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Rocket your D&D 5E and Level Up: Advanced 5E games into space! Alpha Star Magazine Is Launching... Right Now!

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Message: <blockquote data-quote="DreadPirateMurphy" data-source="post: 4744050" data-attributes="member: 20715">Jack,You've gone for a deeper analysis than me.  Mostly, I was appreciating the potential for adding flavor.  From a more academic standpoint, I thought the paper lacked rigor in a number of ways.  That actually makes it better as an RPG resource, in my opinion.Most folks aren't very good at conceptualizing different mental frames of reference.  We anthropomorphisize our pets.  We act as if children are little adults.  Every once in a while, some idiot walks into a cage in a zoo expecting that a full-grown tiger is going to like having its chin scratched like Tabby back home.Speculative fiction at least attempts to present cases.  Robert Sawyer does his take on different types of virtual immortality in The Terminal Experiment, and looks at an alternate humanity in his series starting with Hominids.  Vernor Vinge has works talking about artificial and group consciousness.  Card turned his later Ender books into a philosophical discussion about relating to alien minds.Actually, the best example of explorers projecting their expectations on alien beings is Russell's The Sparrow.  Some folks will find it to be nightmare fuel, but it's worth a read.  A clever DM could run a really intersting campaign if they came up with an alternative way to mimic this level of misunderstanding in the players.  That would definitely establish the DM's credentials as a rat-bastard.Less imaginative authors usually either resort to the humans in rubber masks trope, or go with Lovecraft's unknowable Elder Gods, either of which makes things easy but less interesting.  Alternatively, you can play lip service to the concept with exploring it in detail.  Halderman's Forever War ended supposedly when the unknowable became understandable when humans became clones, but the details are never discussed.  Similarly, the big bads in Pohl's Gateway universe relax when they see the protagonists evolving into machine-based virtual life, but few details are given.Anybody interested in how humans tick, so to speak, should pick up a copy of Pinker's How the Mind Works.  From a more socio-mythical perspective, I enjoyed Sagan's The Demon-Haunted World.Language, as you mentioned, is an entirely different topic...worthy of its own thread, perhaps.</blockquote>

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