Aliens, non-humans and demihumans: similarity, verisimilitude, familiarity

[lategamer]

I'm writing a new cross-dimensional game (which may be somewhat based on The Long Stair concept) and I'm writing about the first humanoid race the PCs would come into contact with.

I'm thinking about how in traditional fantasy (european) humans tend to meet (european) dwarves and (european) elves. I'm thinking about how we just accept these things. We want some familiarity, cultural touch-points, obviously and we have the legacy of Tolkein and D&D which reinforces this. when I say 'dwarf', people think about Gimle. when I say elf, they likely think of Legolas...or perhaps the more diminutive elves of D&D.

There were some tropes I want to introduce to this alien world and some I don't. I like the idea of there being greater heteromorphology between the cultures of the world. As Humans are a new introduction to the world there's no reason to think there would be the possibility of 'half elves' with human and elf parents. (One of the things I dislike about Avatar 2 - they have human-Na'vi hybrids)

So, I guess the topic I'm talking about is your demihuman cultures. How different are they? Do you attach to real world cultures? do you just take the vanilla approach? What's special about your demi-humans??

 

[arjunstc]

I ran 3 seasons of a space opera campaign, with the third season featuring the PCs traveling to another galaxy through a wormhole and meeting aliens they have never met before. I realised that while the aliens may have alien culture and biology, when it comes down to social interaction you are forced to default back to our own species.

Like, try to roleplay communicating with an alien species using sign language. It's impossible unless the aliens are in fact very human and operate in the same scale and environment as us, and possess the same facial expressions.

It's an impossible task. That's why Star Trek handwaved it by saying we were all descended from the same Progenitor.

 

[lategamer]

Like, try to roleplay communicating with an alien species using sign language. It's impossible unless the aliens are in fact very human and operate in the same scale and environment as us, and possess the same facial expressions.

Watching Stargate (the original movie) and they brought a genius linguist with them and still the majority of the interactions were extremely basic. Now, I don't have a problem with that per se, but I also don't want the majority of the game to be spending weeks building a rosetta stone.

It's an impossible task. That's why Star Trek handwaved it by saying we were all descended from the same Progenitor.

I remember the difficulties I had in Bulgaria in the 1980s with no Bulgarian language, no way to acquire any and discovering that nodding meant 'no'.

 

[lategamer]

OK, I think I found a solution. I forgot briefly that we were going to a world of magic....

Tola Folk
These people are the main culture found in the steppes. They are semi-nomadic herders, following the growth of elephant radishes and dragging their merych-herds wherever they go.

They're traditionally short by human standards, with weathered ruddy skin and reddish hair. They have two sexes but the culture is predicated on gender roles which are indicated by the presence or absence of head hair. Warriors and herders shave their heads, foragers and home-makers keep their hair long. They wear woven fabrics close to the skin, and hard-wearing leathers as outer garments. They will likely have a pocket filled with Crackle to share with anyone they talk to but acceptance will be in receiving cups of Tola Wine.

Tola are armed with knives, spears and bows, designed for hunting rather than fighting.

The Tola venerate ancestors, harking back to a 'khanate' which ruled the steppes. They have no pretensions to rule, considering the desire to rule as a pathology. The leader (or representative) of the Tola is chosen depending on who "steps forward" in a situation. They'll be referred to as the Khut (steps first).

Tola trade skins, part of their harvest and their Tola Wine to others. They maintain good relations with neighbours and value positivity.

Tola usually have a family group of Gabir (magicians) who travel within the group and are afforded respect and responsibilities. Gabir magic is usually restricted to healing sickness in humans and animals but can also be used to influence the weather and manipulate sound and sight. The Gabir will happily teach healing magic to others.

The Tola term for strangers is Arba, meaning "those who mumble incoherently". The Tola rarely speak anything other than their own language but can rely on Gabir magic to communicate with others.

 

[Nobby-W]

There's only so alien you can be and remain reasonably playable. As a DM you can maybe pull off an alien NPC with inscrutable motivations and values for a while, but alien races like that aren't really practical as playable PCs. Even if you've got a player that's up to playing such a character, the rest of the party are going to have disproportionate trouble maintaining character and interacting with the super-alien being.

So, I find you have to have aliens with motivations that can be easily described to players, either in terms of a cultural anchor they're familiar with, or through some fairly straightforward principles - and especially ones that don't really constrain sensible behaviour.

They don't have to interbreed with humans - a half-Vargr character is a fairly silly concept, much more so than a half-elf.

I think that for ease of use, aliens should be fairly rubber suit-ish, and perhaps stick to mechanical distinctions such as stat mods or some racial ability that affects game mechanics, for example night vision, chromatophores in the skin that enhance camouflage, or ability to stay underwater for long periods. Keep behavioural traits easy to play in a context of a party of adventurers.

 

[Dr Jack]

Vagyr are uplifted dogs so a half-Vagyr would make a lot more sense than any of the other possible half-breeds in Traveller. I always like the Hiver as a good example of an alien species that feels alien; where the Aslan, K'kree, and Vagyr were all just animorphs with various degrees of justification, the Hiver were a completely distinct concept who actually felt like they had distinctly non-human psychology.

As Nobby-W says one of the problems in RPGs is making playable races. It's a lot easier to have inhuman sentients if you don't have to regularly represent them.

 

[lategamer]

Vagyr are uplifted dogs so a half-Vagyr would make a lot more sense than any of the other possible half-breeds in Traveller.

There are no half-breeds in Traveller, right? Please tell me that hasn't changed.

As Nobby-W says one of the problems in RPGs is making playable races. It's a lot easier to have inhuman sentients if you don't have to regularly represent them.

I'll make the distinction between non-human and inhuman here.
Non-human: elves, dwarves, orcs, vulcans, klingons
Inhuman: shoggoths. the great race of yith, the Q, the Affront

I think that for ease of use, aliens should be fairly rubber suit-ish, and perhaps stick to mechanical distinctions such as stat mods or some racial ability that affects game mechanics, for example night vision, chromatophores in the skin that enhance camouflage, or ability to stay underwater for long periods. Keep behavioural traits easy to play in a context of a party of adventurers.

For this game it's about presenting a world which
a) has humanoid races who have hunger, romance, music, trade, language
b) they're not humans, their DNA codes differently, they won't have the same genitalia
c) they do have different cultural mores, things they value or abhor
d) language will be a cultural touchpoint, one that human PCs new to the world won't be entirely aware of.

Things I want to dispense with
x) europeans visiting european fantasy worlds
y) the 'common' tongue
z) weird for the sake of weird.

 

[Dammit Victor]

For me, it is simply not enough for "aliens" to be culturally different from "humans"; if the differences are only cultural, wholly learnable and only learned behaviors, attaching them to beings that are (biologically, magically, whatever) not human isn't necessary and I really don't care for the social implications of that. In order for the existence of these "alien" beings to be narratively justified, they have to be physiologically and neurologically different-- they have to be different in ways that "exotic" or "alien" human cultures (or human orphans raised in alien cultures) simply can't be.

To use a fantasy example, elves can't be Clerics in my D&D-style games because elves can't pray; elves have tremendous cultural and individual diversity in their religious beliefs and many adopt human religions... but in our "scientific reality" every human culture has some form of prayer that, regardless of the cultural specifics or any potential cosmological legitimacy, can be confirmed and quantified by modern medical imaging equipment. Prayer is a known biological function of the human(oid) brain that, in my fantasy worlds, elves don't have.

Elves have a variety of personal and cultural responses to this, again, ranging from admiration and envy to horror and contempt: Some elves wish they could pray, or even engage in insanely dangerous and unethical medical/scientific experiments in the hopes of unlocking that ability; some elves consider prayer to be a ridiculous atavism of the inferior humanoid evolutionary process; some simply consider it something that other peoples do, important to non-elves but irrelevant to the elfin life experience, and never give it another thought.

In D&D-adjacent games specifically, almost every non-human ancestry has-- from birth-- sensory abilities that humans simply don't... whether their particular ruleset allows them to acquire those senses later or not. At its most basic, they see colors we don't, hear frequencies of sound we don't, smell chemical compounds that we don't. From before they are even aware that they are not the same as the other wee babbies in their multi-species magical child soldier boarding school, they're living in a physical universe that their classmates-- human and otherwise-- can only comprehend in the loosest intellectual sense.

And I acknowledge that it doesn't have to be that way, and not every table wants or needs to explore those kind of philosophical ideas-- but for the life of me I do not understand what value the Tolkien Trio and the Mos Eisley Cantina bring to the table otherwise.

 

[Dr Jack]

There are no half-breeds in Traveller, right? Please tell me that hasn't changed.

I certainly hope it hasn't!

I'll make the distinction between non-human and inhuman here.
Non-human: elves, dwarves, orcs, vulcans, klingons
Inhuman: shoggoths. the great race of yith, the Q, the Affront

I think I see it as a bit more of a spectrum. Vulcans and Klingons varied a bit, but most often simply seem like exaggerated caricatures of human cultures. Humans in a funny suits, as it were. Elves and dwarves in RPGs have been even more guilty of that (although fiction usually does better). I don't like that much. I want these different races/species to have something about them that couldn't simply be a human in a suit, and I don't just mean physically or in fiction rules (i.e Elves get different magic, or whatever).

For example, my take on dwarves is that they're not biological at all. They're created from a specific type of stone by a transmutation ritual that turns stone into a kind of flesh. Thus there really are no female dwarves, or male for that matter, because they don't reproduce. To a dwarf then, the ideas of sex, attraction, and family are completely absent. They get that humans have these things, they might understand them in the same intellectual sense that we can understand echolocation, but they are completely incapable of experiencing them on an emotional level. Without these prime drivers of human behaviour, dwarves are definitely somewhat inhuman, but they still have many of the same drives and emotions as humans otherwise so they can be understood, predicted, and reasoned with.

 

[lategamer]

In order for the existence of these "alien" beings to be narratively justified, they have to be physiologically and neurologically different--

To use a fantasy example, elves can't be Clerics in my D&D-style games because elves can't pray; elves have tremendous cultural and individual diversity in their religious beliefs and many adopt human religions... but in our "scientific reality" every human culture has some form of prayer that, regardless of the cultural specifics or any potential cosmological legitimacy, can be confirmed and quantified by modern medical imaging equipment. Prayer is a known biological function of the human(oid) brain that, in my fantasy worlds, elves don't have.

By prayer you mean the functional prayer in the fantasy world?

Elves have a variety of personal and cultural responses to this, again, ranging from admiration and envy to horror and contempt: Some elves wish they could pray, or even engage in insanely dangerous and unethical medical/scientific experiments in the hopes of unlocking that ability; some elves consider prayer to be a ridiculous atavism of the inferior humanoid evolutionary process; some simply consider it something that other peoples do, important to non-elves but irrelevant to the elfin life experience, and never give it another thought.

It's not related to this thread, but does this imply the gods see Elves as useless for the 'result of prayer'. Elves can't pray to us so they're no use to us'?

In D&D-adjacent games specifically, almost every non-human ancestry has-- from birth-- sensory abilities that humans simply don't... ... they're living in a physical universe that their classmates-- human and otherwise-- can only comprehend in the loosest intellectual sense.

Well, this isn't particularly gameable - I mean, explaining the colour indigo is difficult enough. It has to be turned into a mechanical advantage to be notable.

And I acknowledge that it doesn't have to be that way, and not every table wants or needs to explore those kind of philosophical ideas-- but for the life of me I do not understand what value the Tolkien Trio and the Mos Eisley Cantina bring to the table otherwise.

Even the slightly bottom-faced Walrus Man?

 

[Urdlen's best boy]

I'd rather give them their own cultures based on how they are and what they do, though if there's a similarity in lifestyle to real cultures then I can draw from it slightly. Eg I have elves that chose a nomadic lifestyle, so necessarily there's some similarities with some nomadic people (dependance on horse, cattle and animal products, tribal confederacy based politics etc).

 

[lategamer]

I think I see it as a bit more of a spectrum. Vulcans and Klingons varied a bit, but most often simply seem like exaggerated caricatures of human cultures. Humans in a funny suits, as it were. Elves and dwarves in RPGs have been even more guilty of that (although fiction usually does better). I don't like that much. I want these different races/species to have something about them that couldn't simply be a human in a suit, and I don't just mean physically or in fiction rules (i.e Elves get different magic, or whatever).

We have to have something that has some familiarity. Teleporting our PCs into a world where everyone is a nitrogen-fixing aerial gas-bag floating in a gas giant atmosphere just means they plummet to presumably a high death if they don't suffocate beforehand. There are some assumptions we have to make.

For example, my take on dwarves is that they're not biological at all. They're created from a specific type of stone by a transmutation ritual that turns stone into a kind of flesh. Thus there really are no female dwarves, or male for that matter, because they don't reproduce. To a dwarf then, the ideas of sex, attraction, and family are completely absent. They get that humans have these things, they might understand them in the same intellectual sense that we can understand echolocation, but they are completely incapable of experiencing them on an emotional level. Without these prime drivers of human behaviour, dwarves are definitely somewhat inhuman, but they still have many of the same drives and emotions as humans otherwise so they can be understood, predicted, and reasoned with.

Absolutely. If they have drives, they can be influenced and predicted.

Are those dwarves prone to hunger? Do they poop? Do they need water?

 

[Dr Jack]

We have to have something that has some familiarity. Teleporting our PCs into a world where everyone is a nitrogen-fixing aerial gas-bag floating in a gas giant atmosphere just means they plummet to presumably a high death if they don't suffocate beforehand. There are some assumptions we have to make.

Precisely.

Are those dwarves prone to hunger? Do they poop? Do they need water?

Yes to all three. Not quite in the same way as humans; but they still live, breathe, feed, drink, age and die.

 

[lategamer]

Yes to all three. Not quite in the same way as humans; but they still live, breathe, feed, drink, age and die.

This is kinda what I have done with the Tola, the Ulhaen and the Faranish. They're humanoid. They have differing racial characteristics but ultimately can interbreed, share some cultural touchpoints, have their reasons for wearing their hair a certain way and having biases in society. But they're not human. They eat food that makes humans feel nauseous (and vice versa). They don't have peepees and vajayjays. They have the position of 'nomad-dwarves', 'civilised elves' and 'orcs' in the world though they're all the same race, ultimately.

The PCs are human. They're the interlopers.

 

[Telok]

I go two ways on this. First, most of my players are basically incapable of anything more difficult than the rubber-forehead-American-in-makeup level of "alien" so I trend towards playing games that way on a purely functional level.

What I'd love is something like the classic Traveller Vagyr where they had a unique attribute that replaced the typical 'social' stat for humans and had its own unique rules. Ideally every species in the game gets its own little unique attribute and mechanic that drives players to choose "in charactrr" actions more suitable to the alien species. The old White Wolf games with the willpower, humanity, rage, etc., stats did some of that to a partial extent.

Of course a unique stat and associated mechanic per species, including humans, that encourages specific behavior is a lot of design work. There's chunks of armchair writers who'd scream bloody murder about "too hard / complicated / etc." because they really just want a fantasy/scifi SWAT team combat semi-board game. Which is fine, but it'd be nice if they'd admit to the preference and stop whinging at everyone who wants a bit of 'non' in their nonhumans.

 

[robertsconley]

So, I guess the topic I'm talking about is your demihuman cultures. How different are they? Do you attach to real world cultures? do you just take the vanilla approach? What's special about your demi-humans??

There are differences but within human variations. Why? Because I decided long ago to dodge the issue of aliens being just human in funny suits by making my setup literally humans in funny suits.

How?

Creation of the Races

Only two races were present at the creation of the Majestic Wilderlands. The Elves, who were created to be the glory of the Wilderlands. And Humans, who were given a special destiny. However the tranquility of creation was shattered by the revolt of the Demons. The War between the gods and the demons lasted for millennia until the Demons were imprisoned in the abyss. During the War the Demons enslaved countless humans. They performed horrific experiments in order to produce the perfect servitor race. It is from these experiments that the myriad sentient races of the Wilderlands originated. After the war's conclusion, the gods withdrew and left each race to find its own destiny.

An short list is
The original two

• Humans
• Elves

Modified from humans.

• Halflings
• Half-Elves
• Dwarves
• Gnomes
• Orcs
• Goblins
• Reptile Men
• Lizard Men
• Serpent Men

Demonic (self-modified)

• Viridians
• Half-Viridans

But also includes Centaurs and other similar sentient beings as well.

The modifications had varying effects on the basic human psychology. The ones traditionally considered demi-human (Dwarves, Gnomes, Halflings) just had physical modifications. While Orcs and Goblins had both physical and mental modifications. And then there are the extreme modifications represented by the animal-human hybrids like Reptile Men, Lizard Men, Serpent Men, Centaurs, etc.

For example

Orcs

The Demons were unsatisfied with early races they bred. Too much of Man's free will remained in their creations. With the Orcs the Demons sought to correct this "flaw". They bred a strong and hardy race. To curb their free will they bred in a fierce aggressiveness that only subsided in presence of strong leaders. The Orcs were used to slaughter the remaining slaves of the Demons and were placed in their stead. The few Orcs that were freed or escaped slavery found their aggressive instincts left them unable to cooperate with any other race. After the wars the Orcs fled to the deep wilderness. Their ability to bred quickly soon found them filling many of the empty lands of the Wilderlands and brought them into renewed conflict with the other races.

Orc Culture

Orcs are defined by aggression. The Demon Lords took humans and bred in a fierce aggressiveness that only subsided in the presence of a strong leader. The rebels tried integrating liberated Orcs as they did other races but soon were forced to drive them out as their aggressiveness caused major issues. After the war, the Orcs turned on themselves in a fratricidal struggle for power. Only their high birth rate saved the race and allowed them to spread throughout the Wilderlands. They soon dominated the Padizan Peninsula.


Since then their culture have remained stagnate. Their technology only advanced when a clever orc utilized a captive to teach him one of the crafts of another culture. Today the most advanced Orcs are at an early Iron Age level of technology capable of smelting iron but not steel and construct crude siege weapons.

Orc society is organized in a system of the strongest rules. Polygamy dominates Orc society with the strongest Orcs having the largest number of females in his harem. In a third of the orc tribes females actually dominate using a system of polyandry. Female Orcs are just as aggressive as male Orcs.

As a legacy of their original breeding, Orcs can be dominated by other races. The most notable recent example is the dragon Ancelgorn rallying the Orcs to sack the Majestic Fastness and Silverwood. This involves being able to defeat the strongest orc leader and promptly dealing with challenges from subordinate Orcs.

Overall the setup worked out rather well and the players seem to have fun with it without being overwhelmed by having to roleplay a completely alien mindset.

 

[lategamer]

There are differences but within human variations. Why? Because I decided long ago to dodge the issue of aliens being just human in funny suits by making my setup literally humans in funny suits.
...

Orc Culture

Orcs are defined by aggression.....

Overall the setup worked out rather well and the players seem to have fun with it without being overwhelmed by having to roleplay a completely alien mindset.

Do you have players playing Orcs?

I haven't worked out the Orcishness of the Faran culture - but I'll likely base it off some Celtic tales of the Firbolg and a game of Palladium Fantasy I played 100 years ago where our little party was saved from bandits by a group of Orcs. Somehow I don't think the Referee was playing canon that day.

 

[Bunch]

By prayer you mean the functional prayer in the fantasy world and not the mumbling of pointless words like in the real world?

please.
Let's leave the disparaging of people's religious beliefs out of this.

 

[robertsconley]

Do you have players playing Orcs?

Three times, it is not an appealing option. All three times, I told the players that like normal, orcs have a range of behaviors. While the orc average is just beyond the extreme end of human aggression, the bottom range of orc aggression overlaps normal human behavior. So it is possible for individual orcs to live among humans and make a living or adventure.

Goblins have a much better situation.

I haven't worked out the Orcishness of the Faran culture - but I'll likely base it off some Celtic tales of the Firbolg and a game of Palladium Fantasy I played 100 years ago where our little party was saved from bandits by a group of Orcs. Somehow I don't think the Referee was playing canon that day.

Nice. When I figured out my orcs there are several goals in mind.

The only thing that is irredeemably evil are demons.

I wanted to avoid the warcraft/klingon style honorable warrior trope for orcs. I reserved that role for the desert dwelling Reptile Men.

Traditionally "evil" races, orc, goblins, are what they are for tragic reasons. Some, like goblins, have managed to co-exist with other races in various cultures. While others, like the orcs, can't peacefully co-exist despite various attempts to do so over the centuries. However that is only true for orcs as a group, individuals and the rare small group (a dozen or so) can and have peacefully co-existed.

 

[David Johansen]

There was a story in one of my English textbooks, I don't know the author or even the title but it was about a Shakespeare company that plays to a very alien race. The story focused on similarities imposed by physics. Groups, the need for energy in, and so forth.

What this gets me thinking about is what aliens might be like that are in energy rich environments like stars, where getting rid of energy becomes the fundamental issue, non-entropic aliens that are constantly moving to higher energy states instead of lower energy states. Amorphous aliens possibly like hive organisms but also non-differentiated protoplasm that comes and goes without a concept of individuals or self. Some of these actually work better in fantasy than science fiction.

What if orcs aren't after food or sex? What if they have too much energy all the time and just have to keep moving, acting constantly or they, suffer mitosis or even burst into flames?

 

[Dammit Victor]

By prayer you mean the functional prayer in the fantasy world and not the mumbling of pointless words like in the real world?

I feel like the actual meaning of my post was perfectly clear, and I do not know how I could have made it any clearer.

Regardless of whether or not "prayer" has any effect on the outside world in real life, it is a matter of verifiable science (and common sense) that it is a cognitive behavior and that it does something inside the brains of people who engage in it. Since fantasy games link this real world phenomenon with the fantastic elements of their cosmology, I use it to establish a fictionally objective and potentially interesting distinction between elves and other humanoid peoples.

It's not related to this thread, but does this imply the gods see Elves as useless for the 'result of prayer'. Elves can't pray to us so they're no use to us'?

That would depend wholly on the nature of gods and the purpose of worship in the given setting. The assumption you're making here is one of the most pernicious D&Disms that has infected practically all other fantasy roleplaying and fantasy fiction setting design... and one of the major reasons why I refuse to engage with the religious elements of most D&D settings.

If elves cannot worship the gods, that makes them no more useful and no less useful than any other mortal who chooses not to-- and whether or not this offends a given deity should really be a matter of that deity's personal feelings and worldview, even in a setting where mortal worship is somehow necessary for divine maintenance.

Even the slightly bottom-faced Walrus Man?

Especially the slightly bottom-faced Walrus Man.

 

[Dammit Victor]

What if orcs aren't after food or sex? What if they have too much energy all the time and just have to keep moving, acting constantly or they, suffer mitosis or even burst into flames?

One of my favorite "stupid orc tricks" in my games is to have orc raiders hit a village that's already being wracked by famine and pestilence, and the orcish warchief sacrifices a couple of his own weakest warriors for the villagers to eat-- whether they want to or not-- and orders their warlocks to provide healing. They steal any portable wealth and maybe children too young to do farmwork within a couple years... but otherwise they just slap the defenseless villagers around a little and then leave.

Because orcs do not raid humanoid settlements for food and wealth unless they're actually destitute. They raid other peoples to force them to fight.

 

[lategamer]

Because orcs do not raid humanoid settlements for food and wealth unless they're actually destitute. They raid other peoples to force them to fight.

That’s a pretty cool idea that I can’t use. But I spent a little time re-reading it because it’s clever. Me gusta.

On the prayer thing - I meant does it have mechanical effect. That wasn’t clear.

 

[Dammit Victor]

On the prayer thing - I meant does it have mechanical effect. That wasn’t clear.

Outside of facilitating specific flavors of "divine magic", and elves being prohibited from directly wielding those flavors of magic? No, not really. There are no "divine intervention" rolls in my games, and whatever divine beings I'm using in a given setting-- very rarely "Da Gawdz"-- can't normally be summoned or just spontaneously appear in that fashion. I'm kind of a fan of the old school AD&D rule that elves can't be resurrected using normal magic, but I've never felt like trying to impose that rule on modern D&D and I'm more likely to make them the species that invented alchemical cloning than make them unable to take advantage of it.

 

[Silverlion]

For example, my take on dwarves is that they're not biological at all. They're created from a specific type of stone by a transmutation ritual that turns stone into a kind of flesh. Thus there really are no female dwarves, or male for that matter, because they don't reproduce. To a dwarf then, the ideas of sex, attraction, and family are completely absent. They get that humans have these things, they might understand them in the same intellectual sense that we can understand echolocation, but they are completely incapable of experiencing them on an emotional level. Without these prime drivers of human behaviour, dwarves are definitely somewhat inhuman, but they still have many of the same drives and emotions as humans otherwise so they can be understood, predicted, and reasoned with.

In one setting I created dwarves were forged, made things of metal but quickened to life with a mixture of ancient alchemy and rune magic. One player didn't like it, but I only had "male" dwarves for the same reason. I mean, gender is a social thing even for them, so I'm sure there were women dwarves, just no different parts. They probably don't even HAVE parts.

A big thing of that thought is the entire setting is that humans were once these ancient precursors to everything else. They MADE dwarves for war and manufacturing--robots but magical. Elves were these ancient sorcerers, next-generation children created with magic to be better than their human parents to be hostage brides (and assassins). Dragons were ultimate weapons made from their science--bigger than nukes for them. Only halflings and the monster races weren't 'created' directly. Indirectly though, halflings were familiars of those ancients, when magic went out of control it uplifted them into human-like form (they'd spent centuries breeding smarter/better familiars of course.) And all the monsters are either elemental creatures (giants/trolls), or corrupted humans twisted by dark magics that went wild (and who did terrible things for that magic to twist them into monsters.)


So while strange humanity is the model from which most of them COME, some relation to that as a standard does exist.

In different settings, I do different things.

As for sci-fi
I like playable aliens which tend to lean more humanlike because of playability factors, but I also like ones that are strange and different from humanity. I think the HIver and the K'kree are very good "these are not humanlike at all" species.

 

[pawsplay]

If a people has human-like characteristics, live human-like lives, and live in human-like cultures, they just become functionally humans. If you then slap on real world human cultures, now you are equating real world ethnicity with being semi-human. So in thinking about non-humans, to justify differences from humans, you should be able to give a firm answer to at least one oft these questions:

1. What decidedly non-human characteristic do they have that shapes who they are?
2. In what ways do their lives differ from humans? Is there something about their upbringing or environment, to which they are adapted, that explains why they don't turn out exactly like humans?
3. In what ways do they have culture different from humans? Not simply, how are their cultures different? Humans have different cultures. Is there some aspect to how they grow, populate, and socialize, that causes them to learn and adopt culture in a different way than humans, in a way that is not simply ethnic?

So, some examples. Elves are usually depicted as long-lived and almost preternaturally healthy and beautiful, so they are different from humans in that they don't really think about aging very much. Dwarves dig deeply into the Earth, and live lives of toil and greed that would be basically unbearable to almost all humans, so their differences are explained by what makes them into miners, fortress builders, and (in some depictions) dwellers underground. Warforged are artificial beings with a somewhat mysterious inner nature; this makes them different from humans. They are born with a profession, but no past or childhood. Halflings are much smaller than humans; their perspective is shaped by living in a world that is simply more dangerous, and filled by people who are much larger and more violent. Vulcan culture is unlike human culture; they are not simply ethnically Vulcan, with a love of logic. Instead, they are presented with an academy-like upbringing, and it is explained how their psychological intensity forces them to develop more restraint than humans to participate in civilized society. Indeed, Vulcans are shown as having their own ethnicities and subgroups, and some of those groups have their own heretics and eccentrics. Betazoids have telepathy, sometimes very powerful, depending on the individual, so they have very different concepts about privacy, honesty, and self-expression than humans. Gungans are amphibious, and so are able to move above and below the water with an ease humans don't. Although they interact with and trade with humans, this creates some separation between the gungan and human cultures, something that is not always seem in Star Wars's cosmopolitan cities.

 

[xanther]

Are you asking about fantasy or sci fi or something else?
With fantasy I stick pretty vanilla, but eschew the D&D kitchen sink half this/half that approach.

As to sci fi, much more along the lines of David Brin & James White aliens, with a dash of Larry Niven. Really do not care for the humans with face prosthetics...ala Star Trek and Star Wars, or aliens as stand-ins for human cultures. Traveller, as much as like the game, the best I can say about the aliens they were trite, and juvenile...except for the Hiver.

The closest would come to humanoid-like aliens that would C.J. Cherryh's Hani series aliens, or perhaps the Kzin (the original ones, not the highly anthromorphized ones that seem to dominate later art).

I build alien mentality right into the attributes/descriptors, because Knnn

 

[xanther]

Here is my take on alien cognition and how can use it in a game:

Cognitive Classification

Sense of Identity - individual (I), collective (H), cooperative (C), emergent (E)
Thought Process - linear (L), matrix (M)
Event Relational Process -sequential (S), reflexive (R)
Temporal Perception -uniform (U), variable (V)

Aliens which share all letter codes in all 4 area of cognition will be able to at least communicate effectively. Although cultural differences can intrude, their brains basically work the same. Aliens which differ in 1 area/letter code can be communicated with but with great difficulty even if the two species share a common goal and a desire to work together. Species with two or more code differences find it near impossible to communicate or work with each other. The other species' actions appear chaotic, insane and are completely unpredictable to the other. In this situation, an interpreter species is needed to bridge the gap. I give some examples below after the classifications.

Examples:
Identity
I=humans, H=collective: many individual thoughts form one group will/mind, there are no individuals (e.g., Borg STNG); C=cooperative: individual minds can access a group mind but individuals still retain individual will/mind (e.g. Conjoiners, Revelation Space series); E=emergent : individuals have no sapience but in groups a form of sapience emerges, also referred to as a hive-mind.

Thought Process
L=linear: individual concepts can stand alone, binary logic possible, concept of independent variables possible; M=matrix: no concept stands alone, do not readily grasp binary logic or concept of independent variables, grasp problems composed of multiply dependent variables readily.

Event Relational Process
S=sequential: effect follows cause, effects are the manifestation of cause, predictive theories favored; R=reflexive: cause is the manifestation of effects, theories often appear ad hoc or by fiat to S (sequential thinkers) but R species appear to more readily grasp faster than light travel concepts.

Temporal Perception
U=uniform: time perceived as proceeding in a linear fashion at a relatively constant rate; V=variable: one of the hardest concepts for U (uniform) species to grasp, V species have a hard time grasping beginnings and ends as these concepts are understood by U species.

For example, Humans are ILSU as are almost all species in sci-fi, the Borg HLSU, the Knnn IMSU, a "hive" species might be EMSU. The humans may find it near impossible to understand the "hive" but can communicate with the Knnn, albeit with difficulty. The Knnn have a hard time with humans and the "hive" but can communicate with both. The Knnn can thus serve as a go between or interpreter for the Human and "hive" species.

All PC species should be ILSU in my opinion, its not a system for PC development but for universe development.
This cognitive system can be used to "explain" why aliens act in unexplainable and to humans irrational ways. The GM does not even need to explain, how can a ILSU do so. Random tables could come in handy as the alien behaviors will appear random. The role-playing aspect is through using an NPC interpretive species and being aware that aliens are not just beings with more or less limbs who breathe different air. Thus, some NPC species may become a valuable interpreter/diplomatic species.

 

[opaopajr]

I like to go as alien as possible to the threshold of my players. Given that most cannot take *that* much alien-ness, I often compromise pulling an emphasis on cross-cultural encounters' shared elements. Basically I'll lean on the shared "dominant human culture analog" veneer to communicate in the beginning, and let the deep psychological or physiological differences become emergent in play. e.g. Goblins dressed and speaking as Edwardian dandies yet living off of putrid offal and offering that as food, or mock-attacking and leaving a cut that will scar over being a courteous gift to a guest.

Unfortunately you always have to consider your audience and then adjust to the lowest common denominator. It's one of my biggest challenges trying to get others to try "cool new games I got!", like Talislanta. It is high concept fun and a majority of players I encounter are more beer and pretzels in play interest. So I dampen the weird to levels I assume they can digest.

 

[arjunstc]

I like to go as alien as possible to the threshold of my players. Given that most cannot take *that* much alien-ness, I often compromise pulling an emphasis on cross-cultural encounters' shared elements. Basically I'll lean on the shared "dominant human culture analog" veneer to communicate in the beginning, and let the deep psychological or physiological differences become emergent in play. e.g. Goblins dressed and speaking as Edwardian dandies yet living off of putrid offal and offering that as food, or mock-attacking and leaving a cut that will scar over being a courteous gift to a guest.

I find Jack Vance's Cugel stories a great example of this. Humanoids who are somewhat weird because of their circumstances and motivations.

 

[lategamer]

If a people has human-like characteristics, live human-like lives, and live in human-like cultures, they just become functionally humans. If you then slap on real world human cultures, now you are equating real world ethnicity with being semi-human. So in thinking about non-humans, to justify differences from humans, you should be able to give a firm answer to at least one oft these questions:

Interesting perspective.
I think I've definitely concentrated on the similarities/cultural/social touch points. I mean, I don't want the spectre of half-Tola running around but I think it's not a bad thing that the players don't get slaughtered while smiling on their first meeting because I've decided that the Tola see the baring of teeth (like chimpanzees) as a sign of aggression.

1. What decidedly non-human characteristic do they have that shapes who they are?
2. In what ways do their lives differ from humans? Is there something about their upbringing or environment, to which they are adapted, that explains why they don't turn out exactly like humans?
3. In what ways do they have culture different from humans? Not simply, how are their cultures different? Humans have different cultures. Is there some aspect to how they grow, populate, and socialize, that causes them to learn and adopt culture in a different way than humans, in a way that is not simply ethnic?

I am going with "See Similarity, Discover Difference" as my guideline.

At first glance, the Tola seem like a "Mongols from the Steppes" culture. The PCs discover they don't even have horses but do have history.
At first glance they look human. The PCs will discover they have some striking dissimilarities from humans in their biology/physiology/biomechanics
At first glance, the culture is similar. They smile, they laugh, they have friends. They don't maintain strong leaders.