Favorite Aliens from TTRPGs?

[Kage2020]

Influencing the Ithklur to become more tactically violent rather than randomly violent - or as the Ithklur see it, wearing them down to the point they give up trying to resist - is interesting as well, though I think it's great that the Ithklur get back at the Hivers by competing to be the most annoying while keeping "ornamental carnivores" as pets to terrify their starfish overlords.

I just remember the goofy artwork and Santa hats and the San * Klaus thing (or whatever that was). In fact, that's almost all that I remember since looking at it almost 30 years ago.

 

[AsenRG]

Yeah, I’m still reading the Kafer books, but I think you hit the nail on the head. I’m not going to explain the “why” here, but the Kafer have to take Humanity out if their civilization and culture are to continue.

I can’t wait to introduce the Kafer Into battle when the players notice their adversary transforms from simpletons into canny, Sun Tzu caliber opponents anticipating the party’s every move.

...OK, I'll bite: why?

a sector-sized state that's lasted enturies - it's far bigger and older than any state we've managed here of Earth to date

Egypt says "hi"!

 

[TheSaint]

...OK, I'll bite: why?

Okay, I'll answer (off the top of my head, from memory, having not read the books in decades, so forgive me if I get some details wrong).

Don't click on the spoiler below if you don't want to know the secrets of the Kafer.

Spoiler

So, Kafer biology has a reflex that is akin to the human adrenaline reflex. But instead of increasing blood flow, heart rate, etc, the Kafer reflex increases neuron connectivity in their brain and central nervous system. The high and low of it is: when their fight-or-flight reflex kicks in, instead of getting stronger and faster, they get smarter. An unexcited Kafer has an IQ around that of a chimpanzee, but an excited Kafer is as smart, or maybe slightly smarter, than the average human. When the stimulus goes away, their IQ returns to its base level, but over time as they experience more and more of these excitation events, their base IQ increases as well. And, occassionally, in an uncommon mutation, there can arise a Kafer who is always at a high level of IQ, a genius of sorts. These are relatively rare, and would be the equivalent of our household-name geniuses, like a Newton or an Einstein.

So the prehistory of Kafer civilization was a series of expansions and collapses. A group of Kafers would gain enough base IQ to work together and form a small empire, build a city, develop some early level of technology. But their decendants would no longer face the threats of living in the wild, and so they would not experience that excitation. Their base IQ would remain low, and eventually the civilization would grow weak and be overthrown by other tribes who had remained less civilized and experienced more frequent threats to their safety.

And then along came a Kafer genius named Striker of Stars. He hit upon the idea of founding a civilization based on a code of ritualized violence. You woke up in the morning and you and your roommate picked up your fighting sticks and got into your morning brawl before breakfast. Stuff like that. The idea was to stimulate the IQ response on a regular basis without actually killing each other in order to keep the average base IQ of the population high. And the other founding principle of his civilization was that this needed to be done to face the threat of the smart barbarians, those uncivilized tribes who were not a part of their civilization. They were the outsiders, the bogeymen. If this code wasn't kept, the smart barbarians were waiting just outside the gates of the city to overthrow everything that everyone was working towards. His civilization with its codes and beliefs spread across the entire Kafer homeworld and overtook everything. It's now universal among all Kafer, and the closest thing to a religion that they have. And it is what enabled them to build a technological base advanced enough to develop spaceflight and FTL. They encountered a couple of species that were not technologically advanced, and IIRC they enslaved one and wiped out another.

And then they encountered humanity. And what did they discover? A species that is just as technologically advanced as they are, but who are basically composed entirely of (what a Kafer sees as) geniuses who are always smart. Humanity are, from a Kafer perspective, literally an entire species of smart barbarians. They found out that their worst primal fear is true. It's like we woke up one morning and found out that there really are monsters living under our beds who want to eat us. To try to make peace with them would go against everything that Striker of Stars codified as the central tenets of their civilization that have kept them going for millennia. Even if the current genius Kafer leaders wanted to do such a thing, the general population would never let it happen.

 

[AsenRG]

Okay, I'll answer (off the top of my head, from memory, having not read the books in decades, so forgive me if I get some details wrong).

Don't click on the spoiler below if you don't want to know the secrets of the Kafer.

Spoiler

So, Kafer biology has a reflex that is akin to the human adrenaline reflex. But instead of increasing blood flow, heart rate, etc, the Kafer reflex increases neuron connectivity in their brain and central nervous system. The high and low of it is: when their fight-or-flight reflex kicks in, instead of getting stronger and faster, they get smarter. An unexcited Kafer has an IQ around that of a chimpanzee, but an excited Kafer is as smart, or maybe slightly smarter, than the average human. When the stimulus goes away, their IQ returns to its base level, but over time as they experience more and more of these excitation events, their base IQ increases as well. And, occassionally, in an uncommon mutation, there can arise a Kafer who is always at a high level of IQ, a genius of sorts. These are relatively rare, and would be the equivalent of our household-name geniuses, like a Newton or an Einstein.

So the prehistory of Kafer civilization was a series of expansions and collapses. A group of Kafers would gain enough base IQ to work together and form a small empire, build a city, develop some early level of technology. But their decendants would no longer face the threats of living in the wild, and so they would not experience that excitation. Their base IQ would remain low, and eventually the civilization would grow weak and be overthrown by other tribes who had remained less civilized and experienced more frequent threats to their safety.

And then along came a Kafer genius named Striker of Stars. He hit upon the idea of founding a civilization based on a code of ritualized violence. You woke up in the morning and you and your roommate picked up your fighting sticks and got into your morning brawl before breakfast. Stuff like that. The idea was to stimulate the IQ response on a regular basis without actually killing each other in order to keep the average base IQ of the population high. And the other founding principle of his civilization was that this needed to be done to face the threat of the smart barbarians, those uncivilized tribes who were not a part of their civilization. They were the outsiders, the bogeymen. If this code wasn't kept, the smart barbarians were waiting just outside the gates of the city to overthrow everything that everyone was working towards. His civilization with its codes and beliefs spread across the entire Kafer homeworld and overtook everything. It's now universal among all Kafer, and the closest thing to a religion that they have. And it is what enabled them to build a technological base advanced enough to develop spaceflight and FTL. They encountered a couple of species that were not technologically advanced, and IIRC they enslaved one and wiped out another.

And then they encountered humanity. And what did they discover? A species that is just as technologically advanced as they are, but who are basically composed entirely of (what a Kafer sees as) geniuses who are always smart. Humanity are, from a Kafer perspective, literally an entire species of smart barbarians. They found out that their worst primal fear is true. It's like we woke up one morning and found out that there really are monsters living under our beds who want to eat us. To try to make peace with them would go against everything that Striker of Stars codified as the central tenets of their civilization that have kept them going for millennia. Even if the current genius Kafer leaders wanted to do such a thing, the general population would never let it happen.

So basically Kafer leaders are smarter than wanting war, but are hostages to populists who are afraid that Kafer Culture would be destroyed if they made peace with humans?

 

[TheSaint]

So basically Kafer leaders are smarter than wanting war, but are hostages to populists who are afraid that Kafer Culture would be destroyed if they made peace with humans?

Spoiler

You're reading a lot into that last line. The operative phrase is "even if they wanted to". Their belief system permeates their entire life from birth. It isn't that they believe their culture would be destroyed, it's that it would be destroyed. They would be admitting defeat to the smart barbarians. It would be the end of everything. I'm trying to come up with an analog in human society, and drawing a blank. I guess it would be something like the Medieval Papal States suddenly announcing that the Pope is an atheist and that there is no God. "Okay, folks, all the things you have been basing your entire life around since you could walk are a lie." It would result in a complete breakdown of society even if the war was over and humanity wasn't firing a shot. It's not a political thing, or even what we as modern folks would imagine a religious war would look like. It's fundamental to who they are. And not just some of them, all of them.

 

[AsenRG]

Spoiler

You're reading a lot into that last line. The operative phrase is "even if they wanted to". Their belief system permeates their entire life from birth. It isn't that they believe their culture would be destroyed, it's that it would be destroyed. They would be admitting defeat to the smart barbarians. It would be the end of everything. I'm trying to come up with an analog in human society, and drawing a blank. I guess it would be something like the Medieval Papal States suddenly announcing that the Pope is an atheist and that there is no God. "Okay, folks, all the things you have been basing your entire life around since you could walk are a lie." It would result in a complete breakdown of society even if the war was over and humanity wasn't firing a shot. It's not a political thing, or even what we as modern folks would imagine a religious war would look like. It's fundamental to who they are. And not just some of them, all of them.

It would depend, I suspect. I mean, a lot of people in history did have suspicions about the piety of one Pope or another...

Spoiler: But then I've only ever read 2320 AD, so I might well be WRONG

As in, my analogy for this would be "this is the fundamental of their science". Because that's what brought us out of the caves.
So...what if we were to suddenly deny science?
Well, what "if you suddenly declared that the Earth is flat". Or how about "hollow and other people are living below". Or "Earth was actually created by an intelligent creator".
Yes, for some people it wouldn't be much of a shock if you declared that all science is wrong and a lie. Those people are out there.
So, amusingly, for the Kafer-Human war to end, they would need some of their fringe guys to suddenly become popular!

OTOH, they would make some nice replacement for orcs (after being switched to humanoid bodies). Advantages: human barbarians and bards alike would make them smarter; they would need to have some highly ritualistic combat practices that they engage in daily; and they might well frown on barbarians that try to actually kill during combat...

 

[Triumvir]

We might need to pod off into a separate Kafers/2300AD thread, but anyway...

The Kafers' motivations are both comprehensible and also totally alien, which is what makes them such a fantastic piece of writing IMHO.

Spoiler: Spoiler

As an example of how different they are, the "Back Door" campaign from the original game line was about humans discovering another species, the Ylii, that the Kafers have known about for some time and almost completely conquered. (Many Kafer ships have Ylii slaves on board as technicians. The Ylii have their own psychology and go along with this better than humans would.) The Kafers didn't finish the job of conquering the Ylii solely because the Ylii didn't fight back, so the Kafers just lost interest. The Kafer task forces started fighting each other because it was more fun then rounding up unresisting (or even cooperating) Ylii. Some Ylii are starting to re-learn their lost military skills, which is actually putting their species in grave danger and gives the humans a nasty moral dilemma - use the Ylii to open a new front, even at the risk they might be genocided?

So the idea that Kafer leaders would stop fighting humans if they didn't have to pander to ordinary Kafers kind of misses the point. All Kafers view fighting as an unambiguously good thing, not a tragic waste or a grim necessity.

 

[BigJackBrass]

The Kleibor from Pacesetter's Star Ace. You're a clumsy, genial giant, looking like a twelve foot tall polar bear wearing mittens, have telepathic and telekinetic abilities, and the central motivation of your people is to have fun. Has there ever been a more attractive player character option?

 

[Sharrow]

Egypt says "hi"!

Egypt, by the way Vargr state continuity is measured, is many states that happen to occupy similar territory. You see, apparently when a Vargr state (or corporation, or whatever) has a change in leadership by ways that Humans consider 'unconstitutional', that's complete chaos, and change in the state itself, and so on. When it happens to a Human state, if it returns to some similar state afterwards it's just a bit of a hiccup.

Unreliable and humanocentric narrators...

 

[Sharrow]

So basically Kafer leaders are smarter than wanting war, but are hostages to populists who are afraid that Kafer Culture would be destroyed if they made peace with humans?

I wouldn't say that - most leader Kafers see violence as a natural state of affairs, and raids and skirmishes between factions are common. And Humans are both a threat and an opportunity - the leader that conquers Humanity can expect to become incredibly powerful off the prestige and the loot and the ongoing wealth that captured Human worlds and their industries would produce.

While the Kafer leaders are generally fairly smart all the time, they still get quite a boost from their 'adrenaline', so they still need violence or the real threat of it to think clearly, and they're still likely to be addicted to that. Very, very few Kafers are truly 'always smart' and even they get at least a little boost from excitation.

Not only do Kafers not want to give up a life of violence, they cannot. Making it ritualised only goes so far.

What makes their treatment interesting is that there was some thought put into it - Kafer equipment is made very rugged, because they have a tendency to smack it around a bit when first using it, as an automatic attempt to 'smarten' it. We best kit up when it fails to perform, Kafers beat it up pre-emptively to make it perform. Likewise, while the more violent among us might smack someone around for failing at a task, a Kafer leader will give someone a smack before giving them an instruction to make them smarter so they can understand it.

When the Kafers captured some Humans, they treated them adequately - by their standards, and as a result they were quite traumatized by the time they were rescued, not least because they'd been beaten constantly for no reason they could see (and Kafers average bigger and more robust than Humans, so what they consider a 'wake up swat' would be a painful and bruising blow for a Human).

 

[TheSaint]

I wouldn't say that - most leader Kafers see violence as a natural state of affairs, and raids and skirmishes between factions are common. And Humans are both a threat and an opportunity - the leader that conquers Humanity can expect to become incredibly powerful off the prestige and the loot and the ongoing wealth that captured Human worlds and their industries would produce.

While the Kafer leaders are generally fairly smart all the time, they still get quite a boost from their 'adrenaline', so they still need violence or the real threat of it to think clearly, and they're still likely to be addicted to that. Very, very few Kafers are truly 'always smart' and even they get at least a little boost from excitation.

Not only do Kafers not want to give up a life of violence, they cannot. Making it ritualised only goes so far.

What makes their treatment interesting is that there was some thought put into it - Kafer equipment is made very rugged, because they have a tendency to smack it around a bit when first using it, as an automatic attempt to 'smarten' it. We best kit up when it fails to perform, Kafers beat it up pre-emptively to make it perform. Likewise, while the more violent among us might smack someone around for failing at a task, a Kafer leader will give someone a smack before giving them an instruction to make them smarter so they can understand it.

When the Kafers captured some Humans, they treated them adequately - by their standards, and as a result they were quite traumatized by the time they were rescued, not least because they'd been beaten constantly for no reason they could see (and Kafers average bigger and more robust than Humans, so what they consider a 'wake up swat' would be a painful and bruising blow for a Human).

Yeah, did we mention that Kafers have a carapace? Humans don't. <ouch>

I also remember in one of the adventures that when the Kafers captured a French outpost, one of the Kafer officers was reading Sartre and thinking that humans and Kafers could understand each other. They aren't mindless, they just think differently.

The thread is making me want to pull out my copies of Kafer Sourcebook and Invasion and reread them. Haven't done that in 30 years. Mongoose is rewriting Invasion for their edition of 2300, I'm curious to see what direction they take them in.

 

[Ronnie Sanford]

We might need to pod off into a separate Kafers/2300AD thread, but anyway...

The Kafers' motivations are both comprehensible and also totally alien, which is what makes them such a fantastic piece of writing IMHO.

Spoiler: Spoiler

As an example of how different they are, the "Back Door" campaign from the original game line was about humans discovering another species, the Ylii, that the Kafers have known about for some time and almost completely conquered. (Many Kafer ships have Ylii slaves on board as technicians. The Ylii have their own psychology and go along with this better than humans would.) The Kafers didn't finish the job of conquering the Ylii solely because the Ylii didn't fight back, so the Kafers just lost interest. The Kafer task forces started fighting each other because it was more fun then rounding up unresisting (or even cooperating) Ylii. Some Ylii are starting to re-learn their lost military skills, which is actually putting their species in grave danger and gives the humans a nasty moral dilemma - use the Ylii to open a new front, even at the risk they might be genocided?

So the idea that Kafer leaders would stop fighting humans if they didn't have to pander to ordinary Kafers kind of misses the point. All Kafers view fighting as an unambiguously good thing, not a tragic waste or a grim necessity.

It’s interesting that you referenced Operation Back Door as I literally finished reading it yesterday afternoon. And yeah, I wondered at the time, if the Ylii (who have studied the Kafer for thousands of years and who bioengineered their own species to be more passive towards the Kafer), would really go to war with the Kafer given not only how passive the Ylii are but also their understanding of how the Kafer are going to react to them “fighting back”.

Like you said, the only reason the Ylii still exist is because the Kafer, gaining no stimuli from butchering Ylii, decided they weren’t worth their time.

Did you run Operation Back Door? If so, what did you think? I just got the Mongoose 2300AD books, and I am considering running Back Door and also the one-shot scenario “Lone Wolf” using its rules.

From what I have read so far of GDW’s 2300 setting, I love just how alien, the aliens are. And it’s not just the Kafer or the Ylii... I took a quick look through the scenario “Having Seen the Sky” and the Pentapods, with their “interesting”, views of “self”; total mastery of genetics and bioengineering; and strong desire to trade with humanity (but total cluelessness about what things humans find appealing or disgusting) look more fun, in my view, than the Kafer.

Any thoughts?

*** Apologies to the original poster, I was surprised to see someone bring up Operation Back Door and I not only participated in thread drift but encouraged it. I will start a separate thread!

 

[lategamer]

It’s interesting that you referenced Operation Back Door as I literally finished reading it yesterday afternoon. And yeah, I wondered at the time, if the Ylii (who have studied the Kafer for thousands of years and who bioengineered their own species to be more passive towards the Kafer),

I’ve completely blanked on the Ylii - I’ll have to go back and read.

I’d love to play 2300AD again.

I took a quick look through the scenario “Having Seen the Sky” and the Pentapods, with their “interesting”, views of “self”; total mastery of genetics and bioengineering; and strong desire to trade with humanity (but total cluelessness about what things humans find appealing or disgusting) look more fun, in my view, than the Kafer.

Pentapods are my favourite aliens.

 

[Silverlion]

I liked what were they the design (not the culture) of the Sung, and yeah the Pentapods are cool.
Damn the new core book in print for 2300 is 100 bucks. Good lords.

 

[lategamer]

I liked what were they the design (not the culture) of the Sung, and yeah the Pentapods are cool.
Damn the new core book in print for 2300 is 100 bucks. Good lords.

Having already got 1st edition, 2nd edition in paper and the GDW PDFs on DTRPG, I am not sure I can justify spending money on yet another edition of a game I won’t play.

 

[Silverlion]

Having already got 1st edition, 2nd edition in paper and the GDW PDFs on DTRPG, I am not sure I can justify spending money on yet another edition of a game I won’t play.

I no longer have 1E and never got 2E.
Still oof, I know it has color art, but that's damn expensive for a corebook.

 

[AsenRG]

I'd love to play 2300AD and/or 2320 AD, is all I'm going to say!

 

[Silverlion]

I'd love to play 2300AD and/or 2320 AD, is all I'm going to say!

Me too!

 

[Kage2020]

I don't remember picking it up, but apparently I purchased 2320 AD even though it was d20. I imagine that I was wanting to see what they had done with the intervening years.

 

[David Johansen]

A Blaard, a Kagoth, and a Kelibor walk into a bar. The bartender rolls his eyes and says "I can't bear it." The Blard says, "you got a problem with the right to armed bears comrade." The Kagoth says, "oh dear! I don't like conflict, then flies into a rage and eat's the Bartender." The Kelibor says, "Whoa, dudes! Free drinks!"

 

[Kage2020]

As I mentioned it up-thread, here are the "aliens" of Equinox. Guess the species that they map on to in Shadowrun and/or Earthdawn.

 

[Harl Quinn]

I'd love to play 2300AD and/or 2320 AD, is all I'm going to say!

Me too!

I'll keep that in mind. I've got an idea for a campaign rolling around my head that I may or may not run with using the Mongoose Traveller 1e version. We'll see whether that comes to fruition based on the progress of my Dragonbane game and interest from others on the board.

 

[Ronnie Sanford]

I'll keep that in mind. I've got an idea for a campaign rolling around my head that I may or may not run with using the Mongoose Traveller 1e version. We'll see whether that comes to fruition based on the progress of my Dragonbane game and interest from others on the board.

Please keep me in mind too as I would love to play. any version of 2300 / Star Cruiser.

Also I’m planning to run a mini-campaign using the newest Mongoose 2300AD version in April or May and will have a couple of open virtual seats for those that can handle a Saturday or Sunday 3:00pm to 7:00pm (US Central Standard Time) time slot. Note, while the Kafer might make an early appearance in my games, my setting happens a little bit prior to the Kafers trying to blitz humanity and thus won’t be nearly as military focused.

 

[lategamer]

Mongoose 2300AD version in April or May and will have a couple of open virtual seats for those that can handle a Saturday or Sunday 3:00pm to 7:00pm (US Central Standard Time)

That would be 10 pm to 2 am CET

Note, while the Kafer might make an early appearance in my games, my setting happens a little bit prior to the Kafers trying to blitz humanityp and thus won’t be nearly as military focused.

Watching Foundation has me absolutely itching to do a non-military colonists campaign. But then so many games, so little time, so few players.

 

[Triumvir]

...Did you run Operation Back Door? If so, what did you think?

alas never had the chance. (BTW the Ylii edited out their aggression before they ran into the Kafer, IIRC?)

The Kafer are a brilliant bit of design but we've kind of already spoiler'd them on this very thread. Once the mystery goes, there is a risk they just turn into orcs.

I've been pondering an idea for a campaign involving the Sung and, um, another established setting element. Bit less mil-SF, bit more techno-thriller in theme. Rules-wise, for choice I would use BRP or Mythras. (For genuine preference I would use... Chill 2e, but that is a bit niche to put it mildly).

But basically I'd play/ref any 2300AD going. We need another thread.

Edit: we have another thread

 

[Ronnie Sanford]

alas never had the chance. (BTW the Ylii edited out their aggression before they ran into the Kafer, IIRC?)

The Kafer are a brilliant bit of design but we've kind of already spoiler'd them on this very thread. Once the mystery goes, there is a risk they just turn into orcs.

I've been pondering an idea for a campaign involving the Sung and, um, another established setting element. Bit less mil-SF, bit more techno-thriller in theme. Rules-wise, for choice I would use BRP or Mythras. (For genuine preference I would use... Chill 2e, but that is a bit niche to put it mildly).

But basically I'd play/ref any 2300AD going. We need another thread.

Edit: we have another thread

The original Operation Back Door from Challenge magazines 49 - 52, suggest that about 100,000 years prior to Humanity finding the “back door”, the Ylii were shocked to discover intelligent life, the Kafer, that despoiled their own environment, killed more prey than it needed to survive, and reveled in violence. Because of this discovery, the Ylii of the time began to suspect that the “natural cosmic order” of ecological communalism was not as inevitable as they had thought.

Ylii xenobiologist, contrasted the relative youth of the Kafer society (compared to the Ylii) with its unexpectedly high technological achievements, and suggested that a collision between the Ylii and Kafer societies would one day be unavoidable; a notion that violated the Ylii’s deeply held belief that all things could and should live in balance with one another.

The potential threat highlighted by Ylii xenobiologist activated ancient defense instincts in the Ylii Alpha genus, prompting them to step forward with a suggestion that “some action”, possibly containing the Kafer by force, must be taken. This suggestion by the Alphas, flew in the face of the Ylii’s belief that the “natural order of things” should never be disrupted, and was the first “incident” that touched off a cataclysmic civil war causing billions of Ylii to be killed, commit suicide, or go insane.

In the end, the Alphas lost, and in a bid to prevent their socially protective instincts from ever harming the natural order again, eugenics were used to remove those instincts from the Alpha line.

So yes the Ylii have always been mostly passive, but removing the social defense mechanisms from the Alphas completes the job.