would otherwise be too difficult. Their early society was slower to start, but eventually became far more heavily focused on robotics and automation, essentially making them a bit of a late bloomer technology wise. They see conflict in everything, even friendly games, and are always looking for a way to gain the upper hand in the most efficient way possible. Despite their culturally warlike ways, they see actual physical conflict as the most inefficient way to solve a conflict, and avoid it as much as possible due to the risk of destroying what is being fought over in the first place.

Octopi can communicate concepts as advanced as "If you take these plant shells, you can hold them together to create armor" and "if you disguise yourself just so, you can sneak right up on fish".

That's GOOD ENOUGH for me.

As spacefaring creatures? Having to carry around all that extra mass of water makes space travel even more difficult.

Nemo Ramjet came up with a non-humanoid intelligent dinosaur. Pic related

There are labs with biologists dedicated to teaching octopi stuff. If they would have developed a means of communication we would know already.

The same pattern recognition skills that make them succesful animals must also be pretty benefical for a gregarious species, even if they themselves aren't one.

Like human endurance, the same ability that allow us to chuck a spear at an animal and persue them until they die from the wound is also very useful for migrating all over the world.

Or the fact that we are the primates who can swim the best, primarily because of our ability to rotate our arms to chuck spears allow us to make all kinds of weird swimming manouvers. Also we don't sink.

That's because you are unimaginative. It's okay, not everyone can be I suppose.

you don't need that much water.

Not having to worry about bones is so much easier.

The Ceph are more or less octopodes, with ten tentacles, four eyes on stalks located around the lower rim of their body just above the tentacles, and an artificial shell at the top of their head which is used as a CPU by their distributed nervous system to mediate the many sub-brains they have controlling their limbs, eyes, and chromatophore skin which is used to communicate.

They are an artificially evolved race, whose early evolution was drastically manipulated and controlled from the stone-age onward, and would likely never develop fire on their own otherwise.

The Skyl are in the same boat. Five eyed creatures whose head is composed of a large, solid bone-like black beak with a second jaw of teeth resting inside that moves in a spreading motion when chewing, muscular forward facing claws used to manipulate tools, and a number of wings used to glide short distances but incapable of free flight, and geko-like climbing feet on their hind legs. Their early evolution from animal to intelligent sophont was overseen by the same entities that manipulated the Ceph, and eventually were driven to extinction by said entities, although they are being resurrected through cloning tech in the quest.

There are some others too, but both are confirmed to have at least been moderately modified in their evolutionary past by other aliens, including humans.

Get a better imagination senpai. Not all worlds are terrestrial, and not all terrestrial worlds have Earthlike gravity.

Believe me, i think octopi are awesome.
But those concepts aren't abstract enough, at least not to make a sudden jump in capabilities in a few generations as some anons here are suggesting.
I think they are on the right track, tho'
The problem here is natural selection.
Do you think that if humans were as strong as a gorilla or if we had any other kind of natural weapon our ability to make tools would have been the same? Or even close?
Nature is a harsh mistress, if you don't need it or it doesn't give you an advantage over your peers, it goes away.
What kind of advantage a language confers to animals that aren't gregarious or need to be smarter than they are?
We are intelligent motherfuckers who can throw sharp shit because without that we SUCK in every aspect. Octopi are amazing killing machines that can crush many of their neighbors into pieces already.
Outside of direct human interventon you aren't going to see octopi change much in less than a few thousand of years. And even then, human intervention would only accelerate said development to centuries or decades, if they are lucky.

And what do you think the odds are of life evolving on those other worlds, because I'd say they're pretty unlikely for a host of reasons.

>pretty unlikely
So? Any sort of life evolving is pretty unlikely in the first place.

user, I'm not saying it's a few generation thing if we fix octopi parenting.

Just that they would ACTUALLY HAVE A CHANCE if we fixed it.

As it stands, the male has no reason to stick with the female, and the female starves herself guarding her eggs from the infinity of fish out there who love eating octopus eggs.

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Oh, we are on the same page then.
My mistake.

But even given life can only be made out of DNA on earthlike worlds, why would intelligent life share our shape? You are kinda ignoring the fairly plausible aliens posted in the thread.

The other two would include Ralighans, stone age level development with ten limbs arranged like the spokes of two wheels on the front and back of their bodies, so they spin sideways to move. Their hands are arranged almost like two human palms stitched together like a claw, with fingers that clamp together used to climb. They communicate by using their limbs to drum on a series of inflated air sacs, manipulating the thickness of the membrane and the air pressure to adjust the note, and using tempo and pattern for their language. While they use a native hollow tree for long range communication like smoke signals, they only have basic tools made of bone, stone, and other easy to access resources, using atlatls and slings to hunt by spinning themselves and hurling the object by more or less just letting it go mid-spin.

The other are called the Phantoms, which are winged, roughly humanoid creatures that use their long, muscular arms to walk and as wings, while their short legs hang under them as arms and manipulators. They have a highly complex mouth of mandibles used to make an incredibly wide range of sounds, with four eyes clustered in the front. They are possibly early bronze age, with their development being accelerated due to them hosting a Queen of a space faring hive species hiding on their planet.

Both species plus humans have been genetically altered in the distant past by said hive species to varying degrees.

But guys

Guys

Guys

But guys

Hold up

Guys

Guys
convergent evolution

I'm not ignoring them, if you scroll back my original argument is that they seem likely to be oddballs, and upright things with bones and hands and heads are going to be the most common type of sophont. (because it's easier to get the kind of positive feedback loop of evolutionary pressure needed to develop a highly intelligent tool user if you have the right kind of shape)

That's also a big deal. Species are shaped by their environment, and you'll likely see a lot of similarities in shapes, even if the chemistry and internal structures are different.

QuestDrone?

yes and gurps aliens generator fit the bill

Maybe.

Man this makes me want to play a retro sci-fi game now. That and having to try to absorb's Eclipse Phase super fucking dense concepts and failing.

There are two Traveller races that fit that trope, and one of them only barely. Both, as well as the Dolphins, are acknowledged to be either modern or ancient uplifts.

The rest are actually aliens. The really bad Mongoose art for the Aslan aside, their resemblance to Terran forms is coincidence. The Mongoose Aslan are, well, Mongoose. If you need that explained you haven't been paying attention.

>so bizzare, otherworldly and well, alien that they are not available as player characters.
"Too alien to play" can also be shorthand for allowing the Ref to make shit up as he goes along.

Completely inscrutable means they are a waste of paper, because they become unplayable by *anyone*.

buddy, even cuttlefish can use rudimentary tools

and those guys would look cool as hell alien-ed up

So this whole thread has turned into

Let's make fun of this idiot and prove him wrong

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I'm not an idiot just because I don't agree with you, and nobody has or can prove me wrong. (Nor can I prove I'm right.) Short of actually documenting alien life on a significant number of planets, this is all 98% speculation and ass-pulls.

I just dislike the tendency to try to make aliens weird for weirdness sake, without thinking about how they would ever get to be shaped that way from the unicellular stage. I understand the dislike for Star Trek aliens, what with the planet-of-the-hats and the cheap forehead ridges, but Squiddly McTentacleAlien is just as much a goofy cliche in the other direction.

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So you're just boring. Gotcha

Heh. Sure, if you like.
I prefer a range of aliens from human-like to WTF is that?, but I figure really weird stuff is going to be uncommon due to various constraints.

Is this image from something? I am interested in the story behind it.

It's only half the picture, and it's missing the funny part, but it's not particularly sophisticated. I don't know of any story behind it.

this

except when you want absolute seriousness and biological consistency

michaeldashow.com/zoom/zoom_sockpuppet.html

cheers

Weird, for years now I thought that picture was by Ursula Vernon

Elder Thing a cute! Cute!

Hey now, diss all the other races all you want, but don't talk shit about Hivers.

to start life as we know it you just need liquid water , energy , carbon, hydrogenium , and that stuff aminoacids (not sure if spelled right) are made out of

having liquid water is already an indicator that the planet is somehow protected from the universe around it.
gravity or athmosphere does not really matter if the other factors are covered.

now the tricky part is reconstructing the evolution of a species that adapts tool-use and society to the point of reaching human-level intelligence.

some things may become very hard to achieve in a f.e. sub-marine society, but someone may work out ways to bypass the problem with smelting metals underwater by finding alternatives or workarounds.

the moment something is possible in theory , as a GM you can create believable yet creative things

Actually they're all a cut above the usual stuff.

Like the Vargr may seem familiar, but they're also pretty uncanny in their own right, what with the peculiarities of how Vargr Charisma affects their behavior.

>smelting metals underwater

Yeah, physics called, and he says you'll melt your face off.

Wasn't there a quotation from "At the Mountains of Maddness" to the effect that the protagonist realised that the Elder Things were essentially the same as humans?
Therefore, pic related

Wayne barlowe's extraterrestrials has a lot of sketches and explanations of aliens from a wide range of scifi. Most of them are pretty interesting.

Its possible op. Just stop being a faggot and accept that creative processes are inherently derivative. Its a benefit rather than a limitation. Maybe tell your players to stop being faggots too.

They'd have to become somewhat amphibious I suppose in order to do that. At least find a way to get out of the water long enough to do these tasks

>The likelihood of an underwater booger creature evolving into an intelligent tool-user seems terribly remote to me.

Dolphins are so intelligent they're the only other species that can be considered evil. You never want to be in the water with a pod of wild dolphins around you. They're like Berserk side characters with how much rape, murder, murder-rape, and child abuse they do

>tool user

Call me when they build a jeep to go on beach excursions. Until then the chances they'll get to the stars on their own look pretty slim.

Do you just believe whatever the internet tells you? 'Cause I have some bad news.

Do you want to see my diploma? I could take a picture of it

I didn't spend 6 years of college and mountains of debt just to make shit up online. Dolphins are fucking evil, m8

We didn't have much better than sharpened rocks for 100,000+ years

Not until we were uplifted by extraterrestrials

And dolphins have been around far longer than us and don't even have that.
Face it, dolphins are our lazy stoner cousins who sit on the couch and refuse to get a job. They're NEVER going to be astronauts.

Most humans aren't going to be either. Less now than before, and soon enough none. Sure as fuck not anyone here. Space is fucked and expensive.

>most humans

>moving the goalposts

They're at the point just before concepts of morality. Creative and aware enough to engage in all kinds of debased activities just to see how it feels, and without any moral structure to care if it may be "evil" or not.

They're like children that have just discovered how to kill ants with a magnifying glass. Too fascinated by the revelation to stop and think it may be monstrous.

Shut up scully, you're not going to be an astronaut either.

Not having hands is a really shit deal. Watch, just give them robot arms and they'll be assembling AKs in 100 years

Just read some Banks, most of his aliens are alien as shit

i always imagined that aliens with space-faring technology would have become cyborgs for the most part

They'd make Lances as a weapon/increase their reach.

With their claws, they can easily skin prey, so I can't see why they wouldn't create armor from hides. The only step they'd skip are the stone knives.

Nemo Ramjet's idea of intelligent dromaeosaurs use spears they carry and aim with their mouths since their wrists can't rotate like a primates can

On a planet with high enaugh air pressure you could swim in the air while still being perfectly able to make fire and thus devolop metallurgy.

The only idea I find laughable is underwater species developing beyond hunter gatherer like because you need metallurgy which is impossible under water. Please don't bring in fantasy crap like living tech and such because thats pure fantasy.

There is nothing speaking against tree climbing octupus-things on the other hand. Just because our octupuses live underwater that doesn't mean it has to be the norm.

Also you are an unimaginative pleb.

Interesting, I would think that they'd hold them to their side like a Lance DESU...

They wouldn't attack from range as their natural weapons give them an edge in melee... Or am I missing Something?

Range gives you an edge against everything though, and you don't have to risk yourself in the process

Sea-weed could be used to make structures and what-not, as well as Masonry shelters...

But your Metallurgy point is legit.

Friend even told me recently about how a giant octopus escaped captivity only to be found outside in a tree covered in feathers after eating a bird and its eggs

It would, but look at the Vertebrae of the neck... Dinosaurs and birds have a limited throw with their mouths/beaks for their size.

Besides, a ground-based Corvid would be more likely to be an ambush predator... Feathers easily evolving colours to match the environment.

Other Tools would be ropes/ties. Two run around a creatures legs to trip them, then the pack could jump in and attack.

Spears give enough Range + Accuracy for an ambush predator...

jesus christ, how horrifying

Anyways, here's a tree-dwelling octopode

that looks so plausible, why doesn't it exist?

On some world you'll never see, it does

Looks to me like a mutated woodlouse with moss/leaves growing on it to me.

A culture whose most basic language is based on signaling Fuck off or fuck me. So I guess everything would be seen as aspects of the 2?

>this is the worst trope on the fucking planet

no u

Eh, I could imagine certain patterns and colour flashes being a decent basis for a language, no different than how we use speech (or sign language, I guess). Being blind becomes the equivalent to being deaf, and the colorblind are the equivalent of.. the bad of hearing?

>A favorite human may be greeted by the octopus climbing up the tank and reaching out to be picked up.

>Octopus wants upsies!

C-cute

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And those with skin disorders who can't change their colors would be mutes and likely social outcasts