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<blockquote data-quote="Hussar" data-source="post: 8379960" data-attributes="member: 22779">Been noodling around in my brain for a while with thoughts about this and the notion of alien as &quot;unfathomable&quot; vs &quot;anthropomorphic&quot;.&nbsp;&nbsp; Had a few thoughts:1.&nbsp; In a D&amp;D world, we know that the mortals were created by gods.&nbsp; And that the gods are not inscrutable to each other.&nbsp; Gruumsh and Corellon might hate each other, but, they can totally understand each other's motivations and carry on a conversation.&nbsp; So, with that in mind, the notion of totally alien mortals is pretty easy to bypass.&nbsp; The mortals can talk to each other and understand each other because the folks that created them built it into them.&nbsp; If elves were totally inscrutable to orcs and vice versa, it would be pretty hard to stoke those fires of hate after all.&nbsp; 2.&nbsp; If your idea of an alien is an intelligent shade of blue, then, sure, it's going to be inscrutable.&nbsp; But, presuming for a moment that our two beings are roughly analogous, then they will have a lot of points in common.&nbsp; I might not be able to converse with a cat, but, it's not too hard to figure out what's motivating it to knock my favorite plant off the windowsill - cats are naughty words.&nbsp; <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f600.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":D" title="Big grin&nbsp; &nbsp; :D"&nbsp; data-smilie="8"data-shortname=":D" />&nbsp; But, joking aside, assuming that our two species are mortal (more or less), procreate in some fairly understandable way, need to eat, rest, poop, that sort of thing, then those two species have a number of points in common that make it fairly reasonable that they would be able to understand each other.&nbsp; I don't need to be a genius to figure out why that dwarf is pounding that metal into a shape.&nbsp; It's a mug.&nbsp; And, over time, we're going to be able to come up with language that allows us to communicate.With those two points in mind, the whole &quot;humans with bumpy heads&quot; criticism is kind of missing the point.&nbsp; It's not all that unreasonable that two species, with similar physiology, say a human and a dragonborn, similar needs and whatnot, are going to behave in, if not similar ways, at least understandable ways.&nbsp; A dragonborn farmer isn't going to be radically different from a human farmer or a halfling farmer.&nbsp; It's still wheat at the end of the day, and there's just only so many ways you can make wheat grow.&nbsp; All three groups will probably have farms and houses and tools and whatnot that would be pretty understandable by the other groups.&nbsp; Sure, maybe dragonborn use a base 9 counting system instead of base 10, but, that's pretty easy to work around.&nbsp; I mean, heck, the French don't have a word for 80, yet, they can do the same math that English speakers do.&nbsp; Conversely, English speakers don't have a word for ten thousand, yet, we can get along well enough talking to the Japanese.&nbsp; So one and so forth.So long as our aliens are more or less humanoid - bilaterally symmetrical, bipedal, hands for manipulation and so on - our aliens are going to be fairly understandably &quot;human&quot;.</blockquote>

[QUOTE="Hussar, post: 8379960, member: 22779"] Been noodling around in my brain for a while with thoughts about this and the notion of alien as "unfathomable" vs "anthropomorphic". Had a few thoughts: 1. In a D&D world, we know that the mortals were created by gods. And that the gods are not inscrutable to each other. Gruumsh and Corellon might hate each other, but, they can totally understand each other's motivations and carry on a conversation. So, with that in mind, the notion of totally alien mortals is pretty easy to bypass. The mortals can talk to each other and understand each other because the folks that created them built it into them. If elves were totally inscrutable to orcs and vice versa, it would be pretty hard to stoke those fires of hate after all. 2. If your idea of an alien is an intelligent shade of blue, then, sure, it's going to be inscrutable. But, presuming for a moment that our two beings are roughly analogous, then they will have a lot of points in common. I might not be able to converse with a cat, but, it's not too hard to figure out what's motivating it to knock my favorite plant off the windowsill - cats are naughty words. :D But, joking aside, assuming that our two species are mortal (more or less), procreate in some fairly understandable way, need to eat, rest, poop, that sort of thing, then those two species have a number of points in common that make it fairly reasonable that they would be able to understand each other. I don't need to be a genius to figure out why that dwarf is pounding that metal into a shape. It's a mug. And, over time, we're going to be able to come up with language that allows us to communicate. With those two points in mind, the whole "humans with bumpy heads" criticism is kind of missing the point. It's not all that unreasonable that two species, with similar physiology, say a human and a dragonborn, similar needs and whatnot, are going to behave in, if not similar ways, at least understandable ways. A dragonborn farmer isn't going to be radically different from a human farmer or a halfling farmer. It's still wheat at the end of the day, and there's just only so many ways you can make wheat grow. All three groups will probably have farms and houses and tools and whatnot that would be pretty understandable by the other groups. Sure, maybe dragonborn use a base 9 counting system instead of base 10, but, that's pretty easy to work around. I mean, heck, the French don't have a word for 80, yet, they can do the same math that English speakers do. Conversely, English speakers don't have a word for ten thousand, yet, we can get along well enough talking to the Japanese. So one and so forth. So long as our aliens are more or less humanoid - bilaterally symmetrical, bipedal, hands for manipulation and so on - our aliens are going to be fairly understandably "human". [/QUOTE]

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