Making Star Army More Alien/Diverse

[Wes]

I saw an article on Ongoing Worlds that reminded me of this topic: Infinite Diversity in… You Know the Rest Right?

So far I've got a couple of new artworks to help balance the white human(oids) that still make up like 90% or more of the site's art. They're on the Star Army's duty uniform page since that's the main uniform of the main faction. I got a coffee-colored neko, a Kodian, and a black human female (also used to to show a woman in a pants). I hope to get more commissioned artworks from Nicoy, I just need to figure out what to get next (your ideas, please?).

 

[Wes]

Here's the first Phodian chibi:

In the next order I'm building, I'm planning on getting more alien chibis. Because player characters of non-human-like species are practically non-existent, some of them will be unnamed characters like the above. The art can always later be used for future characters that match it.

 

[MoonMan]

You know, while we're talking about it~

A while back, I was working heavily on a Delsaurian rework. I've always liked the idea of lizard-like races, but I didn't think something like The Elder Scrolls Argonians was something that really sold the alien feel, and currently that's kind of what Delsaurians are; lizard humanoids. I tossed up a bunch of ideas, but I never got around to really finishing them. Wes, since you technically created them, I'd like the run my ideas by you; maybe, since there's very little about Delsaurians at all currently in the roleplay, I can get some sort of approval to further develop the ideas in my spare time. I've always really liked Delsaurians, and as long as I've been with Star Army I've seen that they're quite under-represented and not really used, perhaps because they are too human-like without actually being human enough to reach that comfortable human stereotype that we all gravitate towards when we want to associate with a character. I wanted to make them different, discernible... if only to use them as entertaining and interesting NPCs in plots.

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First off, I really wanted to play on Delsaurians and how interaction and integration with Nepleslia had actually improved their lives as a species, mostly Nepleslia's introduction of cybernetic enhancement. What I imagined was that, prior to their "integration" with Nepleslia, Delsaurians were not really high on the food chain on planet Delsauria. I imagined they had lots of nasty wildlife, coupled with some less-than-stellar physiological traits that they had not naturally evolved out of. My re-imagining of Delsaurians gave them large rear-jointed legs instead of normal humanoid ones, as well as 3-claw hand structures similar to that of a T-rex. The lack of a thumb appendage made things difficult for Delsaurians, their brains large enough to utilize a much broader range of things but their lack of opposable thumbs actually halted their cultural and technology growth, unable to really get past the hurdle. Something as simple as the lack of an opposable thumb hindering them would have been infuriating.

Suddenly, Nepleslia (I imagine still under Yamatai at the time) comes in and wrecks them in their normal fashion, absorbs the culture, and suddenly Delsaurians realize they can buy cybernetic thumbs for the cost of a microwave meal. Their long tails, often unwieldly, could be replaced by shorter cybernetic versions that retained the important sense of balance they represented while also allowing them to properly fit in a crowded public bus more easily. Glandular replacements that allow Delsaurians to survive in more moist, colder climates where their original physiology only allowed them comfortable survival in the extreme arid heat of Delsauria. I envisioned nearly all Delsaurians embracing Nepleslia's cybernetic affinity and, as a result, really breaking out into their own from the wellspring of benefits that were otherwise unavailable to their species. Now ALL Delsaurians have cybernetic thumbs, or even entire hand replacements. Legs, eyes, tails, I imagined there's a huge market for selling cybernetics of Delsaurians.

It was through this acceptance of Nepleslia and their technology that I wanted Delsaurians to feel appreciable, maybe even lucky, that they were rather aggressively taken over by Nepleslia. We have a species of alien that prior to the arrival of Nepleslia, could have possibly gone extinct... and now relies heavily on cybernetics to become more civilized and, suddenly, Delsaurians civilization is bursting forth and thriving, whereas Nepleslians don't have such a dependence on cybernetics. The shortcoming and dependence of these cybernetics, I felt, added more character to the Delsaurian race and really personified the distinct style that being a part of Nepleslia represented, that sort of combination of machine in conjunction with the flesh showing how much good associating with Nepleslia could be.

That was a major part of my rework. Whaddya think? :V

 

[Kai]

I think that's an awesome idea. It also reminded me of a little Alien species I created a ways back that's not especially dissimilar from the Delsaurians, though I suppose in some ways they would have been better off, having actually been gifted with opposable thumbs and fine motor skills. I call them Moonies since they are derived from some other race i created when I was much younger, who were supposed to be spies, but I adpated them as having come to being on a habitable moon around a gas giant.

I have a feeling they would get along with Delsaurians, though unlike the Delsaurians, not have such a dependence on Cybernetics like you envision. But yeah, they are of a similar vein, though different enough that the two would be distinct. Either way both of these species are neat, quirky ways of adding some more reptilian diversity to SARP.

 

[Wes]

I like the idea of expanding the available information about the Delsaurians, but I don't want to throw out the core concepts of what they where, based on how my friend and I originally envisioned them back in 6th grade. If we did all of the above, they would basically be Delsaurian only in name and unrecognizable. Besides, we already have art for them that shows their hands and legs and lack of cybernetics. I'd rather see them as SARP's equivalent of Krogan from Mass Effect: a very tough, beefy race known as badass warriors. Also, Delsaurians have independently developed space travel thousands of years ago, and have their own tech base that includes their triangle raider ships covered in disruptor ports, cargo doors, glowing red windows, Millenium Falcon-style rear engine banks, and underside hatches with an anti-gravity beam to lift things into the ship (think off alien abduction scenes).

 

[Moogle]

Delsaurians don't look like the kind to badass their way through combat. They look more the sort to tough it out like a turtle.

 

[Ira]

I demand more gart love.

 

[Soresu]

I like the idea of expanding the available information about the Delsaurians, but I don't want to throw out the core concepts of what they where, based on how my friend and I originally envisioned them back in 6th grade. If we did all of the above, they would basically be Delsaurian only in name and unrecognizable. Besides, we already have art for them that shows their hands and legs and lack of cybernetics. I'd rather see them as SARP's equivalent of Krogan from Mass Effect: a very tough, beefy race known as badass warriors. Also, Delsaurians have independently developed space travel thousands of years ago, and have their own tech base that includes their triangle raider ships covered in disruptor ports, cargo doors, glowing red windows, Millenium Falcon-style rear engine banks, and underside hatches with an anti-gravity beam to lift things into the ship (think off alien abduction scenes).

Krogan were immensely warlike, hard to kill, and in general one of the most 'efficient' killing machines in Mass-Effect if lore is to be believed. So if you want the Delsaurians as SARP's Krogan, be careful what you bargain for.

 

[Wes]

How do you guys think we're doing on this? If you look at the past couple years, have we been able to diversify the characters who appear in SARP to any noticeable extent? I know we have more Nekovalkyrja player characters with non-white skin colors than before, but I'm unsure we've made much progress in showing other human races or featuring aliens more than we used to.

I do think I'll like to have a Yamataian planet with a Delsaurian population.

 

[Doshii Jun]

I think our focus isn't on racial diversification as much as creating new species, such as Edto's and the I'ee.

 

[Zack]

And now for a dissenting opinion...

You may have noticed a lot of species are humanoid, two eyes, bipedal, star-trek-style-facial-makeup, ect.

Common knowledge has it that aliens would look nothing like us. After all that makes sense doesn't it? It is a big universe out there and there is no telling what conditions life elsewhere would have right?

So how do we square those two ideas?

Well, lets consider that intelligent life didn't happen by chance. Oxygen breathing life formed on earth because there were plants there to make the oxygen. The life was carbon based because carbon is the best material for bonding with other materials. Intelligent life evolved from monkeys because they are the most pre-disposed to intelligence; They needed larger brains to hunt prey, larger brains to calculate how to throw rocks. Ontop of that they had two forward facing eyes for depth perception, two arms, two legs for tree climbing, they walked upright and had the head positioned at the top of the spine to support a larger and heavier brain. Then ontop of that there are really only so many viable shapes for things like eyes, hands, mouths, ect.

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It might be easier to say that intelligent life prefers to look a certain way, that it would be to try and create sentient gas-clouds. Of course, this doesn't mean that some other kind intelligence couldn't exist, just that it is far more likely that we'll come across something that looks familiar to us.

 

[Eistheid]

Oxygen breathing life formed on earth because there were plants there to make the oxygen

Oxygen breathing life exists because of the evolution of cyanobacteria, that killed all of the anaerobic bacteria that used to be more common. It's actually one of the biggest extinction events on the planet and nearly left Earth as a lifeless ball.

The reason humans evolved to be dominant on Earth are literally because of the circumstances present on Earth, ranging from gravity, abundant resources, and so forth. Basically, bipedal, ape life is only beneficial on a world like ours. In other environments that would not be the case. So it isn't a great idea to make a sweeping generalization that the human form is the classical ideal.

So I guess if you're lazy and say life only exists on Earth like planets with minimal variation, then sure. But otherwise you should expect much more diverse species with traits nothing like those found on Earth.

 

[Zack]

Think of it like winning the lotto. The odds of you winning the lotto? Basically 0. But the odds of no one winning the Lotto? That's also pretty low. (See also, the Birthday problem)

It took a lot of events for life to develop the way it did on earth, but for intelligent life to develop those events have to take place. It follows that where we see intelligent life, we will also see a series of improbable events akin to what we saw on earth.

Intelligent life won't show up in space, because there is no gravity, oxygen, ect. It will likely be on a planet. Too much gravity and there will be no life, just like there is no life if there isn't enough gravity. Intelligent life also likely won't be a herbivore because Herbivores don't need to be smart. Intelligence favors certain traits and it isn't lazy to say that aliens might not be all that alien due to convergent evolution.


Of course, since we haven't seen life anywhere else in the universe, we can't really build a solid picture about where life forms, but this is a pretty good explanation for lots of things being humanoid in my opinion.

 

[Doshii Jun]

... Not sure how that opinion is dissenting, or even relevant.

The question started as basically a desire to include actual diversity among the playerbase as well as ICly. Species creation doesn't address those Earth-based desires for the inclusion of more nonwhites, but it's succeeding in transhumanism and, to some extent, species diversification.

 

[Syaoran]

Diversity is a very very hard thing to accomplish in an RP setting. Especially when you're talking about creating more alien life forms. Because there is one major thing in the way, familiarity. The number of people who can be comfortable playing something that is vastly different from a human constantly is slim. And the number of people who can play something vastly different from a human or anything on the planet earth constantly is even slimmer. Simply put, generally speaking the human brain isn't designed to rationalize and understand things well from a perspective that far off form human. So playing a race far detached form human for a large portion of people will be a struggle. And designing an entire race is even more difficult, it's why most races even if physically drastically different, on the mental front their culture ends up revolving around a concept that when you think about it is human. There's nothing wrong with this, but that's just how it kinda has to be for most people to be able to associate with something. If they can't feel a measure of humanity or at least familiarity with it, it's difficult for them to get into the mind of the character.

Edit: And I just realized my point might not have gotten across. By this I mean players will tend to gravitate mainly to the most 'human like' races because of familiarity. Of course there will be exceptions based on preference and tolerance, but generally speaking it's what happens. Hence why so many people gravitate towards The core Yamatai races, and Nepleslians even when they're in other factions or independent.

 

[Sham]

*points to Raiken*

Also, Syaoran does make valid points. (Of course, shedding the human 'thought-box' opens a whole world of possibilities.)

 

[Moogle]

Of course, the best alternative to just setting bloat is utilizing old resources in new ways.

 

[Zack]

Maybe it would make sense to have a tholian type species that is largely NPC so players don't have to deal with controlling it?

The Tholians were from star-trek, and because they live in a vastly different type of environment than humans, they didn't really interact much with starfleet. While the humanoid-like species of the alpha quadrant all started forming alliances and doing their own things the Tholian's were largely left alone. Humans went for M class planets, Tholians went for whatever weird planet type they needed, and the two co-existed without bothering each other.... for the most part.

There doesn't seem to be much of a desire for people to play as non-humanoid races, and having them as NPCs would increase diversity without weighing down players with unwanted obligations.

 

[Syaoran]

Having races as NPC doesn't really help the apparent diversity of the RP. That's just having token races there to say "Oh we don't have only humanoids, we have some crazy stuff too(just no one plays it)." What would help more is the realization that something being bipedal 2 arms 2 eyes, does not actually make it 'similar to humans'. The Laibe, Raiken, HSC, and more races, are all good examples.