Favorite Aliens from Science Fiction but not from TTRPGs

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Ronnie Sanford

Ronnie Sanford

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Hey, I’m taking inspiration from @Silverlion’s recent thread on favorite aliens from TTRPGs,, but instead of aliens from TTRPGs, what are your favorite aliens from science fiction? What makes them special? Is their society different from human society in an interesting way? Do they have other characteristics that humans would find strange? How hard would it be to incorporate your favorite alien into a TTRPG like M-Space, Coriolis, or Traveller, etc…
 
Are we picking aliens that haven’t yet been adapted to RPGs?
 
Vulcans. Manipulators down, the winner. Complex, Well Developed, full back story, and many possible variations (they are not identical, you have different individuals in different episodes and books).
 
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The vampires from Lifeforce? The Predators are too easy. The aliens in Communion were suitably freaky. Tim Thomerson is an alien in Dollman but they are basically us. The people Kathy Ireland meets in the center of the Earth are aliens, that would be a cool way to go with a Hollow Earth game, the immortals are aliens in Highlander 2 …

Hmm, I’m not a huge sci fi reader so my references are mostly films, horror and exploitation at that. :shock:

I’ll have to ponder on this on my drive home…
 
The pods from Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1956). A classic horror/sci-fi story!

135949D9-900F-4E4E-B3C8-5456566972CE.jpeg


The pods are creepy because they impersonate real people. Look like us. Walk like us. Talk like us. But they 'aint us. Plus you can't fall asleep or they'll get you.
 
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sharps54 said:
Are we picking aliens that haven’t yet been adapted to RPGs?
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Since I’m kinda new to scifi roleplaying (despite being in an awesome Stars Without Numbers campaign), I would prefer if y’all provide your favorites even if they have already been adapted since I’m likely unaware of them.
 
So many examples to pick from literature and to a lesser extent film, will have to give it more thought but the first thing that springs to mind is the planet-wide ocean consciouness that can literally bend reality and read human minds in Lem's Solaris, later adapted by the great Tarkovsky in his seminal sf film.

Central to both book and film is the alien aspect of aliens: its motivations and intentions are not easily understandable, or understandable at all, by humans.
 
sharps54 said:
The vampires from Lifeforce? The Predators are too easy. The aliens in Communion were suitably freaky. Tim Thomerson is an alien in Dollman but they are basically us. The people Kathy Ireland meets in the center of the Earth are aliens, that would be a cool way to go with a Hollow Earth game, the immortals are aliens in Highlander 2 …

Hmm, I’m not a huge sci fi reader so my references are mostly films, horror and exploitation at that. :shock:

I’ll have to ponder on this on my drive home…
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I’m not familiar with Communion but I will look it up. Your suggestion about a Lifeforce is absolutely fire for sure though! I’m pretty sure I have it on blu-ray though I’m not sure my wife will let me watch it! My mind is already racing with the possibilities! Thanks!
 
Voros said:
So many examples to pick from literature and to a lesser extent film, will have to give it more thought but the first thing that springs to mind is the planet-wide ocean consciouness that can literally bend reality and read human minds in Lem's Solaris, later adapted by the great Tarkovsky in his seminal sf film.

Central to both book and film is the alien aspect of aliens: its motivations and intentions are not easily understandable, or understandable at all, by humans.
Click to expand...
Voros said:
So many examples to pick from literature and to a lesser extent film, will have to give it more thought but the first thing that springs to mind is the planet-wide ocean consciouness that can literally bend reality and read human minds in Lem's Solaris, later adapted by the great Tarkovsky in his seminal sf film.

Central to both book and film is the alien aspect of aliens: its motivations and intentions are not easily understandable, or understandable at all, by humans.
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My Russian wife has a copy of the original on DVD with English subtitles I think. Does anyone know how faithful the newer English version is to the original?
 
MoonHunter said:
Vulcans. Manipulators down, the winner. Complex, Well Developed, full back story, and many possible variations (they are not identical, you have different individuals in different episodes and books).
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That’s a great idea! It wouldn’t even be hard to implement I don’t think. Thanks!
 
Ronnie Sanford said:
My Russian wife has a copy of the original on DVD with English subtitles I think. Does anyone know how faithful the newer English version is to the original?
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The Soderbergh English-language film is quite good but the original film is considered a difficult (like all Tarkovksy) masterpiece.

The book is probably the best starting point if you can spare the time, it is less demanding than Tarkovksy's film and explains its concepts more clearly.
 
Kardinal Tabbe said:
The Narn from B5. Dogged survivalists and constant underdogs, yet deeply spiritual and honorable. My affinity is probably colored by G'kar's journey through the series.
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Despite the dated effects, occasional stupid plots (alien kumite comes to mind...) and some, let's say uneven acting talent on B5, all of the alien races felt extremely well-developed with unique cultures and goals. Such a great show.
 
I recently read Children Of Ruin, and while its uplifted spiders are 'earthlings' in heritage, they're very alien in their worldview, how they communicate, how they go about doing things. And since the book tells big chunks of the story from their point of view it makes for a nice guide in developing how other aliens thoughts might derive.
Anyway, those spiders will show up in a game someday, though maybe not literally as spiders.
 
In Ann Leckie's books, the Presger are so alien that they had to create half human/half Presger creatures just to communicate with other species. They're capable of disassembling ships and creatures to satisfy curiosity and are able to bend space so no one wants to get on their bad side but even the hybrid translators barely understand them. They are a good example of aliens that are too alien to be understood.

The Geck in the same books are cool too. They prefer to stay in the deep ocean but have adopted humans who travel in space along with biomechanical spiderbots. Their main reason for space travel seems to be because they know other species exist in space so they deal with them enough that they can be left alone.
 
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Every creature in Sector General novels (Hudlar, Cinrusskin, etc. ) https://aliens.fandom.com/wiki/Category:Sector_General_Universe
The sapient plastic like life form from Tanya Huff's Valor series (they're creepy bad guys.)
The Chanur from Pride of the Chanur.
The invaders from Madness Season (C.S. Friedman)
Narn, Centauri but primarily the Vorlon, Shadows and the other ancients (With their so freaky natures)
I am also fond of Star Trek's Gorn (not recent takes on them, but older ones where they're a sophont species with their huge Empire out there.) and the strange shapeshifting "Undine" (Species 8472)
 
TheoryofGame said:
The pods from Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1956). A classic horror/sci-fi story!

135949D9-900F-4E4E-B3C8-5456566972CE.jpeg


The pods are creepy because they impersonate real people. Look like us. Walk like us. Talk like us. But they 'aint us. Plus you can't fall asleep or they'll get you.
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Um ... thinly disguised versions of these guys showed up in the first Ravenloft Monstrous Compendium. (I also recently came up with a variation on their story for my own setting.) So ... not "not from TTRPG", then.
 
Silverlion said:
Every creature in Sector General novels (Hudlar, Cinrusskin, etc. ) https://aliens.fandom.com/wiki/Category:Sector_General_Universe
The sapient plastic like life form from Tanya Huff's Valor series (they're creepy bad guys.)
The Chanur from Pride of the Chanur.
The invaders from Madness Season (C.S. Friedman)
Narn, Centauri but primarily the Vorlon, Shadows and the other ancients (With their so freaky natures)
I am also fond of Star Trek's Gorn (not recent takes on them, but older ones where they're a sophont species with their huge Empire out there.) and the strange shapeshifting "Undine" (Species 8472)
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At the surface, the Chanur are just cat people. But Cherryh gives them a nice complex culture. The Kif are very interesting - they live and die by coolness/rizz. Her Chanur novels have a fun melange of aliens; I like how the space stations have an oxygen side and a methane side on the assumption that all major species will breathe one or the other.

Her Foreigner series also takes a deep dive into an alien culture.
 
Giger's Necronoms II & IV.
First appearance in film was the stuff of lifelong nightmares. :shock:
Each successive time they had their blood and terror thinned until they became vapid clichés. Much like the work of the original director. :tongue:

Close second is The Thing (as depicted in Campbell's novella and Carpenter's 1982 film).
 
TheoryofGame said:
The pods from Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1956). A classic horror/sci-fi story!

The pods are creepy because they impersonate real people. Look like us. Walk like us. Talk like us. But they 'aint us. Plus you can't fall asleep or they'll get you.
Click to expand...
Recently re-read the Collier's serialization of the original novella. Still creepy after all these years.
 
Stan said:
At the surface, the Chanur are just cat people. But Cherryh gives them a nice complex culture. The Kif are very interesting - they live and die by coolness/rizz. Her Chanur novels have a fun melange of aliens; I like how the space stations have an oxygen side and a methane side on the assumption that all major species will breathe one or the other.

Her Foreigner series also takes a deep dive into an alien culture.
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It's obvious to me when I read the Aslan from Traveller who they were based on.
 
Cherryl is great for aliens. But nobody voted for the Moties yet?
 
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Teotwawki said:
I think the Aslan predate Cherryh's novels by a year or so.
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I don't recall their culture/details appearing until 85-ish, does anyone have the original Traveller's Aid Society that has them inside?
 
As saskganesh saskganesh and @Teotwaki said, the Triffids and the Thing are two of my favorites.

Also the alien-like (but created on Earth) noocytes from Greg Bear's "Blood Music."
 
Voros said:
The Soderbergh English-language film is quite good but the original film is considered a difficult (like all Tarkovksy) masterpiece.

The book is probably the best starting point if you can spare the time, it is less demanding than Tarkovksy's film and explains its concepts more clearly.
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Thanks! I am blessed with a beautiful wife that has an engineering degree and who loves science fiction. She has been pushing me to read the book for years. I guess it’s time :-)
 
TheSaint said:
Favorite aliens from fiction? Hmmm....

I like the Moties from The Mote in God's Eye. I think they're a fantastic example of an alien species that is driven by its biology, that is still as intelligent as humans, but thinks differently.
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I totally agree. They are my favorite scifi aliens. I have already started adapting them to my first scifi / space campaign.
 
Given my recent foray into "Occulted Strangeness", there's a few things.

1) I think all Mythos beasties have been done dirt by Chaosium so I've re-interpreted them. MiGo. Ghouls. Deep Ones. Yithians. Yithians in particular are super-daleks
2) The Azadians and the Affront. One of the main reasons to play a Culture game is to have the opportunity to fillet these feckers.
3) The Culture. They're pan-human. Advanced. But an alien culture that most people on Earth can't even conceive.
 
Johnny Utah said:
Despite the dated effects, occasional stupid plots (alien kumite comes to mind...) and some, let's say uneven acting talent on B5, all of the alien races felt extremely well-developed with unique cultures and goals. Such a great show.
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I always think of B5 as the opposite of the show Vikings. Vikings had good actors, great sets (even with the mountainous danish fjords:grin:), great costumes, but really, really shitty plots.

B5 had uneven acting, cheap effects and sets, but the show's multi-season arcs were spectacular and probably changed the entire industry.
 
TheSaint said:
Favorite aliens from fiction? Hmmm....

I like the Moties from The Mote in God's Eye. I think they're a fantastic example of an alien species that is driven by its biology, that is still as intelligent as humans, but thinks differently.
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To my taste the Moties share a slightly irritating trait with Niven's other aliens (such as the Kzinti and the Pierson's Puppeteers) of reasoning explicitly from their evolutionary origins to what they ought to do, or explaining their actions as natural to their evolutionary heritage. But I don't ever feel that I do anything because my pre-human ancestors were social opportunistic omnivores who had to keep track of the development of seasonal and occasional food sources in a mixed woodland (or whatever they were in the latest theory), I do things because I feel generous, or resentful, or moved by pity or whatever, and I am not aware of the evolutionary origin of these impulses.

In other words, I don't like that Niven's aliens show his working.

saskganesh said:
Triffids! Aggressive plants, mysterious origin, maybe created by the Soviets.
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Among Wyndham's aliens I rather like the xenobathites from The Kraken Wakes, though the Midwich Cuckoos were pretty good, too.

I am rather fond of E.R. Burrough's Martians, for obvious reasons, but oviparousness aside I doubt that they count as aliens.

I think my actual favourites would probably be the Venusians from Robert Heinlein's Between Planets. One was accidentally killed with an anti-tank rocket because she happened to have her mouth open when it was fired. Caused a terrible political stink.
 
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I would say the Beast plus his Slayer & changeling minions in Krull.

And Carpenter's "The Thing" but that is probably harder to implement in an RPG as it's like a world destroying disease.

I quite like the 8ft alien in the film "it came without warning". Basically the predator before the Predator. I could see the players having real problems with one of those hunters on their tail. :smile:
 
The aliens from John Christopher's Tripods (the 4 books, though I have a soft spot for the TV series)
All the aliens from the Quatermass series (TV and movies)
The ones from John Carpenter's They live!
The martians from Frederic Brown's Martians Go Home, because it doesn't always have to be all doom and gloom
Star Trek's Borg when they first appeared
The Traags from Fantastic Planet.

EDIT: and the spiders from Adrian Tchaikovsky's Children of Time !
 
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