Humanity is only a small part of an alien alliance

>Humanity is only a small part of an alien alliance.

Would we have a problem with that? I'm not sure how to present it.

Other urls found in this thread:

rfreitas.com/Astro/Xenopsychology.htm
twitter.com/NSFWRedditImage

Start Trek did it.

Mass effect did it.

Humanity is a major player in mass effect.

If you use the real world as your guide, then the two things that influence your answer are A) what is the humans' contribution and B) what are they allied against.

If it's a desperate alliance against insurmountable odds, I can't imagine anyone will really give a shit. If it's an alliance where we participate in freedom of navigation exercises just outside the Great Annihilator for Duke Qkdlsljla'skjlsjjjjjfuck's ten-thousand-year jubilee parade at devastating costs to Earth's people just to demonstrate our mediocre fleet-in-being, then... maybe people would have a problem?

More background might be in order.

Rick and Morty -sort of- did it, and they did it in a realistic way

ME 3, maybe two
But in Mass Effect humans are little side chicks for the real players

What kind of an alliance is this?

Let's say that it's a fairly standard military alliance. An attack on one is an attack on all. There's some degree of shared command and intelligence, and it likely comes with close economic ties.

This wouldn't affect the day-to-day of the average human as much, and we'd likely be proud to be a part of it.

See . Run a United Federation of Planets where humans don't make up 90% of the cast because you're not limited by a makeup/prosthetics budget.

Also, you could run something like the Tau Empire, where the HQ planet and main race of this alliance aren't human, and humans just see themselves as part of the larger picture.

Demiurg brotherhood responding.

Something to mine there?

>He says, in the middle of a battle.

>More background might be in order.

The alliance is strongly inspired by Covenant from halo. The leaders are pretty much Eldar/Protoss.

How about a setting where humanity was conquered, but so long ago that it's practically water under the bridge. Humans now are side by side by their once conquerors having fully integrated as valued members of the unified culture.

Humans are memetically manipulated by post-biological alien super-AIs to be happy with their lot. They regard the aliens with religious awe and hope to some day ascend to their level.

Even in those the problem in human centric presentation.
Main character is always human, and thus human is the biggest hero of the galaxy which makes humanity seem like bigger deal it otherwise would be in the setting.

But that's kinda same problem as what OP has.
It's easy to make setting where humanity is just one of many races, but it's a lot harder to properly present it and make players feel it.

>Humans are relatively new to interstellar travel and have only just met extraterrestial life
>There are two (or more) large, intergalactic empires that have set their sights on earth
>Earth flipflops between alliances with the two, trying to remain neutral by playing the two larger entities out against eachother

Alternatively
>Same scenario, but now there are multiple large empires trying to add earth to their collection
>To these planets, the concept of nation-states is unknown: all politics is tied to race or species
>The aliens all start picking sides with various countries on earth and arming their chosen champions to the teeth
>A world war starts, with at stake what alien entity will rule Earth as a puppet state and what country will represent the entire planet
>Behind the screens, secret operatives (the PCs?) work hard to cut out as much alien influence as possible, reverse engineer alien technology and ally the countries of earth into one solitary front that can weather the alien storm, and perhaps even have earth acknowledged as an independent empire within the universe

Just make the humans a minority. Human soldier was trained by [insert alien here], his commander is also an alien, who has another totally different alien as their superior. The human's squad-mates are also aliens. Maybe the human has an alien pet at home or an alien girl he wants to go back to after the war? perhaps he has a buddy in the squad who is in the same boat as him being a minority, but is alien himself from another low profile planet?

I feel that with that kind of approach a thing happens which I tend to see when I play generic fantasy, where the different races just start to look like humans on different flavor.

If that's what you are fine with, then fine, but if one tries to build a feeling of "large amount of people you interact with are different from you, really different, biologically, culturally and historically," that's hard.

Why would you want a setting like that? I mean, you can do it setting-wise, but look at all the examples people gives. Humans are irrelevant but that's only to build a background for the human protagonists. Because, you know, your players are humans. The most obvious example is the Cal of Cthulhu were humans are literally irrelevant in the cosmic order yet the stories are all about humans. The same happens with Rick and Morty and to a degree with Star Trek (I haven't played ME). In 40k, where humans are not irrelevant at all but neither the only important species, the focus is always put on a human internal conflict of empire vs chaos with the conflict with the rest of species granting mostly background and variety for the miniatures game.

Just scrap humans completely if you want to avoid antropo-centrism. There's no other way.

Make all the PCs aliens.

Bam. Done. The focus is no longer on humans, because it's on the fucking aliens. Easy fix that none of those examples could use because - guess what - they all revolved around human main characters.

End result is that players will be playing bunch of humans with funny ears and skincolor.

So then what would scrapping humans entirely change, then, if aliens are just humans with a few extra features? By your logic, no matter what, players will play humans, even when they aren't playing humans.

Haven't you ever read a fantasy story or looked at a sci-fi world that tried to be revolutionary and do things from the orc's perspective or the alien's perspective, and make humans seem strange and antagonistic?

Why have humans if they're not playable? What's the purpose?

They always fail, and at best just manage to make the alien think like a non-westener human.

That's my point. It's really hard to make non human races seem sufficiently alien.

>If that's what you are fine with, then fine

Two things, one, humans with shit on their faces just to be make them different Star Trek style, is fine, lazy but acceptable, but not want I'm talking about. The universe is so vast that it is both entirely conceivable that you would encounter aliens that look nothing like humanity and others that would, the universe is large enough that the odds go both ways. If Earth were inhabited by sapient crabs and those crabs went to space to find another alien race of crabs, such a scenario would not be unheard of in a similar manner.

Number two, the easiest, most determinable way to make something or someone feel ordinary or insignificant among a larger scope is through supersaturation. Sword using heroes in fantasy fiction are ordinary, why? Because practically every hero in fantasy fiction uses one. If the OP wants to make a setting where humanity is just another cog in the greater mechanism of an alien alliance or empire, then the logical route would be to over saturate the audience with that fact. You want humans not to be special? Fine, the human is just another grunt in an alien army filled with other aliens who lives in a city with a small Chinatown-like block for humans (or not at all) in an overwhelmingly alien society. Make the fact that humans are just humans, be exactly that. The other aliens don't give a shit, they just expect of humanity what they expect of every other race in their alliance and likewise, humanity can trust that the many aliens it encounters in said alliance will expect humanity to be humans.

Why have monsters, alien creatures and various other races if they aren't playable? Or maybe they are playable, but like in fantasy how you can end up with no humans, in a sci fi universe the players might not pick any humans as well.

Which is admittedly a flaw of being human, and why I say 'try' to be revolutionary than actually really making a statement, but the point is it can be done. If you want to play all aliens, it's possible.

Sure, but that doesn't mean that you have to throw out aliens entirely, or throw out humans entirely just to force aliens for that matter. If you really want it, you can put your best effort in, even if it falls short.

>That's my point. It's really hard to make non human races seem sufficiently alien.

This is because humans view everything through our own cultural paradigms. If you saw an alien do something nice for another alien and said that alien was being humanitarian, you're doing it wrong.

Humans were the dominant species though

You could describe human dominance in Star trek as a benign tyranny. Humans were the focus of Federation but at the same time, they still had alien commanders, at least one alien president shown.

both somehow ended up at the top of their faction.

don't forget that everything bad in trek happened because of humans

What is it with SciFi and 'interstellar' empires? Is that the only political future you can imagine? At all? Moreover, your scenarios are completely against what the OP is trying to discuss. Lastly, why would fucking interstellar empires give that much of a shit about Earth? There are a shitton of resources in the solar system, putting aside greater milky way. There's no need for serious investment into conquering Earth.

That's also got the in-universe explanation in that we breed faster than practically all the other Federation species. If the ocampa joined, they'd probably end up outnumbering us and in every role eventually.

>What is it with SciFi and 'interstellar' empires? Is that the only political future you can imagine? At all?
No, they're just the best, coolest, and most preferable futures.

because the solar system has the one thing that is unique to it

humans

it's the only resource that you can't get anywhere else in the galaxy

So more of a federation than an alliance? The different member species are united under one government?

Oh.
A bit like in Last Angel except for the "valued members" part

I'm not sure I see the problem. Just tell the players that humans are only one of many sentient races, and aren't especially powerful or numerous. Then have most places they go be like the cantina scene in Star Wars.

Read this

Had something similar in a Stellaris game I played, funny enough.

>Hyper religious Aliens uplifted the broken and divided governments of Earth and added it to their sphere of influence.

>Slave-owning despotic empire that are probably just humans sucked through a wormhole onto another planet see humans as at best a "subspecies" they should probably enslave anyways.

>Earth was part of a series of planets released by a psuedo-tribal militant species. Humans were conscripted but otherwise left well enough alone

>Earth was later directly annexed by a libertarian-ish corporate confederation that was in an alliance with several neighboring Empires.

It was pretty fun. Pic related, Sol was ironically enough in the center of the Alien's Empire.

This is my ideal for any space empire.

>rapid expansion
>by diplomatic or military means
>keeps conquered/subjugated populations under control, but not oppressed
>subtly engineer their societies so they can assimilate into the primary one without too much trouble
>cue cosmopolitan super empire that's diverse in species, but has a single unified cultured

>implying that humans haven't been regularly seeded to other systems

>Lastly, why would fucking interstellar empires give that much of a shit about Earth? There are a shitton of resources in the solar system, putting aside greater milky way. There's no need for serious investment into conquering Earth.

Maybe they see the existence of any intelligent race not under their control as a potential threat.

Problem? Not really. Everyone loves an underdog. Besides, climbing up is more fun when you're at rock bottom.

>Would we have a problem with that

Does France have a problem being part of NA...

Okay, bad example.

Does Italy have a problem being a part of NATO?

Who cares what Italians think?

Your mother.

and where did the humans come from?

thats right, erff

>medplebs
>ever

Most of the galaxy is part of a multicultural empire and humans have average political influence, and are common without being the most common.
A bit like Stars Wars where there is a lot of worlds with loads of different alien races on here, but there is no a human majority.
You don't have to have almost all aliens heing humans with prothestic either.

To be honest, I figure that the best case scenario for humanity would be to just get into as many space ships as possible and ditch Earth. It's a good planet, don't get me wrong, but I'm sure there are plenty of people here who would rather take their chances out there.

I can see some ranking political members of a Galactic government who are some kind of activists taking a interest in getting humans off their home world. So that if something bad happens to the planet at least their be some other humans somewhere else. And I can see this alien writing a letter to another politic about this case. Like the alien expressing that it is the right of all space faring beings to have a back up population.

>Being the newest (associate) member of the Galactic Axis humanity's presents in the galaxy is quite non-existent
>Humanity did have the fortune to emerge in another member's area of control, giving the race unknown protection
>The member race who was in control of that space has no problems in giving Humanity a slice of space to call there own, seeing how they have no operation in that area.
>Humanity's United Nation's has become their number one voice which is view favorably by the GA and as Associate Members of the GA they will have many benefits showed their way.
>Their population (there are around 12 billion humans) are all in one little solar system. And on top of that most humans still live on their home world. Meaning any major lost of life on that one planet alone would put the race to near extinction.
>But because they still have an non-existent presents in the galaxy and almost nothing to offer to the GA I believe that their status as an Associate member should be converted into a Protectorate member.
>Once that is done and they can settle themselves onto other world we can bring them back to Associate status.

Why ? I wouldn't have a problem with playing only a vaguely humanoid alien (bipedal and with arms) or even one with tentacles or a non-humanoid robot.
That's not like you are limited with a prothestic or animatronic budget, just search more exotic pictures of aliens beings on Google Image or something.

It's not about looks. It's the culture and feel, getting those properly alien is hard.

Yeah, Earth is going to become a backwater world in such a scenario.

I really like this article
rfreitas.com/Astro/Xenopsychology.htm

Something like this would be a good way to do it:
As a setting, I could see it taking place around here. PCs just got off the space boat, now they gotta find themselves a way to prosper in the big and wild galaxy.

Logistics.

If you have an interstellar armada going a particular direction in space, you either subjugate what's in your way or destroy it. Because going around or turning around would cost more fuel, the one thing you need the most of. And why bother destroying what you can milk for food resources and genetic stock.

Being a backwater in a space empire is the best case scenario. It's like being in Hufflepuff at Hogwarts, at worse, you get a few outliers that draw attention but you mostly get left alone while the bigger parties obliterate each other.

>It's like being in Hufflepuff at Hogwarts
That's an awful example, Hufflepuff was the house for hard work and loyalty. Humanity would quickly drop the backwater and become a place of importance.

Even so, I'd reckon any empire/federation/alliance thingy would put down some buildings and satellites nearby and on it. Stuff that might seem small to the faraway group of folks and AIs, but might end up.being big things to everyone here.

My idea was more something like most humans living in a political entity with a lot of races.
To change a bit from all the spaces empires with only one race and all.

There is a difference between humans having a good immigrants potential and Earth being important.

>Hufflepuff was the house for hard work and loyalty

Which had no presence at all and never rocked any boats except for that one time. Besides being known for hardwork and loyalty is pretty boss for a member of a space culture, everyone would come to Earth for good service letting us do our own thing otherwise.

So a benign empire?

There is a difference between what the Houses are supposed to be and what the members are though.

Yeah.
A less human-centric Federation or cosmopolite parts of Stars Wars.

Well no shit, I'm just saying that if your culture is known to other cultures for a particular quality, loyalty and hardwork is pretty good.

If you could have humanity and Earth be known for one thing in the minds of aliens across the universe, what would it be?

I pick spiders.

>I'm sure there are plenty of people here who would rather take their chances out there.
Why?

Probably the same type would would volunteer to be part of the first civilian wave in a Mars colony.

I prefer
>humanity reaches the stars, no one's home
>start spreading out at first everything goes according to plan
>then the political upheaval occurs
>you thought the balkans were bad
>X amount of years latter and the human territories are all united...sort of
>the current government is an Imperium in that so long as taxes and tithes are payed, certain laws are obeyed and a fealty is sworn all the other territories go their own way
>basically nothings changed, borders still move, governments rise and fall, governing philosophies fall in and out of favor and the occasional holocaust occurs
>when things get too out of hand an Imperial fleet drops of a sternly written letter and things usually return to normal
>little attention is payed to the xeno front first contact was made with an old probe, long ago it was theorized that alien society may exist far far away into the galaxy, later it was found exactly how far and few summon the energy to make the trip
>man is content to squabble in their corner of the shard of the galaxy, the alien powers that be are content to let them, rarely do the two come together aside from the odd bobble or mercenary band
>eventually someone remembers to care enough to attend the meeting of one federation or another little is said and few agreements made aside from the occasional circumstance where an official response is demanded
>rarer still is the circumstance that requires a concerted effort to encroach on either space en masse

Why people immigrate ?

Because conditions are shitty where they currently live, but the post responded to called Earth "a good planet."

>High Senator Feklaar, I hear you're going on vacations soon, anywhere special?
>Yes mediator, I was considering Earth
>The home of those humans? the ones that just joined our great congress?
>The very same, I hear their particular oxygen atmosphere makes for quite peaceful sunsets, something I should like to see
>But high senator, is they not the same place as the spiders?
>...Yesss, perhaps not then

>Cal of Cthulhu

Probably because I'm tired but that cracked me up.

>Yes, hello, this is Cal, down in the Cosmic Abominations department, I wanted to talk to you about mind-shredding evil

Some immigrants immigrate for hope or improvement even when things are not really bad.

>Would we have a problem with that?

No.

>I'm not sure how to present it.

Human characters should answer to alien superiors and have to work around alien bureaucrats. Also, have at least some human characters explicitly look up to certain races. There was a great bit in Gene Roddenberry's Andromeda where Dylan Hunt, human hero of the series, starts talking about the Vedrans, the "elder race" which had founded the All Systems Commonwealth. He made it clear he viewed them as superior life forms, who were nobler and wiser than anyone else in the three galaxies.

>tfw even ancient cosmic horrors have to rely on middle management to get sdhit done.

Big evil is big business.

>Hey Karen, mr. Cthulhu asked me to call a Mr. Yog ...soysauce? No, that says sothoth... and ask to reschedule their golf game. Do you have his number? It's not in my rolodex.

>Would we have a problem with being surrounded by hot alien chicks to bang?
Nope.

>It's a "R'Lyeh Codex" sir, not a rolodex.

Asari tits a superior

Yes, but now they aren't unique to earth.

Reminds me of something....
When are we rolling out the these fuckers to stop the rebels?

>Sometime in the late 21st century, the first fusion reactor starts producing cheap electricity for the first time.
>After a few months, Cthulhu comes out of the sea, destroys it and in the following conflict a fair bit of humanity.
>As more and more groups submit to it, someone decides to ask why.
>"I was sleeping beneath the ocean and that thing was intolerably loud."
>okayface.jpg
>But then how are we supposed to provide for our people? All other methods have failed in one way or another.
>Oh, yeah, I kinda owe you for all that mess I made. Here, have some mindwrecking tech, that should help you out! I'll even stick around for a quick century to make sure you get it right.
>Humanity slowly but surely adopts crazy mindbending tech, which is part conventional tech, part magical space-time-mind-fuckery. Society turns into a somewhat authoritarian theocracy, following the teachings of Cthulhu, such as "don't use noisy tech to annoy ancient godlike beings", and "don't be a dick, it smells bad in the astral plane".
>Using kinda-sorta magic portals, humanity can travel in space almost instantly but only in tiny, tiny bunny hops, allowing just a little more than getting into orbit.
>Half a century later, humanity becomes that weird species who uses magic in a high-tech interstellar society.

So basically, a setting where nothing bad really happens aside from occasional internal squabbling, and no one really cares about each other?

It's not the worst, but when you really look at it it's kind of boring. Isn't there anything man wants from the xenos, an edge in their squabbling, a resource? Isn't there anything the xenos want from humanity?

I get that the xenos aren't human, but in real world history, it's not as if countries more or less peacefully expanded, bumped into each other, and then never really had contact again. Even if oceans separated them, a shitton of people sailed to other lands.

I don't why you are assuming so, there can still be conflict.

Yes. Anyone still retarded enough to think that the only sane solution to the discovery of sapient aliens isn't immediate genocide is too stupid to be allowed to speak for any part of humanity.

What.
Could you at least elaborate on the reasons why ? genuinely curious.

That's a lot of xenophobia there, mate, you really should go for a colonoscopy because there's a lot of pent up agression stuck in your ass. And don't start with logic or reason, because those things say that in order to become a spacefaring species, you must pool your resources, tech, and manpower together, which means you must not be an absolute ass, which in turn means that a spacefaring culture will be much more likely to be at least non-hostile than genocidal. Ironically, the very thing you want to prevent is spawned by your own attitude.

Earth is now the alien's Afghanistan. Take that and run with it.

Someone give him the screen of an alien party discovering something about their FTL gate network.

Wasn't that the Borg?
Humans were protagonist, so the most focus was on them, obviously.

>Afghanistan
>not The Balkans

Not having every player character and major npc is a good start. No matter how you present it, if the majority of charaters is human it wil still result a humans in space story rather than an alien alliance which also has humans.

>*every player character and major npc BE A HUMAN