How do you write alien planets or ecologies?
>>98316050What game?
>>98316050Sounds like a topic for /lit/. Anyone who responds to this after this point and engages with the thread premise is a bot just trying to bump this thread.
>>98316073Bump
>>98316073>I'm not a bot drawing attention to the thread thokwab
>>98316050I think the best examples of that kind of thing are usually to start with some kind of theme or core ideas and build everything out from that. Examples:Scavenger's Reign has probably the best alien world in any visual medium. Almost all of its creatures and ecological relationships are based on parasitism of one form or another. Creating a really neat web. Even just having 2 creatures that act on our with each other makes the world feel a lot more alive.Wayne Barlowe's Hell is all based around using souls as building blocks. Turning sinners into both literal bricks but also every creature and object in Hell that isn't a demon.>>98316073Fuck off, wannabe janny. /tg/ has always been about the discussion of stories, their structure and how to build them. Bouncing ideas and thoughts around to make compelling worlds to play in. The idea that /tg/ is exclusively for dry, established game discussion is a modern invention by retards with no imagination and it's made the board the shithole full of nothing but Generals it is todayI sincerely hope you die.
>>98316161Yeah tell that gamechud whatfor! Games are elitist and limit the possibilities of the realmforger.
>>98316209And this is a good thing.
>>98316050Heroic games: start with the planet's wonders, dangers, and potential for set pieces, and then add the absolute minimum backstop explanation. Horror games: same but replace wonder with terrorHard sci-fi autism games: use one of the many "roll to determine planetary diameter" products to establish the star, gravity, geology, etc. Then start doing spec evo to create biosphere fitting requirements. Then work out who first colonised and do speculative anthropology (xenopology?). Then work out how the anthropocene (xenocene?) era affects ecology. Die of old age before getting game to table. Science fantasy: take monsters from Monster Manual and add -oid to names.
>>98316050Very roughly. Haven't run a game where its just one alien planet the players are stuck on so getting too into the weeds about what the different types of insect egg laying patterns as it relates to moisture content collected on the undersides of the ambulant flora during different phases of the moon aren't that relevant. Taking a few ideas that are zoomed out elevator pitches, mixing them together and running with it works well enough. Worlds Without Number and the splat Dead Names is quite good for generating ideas. Perilous Voids is okay, different but similar approach. Making things alien mostly involves taking a familiar assumption and altering it. Don't have to explain it, often works better if you don't explain too much of it.
>>98316050two routesThe first is you probably need to define the planet's atmosphere, gravity, mineral composition, type of sun and how far away this planet is from the sun. With those done. You can use those parameters to define what types of flora and fauna would succeed in such an environment.The second is just going by vibes and what would be cool for the PCs to face
Like Monster Hunter, but sometimes replace "Elder Dragon" created phenomena with regular natural disasters or the planet itself being more "alive" than usual, but almost never truly sapient.So basically start with plant life or fungal life or nutrient dense airborne microbe colony. Make up a "Deer" equivalent > "raptor" equivalent = sapient lesser species > sapient greater species between "Rath" and "Metal Rath" in general power level > "Elder Dragon" > "Calamity Dragon". Then simply give each species it's own ecological niche and preferred environmental biome.
>>98316161No. If you're "writing" a story you aren't playing a game, you're just railroading players. Also, you're trying to make this board shit with inane posts to drive more people to /pol/ for the culture war. This was all in the Epstein files.
>>98316050Earth stuff, but bluer and with an extra eye.
>>98316050Honestly anon, i agree with >>98316073/lit/ will give you more. If you mention the game system you are using or at least the kind campaign you are going for we can give you ideas. But for just a vague alien lifeforms thing this isnt the best place.
>>98318894OP doesn't want to go to /lit/ and make that board interesting. They want to make /tg/ suck. This is literally off-topic, a topic for /lit/, and the jannies won't do anything because they're complicit in making this board shit.
>>98318894/lit/ doesn't, and never has, discussed "genre fiction"./tg/ is and always has been, the best board to discuss world building because you need a world to play a game in.>>98319059Go back to plebbit or whatever autistic shit hole you climbed out of. The best of /tg/ is always creative discussion. We have never been limited to just talking about game mechanics. Don't force your gay idea of what /tg/ should be on the rest of us. The jannies wont delete this thread because it's perfectly on topic. If you don't like that, go elsewhere.
>>98319317>/tg/ is and always has been, the best board to discuss world building because you need a world to play a game in./tg/ is game design. Drows exist because Garry needed some intelligent humanoid adversaries who couldn't be looted by the players. What worldbuilding threads on /tg/ do is just float ideas that sound good in theory or just unload trivia.'My elves have an abstract pantheon where they worship the elements' sounds meaningful on the surface, but without the context of the system it takes place in or what purpose it's supposed to serve, it's devoid of any real substance or usefulness to potential GMs.
>>98319317>The best of /tg/ is always creative discussion.Yes. But OP just posted a thread and didn't support it with discussion. OP is likely a bot run by Britbong intelligence or the Epstein conglomerate, here to make these boards shittier so people don't have a place besides social media sites to discuss things like this.
>>98319895You don't need OP to lead a discussion by the nose to have a thread about something. It takes more than one person to talk about something. Rather than just coming into a thread and bitch and say "go to /lit/, a board that doesn't talk about this kind of thing, instead" you could attempt to actually contribute to the topic.Being a fucking wannabe janny instead of at least trying to contribute to a given topic is how the board gets worse. Not the OP at least putting out SOMETHING that isn't a fucking General or Puckee thread
>>98319921If you actually genuinely want a thread to start, you should provide some content to chew on. The fact that OP didn't tells me it was more about pushing other threads off the board and filling it up with meaningless drivel slop threads than anything else.
>>98316050I roll on the all the autistic charts for Traveller & go from there
You ever heard of the game Blue Planet? A game kind of built around learning to survive, exploit, and understand and alien ecology on a water world with exotic resources? It's got a fun GM's guide just detailing all the xenobiology and how your players might investigate and interact with the unique ecologies of the planet.
>>98319948OP doesn't care, he isn't here to discuss games.
>>98316050Just make some stuff up.
>>98316050Traditional games?
>>98316050>how do you writeI take a pen and a piece of paper. I then make markings that record my thoughts on alien biologies on the paper with the pen.
