Shipyard Locked
How long do I have?
- Joined
- Apr 25, 2017
- Messages
- 2,661
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- 5,690
I have not read Blindsight.
I know a lot about it though, enough to realize it's too depressing for me yet it has some very interesting ideas. One of those ideas is that you could have an alien race that is intelligent enough to build spacefaring vehicles yet not sapient. It seems paradoxical, but having real consciousness, a sense of individuality across time, might not in fact be necessary to making sophisticated tools as part of your brute animal instinct to survive and reproduce.
I find this idea intriguing in a tabletop RPG context because...
A) I'm increasingly queasy about all the wanton killing of humans/humanoids in my personal games.
B) Try as I might, I'm finding it hard to mentally 'stay' in a pre-modern mindset when running fantasy stuff these days. Therefore, elementally evil sapient races have been hard for me to convincingly portray for some time now.
C) There's no reason to believe that the drive to controversialize fantasy tropes is going to stop at orcs, so I'm trying to fast forward to a solution for the 'simple antagonist problem' that is non-political, beyond rational reproach, and not more goddamn zombies.
On another thread I wondered about building a D&D setting around antagonists like the xenomorphs from Alien, or the tyrranids of 40k. Such a setting would focus almost entirely on humanoids banding together out of necessity against an eternal natural foe. I could set things up so that murder among humanoids is rare. I wouldn't have to deal with the baggage of elemental evil. Finally, the core premise would be immune to controversy the way no one accuses zombies of being a problematic antagonist.
However, as dangerous as they are, in my estimation the xenomorphs lack the intelligence and tool-making capabilities to provide a consistent, flexible threat for the duration of a campaign.
Enter the non-sapient intelligent antagonists. They can build fortresses and weapons. They can covet resources beyond food. They can organize armies and patrols. They can strategize campaigns of conquest. They can cast spells or psionics or whatever. They can leave loot behind.
Taking a page from Blindsight, they cannot be negotiated with because they cannot even understand the concepts of individuality, self-expression, self-actualization, sympathy, mercy or cruelty. All their tools and sophistication are just for for satisfying soulless drives, like a fungus spreading.
Most important of all, protagonists can kill them in self-defense without a qualm.
I'll be thinking about this when I set up my next D&D campaign. I'm thinking that a re-write of the formians (NOT the fomori, that's something else), an established D&D monster without much existing popularity or sympathy, would fit the bill rather nicely. After all, I've never seen anyone cry over efforts to fend off swarms of ants.
This could all be foolishly, pretentiously off-base though. What do you think?
I know a lot about it though, enough to realize it's too depressing for me yet it has some very interesting ideas. One of those ideas is that you could have an alien race that is intelligent enough to build spacefaring vehicles yet not sapient. It seems paradoxical, but having real consciousness, a sense of individuality across time, might not in fact be necessary to making sophisticated tools as part of your brute animal instinct to survive and reproduce.
I find this idea intriguing in a tabletop RPG context because...
A) I'm increasingly queasy about all the wanton killing of humans/humanoids in my personal games.
B) Try as I might, I'm finding it hard to mentally 'stay' in a pre-modern mindset when running fantasy stuff these days. Therefore, elementally evil sapient races have been hard for me to convincingly portray for some time now.
C) There's no reason to believe that the drive to controversialize fantasy tropes is going to stop at orcs, so I'm trying to fast forward to a solution for the 'simple antagonist problem' that is non-political, beyond rational reproach, and not more goddamn zombies.
On another thread I wondered about building a D&D setting around antagonists like the xenomorphs from Alien, or the tyrranids of 40k. Such a setting would focus almost entirely on humanoids banding together out of necessity against an eternal natural foe. I could set things up so that murder among humanoids is rare. I wouldn't have to deal with the baggage of elemental evil. Finally, the core premise would be immune to controversy the way no one accuses zombies of being a problematic antagonist.
However, as dangerous as they are, in my estimation the xenomorphs lack the intelligence and tool-making capabilities to provide a consistent, flexible threat for the duration of a campaign.
Enter the non-sapient intelligent antagonists. They can build fortresses and weapons. They can covet resources beyond food. They can organize armies and patrols. They can strategize campaigns of conquest. They can cast spells or psionics or whatever. They can leave loot behind.
Taking a page from Blindsight, they cannot be negotiated with because they cannot even understand the concepts of individuality, self-expression, self-actualization, sympathy, mercy or cruelty. All their tools and sophistication are just for for satisfying soulless drives, like a fungus spreading.
Most important of all, protagonists can kill them in self-defense without a qualm.
I'll be thinking about this when I set up my next D&D campaign. I'm thinking that a re-write of the formians (NOT the fomori, that's something else), an established D&D monster without much existing popularity or sympathy, would fit the bill rather nicely. After all, I've never seen anyone cry over efforts to fend off swarms of ants.
This could all be foolishly, pretentiously off-base though. What do you think?