Alien Stereotypes

[Dust Raven]

I'm putting together a Star Hero campaign universe and need a diverse array of aliens to populate it. I'm looking for all of those stereotypical stables of space opera and epic SF aliens, such as the cat people, the detached emotionless people, the machine people, the people who love archaic weapons, etc.

 

What other stereotypes are there I may use? I'm planning on warping each to my own personal taste of course (for example, the cat people will actually be the looks like a wet cat that's been kicked in the groin people, and have a disgruntled but not quite xenophobic outlook on other races). I'm not sure how many I need at this time, any suggestions would be appreciated.

[Lord Liaden]

Re: Alien Stereotypes

 

Let's see:

 

The warrior race - aggressive and usually expansionistic, but also often having a strong code of honor.

 

The puppeteers - symbiotes/shapeshifters/mind controllers etc. who infiltrate other races to take them over.

 

The godlike aliens - so ancient that they've evolved seemingly magical personal powers, or techology far beyond anything else extant. Either extinct (but their artifacts may survive and be sought after) or isolationist (but rebels may cause trouble in the greater universe).

 

The hive mind - individuals are volitionless cyphers within a greater collective consciousness.

[Lord Liaden]

Re: Alien Stereotypes

 

Then there are the BEMs - hideous, destructive, with motives scarcely understandable to other races, beyond the desire to survive, feed and propagate. May combine with other of the archetypes above.

[Captain Obvious]

Re: Alien Stereotypes

 

Pure energy. It's life, but not as we know it.

[Dr. Anomaly]

Re: Alien Stereotypes

 

The race that is sly and treacherous, as a racial ideal. Completely untrustworthy, and prone to developing various "stealth" technologies and so on.

 

The perfected human race: looks just like humans, but every member of the race is physically perfect, technology is usually at least slightly more advanced, and they tend to be arrogant and regard themselves as clearly morally superior to all others, especially if they aren't.

 

The species that has a highly-regimented dueling tradition, very rigid codes of personal conduct, and probably thousands of ways to get you involved in a duel and kill you because you happened to say "Would you please pass the salt?" in just the wrong way...

[Cancer]

Re: Alien Stereotypes

 

A variation on the energy people: the pure-mental people, just disembodied mentality.

[Flames]

Re: Alien Stereotypes

 

There's the race that seizes upon one epoch in another race's history and painstakingly recreates it for one reason or another (Star Trek... Spectre of the Gun, A Piece of the Action, and so on).

 

You're looking for SF cliches?

 

Check out this site: http://www.strangehorizons.com/guidelines/fiction-common.shtml

 

It's the list of plotlines that Strange Horizons says they've "seen too often."

[Outsider]

Re: Alien Stereotypes

 

Hmm. lots of these so far are represented in Master of Orion

 

Alkari : An avian race with an almost instinctive grasp of the dynamics of 3 dimensional motion... great tactical pilots.

 

Bulrathi : Large, Bear like, heavy worlders. Prone to personal combat.

 

Darloks : Enigmatic Shapeshifters. They're good spies & their tech favors stealth.

 

Elerians : Matriarchal, militaristic, telepaths.

 

Gnolams : Small, low-g aliens. Their society focuses on capitalism and finance.

 

Klackons : Insectoid hive mind. Since individuals are largely unimportant, they tend to skip safety considerations, and thus have a greater ability to exploit resources for a given amount of labor.

 

Meklars : A cybernetic race. Their ability to directly link to machines makes them formidable industrialists & shipborne damage control artists.

 

Mrrshan : Catlike, high reflexes. Great gunners.

 

Psilons : Big brains. Great researchers.

 

Sakkra : Subterranean living reptiloids. Fast breeders, and they regenerate. Low mortality and high reproduction make them excellent at quickly exploiting planetary resources. Big colonizers.

 

Silicoids : A crystalline life form, eats minerals. Hard for other races to understand. Specialize in colonizing environments distasteful to other sentients.

 

Trilarians : Aquatic, with an affinity for trans-dimensional physics. Great navigators.

Bulrathi

[Dust Raven]

Re: Alien Stereotypes

 

Excellent list Outsider! However, one stereotype I'm desperately avoiding is that all aliens with appearances similar to Earth animals also have traits similar to those animals.

[Dust Raven]

Re: Alien Stereotypes

 

There's the race that seizes upon one epoch in another race's history and painstakingly recreates it for one reason or another (Star Trek... Spectre of the Gun' date=' A Piece of the Action, and so on).

I love those episodes. A Piece of the Action is my favorite I think. I'm not sure if I'll actually do something like that, but I might do the alien race emulates the popular fiction of another race al-la Galaxy Quest.

 

You're looking for SF cliches?

 

Check out this site: http://www.strangehorizons.com/guidelines/fiction-common.shtml

 

It's the list of plotlines that Strange Horizons says they've "seen too often."

Great list... repped.

[ghost-angel]

Re: Alien Stereotypes

 

I suggest picking up Star Hero.

 

It has a bunch of package deals for generic common aliens (cat people, dog people, insect people, bird people, lizard people); Cultural packages (warriors, thinkers, ...)

 

As well as a good long section on developing cultures as a whole (both stereotypical and not so).

[Dust Raven]

Re: Alien Stereotypes

 

I suggest picking up Star Hero.

 

It has a bunch of package deals for generic common aliens (cat people, dog people, insect people, bird people, lizard people); Cultural packages (warriors, thinkers, ...)

 

As well as a good long section on developing cultures as a whole (both stereotypical and not so).

Excellent suggestion! I already have and have read Star Hero though. I'm looking for some suggestions as to those stereotypes not found in the book, or of other takes on those stereotypes.

 

Any other Star Hero books which may prove useful?

[Lord Liaden]

Re: Alien Stereotypes

 

You might want to check out this website: http://www.angelfire.com/scifi2/mathew/champions.html#packages . The center column, "Racial Packages," has links to a large number of HERO Fifth Edition racial Package Deals, including a number of aliens drawn from Gamma World, RIFTS and GURPS Aliens. Probably the majority of packages are for fantasy races from various sources, but I daresay you could adapt some of those too.

 

Note that the links on the webpage above are sometimes cranky and may take you to the author's homepage instead. Just go Back and try the link again.

[Killer Shrike]

Re: Alien Stereotypes

 

The Endless

[tancred]

Re: Alien Stereotypes

 

Excellent suggestion! I already have and have read Star Hero though. I'm looking for some suggestions as to those stereotypes not found in the book, or of other takes on those stereotypes.

 

Any other Star Hero books which may prove useful?

 

Take a look at Terran Empire, if you don't already have it.

It has a lot of other races to use.

 

Not much in the way of stereotypes that haven't already been mentioned, but some interesting races there.

[Maccabe]

Re: Alien Stereotypes

 

Lets not forget the half breed telepaths (Star Trek; Spock /Vulcan and Troi/Betazoid) . What about the Cylons from the original BSG?

Then there's; Time Lords, Jedi, etc

There was a book called Barlow's Guide to the Extra-terrestial's try that for quick ideas.

[Arkham]

Re: Alien Stereotypes

 

Excellent list Outsider! However' date=' one stereotype I'm desperately avoiding is that all aliens with appearances similar to Earth animals also have traits similar to those animals.[/quote']

 

Then mix and match. :-D

 

Avians who can shapeshift and make excellent spies.

Catlike race who regenerates, tunnel, and breeds super fast.

Bear-like empathic matriarchs.

Insectoids who base their society on trade and wealth.

 

But then I suppose it wouldn't be a SF stereotype... *hrm*

[ghost-angel]

Re: Alien Stereotypes

 

Excellent suggestion! I already have and have read Star Hero though. I'm looking for some suggestions as to those stereotypes not found in the book, or of other takes on those stereotypes.

 

Any other Star Hero books which may prove useful?

 

Go with Tancred's suggestion - Terran Empire.

 

You know what surprised me in Star Hero - no Simian Aliens suggestions, besides humans I mean. But Planet Of The Apes type Simian, or the Yazarians from Star Frontiers.

 

Try this - a hive mind that forms a larger body (resembling the small little aliens that make it up) creating a shapeshifter. Individually they have little chance against their surroundings, but collectively as they use a "large" version of themselves they can.

 

Like those ant-balls that form when they get swept into a river, only more sentient.

[Dust Raven]

Re: Alien Stereotypes

 

Bear-like empathic matriarchs.

 

I like this idea...

[Dust Raven]

Re: Alien Stereotypes

 

Go with Tancred's suggestion - Terran Empire.

I'm definitely considering picking up Terran Empire.

 

Try this - a hive mind that forms a larger body (resembling the small little aliens that make it up) creating a shapeshifter. Individually they have little chance against their surroundings, but collectively as they use a "large" version of themselves they can.

 

Like those ant-balls that form when they get swept into a river, only more sentient.

 

Mmm... alien ant balls... There is likely potential there, but unfortunately I have a very sick mind.

[Outsider]

Re: Alien Stereotypes

 

Try this - a hive mind that forms a larger body (resembling the small little aliens that make it up) creating a shapeshifter. Individually they have little chance against their surroundings, but collectively as they use a "large" version of themselves they can.

 

Like those ant-balls that form when they get swept into a river, only more sentient.

 

 

I had a hive-mind race made up of non-sentient individuals in a character back story once. They were aquatic, and, due to their resemblance to earthly krill, were known as the Krill. Once a swarm of them reached a critical number they became sentient and powerfully telepathic. The larger the swarm, the greater the hive-mind's intelligence, and the more powerful its mental powers. The critical number, fortunately for other intellegent life in the galaxy, was so large as to preclude Krill intelligence from travelling in space.

 

Not that this limited them to a single world. Xeno-historians theorized that the era of Krill interstellar colonization started when an exploration ship of a spacefaring race first entered orbit around the Krill homeworld, and there fell under the domination of the Krill Homeworld Mind. After learning a great deal of technical information and that the biochemistry of the explorer's homeworld was compatible with the Krill's, the ship was sent back to its homeworld with a hold full of gravid Krill breeders to be released in the ocean. There the Krill flourished, and some years later reached sentience and power. Thus the Krill dominion extended to a second world, and its first slave-popluation. This slave population was instructed to build more ships, explore more worlds, and plant more Krill colonies where they might. And so they did. But some resistant individuals were able to shake off the Krill domination once out of their presence, and so a warning went out ahead of the colonization front. Krill dominated space was quite extensive, but their dependence on unreliable slaves (outside of a Krill presence, anyway), and the vigilance of neighboring races (once warned) brought Krill expansion mostly to a halt. There was debate about what to do about the Krill. Some favored planet busting weapons to end the threat, and so-sorry about the dominated races. Others wanted to contain the threat until a means of ending the Krill domination that did not destroy worlds and kill billions of innocent (though dominated) individuals was devised.

[Matt Frisbee]

Re: Alien Stereotypes

 

Any of the "alien" races that look and function exactly like humans (or at least well enough to mate with us).

 

Any race that requires males to gestate the young or can impregnate human males.

 

Any race that has more than two genders and requires group gropes to procreate.

 

Any race that values the warrior ethic to an idiotic extreme.

 

Any Bug-Eyed Monster that finds humans to be a tasty and nutritious snack food.

 

Any race that cannot adequately function in interstellar society.

 

Any emotionless machine race that is superior to humanity in many ways that hasn't enslaved or destroy humanity.

 

Any race that could have substituted for or explain the legends of ancient human gods.

 

Any race that is essentially an anthropomorphic mammal from earth's biosphere.

 

Just a few off the top of my head...

 

Matt "Asimov-Rules" Frisbee

 

P.S. Yay! My 800th post! Hopefully, I've had something worth saying in every one of them...

[TheRavenIs]

Re: Alien Stereotypes

 

I have always wanted to see a plant based intelligence being a PC that can be played. It just seems to me that would be different and fun.

[Shadowsoul]

Re: Alien Stereotypes

 

Then there's the moral angle.

 

The suicidally pacifistic race.

 

The race that almost seems to exist only to point out the flaws in mankind's attitude towards ecology and spirituality.

 

Also.

Those left behind by the ancient god like aliens.

The highly advanced society that inherited some of their master's technology.

The genetically engineered warriors.

The immensely evil and powerful race that 'destroyed' the godlike aliens but remains curiously vulnerable to these upstart humans.

 

And.

Bizzarre lovecraftian nightmares

[Lawnmower Boy]

Re: Alien Stereotypes

 

The immensely long-lived race that finds human FTL (and maybe even its taste for living around stars, 'lit' or otherwise) tasteless.

The incomprehensible gas-giant dwelling race that just might actually know what is going on --if you could talk to it.

Also incomprehensible, the sonar-using batlike people. This one is sure to be a hit with philosophy majors.

Giant, powerful reptilians that may or may not want to eat us.

Intelligent, mind-controlling plants.

Blobs that assimilate our protoplasm to grow.