What is your go to game for sci-fi, how out there do you like it? What concepts theories and ideas do you like and/or use in games? Like spin gravity or chemical lasers or macron gunsI've been on a kick recently and want to run a sci-fi game, trying to tie a bunch of loose ideas together into something coherent so that it's not just babylon 5 with numbers files off.And as a related topic, not to rag on guys with rubber stuff on their foreheads, but I feel even today there's a real lack of truly alien aliens in science fiction. Eldar, Tau, and Orks are notably humanoid. Even the aliens in Halo humanoid and mostly follow Earth mechanics despite being from several different planets
>sci-fiNo such thing.
>>97719212Liberal hands wrote this post.
>>97719212I use Pinterest for inspiration. My current project isn't gonna be hard sci-fi but it's a mix of huminoid and non huminoid species.And even the huminoid you can find some fun ones that are not just humans with odd skin or something
>>97719225elaborate
>>97719212The tl;dr is that biology is a function of chemistry is a function of physics, so as long as the universe fucntions the same way here and whereever the alines come from, they'll end up with sensory organs, manipulator extremeties of some sort, and they'll probably require a shit-ton of energy to run their brains, more or less like we do.So, ironically enough, you might very well end up with inteligent cat people.Though the number of limbs,eyes, etc is up to for debate. This means a six limbed, four eyed inteligent !not cat is fine, too.Also, truly hard sci-fi means no aliens, because no FTL.
Humanoid aliens aren't so unrealistic if there are other planets with Earth-like environments. Many different species that live in the same type of biome convergently evolve similar features despite not being closely related, like sharks, dolphins and icthyosaurs.
>>97720215For what it's worth, there are (limited) FTL methods that don't necessarily break the laws of physics like the Alcubierre method and possibly wormholes, but there's a lot of reasons they might be impossible in practical terms. I read somewhere there might be a way to travel right at lightspeed involving Higgs bosons affecting apparent mass or something, but that'd still take 4 years to get to the nearest star over.
>>97720215I forget where I saw it but it was a quote or something that every scifi is allowed one freebie ignore physics and the laws of the universe and that should usually be spent on ftl
>>97720215>Also, truly hard sci-fi means no aliens, because no FTL.Eh, not necessarily. There could be life on Europa, Ceres, or Ganymede. They're just most likely microbial and certainly nonsapient.
How do you handle alien culture without just making them hat planets?
>>97719212>Nooo you can't have sexy space babes, your aliens need to be gross bug creatures!!!
>>97721435>violent, thuggish space ape>head shaped like a SombreroWhat did he mean by this?
>>97720215>Also, truly hard sci-fi means no aliens, because no FTL.No FTL doesnt exclude aliens. It just means that any aliens ending up in our solar system via sub-lightspeed travel don't give a shit whether 100% of the journeys are successful.
>>97721435Is the one on the left supposed to be a Hunter? Because if so it's less alien then they actually are. Also imagine how stupid that "Sangheli" would look in motion.
>>97720040He can't because he's wrong
>>97722974no, that's a brute. The real name for the hunters is Mgalekgolo which are made of Lekgolo worms.
>>97719212>What is your go to game for sci-fi, how out there do you like it? Stars Without Number and very well.>a real lack of truly alien aliens in science fiction. Look to books rather than tv and video games, anon. You're right that the lowest common denominator in entertainment rarely tries very hard. But I'm not sure why you'd expect something else. Herbert & Ransom's kelp and Reynold's Pattern Jugglers are my favorite "alien" aliens.>>97720215>Also, truly hard sci-fi means no aliens, because no FTL."Hard sci fi" misses the point of scifi. Scifi is "what if we take these principles and assumptions, and extrapolate to what they might mean in a hypothetical world?" Hard scifi is "what if we take what we know now and try to figure out how it can space travel?"It's not important at all that scifi be "hard." Men with rubber foreheads, warpdrives and teleporters don't make something "less" scifi. Because scifi isn't "all the science has to be right all the time!" It's "let's explore some theoretical possibilities." And you can handwave every single thing that isn't part of what you're exploring.
>>97723085>"Hard sci fi" misses the point of scifi. That's not to say you can't choose to explore "could we space travel with our current science" as part of your scifi, by the way. Of course you can and Kim Stanley Robinson is a fucking genius. But that's just what his scifi chose to explore and someone else can choose to explore something else, and it's exactly the same amount of scifi, is all.
>>97719259>crabsTerrestial meme.
>>97721435>without just making them hat planets?Make them have more than one distinct cultures? If they're a literal hivemnind, maybe they have more than one consiciousness that compete/coexist with each others.
>>97723085>Hard scifi is "what if we take what we know now and try to figure out how it can space travel?"How 'hard' a setting is is really a question of degrees, or a spectrum, or however you want to express it.Also, I didn't mean that whole comment in a negative way, it's just that an alcubierre drive, or jump lane between stars or whatever form of FTL you use has to be thought through.Or you just have FTL available everywhere, and colorful alien girls in metal bikinis. Both are fine.
>>97723177Yeah hard sci fi midwits complain about aliens looking like humans but ones that look like some other earth animal get a pass.
>>97722974No this is his hunter reimagining. I'm not too big on most of these designs but they're pretty interesting. I feel like the elite, if that awkward arm setup was reworked a bit would have potential
>>97720298Yeah Alcubierre and wormholes are kinda in that "it's possible... IF negative energy exists" bucket.I'd be surprised if the Higgs field could help you with reducing mass tho. Most of the mass in everyday objects comes from the binding energy stored in quarks (the building blocks of protons and neutrons).
>>97720298>Higgs bosons affecting apparent massI had been working on an FTL drive idea that imbues the ship with negative mass, this sounds interesting
>>97720215>truly hard sci-fi means no aliens, because no FTL.Not really, we've found exoplanets with potential for life within 100 light years.So you can have aliens if you push the timeline forward by 1000 years or more.
>>97721435>>97723187Related, I've been working on some aliens and trying to design a national flag for them. They're something like starfish, and their two phenotypes have four and six limbs respectively. So I was thinking something like pic, but at the same time it feels a little too on the nose
>>97719212I have my own setting.It's a prison planet in the backwoods of a collapsing interstellar empire.It has gene-coded nanomachine-based pseudo-magic, civilization on the world mostly takes the form of various groups of vicious sedentary and nomadic barbarians, weird isolated religious communities (cultists) corporate city-states that treat human beings as a resource, and occasionally the "Star People" make war on the surface from their crumbling orbital citadels; though that's more one-sided than an American air campaign on a middle-eastern shithole.Basically, the Star People were originally the warders of this prison-planet, they don't really communicate with the surface people except in the form of orbital bombardments, or remotely extorting them for resources.The Star People themselves are genetically modified humans, with organs and limbs optimized for zero-G.They tend to slowly die when stranded planetside, but hybrids can inherit their nanomachine access privileges even when ancestry is much diluted, though the ability must be developed in order to manifest.Barbarian chieftains and spiritual leaders often trace their lineage to exiled or stranded Star People, Corporates want to reverse-engineer their nanomachine powers, and cultists worship them as gods.Aliens?Yeah, but not intelligent, or at least, not communicative in a way meaningful to humans.The world itself is broadly earth-like, but the fauna are all god knows what sort of native and imported hell-creatures that I make up on the fly.Cows are considered mythical creatures that are essentially a living cornucopia, symbolically, so although no cows are on the planet itself, bovine iconography is present.I been hacking this shit together for a while now.
>>97719212>Hard Sci-FiStopped reading there. Feel free to waddle on back, redditor
>>97721435>>97723577Holy fuck this is total asscancer
>>97730896Hard sci-fi had been a thing long before Reddit ever was so why don't you waddle back to it since you know so much about what is reddit and what ain't Man, Reddit got this place truly mind broken
>>97730924I think they're a little interesting. Very out there and never would I take those designs over the originals. But l think this guy's tyranids are kind of funny and I actually do like the eldar design as an alien, may borrow it if I ever get a chance to run a space game
>>97731808Yes you can borrow it
>>97723577So basically the Great Race of Yith?
>>97731808It's shapeslop riding popular franchise's coattails because he knows no one wpuld look at his dollar store chokibg hazard kid's toys from the 60s-ass designs if he DIDN'T try to his A-frame with a mouthpenis is ACKshully a 40K ork!I have no idea who this artist is, so I'm just going to call him Sauceless Barlowe, because that's all he is. Barlowe, but hold all the spice, soul, sauce, or even just a shred of originality. Bitchboy doesn't even have faith in his own designs, or else he wouldn't have to label Concordcan's Purple Cousin over there a tyranid.
>>97731750Doesn't matter, it is and always was spiritually reddit. Only enjoyed by preening faggots who think reading their slopstories about autistic vampire astronauts makes them intellectual.
>>97732729>SlopOh, I didn't know I could dismiss you're useless opinion. You should have said that from the get go. You need to go back to preddit. They are missing their village idiot right about now, I bet. You preen more than any redditer
>>97731808but WHY is the ork a house insect?
>>97732844>you're useless opinionOf course an ESL thirdie would be into this gay shapeslop shit. I'll take that salty concession of yours just as my ancestors took all your hottest women and left the genetic inferiors to eventually spawn (you)>predditThis shit is reddit as fuck, both the designs themselves being fuckass Ricky Morty rejects, and that smug tone of "heh, there you go guys, I FIXED your aliens for you"
>>97733316I just did that to aggravate little old you and it worked. Lmao low-class behavior never fails to amuse me. I'll do it again faggot
I really like the pierson puteteers from the known space novel from larry niven.They are herbivores that manipulate through commerce and do preemtive strike because they are afraid and avoid dangers
Making them playable is hard and I know most wont take the option, yet I do it anyways.
What determines "realistic" alien? Bottom up spec evoing? Simply not being humanoids?I think bipeds will exist sometimes, like 20% of intelligent life, lots of shapes of biped are possible however. No need for it also be proportionally humanoid even if we assume bipeds are always better for complex tool usage. There was a project that suggested "centuarization" but I feel like it isn't the only plausible configuration? Biomechanics arguments I don't trust must because tool usage and more intricate tool usage even with humans tool a lot of co-evolution was involved to get our arms to the tool usage ability they are at now. Not to mention a lot of animals are in swarms, flocks and the like and lots of communicating between many organisms gives another route to complex tool use even if it isn't single bodied like we are. I don't even mean like lekgolo colony type deals or such, but more like something like crows with the numbers of passenger pigeons. Space travel also may be cheaper for such a species as we are big guys, they are little guys and so it's easier to launch them into space. And with a flock culture, life is more expendable so less regulating from the risk aversion our very K-type concerns produce with risky operations like pioneering space travel. Amusingly, the Children of Time series had pretty decent depictions of alien societies despite their societies being uplifted animals.
>>97736200I forgot king salmon also did that
>>97736237*K-selected concernsI will admit it is unclear how R-selection you can get with bigger brains, but I get the impression we aren't at the cap of it. We already reduced 'quality' a small bit from neanderthals in exchange for a better rate of reproduction. >>97736283King Salmon?
>>97723530Weird deformed monster with bacon and ice cream morality
>>97737081No spec evo alien looks like that
>>97737237Birrins, Snaiad, and Expedition just off the top of my head.
>>97720593The builders of the protomolecule would like a word with you . . . (Parasitic low energy lifeforms that were basically siphonophores living on a cold ocean/ice world that eventually evolved to communicate using light and then turned *into* light based lifeforms)
>>97719212I don't mind super weird looking aliens but touting them as more realistic just because "aliens would look super weird since they are aliens!" (which is circular logic) when there is no logical (or biological) reason they would look like that just feels dishonest and forced, its more fantastical than having aliens that are similar to humans, which is why people call this stuff reddit, fans of it act like the way that they like aliens to be is somehow more correct when it isn't just so they can act smug. Also, we know real life aliens look like picrel, so there's really no reason to argue about it.>>97720215 is right, although multiple limbs and eyes are also pretty unlikely since they would become redundant on a sufficiently evolved organism.
>>97731808His tyranids are funny and even nearly good. The big fuck up is that they dont have consistent limb numbers and body plan.
>>97738608None of those do the "eyes everywhere" like some look outside mutant. The snaiad aliens follow a consistent adaptation throughout the spec.The "eyestalks aren't needed on a head that turns" idea ignores atavism and how other usecases than simply sight emerge with eyestalks. Sonar organs make sense in the right contextOkay smooth naked skin i'll give, but like furries are lesser lifeforms and we are trying to make specimens of prime evolutionary supremacy so 'human but with shit insulation' is just not it.Bioluminescences is everywhere on earth from fireflies to numerous sea creatures so it's not a good alien signifier.The extra limbs thing is a mixed bag, avatar is a horrible offender but I feel like it doesn't happen as much as people think.Thermal pits are good fuck youAnd your in ability to get the purpose of the seckshulsectiondidit amazes me, we have birds who look goofy as all hell because their females selected for goofy fucks so go bitch at them about it.
>>97739670This is what women do to you
>>97736283Love this dude's art. If you like him, you should give Decacommand and/or Shoboyuski a look.A small warning though: a quarter of the former's art is equivocally horny while the later is unbashedly so.If you don't have a problem with the occasional giant mechanical woman or a glimpse at sweaty, exposed abs I recommend checking out their portfolios.
>>97737081Someone is clearly mad at Alex Ries
>>97739739To be fair, their subnautica 2 designs were middling. How much of that is due to the developers and designers is less clear as Barlowe works on Avatar and would have effortlessly pulled off concept art hindukino 4 armed na'vi if James Cameron wanted that. He most likely even did IIRC? I actually am not sure if any new artbooks were released lately, I haven't been checking.
>>97739726Decacommand is pretty based judging just from a cursory look
>>97736237Honestly, creating an alien species that "feels" possible is all about anatomical purpose. When drafting a design you should consider the reason your alien evolved the way it did.What did it evolve from? What does its ancestor look like? What environmental pressures pushed it to develop the way it did? Why are its arms and eyes placed they way they are?It doesn't have to be a flawless, completely inviolable picture of evolution.If there is just enough deliberation in your construction it will be evident in the final design and it will feel realistic to the people you share it with.
>>97739822His designs were easily the best part about the game though I will admit it felt like he could have done better. He could have gone further than he did.
>>97739838He made a fun tribute to the original Gundam as a thesis film.Check out "Good Luck Kingfisher Three"
>>97719259Love giant, terrestrial crustaceans. I don't care if exoskeletons cease to be advantageous at certain sizes. More crab monsters.
>>97731808I actually think his ideas are creative, however they are a poor match thematically for each franchise. Granted, these aren't genuine suggestions. This is likely just an artist exercising his creative muscles. I don't believe he genuinely thinks these would be good improvements.
>>97726609Sounds like a fun setting
>>97740092there were some neat aliens in that miniseries in general too.Like that one with the hallucination spider nebula.Or the hivemind diplomacy mess short.
>>97740815There were definitely a few gems here and there.Wish I could live as a mech farmer.
>>97739726>a quarter of the former's art is equivocally horny while the later is unbashedly soYou say that like it's a bad thing
>>97741660I recognize that some people may not want to see that sort of thing, especially at work. It does not bother me, personally.
>>97719212>If you can't Traveller if in space.Wushu/Savage Worlds when not.>Rest of the postNone of this goes outside worldbuilding and is pointless shit outside being window dressing or a rare, pre-defined plot element. Thus - it doesn't matter what game you play or use for it.Also, if you are looking for simulation, then go GURPS 3e Vehicles.
>>97736098I like most of the stuff about them, but I think their reproductive method is a bit silly. Why would a parasitic larva lose the ability to eat meat after it matures? Aren't all the insects who do that in real life carnivores?
>>97743121Hard to say. It's normal for many insects to alter their diet depending on their position in their life cycle or if the right environmental condition is met.For example, grasshoppers, despite being herbivores, will cannibalize one another after transforming into locusts. This is an attempt to introduce protein into the population which tends to become deficient when there are enough of them.It's possible the puppeteers have different nutritional requirements while developing.
>>97740092That was the best episode of that show. Followed closely by the mini aliens
Is this the pedant thread?
>>97742436What do you go with for handling nonhumanoid body plans?I tried making my own system multiple times but I may just be too stupid or adhd to do anything but run in circles about it.
>>97736237
>>97743121I always thought that to be kind of the milk digestion in mammals.most mammals loose the ability to digest milk(laktose) naturally.
>>97743340Also most herbivores espacially in mammals eat meat if given the chance.sometimes even only for minerals
>>97743121I have more a problem with there single hindleg.i cant imagine a reason why something like that evolve instead of an two hindleg bodyplan.The onlything i could imagine is that it is not a leg but a specialized tail
>>97719212> how out there do you like it?Honestly, I do enjoy sci-fi settings that are pretty damn gonzo. I wouldn’t exactly say everything short of literal magic, but pretty close to there’s exactly 2 sci-fi settings that I would say I like that just outright have magic That’s part of the fun of Sci-fi settings, speculative tech, take some of those theoretical science books out there from authors like Michio kaku as an example, and just imagine ways someone might try to exploit the science to make new devices and tech. You don’t have to explain exactly how it achieves these feats, you’re not the inventor, just keep it consistent and go nuts.For alien biology. I like it to be more grounded, but also “alien”, remember, the creature had to make it with no Tech whatsoever at first before becoming a spacefaring species, so the biology needs to make sense under that context. So floating energy clouds is… a bit much. Also, these are ALIEN creatures, they might think like us, but they aren’t gonna look like us. Maybe a familiar body plan (arms, legs, head, upright posture) but that’s about it. If your aliens can be described as “Swedish” then your aliens are unimaginative.Actually that’s a theme I like with introducing aliens, for as strange and bizarre as their anatomy and appearance can get. Their way of thinking isn’t all that alien.
>>97747430That's a good variation
>>97747571>Actually that’s a theme I like with introducing aliens, for as strange and bizarre as their anatomy and appearance can get. Their way of thinking isn’t all that alien.Based and Star Control pilled
>Me taking notes on what Project Hail Mary did like the hack I am
>>97719212All of my sci fi setting's races are ones I want to have sex with and I'm not sorry.
>>97747918Same even though most of them are nonhumanoid and humans are considered on the bigger side as far as the galaxy goes.
>>97719212It's only proper the hardest things in hard sci-fi are the cocks of the rapists. That is universal.
>>97747983Yes, having humans on the bigger side when it comes to intelligent life. Yeah there is bigger but most intelligent life is smaller or an aggregation of smaller organisms like a lekgolo colony is. They know us as big guys.
>>97719212People who use the term hard scifi don't know scifi at all.Aliens? How are they getting here, how are we getting there? An FTL method that is basically just a black box mcguffin? Magic? A vague astrophysics theory that if plausible mathematically has no explanation for the mechanism that creates it?Alien aliens, well I hope you like microbial life because the chances of our evolutionary timelines aligning where one of us isn't slime are ridiculously slim, but we're lucky to meet at all because that dead ball of sand we found could have been something 10 million years ago, or it could be something in another 10 million. Science is hard. And you want scifi to be just as hard? Fuck off. All scifi is soft. Make it the flavor you want. You're not making it harder than star wars no matter how hard you try because you don't know what you actually want. You want aesthetics. Go read some fucking Adrian Tchaikovsky or something. Learn how alien even familiar earth life can be, and then how alien actual alien life is. And watch out for the bugs. The man does great scifi but damn does he love his bugs.
>>97748206Oh, I don’t think you’re even beginning to appreciate how unreasonable the “ultra-hard-sci-fi” people are.They want their sci-fi to be even harder and more grounded than irl. It shouldn’t be possible, but frankly, it’s what they demand at times.
>>97720298No there's not. You're just going from "here's a magic box that lets us go faster than light" to "here's a magic box that let's us do a mathematically plausible thing that let's us go faster than light."Hard scifi is a fucking lie.
>>97748222No they never actually demand hard scifi like that. They always reveal they have no clue how hard shit actually is. Like OP. His idea of hard scifi is "the aliens are done by jim henson productions instead of by the makeup team."He has no idea how stupidly unlikely it is that grass is green.
>>97748230You kinda prove my point. By this logic, it’s idiotic to think life would exist on Earth since the idea of inorganic matter just magically turning into living organic matter is ridiculous and not how chemistry works. it’s called abiogenesis, we currently have no fucking clue how it happens, we’ve never really been able to replicate it, but we know it’s happened at least once
>>97748740how does that prove literally anyone's point about anything here?
>>97740477If his ideas were so creative, he wouldn't need to staple them to preexisting franchises
>>97734283>i-i was just PRETENDING to be retarded! I'm sure
>>97754120I mean it can be fun to just do as an excuse to make some designs. I think halo's original designs are alien enough, kinda would be interested to see their take on mass effect just to see what fuckery they go with.
>>97754144That's the problem, they're just "some designs". If you're going to make some faggy, self-indulgent radical redesign like this it should carry over SOME aspect or spirit of the original work. But none of these do, they're just a bunch of retarded overly-geometric bughorses that nobody would give the time of day if he wasn't trying to pass them off as popular franchises. The closest to a capturing the spirit of the original is probably the tyranid, but that's just because he took the laziest possible route of making the biomechanical modular swarm species into...a mechanical modular swarm species. And as >>97739358 points out he even fucks that up by putting less thought into giving them a consistent body plan than GW. When 40K is more "hard sci-fi" than your SUPAR THOUGHTFUL redesigns, you've fucking failed.
>>97754723Starfish alien version of mass effect aliens I still think could be neatThen also have the joke of making the hanar, rachni and elcor into humanoid aliens since humanoid bauplans worked here so they probably happened a couple times elsewhere.
>>97722974Jiralhanae are brutesMgalekgeko or something to that effect are the hunter worm colonies.
>>97754776Just imagine a puckered asshole and some crab legs stapled to a primary shape and pull a mass effect name out of a hat. It'll be the same fucking thing as what this hackfraud does.Then you can hoot and clap over recognizing THING from BRAND even though it looks and acts nothing alike.
>>97754803>Puckered asshole with crab legsThat only describes the krogan
If the Asari were liquid biotic (gel-like) fuming worms that are able to form lots of soft tendrils to mimic different body shapesWould you still love them?
>>97754856>Asari true form is sentient fleshlight
>>97754127Meme answers are really your specialty, huh. You should stick to the sideline, champ. You're not suited for bad ol 4chan
