How do you come up with alien mindsets and cultures that are fundamentally different from humanity...

Because paranoid aliens want to destroy everything before the apocalypse.
Humans want to survive it.

It seems i didn't understand your question then.

>well that's really the question, isn't it?

Like i said, the best way to go around 'physical unknown' is to exactly do that. Go around it. Get down to familiar.
Do this:
Take known human context and just dress it in weird clothes that don't really match if you want that 'uncanny, inhuman, alien' look.

>How do you make something truly unlike humans?

I still think you CAN'T really make something truly unlike humans. Its an physical impossibility.

Even if you create something you would consider very alien its probably something YOU consider alien. It would be also probably derived from earth flora or fauna anyway, or at least from an idea you know.

The feeling of 'uncanny', 'inhuman' and 'alien' are as much human instincts and perspectives as everything else we know atm.

So if you want to play with this themes go for it.

Look, this is easy. Take a social trait found only in animals, imagine how human society would develop differently if we did that, then take away the development and just present it as being different.

>Animals lay eggs and never come back
Kids come from Children's Creches where parents leave donations (both "eggs" and money), and are basically just pushed out into the street. No language, no education, nothing. All of that happens in apprenticeships, which is more or less literally people kidnapping kids off the street that can't say no and putting them to work.

>Elaborate nests to secure mates
Look, he's a Bowerian. Just... let him decorate. He'll be a nervous wreck otherwise.

>Fiercely territorial
NO shared ship space. No bridge, no common area. Engines, weapons, everything is distributed so that each individual can do their job completely on their own without anyone else in their space.

>Eusocial insects
On the flip side, fuck Hive ships. The giant communal beds are weird enough, but why are all the johns facing each other in a circle?

>genetically reinforced longevity, sentient uplifted sloths

probably only species that would actually enjoy 80,000 years journey to the nearest star

Talking to a Boweiran is rather surreal to a human, because they talk about upholstery the way a human bro will talk about sports cars and drinking. On some level they consider most human males massively effeminate because of the lack of attention paid to color balance in their living spaces.

Even a hundred years ago Lovecraft already understood that the only way to do it is to state that these aliens have a culture fundamentally different from humanity without going into any detail. Optionally add that you'd go insane if you tried to understand them. Boom. Done.

Real MALE is responsible enough and knows how to efficiently organise his living space for maximum comfort and colour.

youtube.com/watch?v=bzsvCaJJu8c

Truth, Lovecraft was king of going easy.
But shit im thankful someone done it.

I can't even count how many times going 'Lovecraftian' saved my ass.

None of these traits are fundamentally inhuman. I can easily imagine humans doing this shit, if not in this age and in this location. Hell, there existed societies where some of these things were present.

Well, sure. No matter who or what you are, some things are going to be constant. Food, shelter, search for a mate. Anything capable of reaching space is going to have some units giving orders; the ones underneath it can have shitty-boss pissing contests with us.

It's in the details where the aliens can be really alien.

Which reminds me! Read this. This thread is what this book is about. Pterry experimenting with truly alien aliens.

I actually had an idea for a short story like that first greentext.
>miserable planet where all life is trapped in certain oases after a cataclysm
>everyone lays too many eggs
>aliens traditionally dump their eggs into the wastes with basic pictographs showing civilization and a rough guide to getting there
>anyone too stupid to figure it out by the time they burn through their birth fat was clearly not fit to be a citizen
I never got further than the basic intro where you follow some kid bursting out of an egg and try to figure out what the fuck he is and where is everyone (if there are other people).

This is really good. Though it does remind me more than a little bit of Ringworld.

Thank you for posting this!

bump

A few ways to do this.
1. Change how they reproduce. A egg-laying species will probably have less attachment to their off-spring than a live-birth one.

A species with 1 gender would be different from a species with 2, which would also be different with a few different specialized castes like ants, which would be different from a race of immortals, or a species that infects the bodies of others.

A strangely smart herbivorous species would probably see humans as a threat just by seeing that their eyes face forwards.
Carnivores wouldn't be able to be very numerous, and if they were numerous they would be small.

Are they like a hive where only 1 of them can actually reproduce?

Are they caste-like like ants? Work in packs like humans or dogs? Were they originally solo like bears who for some reason and somehow learned to work together?

Are males and females basically the same? Do they even both look like the same type of organism? Do males and females live with eachother or an entire settlement apart?

Were they the servants of another race for a long time, and has it caused their physiology to be altered?

>Don't give them a feature because you assume they need it just because we have it
This is one of the most important points that a lot of people miss.
Even if you assume similarities with earth that would make a certain attribute more/most efficient that doesn't necessarily mean that it will arise.

Evolution is guided by whatever works but it's fueled by random chance and chance is a savage bitch.

How about using your IMAGINATION? Jeez some people are helpless.

Who said the aliens need to be accurate?

The thread was just about truly "alien" beings, not what realistic aliens might be like.
You don't need to meet and understand actual real-world alien beings to look at the commonalities of humans and imagine something that lacks them all and operates in a way that's truly alien to us.

Maybe skim a bit before jumping at the opportunity to rant and ramble.

>all these posts saying its impossible

OP if youre still checking this thread I would highly recommend the Nat Geo documentaries "Taboo", you can find many of them on youtube. They go around to other cultures and talk about costums and rituals they do that, guess what, seem alien to us today. From food they eat, sexuality, child rearing, superstition, war, they all focus on very unorthodox ways of living found on earth today. This one in particular focuses ob death and burial rituals, aspects that may seem horrifying for your party but are actually very important and thought out by your aliens. youtu.be/pk9PpYSjGKg

If you want a creature which is fundamentally inhuman you basically have to have
- a physiology totally different from humans (e.g. a supermassive body, making them deep sea dwellers)
- no or very nearly no capacity for humans to communicate with them
Which basically leaves you with some of the cosmic horrors Lovecraft created or inspired, the Aliens from Solaris and 2001.
People very rarely write these kinds of stories because there's not much you can do with them.
It's very hard to conceive of intelligent life which does not in some way reflect human traits because.

Ok, as someone who has done a lot of alien fuckery with players this is how I do it and it works pretty well. It comes mainly from the ideas in the book "A Roadside Picnic", the progenitor of STALKER.

1. They need a purpose. Generally, I go with 1 overriding purpose and a few smaller ones. What that purpose is frankly does not matter but it has to be specific.

2. Give those aliens control over something that humans do not have control over. Conscious or technological control over some basic law of the universe works, but even just say conscious control over the kind of child they have or a genetic structure that allows for rapid evolution (say over a generation or two). Hell, maybe they just don't need shelter and can live outside without problems because they're so robust. Really anything which is a fundamental difference between them and us.

3. With their purpose or purposes and their differences from us in mind, think about what their technology would be like. Specifically, what would they create tools to do? Their tools, technology, and methods would be greatly influenced by what they consider important and the natural capacities they have. Expand outward into what their society would be like; what things would be good or bad.

4. Now decide what they're gonna look like. This part really doesn't matter that much, surprisingly, so just do whatever. It is useful to give them something to manipulate things with, though. Hands or something analogous. Once you know what they look like, make sure that any of that tech you designed works with their physical configurations. Aliens with big long claws probably won't use human buttons.

5. Now that all that is done, put them in the world doing whatever it is that their main purpose would make them do. If they're extinct or not around then just throw the ruins or remnants of their shit around.

6. DON'T TELL YOUR PLAYERS FUCKING ANYTHING ABOUT THEM. Seriously. Continued...

I don't have much to add, but many human societies, especially pre-modern ones are very alien to our modern minds and sensibilities. Kevin Crawford has a very good example here forum.rpg.net/showthread.php?796127-Mythic-China-what-do-you-expect-to-see&p=20723831#post20723831
Quoting select part:

>For example, take the Jiajing emperor of the Ming dynasty. In 1555, he was a hermetically isolated autocrat who was also a Daoist blood wizard who sought immortality through vampiric sexual rites involving children. His appetites were so monstrous that he barely survived an assassination attempt levied at him by several of his own concubines, one which failed only because one of the girls panicked and tied the wrong knot in the cord she was using to strangle him. When one of his eunuchs offended him, he had the man rolled up in a blanket, hung upside-down, and lit on fire feet-first. The Lady Shang, aged twelve, was said to be his favorite concubine because she was the only woman who could satisfy him. He was a stone-cold monster.

>He was also a fairly popular emperor at the time, because he was fastidiously diligent in handling paperwork, punished noteworthy corruption savagely, and had visibly defied the entire Confucian establishment in refusing to accept adoption by his dead imperial predecessor, insisting that his own birth father be elevated in honors. Such heroic filial piety warmed the hearts of the people, for whom love and respect for one's parents was the ultimate personal virtue. Aside from this, any successful rebellion against the Jiajing emperor would plunge the entire empire into oceans of blood, rapine, and destruction.*

>This tension will not make sense to a player unless they understand the context of the situation. If they're playing a regular sort of game, they're going to see an Evil Tyrant and assume that everybody but Evil Tyrant Pals wants him dead and replaced. They're going to get very frustrated with a society which prefers to keep a Jiajing emperor on the throne rather than depose an exemplar of filial piety and invite a realm-convulsing bloodbath. For the situation to be comprehensible and and the PCs capable of making meaningful choices, they have to understand the full context of things, and that's extremely hard to convey well. Even if the players are really interested, how do you compress the zeitgeist of an entire culture with fundamentally different ethical touchstones into the sort of thing a player will actually read, understand, and deploy in play?

>* How bad was a major rebellion? During the An Lushan rebellion of the Tang dynasty, the scholar-general Chang Hsun was praised for his to-the-death defense of the city of Suiyang during a ten-month siege, thus stopping the rebels from savaging the province. Chang Hsun accomplished this by using Suiyang's citizenry as cattle, systematically rounding them up and slaughtering them to feed his army. He started with his own beloved concubine whom he killed with his own hands, sharing her flesh out among his officers. It's unclear whether or not the Tang court officially bestowed posthumous honors on him; all that survives is the debate over whether or not it should. It was a point of sober debate over whether using an entire city as cannibal meat cattle was only a little better than letting a rebel army rampage through a province or if it was a lot better.

And you read the whole thread before you go into full autism, because you just made fool of yourself.

I clarified in next post that i didn't get the question.

I didn't rant, i tried to help.

What is wrong with you?

Are you mentally disabled or something?

No, seriously, tell them FUCKING NOTHING about these aliens. Don't have some Xenobiologist tell them their purpose, don't have them spill any history, don't have them explain aspects of anatomy. FUCK.ING.NOTH.ING. And if the aliens are still around and are encountered, THEY CANNOT COMMUNICATE WITH THEM. The aliens are ALIENS. They do not speak space english, they are not comprehensible. They may react in a way that is consistent with their purpose; they may even try to be friendly or cooperative but no speaking and probably no fucking hand signals or whatever either.

7. Never let the players get a very big picture view of the aliens or their actions. Keep it ground level, they see ruins or installations or tech or the actions of individuals but not the homeworld or anything like that.

The reason for all this crap is because if you do it like this they will feel both consistent AND alien. They will seemingly have a purpose, but the players, lacking anything but scattered evidence, will only be able to vaguely guess at what that purpose is. And thats important because what truly makes a creature alien isn't how it looks, its our lack of understanding of it. But you also can't cross the line into outright random or nonsensical behavior because humans can spot that pretty easily. It has to be incomprehensible but with that shadow of reason and purpose that makes it interesting rather than just "LOL SO ALIEN!"

Consistent actions but with unknown purposes can make even a normal human seem alien.