Faction concept

I've got a rough concept for a faction in my head that I might want to add to the SARPiverse. That faction would be inspired by the Arkonides and the Terrans from the Perry Rhodan universe combined with own ideas. But as I feel that the SARPiverse already contains a lot of factions that don't get the attention they might deserve (I might be wrong with that impression for I'm quite new to SARP), I first wanted to ask if there's sufficient interest for such a new faction before I put real work into it.

The rough points of the faction would be:

• faction is human descendent and lives in an, until recently, isolated star system where it evolved differently
  • faction's typical phenotype would be: white or white-blond hair, red eyes, dark caucasian skin
  • faction is still genetically compatible with baseline humans
• some members of the faction has the potential to get an extra sense activated, a companion in ones mind with whom one can speak mentally, sort of an intended schizophrenia
  • the negative side of this ability is an increased proportion of not intended schizophrenic mental disorder in the faction's population
• faction's society his highly autocratic and nationalistic, but not necessarily racist or aggressive
• faction's shipstyle would prefer spherical space ships
• standard of technology is (in the beginning) far below that of the YSE or DION

As you may see I don't even have a name for the faction yet.

Edit: Changed "species" into "faction" to avoid unnecessary confusion.

So basically an isolated pocket of highly nationalistic humans on some fringe-planet that evolved base psionics.

I see you very specifically shying away from racism for fear of having it scare players away. You could twist this on its elbow by saying they are racist, but not overtly or aggressively: Instead, they have something of a superiority complex, believing other species have to "prove" themselves, talking down to them the same way an adult would a child: Never ever harmful or exclusive but perhaps a bit rude and exclusionary, similar to the xenophobia shown by contemporary Japanese to foreigners because of their extreme isolation in the last two millenia: Being surprised by basic competency.

Specifically, it might be worth researching schizophrenia more to better detail how these problems affect them.

Many assume schizophrenia is "just hallucinations": It seriously isn't. Schizophrenia is entering a catatonic state when you feel stressed, speaking word-salad and thinking everything revolves around you - that you are the centre of the universe -- and regularly, that someone is "coming to get you", vastly over-estimating your own importance and building a very very elaborate fantasy backed up by to try and rationalise these feelings -- and its the stress of forcing yourself to believe these things that causes "daylight hallucinations" or "waking sleep" as its described. Source? I am schizophrenic.

Above all when making a species, you have to make them interesting. The best way is controversy: It gives players a platform to stand on to create conflict to resolve in stories, whether they use you as non-player characters and as player-characters, it gives them a character-arc to work with and a solid source of either distrust or poor behaviour. Please, don't shy away from that controversy.

Upsetting people ICly is GREAT: You HAVE to upset people to get them emotionally invested in the outcome. That's the background of all stories.

We appreciate your interest @Rattenkind. Probing the 'terrain' ahead before commiting is certainly wise of you.

However, the community usually discourages new members from getting into something as involved as species/faction creation in our setting before they've had the chance to experience it for themselves. On one hand, taking some time to stew and experience SARP as it is would give you better insight into what would better belong in said universe. Another consideration is avoiding turning part of the roleplay into something more tailormade by the new member - the subtext of that is generally found rude (like putting salt in a meal someone made for you before having tasted it). Also, while we want to welcome as many new members as possible, it's an unfortunate reality that some come-and-go, abandonning anything they created in the setting, and then this largely unattended content ends up bloating the setting and the admins typically have to clean up afterwards (the in-house term is "exfoliation") in order to offer a more dynamically streamlined setting for our participants.

So, we usually tip-toe around the issue. It's a mix of "please no" but also "please don't leave we still like you!". Well-worded members can sometimes reach compromises. In hindsight... some pay off, others less so.

With that disclaimer out of the way... there's nothing wrong with you thinking about something you'd like to introduce later. However, pay in mind that the premise you've offered is yet another human-descended subrace... and SARP has no shortage of those (and, if I'm not mistaken, we were trying to tone it down). We have independent worlds around and there's an effort to establish those, so, establishing a locally different ethnic group of humans with a different color palette sounds feasible. But that feels like it would all there would be to them as far as interest factor goes. I feel that if it is not alien and just culturally different, it would be best to portray them as such.

To me, this wouldn't be a race submission so much as the description of a human colony on in an independant star system. If you want to push this further, you're likely to meet harder questions like "how would this addition help improve the setting?" and usually in human-like races, it's little. It'd amount to yet another human-looking alien-of-the-week we got to see on a Star Trek episode. That's actually what the image you linked reminded me of.

If you go and manage to craft an actual alien race, you're likely to get more traction. This is a tough act because playable races usually end up being humanoid anyways, and non-humanoids are typically NPCs. As it is, the only true alien race (in my opinion) that SARP has are the Mishhuvurthyar; though even then, the alieness is stymied by those handling them being humans (Mishhu labeling is alphabetic, which is nonsensical of aliens to use).

There are a few other "truly" alien species. Granted, they're extinct.

I'd suggest this be presented as a faction of humans, and not as a new species.

Star Army encourages submissions that are:

• New factions of existing species, such as humans
  
• New species that are alien (note: 3 month active membership requirement)

The reason I bring this up is because we still have a ban on adding new "human +1" species. Here's the quote from the rules on the Factions guide's section on species creation:

Avoid being pseudohuman.
That means you shouldn't call yourselves a separate race if you're really just humans with special powers, minor cosmetic changes (ears, etc), or an extra organ or two. This alone may be grounds for the denial of a submission because the setting already has more than enough pseudohuman species.

Click to expand...

This rule exists because without it, almost all new Star Army aliens would be Star Trek-style wrinkled-forehead-aliens.

@Wes Right, faction is the correct term. They are actually ment to be a faction, it just missed that there's that word for it. I'm certainly the last who wants to create a species that is called alien and is only a human+x. I'm sorry for the confusion.

@OsakanOne I would rather have them to be grounded in general and not at all xenophobic. They should be somewhat curious about the universe out there and well cooperative. But most members of the faction will always put their people first. Of cause there are always exceptions, so they too will have racists, arrogants and extremists in their ranks.
I know that schizophrenia is more than "just" hallucinations. And while I really mean schizophrenia as the negative outcome of their ability, I use the term more loosely for the positive one, for I lack a better word for it. I hope, I don't offend you or other members that might be schizoprenic with my faction concept. I truely don't intend to.

@Fred I understand you completely and your points are exactly why I put it here first and if there's no interest in another human faction, I won't be offended by it. I do have some real alien species concepts but I use them in my own scifi universe for which I am currently writing a book. Though I realize it is not likely to ever be published I wouldn't want to create copyright issues by using them here, in the event one or more books of mine do get published after all.
And, like Wes said, I'm too young a member to introduce a real alien species.

Talk to me about this sometime in the following weeks. I'm working on developing a section of the map that will consist of an amalgamation of independent human colony worlds, mostly out of contact with the Imperial core of the existing SARPiverse (albeit slowly, around 2 young children and the usual mom stuff), and would be interested in possibly working together with you to implement some or all of your ideas into at least one of the systems.

@Floodwaters That prospect would be enough reason for me to start working on the faction. I would suggest that I do just that and you contact me when you got around to it so we review what I got until then together.

Question: Is it a copyright issue to use a name of an existing fictional universe for something different here?
I'm thinking to name the faction's homeworld "Satron" which in the Perry Rhodan universe is the name of the Arkonidian language.

The answer is it can be. If the name is copyrighted.

Satron is listed as a hamlet in Swaledale, North Yorkshire, England.

When in doubt, avoid using a name from another person's work.

I just try to find a name for the faction and somehow I stuck with Satron. Well... seems I have to think more names and hope one sounds right to me.

Naming is always a challenge. Usually what I do is play around with random generators and then I check using Google to make it isn't the Trademark name of some corporation (which somehow turns out to be an issue more than one would think). For my new species, the Rixxikor, we're the only one on the internet using that name so far, which I am pretty pleased with.

I think I got something now. Somehow I want my homeplanet from which my faction name derives to end with -on but somehow most names that I can create is in fact the name of some corporation or something. But now I remembered the ancient akkadian king Sargon. I don't imagine one could copyright that one. And Sargon somehow sounds fine to me.