Anyone want to help me design an intelligent parasite?

[Twichyboy]

Hello, hopefully this is the right location for a thread like this, but I am trying to create a Science Fiction campaign for my players. Specifically I want to try to make a hard science fiction RPG, or at least to best of my ability, its not a requirement as my players probably wont notice either way.

Anyways I'm trying to design some races for my game, And I thought an interesting idea might be a intelligent parasite race, however I am not sure how that would look on paper or in general, I don't want the race to be a generic "Evil" race either, I would rather let the players be able to choose it as a playable race.

The help I am looking for is this, what would this race look like? I mean, I guess they would take over whatever the local fauna was, but im not sure, Do you all think they would have some strange customs or histories? Basically how would this race act? would they have cities? or is it ridiculous to even think a race like that could exist and should I reconsider? Also if anyone has any ideas for abilities or stats I would love to hear those too Anything to help flesh out this race would be greatly appreciated!

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

Well, like Stargate's parasitic goa'uld or Star Trek's symbiotic trill, the species could be kind of...slug like. Aliens like that may well live longer than their hosts, and hop from host to host over time. They would have a culture of their own.

You could go smaller and have worm/insect-like parasites that only become dominant in the host body when they reach a certain critical population mass. Before the population reaches that mass, they are not sentient. A parasite like that would not have a culture.

A similar type of model would work for nanomechanical parasites.

 

[Derren]

If they are sentient they would most certainly have a culture.
Depending on how hard you want the setting to be they could only take over fauna from their home planet. If they can also take over aliens then its probably best, for the sake of them not being evil, that a cultural convention is to only take over non-sentient species. But of course there are cults, etc. which do not adhere to it.

I would suggest you look at the Eclipse Phase RPG as its transhumanist setting has many of the same attributes. Typical problems you have to address is how to recognize others when they can change bodies at will (and, depending on how they control their host are buried inside it) or how to store unused hosts?
The parasites will likely switch to whatever host that is the most suitable for what they need to do so they have a literal zoo of animals for work, recreation, travel, ect. How do they care for them?
Social status would likely also include the size of ones zoo and how exotic it is.

Their cities (face it, every even remotely industrial race needs them) would probably be rather open and flat, especially considering that they need to cater to so many different body forms. They would also have a much larger agricultural sector as they need to feed all the host bodies in addition to themselves.

The rest of their culture would depend on which direction you want them to go? If you want them more warlike let them have a legal system which includes duels to the death (of the host).
You could have a more eco faction which believes that while unused a host should be allowed to live free(ish in a zoo) while others think it is more efficient to keep it in stasis.

If you want to make it a player race I would not make them totally helpless without a host, just very weak. Also you have to watch out during character creation that the player does not use all physical characteristics as dump stat or at least penalize it in some way. Maybe by making checks for controlling the host physical stats (Con or the equivalent to retain control of the host when it takes a lot of damage, strength to force it to do something against its nature, etc. Of course you then have to track the physical characteristics of both the host and the parasite).

Size wise, I would go for something dog sized, just a lot weaker and slower.