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Message: <blockquote data-quote="DMScott" data-source="post: 1937718" data-attributes="member: 11734">"Know" is perhaps the wrong word. What is true is that if what we know about the development of life on Earth is accurate, then the odds against finding a critter just like a jellyfish on a world close enough to matter (in a sci-fi RPG sense) are pretty astronomical. Such a find would therefore imply that biology as we know it is almost completely wrong, and in a hard sci-fi setting (which thrives on consistency), that means the author/GM/whatever would have to figure out in what way it's wrong and how to apply that consistently to the setting. That represents either a lot of work, a lot of handwaving, or a combination of both.For example, Traveller has been brought up a few times in this thread. Traveller's default setting has a bunch of human varieties scattered on different planets, and two major alien species that look like humans in funny suits (the Aslan and the Vargr). So Traveller uses a pretty massive handwave to explain all but the Aslan, which has a variety of implications for the official setting that tend to be more science-fantasy in tone - the Ancients, pocket universes, and so on. The Aslan they just tried to make act relatively strangely as compared to humans. Other alien races like the Droyne, Hivers, and K'kree are all sufficiently weird that they don't need such a handwave.To avoid the handwaves, many hard sci-fi settings make alien life as weird as possible. That's easier than explaining why it should be similar to Earth's. Of course, there are relatively hard settings that simply ignore the question - Babylon 5 comes to mind, I don't think they ever really explained why all the younger intelligent species are human-like bipeds, though some story elements hint at possible reasons. But in hard sci-fi, it's usually good practice to have some answers for things like that, even if they're not revealed, so consistency can be preserved.</blockquote>

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