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Do You Prefer to Play a Human PC When RPGing?
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From what I know about those authors --and I can only speak confidently about Niven-- they routinely cooked up exotic alien physiologies, and left the mindscapes pretty simple and easy to relate to.Dannyalcatraz said:
Niven's famous for his single primary trait aliens (and I don't mean that derisively); Kzin are agressive, Puppeteers cowardly, Pak protective, err, paranoid, etc. There psychologies are easily expressed in human terms.
I've only read a little Baxter, but from what I've seen, the psychology of any race, humans included, isn't one of his interests. Does he ever try to write from a photino birds' point-of-view? I'm guessing not.
Then consider a writer like Samuel R. Delany. In Babel-17 a character briefly mentions an alien race whose langauge was based on heat, who could describe an entire diplomatic base's environmental control system accurately enough to build from scratch using only 7 words ("That's impossible" says one character. "Not if you have the right 7 words").
Its the most impressive, and succinct, description of alien an mindset I've read. A perspective Delany couldn't possible write from, only describe in that tangential way.
All of that is psysiology, though, not psychology. Ever read Clement's "Mission of Gravity"? The Mesklynites are a fantastic creation; armored, methane-breathing catepillars able to survive in gravities between 3 and 100G. But the protagonist of the novel was really just a wily free-trader captain, who, personaility-wise, wouldn't have be out-of-place on the South China Seas.
Can you come up with any other examples?
For a counter-example, I'll site Stanislaw Lem's "Solaris", a book that posits, among other things, that when we try and grapple with the truly alien, all we can see is ourselves.
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Niven does have some non-monolithic aliens out there. I'd cite them specifically, but I lost about 50% of my Niven collection in a recent move- most of what I have is Known Space stuff and what I've managed to replace (Magic Goes Away stories, Dream Park books, etc.).
Baxter does have chapters written from the POV of his aliens.
Sorry, but I'm not about to reproduce the POV of several different authors' takes on alien psych in a messageboard post- I have neither the time nor space to do it justice. Suffice it to say that each of the examples given was from a work of fiction that included chapters from the alien POV. Some were entirely penned that way.
In these works, the alien physiology perforce affected the psychology. After all, if you are a being whose dimensions can be measured in light years, you may not consider a 2m tall being as even being alive. If you were alive in the first 1/10000000th of a second of the universe's existence, a creature alive today would seem as inert to you as stone does to us.
And, as I recall, Greg Bear's xenophobic Jart don't even exist in only 3 dimensions. Their mission in life is to preserve everything in reality as an offering to Descendant Command at the end of the universe...a mission akin to storing the entire universe in a glass paperweight.
Read it. Nice story.
Turjan
Explorer
Elves are defined in the RAW, right. Do they make sense? I don't think so. I really doubt very much that the consequences of such a high lifespan as per RAW have been properly thought through. A 100 year long juvenile phase is either ridiculous or would result in something completely different from a human mindset. Basically, you have the choice between incredibly dumb or superhumanly intelligent. The second condition is, per definitionem, not playable by a human being. The first possibility might be in easier reach.fusangite said:
I also like this version: I'd suggest taking a tape recorder with you when you visit them. Ask them a question. Come back next day to switch the recorder on. Then come back a week later and listen to the answer with "fast forward". Oh, and don't forget a hand brush to remove the cobwebs so you can see which side of the head carries the mouth. You might add a week up front in order to play your recorded question first in slow motion. Of course, the answer would be incredibly wise, even if a bit dated.
Additionally, that lifespan is unrealistic. I think I saw a calculation made by an insurance company that the normal life expectancy of a potentially immortal human being who doesn't "die of old age" would be about 130 years, and if he never gets ill, its about 165 or something like that. By that time, you would be dead by an accident. Of course, areas with medieval technology and dangerous monsters are a bit safer, so you could add a few years
.Okay, in the end it's all fantasy, and possible is what you define as possible. Given the fact that I don't see most of my players capable of playing a genuine rendition of an Italian or a Japanese, fantasy elves or dwarves look pretty bland in comparison to many real world cultures. Of course you can play these races. Don't be surprised if they look as exotic as your uncle, though.
If you are fine with that, then go ahead. In principle, I see fantasy races as an excuse to play pretty narrow human stereotypes without the risk of being called a racist. They are just story vehicles that get rid of real world complications like political correctness. And, in the end, that's not the worst thing
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The Thayan Menace
First Post
Between 800 AD and the present, the average European lifespan has increased by 150%. Are we recognizeable as a species? We sure are.Turjan said:
While I think it is possible that a lifespan 250% greater than our present lifespan would profoundly change our outlook on the world, this is not necessarily he case. In 800 AD, the average lifespan for Europeans who survived past 5 was 32. Now it's just shy of 80. While social institutions like retirement have been invented to cope with this, we remain able to idenify wih what people in those times said and wrote.
I would therefore argue that it is clearly possible for all the sections of the rules pertaining to elves to be simultaneously true, even if this is not the most probable outcome. Therefore, I believe I can apply my standard rule that, if one section of the rules can be construed in more than one way, the correct way to construe the section is ub a way that does not contradict or invalidate other sections.
Turjan
Explorer
Sure. Nevertheless, the few things we know from those times were handed down by people who were often able to beat that average by a considerable margin. The lifespan of the "survivors" was not that much lower than today, it just happened much more rarely that someone reached that age. I know that the time of childhood as we know it was mostly non-existent, but the age of adulthood rose only from about 12 to 18, a much less impressive increase. A hundred years of adolescence are in a completely different ballpark and far beyond any meaningful extrapolation.fusangite said:
Lastly, this is the old question concerning the suspension of disbelief. If it works for you, I'm fine with that
. For me, it doesn't.
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