Building a better BEM

[Jack of Shadows]

Hi,

I'm tinkering with making a "Starship Troopers"-esque home brew and I'm curious whether people would find the alien opponent better if it were truelly alien or if it vaguelly resembles a more terrestrial creature?

My current idea is for a Naga/Snakeman idea essentially resembling a man-sized snake with arms. But I'm curious to find out what you folks would find more interesting in a game setting.

I've always liked the idea of the Kafers from 2300AD. They were essentially cockroach men but it was their culture and perceptions that were truelly alien.

Anyways, your input would be greatly appreciated.

Jack.

 

[NewLifeForm]

Right up my alley...

I think this is an interesting question and will depend greatly on what kind of campaign your going to run. If it is truly "Starship Troopers"-esque, a very alien, near mindless creature would be best. If the battle has an espionage and/or a psychological angle, something humanity (i.e., your players) can relate to works best.

I tend to use a mix of enemy species in my SF campaigns. Sometimes they ally with other powers just as we (the good guys) do. Sometimes not. While the multi-species Federation fights the entire species of Klingons in the old Star Trek shows, it wasn't until DS9 that we met the Dominion, a multi-species enemy.

One of my first space opera campaigns featured three major enemies who threatened the multi-species United Interstellar Alliance on three different fronts. One was a "bug" species (more like a cross between a black crab and a scorpion), another was a vaguely feline species in the style of the Kzinti (though they were really an amalgram of several aliens from SF novels) and the last was a species of attractive blue-grey humanoids with an oppressive communist culture. They were all enemies of the PCs for different reasons and they rarely ever worked together themselves (truthfully they just didn't like each other).

Unbeknownst to any of the three, they were secretly being manipulated by an ancient species of Psionic Mollusk/Squid things believed to be long extinct.

Don't know if I helped but hopefully I gave you some ideas. Good luck and let us know what you end up with.

NewLifeForm

 

[Jack of Shadows]

Thanks for the input,

The current concept is to do a scifi Vietnam War game.

Jack

 

[Peterson]

Thanks for the input,

The current concept is to do a scifi Vietnam War game.

Jack

You know - I've got something like that sitting around on my hard drive. Of course, I outlined it back in the early 1990's, and used the D6 Star Wars system as my "game system", but the general information may help.

Oh, and for the record, I went with a human-like alien species that was culturally divided, one side favored the Imperials (this took place post-RotJ, during the Empire's downfall), while the other side just wanted some land and a Republic-like government of their own.

Of course, there was a rare mineral on the planet - unique to the planet - that allowed ships' to literally heal themselves....

The Yajiin War had been occurring almost five years before the PCs became involved - fresh from New Republic SpecForce Drop Camp and assigned to Firebase Delta - in one of the worse areas of the planet.

We only played the "intro" of the campaign though. Let's just say it was deadly - probably too deadly.

Peterson

 

[Khorod]

Vietnam Sci-Fi...

Interesting thought- aliens are very much alien, and have a psionic/mind control aspect.

So, you can destroy the villains without compunction, but can have the more painfully human problems when survivors go intermittently under mind-control.

 

[HeapThaumaturgist]

Hrmmm... I remember reading a book a while back, putting it down and thinking: "So that was, what ... SciFi Nam?"

The main characters end up landing on a planet to complete some mission ... they're fighting another race in a grand genocidic war. Turns out, this planet has something they both want on it ... but the planet itself is unbelievably hostile. Almost everything is poisonous. Half the plant species have active defenses, which are all pretty uniformly deadly. And all of the animals are dangerous. Finally they start getting hit by odd "tribesmen" which they trace back to a certain type of plant apparently producing ambulatory attack drones. Read alot like Armor ... in the jungle. Was okay, as far as books went, but too much nam movie inspiration. Some guy eventually goes batslop crazy, goes native, and becomes 'one' with the jungle, etc..

Having a human enemy is okay ... I think "Alien" often really stands in for "radically different culture". Sort of a grand American mythological symbol. We didn't really understand Nam. Why and how the Vietcong fought the way they did, how to survive in the jungle, trying to fight a war in a horribly ALIEN place full of very alien people.

In five to ten years I imagine the sci-fi books coming out will deal alot with insurgencies and terrorism under alien guises.

If you want to get into cultural implications and role playing between the sides, then go human(oid). If you want to keep the other side truly "Other" then going with something horribly alien is a good bet. You can FEEL like you have nothing in common with a human being on the other side of your gun, but that's hard to put over in a book or game, so the alien stand-in works well.

Bugs make good choices because they're alien in appearance, most people have a psychological dislike for them, and evolutionarily speaking an intelligent life form is much more likely to develop out of a highly prevalent giant inset species than a serpentine species is likely to evolve arms but not legs. The evolution of arms suggests a need for limbs. You can lose limbs ... snakes, whales, etc ... I'm not sure I can think of any species that started WITHOUT them and evolved in a set of general purpose manipulators.

Currently I think all the rage is evolving out squid and other molluscs ... they've already got limbs, they're predatory and therefore have potential for higher thinking and the evolution of intelligence, and are pretty creepy looking.

--fje

 

[Jack of Shadows]

Vietnam Sci-Fi...

Interesting thought- aliens are very much alien, and have a psionic/mind control aspect.

So, you can destroy the villains without compunction, but can have the more painfully human problems when survivors go intermittently under mind-control.

I wasn't planning on getting that deeply into metaphysics. I had thought of using some psychic abilities but mostly in the low level telepathy, precog and psychometry stuff.

My idea with the "Snakes" (which is the Human's slang for them) was that they communicate through pheromones. It makes communcation attempts very difficult and they're communication equipment likely to be unidentifiable as such.

They are also extremely acrophobic. They don't use flying machines and they never developed starships. They build their homes and communities subterranean and travel between worlds using terrrestrial wormhole generators.

The setting is an arboreal world akin to the redwood forests in British Columbia. For those not familiar think of Endor from Star Wars as those scenes where filmed there. I chose this setting because it gives a similiar envirnment to that of Vietnam. It also explains why airpower isn't very effective thanks to the forest canopy. The world is essentially colonized by both the humans and the Naganese (working name for the Snakes, not sure I like it enough yet) with each oblivious to the other. The conflict starts when the humans advance from simple forestry to mining operations which threaten the Naganese underground communities. This starts a brushfire war between the militia of both races and escalates to the "marines" on both sides being called in which is where the PC's enter the picture.

The ideas of the campaign are based around fighting the enemy, figuring out the enemy, and finally how to resolve the whole conflict. I've tried to sow as much confusion as possible through the nature of the Snakes to make things confusing.

Jack