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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Sunseeker" data-source="post: 6757914">Thanks to the amazing field of biology, yes we understand animals very well.  Like humans, they are driven by common processes.  Food.  Shelter.  Reproduction.  These are not alien concepts.  Even if they lack the ability to go beyond their instinctual existence, indeed that makes them easier to understand, not harder.  The fact that they're blobby critters with 8 limbs doesn't make their mindset more alien, those 8 limbs serve the same purpose our 4 do.  Mobility, access, offense and defense.But beyond that, the reason that there are no aliens in D&D is because they're all created by humans.  They're all aspects of humanity that are exaggerated, parodied, but encapsulated and defined by the human mindset that created their mythos.  We can't describe what we fundamentally don't understand, it's why when you see descriptions of Great Old Ones you see a lot of repetition of "it is beyond understanding".  That's NOT a description of alien physiology, it's a statement by the writer.  The descriptions of these creatures are very round-about.  "Limbs where you would not expect" or "limbs that look nothing like anything we know."  It's still defined by our conceptions.  What do it's limbs look like?  "not what you'd expect".  They're reverse-engineering human perception by starting with a normal arm and then saying it's not that, it's something else.  Even conceptually the Great Old Ones, possibly the most "alien" things we can imagine in a setting are really not that alien.  Their goals are chaos, but that too is defined by how humans conceptualize the universe.  To an Old One what we call chaos, a concept opposed to order, opposed to goodness and righteousness may be ordered and good....but it is still defined within a human-based mindset of good, evil, chaos and law.  There are no aliens because all "aliens" are created by humans and humans cannot fundamentally think like anything other than humans.</blockquote>

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