You like space opera

So much classic space opera is humans-only. Stuff like Foundation never even saw the need to explain why aliens weren't around.

Or you could go Culture, where all the alien races have adopted humanoidish forms for reasons

Or you could do a Revelation Space and have the lack of extant aliens be a major plot point

Time for some hard sci-fi like the Grand Tour stuff minus the artefact.

>The Expanse.
>Dark matter.
>Firefly.
>Outland.
..and the list goes on.. but I'm lazy, you can do your research yourself

>Or you could go Culture, where all the alien races have adopted humanoidish forms for reasons

I quite like that the Culture is pan-humanoid; there's some variations, but most seem to follow a fairly standard template in terms of number of limbs and so on.

There's still lots of non-humanoid aliens though. Like, a lot of them.

Well, why you don't like aliens in the first place?

Make a Space Opera.
Without Aliens.

Play up the we're alone in the Universe angle more.

Purge them.

Transhumanism

Foundation explicitly did explain why aliens weren't around.
/spoiler Daneel killed them all with his mind

Brands of humanity so divergent that they may as well be aliens, perhaps? Kinda like how Eclipse Phase treats transhumans vs. jovians? Or like how Vega Strike has stuff like the Diaspora, slow-boat colonists who awoke to find the galaxy very different; or the mechanists, who decided that unrestricted human augmentation was super dope?

But Weber is trash, user

Couldn't you just set a space opera in our solar system during the early days of space colonization?

Space opera... without aliens?
Fast forward to the year 4000 or something, where there are so many settlements around the galaxy that each planet is like an independent entity, only loosely connected to others through alliances and whatnot.

>Brands of humanity so divergent that they may as well be aliens, perhaps?
I like this idea. The climates of various planets are so different, humans started adapting in very weird ways through all kinds of mutations. Or perhaps some of those mutations were intentional to make living on the planet easier. You know, like "you could wear a gasmask all the time, or take this injection which replaces your nose and mouth with a gigantic anteater snout that filters the toxic fumes on the planet".

I hate aliens so goddamn much and everyone gives me incredibly odd looks whenever I say that.

Aliens are the worst. So whenever I DM a space-based game and my players demand non-human alternatives, I just throw in fantasy races because they're slightly less repulsive.

Legend of the Galactic Heroes

mah nigga.

Nothing. Space opera without aliens is impossible.

Get some help for your shit taste.

Sounds boring as hell.

>I hate aliens so goddamn much and everyone gives me incredibly odd looks whenever I say that.
Maybe because it's an outright peculiar thing to hate.
Why don't you like them, familias?

Going from the show (haven't read the books) it really wouldn't make much difference if the protomolecule-thingy was a human bio-weapon as opposed to whatever it's actually supposed to be.
Unless you're making the point that The Expanse isn't space opera, which I'd more or less agree with

Make it the reality humans will have to live with in 3000 AD.
>Haven't found any intelligent life for hundreds of years
>Even though almost entire galaxy have been examined

>almost entire galaxy examined in less than a thousand years from now

Even with magical FTL tech it would take longer than that. The galaxy is big. Like, bigger than a whole house.

I know das feel.
Unfortunately, the only way to change that, if you're designing or developing the game, is to write the entire design documentation by yourself. It might or might not be easier if you're just Dming.
I'm still convinced the boss or one of the artists is going to try to try to insert catgirls, superheroes, fantasy races or whatever into my setting. Hell, I just want a world where people are recovering and rebuilding after the apocalypse.

The Vorkosigan Saga is also a thing.

>bigger than a whole house
Bullshit

Watch "Legend of the galactic heroes".

Isn't that 40k?

Well he is okay if you read only space battles. His characters are definitely not okay and his dialogues vary from bad to atrocious.

Crest of the Stars if better.

Is the house one story or two stories?

Looks old

So is LOGH. I can't name a good Space Opera anime thats come out in the last decade.

are you telling me Iron Blooded Orphans isn't a space opera?

Looks more like mecha than space opera.

>mecha can't be part of a space opera

ayy

...

1999. Not that old.

That depends what's in the focus. Crest of the Stars and LOGH put space battles, strategy and politics in focus. Sprinkling it with character development. (LOGH more battles and strategy, Crest in many points has limited perspective because main characters are that high in the chain of command)

What is main focus of Orphans?

Child soldiers.

Stuff happens, then they spend 20 episodes getting from Mars to Earth, then some sudden but inevitable betrayals happen followed by main character going full Smashfucker on a Gundam equivalent of a Contemptor Dreadnought. Roll credits.

He said "good", user.

I'm on episode 30 right now.

youtube.com/watch?v=d8X-6D4hOWk

>The galaxy is empty of life
>humans spend millennia working to colonise it
>Terrans turn into /pol/-tier nutbags and start purging anything not from earth
>war were declared

That seems like a fairly simple premise to build on.

>Space opera
Why can't we have more atmospheric space shanty type stuff, what genre even is that?
youtube.com/watch?v=3WDRxtd-2dQ

>purging anything not from earth
t. United Earth Government.

I like you.

Cold War Space Age
>Capitalist v. Commies
>Except now the galaxy is available. Don't like the neighbors? Go to the next planet over.
>Space Race by rival powers to colonize and annex most of the galaxy.
>Spend so much time apart despite being literally right next to each other, government, society, and tech all go down radically different paths.

>

>commies ever outpacing JUSTICE, FREEDOM, AND THE AMERICAN WAY

Underrated.

Captcha: silly church

>Dark Matter
>Not just a shitty firefly fanfic with the good quirky bits replaced with generic "m-muh big bad corporashuns", "m-muh cynicism" straight out of a YA novel

>Space game
>Throw in fantasy alternatives to aliens (which, in fairness, are hard to not do shittily)
Did you mean: 40k?

>kill a main character
>literally nothing happens

>muh weeaboos in space

>muh oc donut steel psychic mary sue

they've taken the worst aspects of space opera and cyberpunk, mashed them together, and somehow made something blander than either

Why? You're entitled to your opinion, but is there a reason for it?

> Space Opera without aliens
What is galaxy-wide Manifest Destiny for 200, Alex?

>kill a main character
>literally nothing happens
In fairness, there might've been more reaction if the characters were more than just 1 dimensiona cardboard cutouts that would send a TVtropes user into a fit of autistic rage

>muh weeaboos in space
If you're going to shamelessly transplant present day cultural shit into space, at least put some effort into making them feel SLIGHTLY original. They kinda make geedubs and the Tau or the racial/historical IG regiments look like grandmasters of subtlety by comparison.

>muh oc donut steel psychic mary sue
And remember, kids, this was after the existing oc donut steel invincible superhot nanobot mary sue

But yeah, this, pretty much. Honestly, it might've been more bearable if it was early on in the whole "rejection of/disillusionment with traditional scifi utopias" wave alongside Firefly and BSG instead of, y'know, being a decade late for it. Or if it wasn't filled with enough "ROW ROW FITE HTE POWAH" to give the millenial YA audience wet dreams.

>like science fiction
>don't like shoehorned fantasy elements
Fucking Armored Descent, fuck the faggot who put elves in a game about alien power armor falling from the skies.

>"rejection of/disillusionment with traditional scifi utopias"
>mfw I find out my patrician scifi taste is literally just vaporwave in space

Now that I think about what happens in the books, I'm an idiot. Disregard picture and sarcastic comment.

It can be done. In fact I wish it was done more often. A lot of human-only sci-fi settings tend to build towards contact with alien life. Which I guess makes sense, as generally that would represent a huge change in human society. It happens everywhere from 2001 to Dead Space. But the journey to that point can of first contact can be fun too.

I remember buying a game called "Nexus: the Jupiter Incident" a few years back. I had seen a demo of the first 3 missions and I was hooked. The premise was that your character was a washed up "war-hero" from the last big conflict between Earth and Mars. He was now the captain of a ship for one of the corporations subcontracting for Earth's military. He was assigned to their Jovian mining operation, ostensibly for security, but really to spy on 2 other corporations. There were whispers of some new propulsion system, an armada of ships built in secret. All very intriguing. And it was all quasi-hard sci-fi. The ships were built like towers, combat took place at huge distances and it all just felt right.

Until 6 missions in you find a wormhole that throws you into the middle of a 4-way alien war. I still had fun with the game but it wasn't what I had hoped for. I was all signed up for a gruelling "low tech" brawl around Jupiter. Nukes and mass drivers, not cloaking devices and bizarrely humanoid aliens.

The point I'm trying to make is that, in a setting, aliens are probably inevitable, but you don't have rush to get to them, or even make them your focus at all.

As for a book/setting I would recommend as a xeno-less space opera: The Quiet War by Paul J McAuley.

bu mp

I'm sure you could just focus your campaigns or quests on humans with only human NPCs and players even if the setting itself has aliens without much problem.

It's an interesting idea to have the aliens look identical to humans. Not rubber forehead painted humanoids, but exactly like Earth humans, barring minor differences.

Delet this

Wasn't that basic premise of Heavy Gear?

Don't think so.

The colony was cut off from Earth. And they both were going its own way. After connection returned Earth wanted to get the same ruling position as before but colony said "Fuck off". After that all the shit started.

>You like space opera
Well there's your first problem

>>You don't like Aliens
If I was a cunt I'd reach for the low hanging fruit and make a joke about the movie, what with your inappropriate uppercase, there.

Aw, heck, let's go for it.

I preferred the first one.

>being a rayycist
Stop this vile slander.

Well you cant do anything about your shit taste im afraid.

But then again Space Operas without aliens are the rule now rather than the exceptions.

I blame it on "its more mature if its humans only" fags.

What's wrong with it? If you make you story interesting, then It doesn't matter if there are aliens or not.

I also disagree with your assertion that more sci-fi is human only. Minimalist sci-fi, perhaps. But, in general, aliens crop up in some form in most of the genre. Whether it's as a competitor empire to humanity or as mysterious ruins left by an ancient race, they're there.

Great Crusade.

It even has a basement

People born when it came out can drive and buy alcohol now

Gotta have mechs

Not my fault. It's hard to get nukes so I couldn't stop them.

My Traveller groups's universe is like that. When man first spread to the stars they found themselves surrounded by alien life, but it was all (more or less) human. Little differences here and there based on planet, sure, but everyone was human enough that reproduction resulting in viable offspring was possible, and it wouldn't take any particular amount of work beyond a costume, accent and knowledge of culture to pretend you were from any other given world. Anything without human life is either uninhabited or has a fairly simple biosphere of single-celled life (this is incredibly common) or simple, primitive animals on the level of things like worms, simple fish, insects and isopods (less common).

In-setting the going theory is that humanity as they know it was somehow coded into multiple worlds' native inhabitants by some unknown ancient race.

It was us, billions of years ago. The PCs are unknowingly in the Milkdromeda galaxy after our civilization is long extinct. From their perspective, their galaxy is the only one they know of, because by this point the light from other galaxies isn't even reaching them anymore.

Then you read Dune OP.

Incidentally, do you not like the concept of non-humans period or you don't like things that don't look human?

What about non-sentients?

The original UC Gundam timeline. It's a little hard sci-fi at times, but still good.

Tons of human civilizations because when Humanity got FTL it fucking SHATTERED. People went off to the furthest edges of the Galaxy to form their own little communities for their very specific views on how people should live their life.
You have religious nutjobs of all kinds, you have people so far into cybernetics they are basically robots, people so far into bio-engineering they are unrecognizable as Human, naturally you have moderates of all sorts, as well as people who completely shun things that another group 100% embraced, etc. etc.

img.4plebs.org/boards/tg/image/1366/05/1366053319764.pdf
Basically SWN.
Humanity used psychics to power FTL drives, but something happened that caused all of their psychics to die at once. Now they're slowly reconnecting with each other following centuries of being isolated.

There are some alien races included, but the focus is on humanity and you can pretty easily retcon them out without affecting lore.

Isn't this a big thing in Trekshit? How everyone's just knife eared or bumpy foreheaded because something something ancient aliens something in their own image?

Thanks, I'll look it over later. Though I don't think it needs the whole "FTL died so people were isolated bit." If you even look as closely back as the founding of the New World people were running off from their Homeland to go found their own isolated communities for their niche lifestyle.

It doesn't need it, but the event has left a massive cultural scar on everyone involved. Psychics are distrusted and seen as unreliable ticking time bombs (their deaths during "The Scream" as they call it, caused quite a lot of collateral damage)

Fair enough.