TheRPGSite

After wasting two decades hoping Hasbro would do something, I've decided to write a ripoff retroclone of TSR's old Star*Drive IP.

If you don't know what that is, here's some links for newbies:
http://thefairlyunkempt.blogspot.com/search/label/stardrive
http://www.sjgames.com/pyramid/sample.cgi?1543
https://www.alternityrpg.net/onlineforums/index.php?s=0&showtopic=6577
https://rickard80.github.io/storygames/?304
https://stagingpoint.com/2010/01/14/on-the-challenge-of-giving-your-interstellar-empire-a-cool-name/
http://www.tsrarchive.com/al/al2.html

Basically, in 1998 TSR decided to write a generic scifi roleplaying game: Alternity. They published two original campaign settings for this: the ufology conspiracy thriller setting Dark•Matter and the space opera setting Star*Drive. They also released a Gamma World setting book just when the line was canceled.

Star*Drive is not an original or avant-garde setting. It was literally written to be the archetypal generic space opera setting. It uses all the tropes you could think of: flying cars, FTL travel, AIs, robots, psychic powers, mutations and genetic engineering, aliens, cyborgs, virtual reality on the space internet ("the Grid"), etc. However, it does have one unique thing going for it: it was an original space opera setting invented in the late 90s and incorporating all the scifi tropes that existed when it was written (except for mech suits). All settings are products of their time, and this is no exception. Star Trek is a product of the 1960s, Star Wars a product of the 1970s, Traveller a product of the... you get the point. Star*Drive sets itself apart from these older settings by incorporating scifi conventions postdating them, notably tropes like cyborgs, virtual reality, and even smartphones/smartwatches. Yeah, really! A basic piece of tech that almost everyone has is a wrist-mounted smartphone with internet access and a holographic interface.

The in-game history is... something. It starts with your typical "humanity advances to utopian tech levels" and then takes a swerve for the weird when the Roswell grays show up. You read that right: the Roswell grays show up. In the late 21st century the Roswell grays publicly reveal their existence and make an alliance with humanity for progress. This isn't the first time they tried making contact, but the last two times respectively resulted in myths of fairies and the ufology craze. Anyway, the grays call themselves "Fraal" and share their gravity inducer tech with humanity. Humanity independently discovers interesting facts about dark matter that they use to invent reactors powered by dark matter: since dark matter is omnipresent, this means in practice that these reactor have infinite fuel. (It's implied here that the Dark•Matter setting is a prequel, but the continuity doesn't actually fit so it's really an Easter egg reference.) By combining the gravity inducer with the mass reactor, they invent the first FTL drives or "stardrives." These are standard scifi hyperdrives: they punch a hole into hyperspace (here called "drivespace") that allows economical FTL travel. The drive operates on similar rules to the drives in Traveller: all communications travel at the rate of 11 hours per jump regardless of real space distance, and all matter (i.e. starships) travel at the rate of 11² hours per jump (i.e. 121 hours, or 5 days and 1 hour).

Humanity and the fraal expand into the thousand ly radius around Earth over the next several centuries (the setting's year 0 is ~AD2500). Humanity encounters various aliens, including ~50 intelligent species. Since humanity invented the first known FTL drives, this puts humanity at a huge advantage. All other species encountered are reduced to clients of the human polities that surround them, with their fates depending on the charity of the local polity. If the humans are nice, then the aliens get a good deal. If not, then the aliens might get enslaved (one of the core races suffered this fate and is trying to get emancipated).

Anyway, the Terran Empire grows increasingly authoritarian until the colonies rebel Jovian Chronicles-style. This rebellion becomes known as the Galactic War (and later the First Galactic War, put a pin in that for now). The Terran Empire is dissolved and a variety of new "stellar nations" are formally recognized. The population of an individual stellar nation go well into the tens of billions at least. The territory they claim is known collectively as the Stellar Ring.

Time passes. The Second Galactic War (GW2) breaks out. It lasts for a century and devastates the Stellar Ring: by the time it ended, the population was reduced to a few trillion from... well, you get the picture. Realizing that they'll be destroyed if the war doesn't stop, the twelve surviving stellar nations sign the Treaty of Concord. This forms a new stellar known as the Galactic Concord to maintain the peace: they're basically the space UN but with their own territory and standing army.

Each of the thirteen stellar nations as of the setting's present day in 2501 have a different shtick, not unlike the factions in a 4X game like Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri. Austrin-Ontis is Space Texas NRA, VoidCorp is Microsoft, Thuldan are the Nietzscheans from Gene Roddenberry's Andromeda, Nariac is Space USSR with cyborgs, the Union of Sol are historians and historical reenactors, Hatire are militant Space Amish, etc. There were originally a lot more nations, but their independence was destroyed by GW2 and the survivors absorbed into neighboring nations. (E.g. one of the dissolved nations was CHOAM, Inc. As in, the one from Dune.)

One of the Concord's initiatives is rebuilding contact with the frontier regions, such as The Verge. The Verge was a rich and prosperous region of space colonized by multiple stellar nations that was cut off from the Stellar Ring early in GW2 and remained isolated for the next century. They still hold grudges over this.

At the same time, a number of extremely hostile alien races have suddenly appeared in the Verge. The insectoid Klicks annihilated a colony, the Kroath abduct people, teleporting weirdos in sunglasses give you scary visions of the future, etc. Eventually it's discovered that these aliens are not unrelated but members of a imperialist theocracy ruled by what seem to be Fraal! (the two groups of Fraal may be an in-joke reference to the Sathar and S'sessu from Star Frontiers, but that's just my speculation)

As if that wasn't bad enough, another alien empire is encountered in The Verge. These reptilian aliens arrived in stasis on craft traveling at sublight speed, but observers quickly discover that they have wormhole technology. The "dragons", as humanity christens them, open wormholes to their own space and start bringing in armies to subjugate the Verge!

The game had something of a metaplot that was explored through various adventures. There were a number of tie-in novels that explored different facets of the setting and in some cases elaborated on the metaplot.

In the distant past of the setting millions of years prior, there was an apocalyptic war between two alien civilizations: the Glassmakers and the Stoneburners. (These seem to be inspired by the Shaper/Artificer conflict from TSR's earlier Bug Hunters setting, which themselves seem to be inspired by the Schismastrix novel.) The Glassmakers used technology composed of silicon, hence the name, while the Stoneburners... they evolved in a flame-retardant chlorinated atmosphere that forced them to develop Lovecraftian mad science and summon demons. The text obfuscates it by saying "dimensions" and other scifi buzzwords, but they summoned demons. These demons eventually turned on the Stoneburners and slaughtered the survivors of the war before themselves being trapped. As humanity expanded, ruins of both species were found and there's a thriving black market in artifacts. The Glassmaker ruins look pretty like glass (if you can get past any automated security systems), whereas the Stoneburner ruins... they look like something out of a Lovecraft story and are just as dangerous as you would expect.

Anyway, one of the colonies in the Verge mysteriously went missing at some point prior to the present day. Somehow they woke and released the demons from the Stoneburner's prison, and these demons called on various cultists they had maintained in reserve. Like those Fraal cousins I mentioned above.

Then there's some more civilizations in distant parts of the galaxy, planned for future supplements. But that's as far TSR got before it was canceled. Bits and pieces of the material were adapted for d20 Modern and d20 Future, including a second edition of the Dark•Matter setting, but d20 Modern itself was canceled in 2008.

The books covered various topics like planets in the Verge and aliens. There were a lot of aliens and the setting had about six or seven distinct biochemistries recognized. These were apparently inspired by the book World Building by Stephen Gillett (https://g.co/kgs/C3nukW), which was recently rereleased in ebook form if you want a look.

I spent a few years looking around for various scifi settings that could be used to do similar things to SD, and I came up blank. SD isn't just a space opera setting, it's a tabletop space opera setting that was designed as a setting first rather than how typical prose scifi is stories about characters, it was written in the content of the 90s scifi zeitgeist, and it was written to incorporate all the scifi tropes. These were specific criteria that went into its development, and I couldn't find any other scifi settings that could replicate it. I've googled for years, asked people in chats and forums... nothing!

So that's why I started this thread. I'm gonna brainstorm my own setting intended to fulfill the same criteria and replicate similar results. To prevent my work from dying out like SD, I'm gonna release my work into creative commons, the public domain or whatever is necessary to keep it from dying out. If anybody wants to give their own input, then feel free!

I'm tired right now, so I'm gonna end this post here.

I would give one solid recommendation.  Don't do it "system neutral."  I would think that doing a Cepheus Engine and a Stars Without Numbers editions would sell pretty well.  I buy up a lot of Cepheus Engine stuff for myself.  You might also look at Open D6 and Black Star as OD6 has a large following and Black Star seems to be taking on a lot of the OD6 crowd.

Contact WotC and ask them how much for the license for Star Drive. If you do your research on how much of a SD fanbase exists, that would help you determine your negotiation point.

Quote from: BadApple on August 22, 2023, 09:43:49 PM
I would give one solid recommendation.  Don't do it "system neutral."  I would think that doing a Cepheus Engine and a Stars Without Numbers editions would sell pretty well.  I buy up a lot of Cepheus Engine stuff for myself.  You might also look at Open D6 and Black Star as OD6 has a large following and Black Star seems to be taking on a lot of the OD6 crowd.

What's OD6?

Quote from: Aglondir on August 23, 2023, 03:30:05 AM

Quote from: BadApple on August 22, 2023, 09:43:49 PM
I would give one solid recommendation.  Don't do it "system neutral."  I would think that doing a Cepheus Engine and a Stars Without Numbers editions would sell pretty well.  I buy up a lot of Cepheus Engine stuff for myself.  You might also look at Open D6 and Black Star as OD6 has a large following and Black Star seems to be taking on a lot of the OD6 crowd.

What's OD6?

Open D6 or WEG D6

Quote from: BadApple on August 22, 2023, 09:43:49 PM
I would give one solid recommendation.  Don't do it "system neutral."  I would think that doing a Cepheus Engine and a Stars Without Numbers editions would sell pretty well.  I buy up a lot of Cepheus Engine stuff for myself.  You might also look at Open D6 and Black Star as OD6 has a large following and Black Star seems to be taking on a lot of the OD6 crowd.

The ideal rules to use would be the original Alternity, but since those are only available via used books market or piracy, I can't expect people to have it available. I'm making it systemless until I can find a generic scifi genre rpg that can replace Alternity. Every single scifi game I checked isn't generic enough. D20 Future is the closest and is currently available on drivethrurpg, but since it's dead I can't expect people to touch it either.

So just use whatever system suits your group. I'm just trying to keep the spirit alive.

Quote from: Spinachcat on August 23, 2023, 03:15:39 AM
Contact WotC and ask them how much for the license for Star Drive. If you do your research on how much of a SD fanbase exists, that would help you determine your negotiation point.

If they were opening to licensing their IPs, then somebody else would've done it already. They're an evil corpo. They don't give a flying fuck about art and culture. So fuck WotC. I hope Hasbro kills themselves trying to chase the mobile market.

The history, the nations, and the aliens

So the first worldbuilding I wanna brainstorm is the history, the nations, and the aliens. I have a rough outline and idea for what I want to accomplish: First contact with the Roswell grays, the invention of FTL, expansion across a 1000ly radius sphere around Earth, first contact with alien biospheres and ~50 intelligent species, the first galactic war where the colonies gain independence from Earth, the second galactic war resulting in the formation of Space UN and the current political situation. And that's before stuff like the frontier and the incursions by outsider species.

The interstellar nationstates provide backgrounds for PCs. Each one has its own shtick that provides a free benefit to PCs of that background. These nation concepts aren't set in stone, but they provide a decent enough foundation for character hometowns.

• Space Texas: You're good with firearms.
• Clone College: You're good at history.
• Butlerian Jihadists: You can call upon your faith to get a minor benefit once per session.
• The Pirate Party: You're good with computers and surfing the web.
• Cyberpunk USSR: You start with a free cybertech implant that doesn't count toward cyberpsychosis. Unfortunately it comes with a tracker that Space Stalin uses to keep tabs on you.
• Space Eagleland: You're good at interacting with people of different cultures.
• Those weirdos who think God resides in Hyperspace: you're good at astronavigation and physical sciences.
• Space Ancapistan: You're rich.
• Space Westworld: You're good with all vehicles including starships.
• Mutant Empire: You're physically superior.
• Historical Lifestylers: You're better at whatever other stuff you chose and you're a historical lifestyler. Pick any historical concept to base your costume around.
• Space Microsoft: You're good at business, games and competition.
• Space UN: The Space UN's territory was donated from various destroyed and surviving nations and many citizens are migrants from wartorn regions. By default you're luckier than others. If you specify your nation of origin, then you may get that benefit instead.

The alien concepts should be fairly diverse. I would point to JBR's page (http://jbr.me.uk/exo/) to serve as a potential list of prompts. But I'll list some basic recognizable ideas below:

• Roswell grays: exactly what the name implies. The entire species are gifted psychics and every individual begins play with a free psychic power. May or may not have an "evil" sibling race waiting to be discovered.
• Reformed Borg: these guys have integrated cybercircuitry and nanobots into their biology to the point where it is self-replicating. They have a higher tolerance for cyberpsychosis and can interface with computers directly using their built-in USB cable.
• Proud Warrior Race Guys: giant furry musclebound hulks. They're good at physical combat and poetry.
• Totally not the Salarians from Mass Effect: giddy reptilians who are good with anything involving fine manipulation.
• The ones with wings: They can fly, or at least glide on patagia. Not much else to say, really. You should probably combine them with another concept like the Proud Warrior Race Guy or invent further details.
• Blob people: giant talking amoebas.
• Ant People: giant talking ants with lots of limbs ending in fine manipulators. Not a group mind, but their highest virtue is filial piety.
• Cyberpsychotic: Not actually a race, but a mental illness that's regular enough to be considered its own society. You installed so many implants that it overloaded your feeble meat brain and turned you into a machine-worshiping psycho dedicated to destroying organics.
• Land squids: exactly what it says on the tin. These guys evolved from cephalopods that learned how to breathe and move on land.
• Totally not the Ur-Quan: evolved from annelid worms or similar niches. They're genocidal invaders that butcher all attempts at diplomacy. May or may not have a "good" sibling race that already lived in known space.
• Imperialistic Reptiles: reptilian aliens that rule an expansionistic empire. They enslave other species rather than exterminating them, so they're easier to deal with than the Not!Ur-Quan.

I'll just leave this here to come back to later.

EDIT: Yeah, you might notice some of these alien concepts reference Star Frontiers. While the settings aren't identical, SD is flexible enough to replicate a fair amount of SF's shtick. The intro adventure Incident at Exile reads exactly like a Star Law intro adventure.

Quote from: BoxCrayonTales on August 23, 2023, 09:31:14 AM

Quote from: BadApple on August 22, 2023, 09:43:49 PM
I would give one solid recommendation.  Don't do it "system neutral."  I would think that doing a Cepheus Engine and a Stars Without Numbers editions would sell pretty well.  I buy up a lot of Cepheus Engine stuff for myself.  You might also look at Open D6 and Black Star as OD6 has a large following and Black Star seems to be taking on a lot of the OD6 crowd.

The ideal rules to use would be the original Alternity, but since those are only available via used books market or piracy, I can't expect people to have it available. I'm making it systemless until I can find a generic scifi genre rpg that can replace Alternity. Every single scifi game I checked isn't generic enough. D20 Future is the closest and is currently available on drivethrurpg, but since it's dead I can't expect people to touch it either.

So just use whatever system suits your group. I'm just trying to keep the spirit alive.

Quote from: Spinachcat on August 23, 2023, 03:15:39 AM
Contact WotC and ask them how much for the license for Star Drive. If you do your research on how much of a SD fanbase exists, that would help you determine your negotiation point.

If they were opening to licensing their IPs, then somebody else would've done it already. They're an evil corpo. They don't give a flying fuck about art and culture. So fuck WotC. I hope Hasbro kills themselves trying to chase the mobile market.

You know that mechanics aren't IP controlled, right?  The words used to describe them are but not the actual system. 

Quote from: BoxCrayonTales on August 22, 2023, 08:35:37 PM
I spent a few years looking around for various scifi settings that could be used to do similar things to SD, and I came up blank. SD isn't just a space opera setting, it's a tabletop space opera setting that was designed as a setting first rather than how typical prose scifi is stories about characters, it was written in the content of the 90s scifi zeitgeist, and it was written to incorporate all the scifi tropes. These were specific criteria that went into its development, and I couldn't find any other scifi settings that could replicate it. I've googled for years, asked people in chats and forums... nothing!

So that's why I started this thread. I'm gonna brainstorm my own setting intended to fulfill the same criteria and replicate similar results. To prevent my work from dying out like SD, I'm gonna release my work into creative commons, the public domain or whatever is necessary to keep it from dying out. If anybody wants to give their own input, then feel free!

I came up with this in the 90s and messed with it off and on over the years. I originally thought about making it hard sci-fi but shifted it over to a more space opera vibe in recent years.

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1p3FBX9dFdY8uII3d3srsTxi5YL9K5q35/edit?usp=sharing&ouid=116753362008267799901&rtpof=true&sd=true

Hope this helps.

What year it is?
The year is 2425.

What is the status of humanity?
Humanity has spread out in a 200 light year sphere centered on Earth and the core worlds of Sol Sector. Human Society is still divided into multiple nation states and colonies. Many worlds have multiple governments. There has been limited exploration out to 500 light years. Hundreds of inhabitable worlds are known. The vast majority of which are terraformed worlds that were created by a dinosaurian civilization dating from 65 million years ago.

Dinosaurs?
It appears that the ancient dinosaurian civilization terraformed any remotely inhabitable world within their range of exploration. The limits of which haven't been reached yet. On some, the terraforming faded causing the earth-based ecology to die off and the world to revert back to its original state. This is mostly true of the smaller worlds that have been terraformed. On the larger world, the earth-based ecology continued to evolve.

On some the descendants of dinosaurs still roam. On others they died out, mammals or other animal orders have taken their place. On several worlds, sentient life developed and created their own civilization.

Humans not born of Earth?
Over 100,000 years ago a spacefaring civilization took humans from Earth and scattered them across several worlds. Currently, 11 worlds are known where humans have been placed. Two of them have advanced spacefaring civilizations, and one has an industrial civilization on par with early 20th-century Earth. One more lies within Earth-controlled space and has a Neolithic society developing agriculture.

 
The most important starfaring civilization is the Yaminaw Ardapar or Undying Empire, dominated by a human culture calling themselves the Tokyane loosely translated as Imperial Ones. The Undying Empire appears to be a century ahead of Earth in technology and controls a sphere of space over 400 years in diameter.

The dominant Tokyana culture is ruled by a seemly immortal emperor, the Kayra. The Empire has conquered seven other worlds with human civilizations, along with conquering a civilization dominated by a sentient dinosaurian race known as the Amyoya. There are other alien races that have also been conquered by the Undying Empire.

First contact was nearly 50 years ago in 2376 and it was with a group of humans and Amyoya calling themselves the Dhana or Commonwealth. The Commonwealth is composed of dissidents and refugees who have fled beyond the borders of imperial space.

Alien races?
The first are the Kang'rits. They look like a cross between a kangaroo and a hairless bear. They were first contacted a century ago by the United States in 2331 and their technology was a century behind humanity.

When first contacted they were at war with the Lupiyana, a relatively recently evolved sentient race of dinosaurians. The United States entered the war as allies of the Kang'rits and was able to expel the Lupiyana from the Kang'rit system.

Since then, the Kang'rit have slowly integrated into the larger human community and now have a handful of colonies of their own.

The Lupiyana technology level is on par with that of Earth. Their dominant culture appears to be comprised of competing clans. The Lupiyana loosely translated is known as the White Banner Clan. There are other clans with different colored banners and collectively they control a dozen systems including their homeworld.

After the conclusion of the war, a neutral zone was created from the system lying between the Kang'rit system and Lupiyana space.  So far the truce has held but the Lupiyana remain hostile to humans and Kang'rit alike.

This part is more flexible can be done away in favor of something more like the list you proposed.

What is the status of Earth?
Currently the Earth in the beginning of an ice age due to the cataclysmic explosion of the Tambora volcano in Indonesia during the middle of the 22nd century. This tipped the global climate into an ice age. It is projected that the ice age will reach its maximum stable extent by the year 3,000 with a 100 meter drop in sea level. Currently, the oceans of the world have experienced a 10 meter drop.

The Northern Hemisphere ability to support a high population has been greatly reduced. This caused a massive diaspora of humanity outward that is ongoing today. Currently, the Earth has a population of 2 billion people with 800 million living in India.

Politically the Earth is controlled by a single world government called the Earth Union. It is a federation of nation-states dominated by India.


Who are the major powers?
The Earth Union is only one of the six major powers of human space. The others are the United States centered on Alpha Centauri. The United Kingdom, the French Union, and the German Bund (Federation) centered on Epsilon Eridani. Along with the Chinese People's Republic centered on Epsilon Indi.

There are numerous smaller independent powers as a result of the human diaspora. It is not uncommon for worlds and star systems to be divided into multiple independent nations and colonies.

What are the United Colonies?
The United Colonies are a loose association of major and minor powers. It is similar to the 20th/21st century United Nations but more focused on managing certain interstellar organizations than being a diplomatic forum.

The two most important organizations it manages are the Astroguard and the Interstellar Astronomical Union (IAU). The Astroguard is a multi-national military dedicated to exploration, search & rescue, and anti-piracy patrols. They function as an interstellar Coast Guard.

Over the centuries a series of treaties and conventions has established that groups and nations can only own a claim that they can exploit. That an entire world can't be claimed unless it is fully exploited. The IAU registers, publishes, and adjudicates these claims. It also publishes the survey information that the Astroguard gathers. Because of this, the IAU has also evolved into an ombudsman investigating and publicizing human rights violations.

Quote from: BadApple on August 23, 2023, 12:11:16 PM
You know that mechanics aren't IP controlled, right?  The words used to describe them are but not the actual system.

I know. There's an Alternity retroclone that snatched up the trademark and had the original authors involved, before they crashed and burned after realizing they couldn't use the original IPs.

Use Cepheus Engine, Stars Without Number, Sasquatch's Alternity, whatever. That's not why I'm doing this.

Quote from: estar on August 23, 2023, 01:03:57 PM
I came up with this in the 90s and messed with it off and on over the years. I originally thought about making it hard sci-fi but shifted it over to a more space opera vibe in recent years.

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1p3FBX9dFdY8uII3d3srsTxi5YL9K5q35/edit?usp=sharing&ouid=116753362008267799901&rtpof=true&sd=true

Neat.

---

Anyway, some of the speculative scifi stuff that SD uses are technology levels and biochemistry series.

The Technology Levels are recapped in d20 Future and I won't repeat them here. Humanity's current level is a 7 out of 10, or the "Gravity Age" characterized by the dark matter reactor and the gravity generator being combined to make economical FTL drives. It's a really speculative subject given that we only have our own history as a basis so it's really just a measurement of how our own history went, then past that it goes into pure speculation. In general SD is fairly soft scifi since it not only has FTL but it also has psychic powers and literal demons. The tech level progression is also broken by the introduction of civilizations that have some kinds of tech but not the others assumed by the tech level, or have tech that isn't anywhere on the list. One of the civilizations doesn't have FTL drives or dark matter reactor, but they do have zero point energy generators that power their wormhole generators. Etc.

The biochemistries seem to have been based on a direct reading of Stephen Gillet's World Building non-fiction book. They're numbered in general order of how much of an extremophile it is compared to us. I'm gonna summarize these here:

• Terrestrial standard. Breath oxygen, drink water, carbon-based. All the major alien species have this. This is overwhelmingly the most common biochemistry. Chirality is not mentioned to my knowledge, and it seems to be assumed that everyone can live in similar conditions and eat the same food.


• Europan standard. They on planets where all water is frozen and their solvent is ammonia, similar to the conditions found on Europa. See this page: https://www.daviddarling.info/encyclopedia/A/ammonialife.html


• Chlorine life. Evolved on planets with similar conditions to Earth, except with lots of dissolved chlorine that life was forced to adapt to. See this video: https://youtu.be/fwauz9uIl9M?si=HVx-YhaHAQLUq6Mp


• Ionian life. Their ocean is made of sulfur dioxide and smells like rotten eggs, similar to conditions on Io, and they breathe sulfur trioxide because Gillet mentioned it in his book. I could only find them mentioned in passing here: https://planetpailly.com/2016/11/18/sciency-words-thalassogen/


• Silicon Venusian life. Their oceans are made of pure sulfuric acid above the boiling point of water, similar to conditions on Venus. Bizarrely, they breathe oxygen despite the well-known problems with that. See here: https://www.daviddarling.info/encyclopedia/S/siliconlife.html


• Liquid sulfur life. They live on planets so hot that the oceans are liquid sulfur, they respire sulfur dioxide, and their biological macromolecules are based on fluorosilicones (on Earth we use this to make rubber). This biochemistry is just so bizarre that I cannot find relevant articles on Google


• Misc/Other/Unknown. All other biochemistries are much rarer, not common enough to get their own entry on the list, and just thrown in series 7 for brevity. These organisms are extremely rare, exotic, and many live in extremely hostile conditions like the vacuum of space. One of the systems hosts a whole space-based ecosystem.

It's pretty obvious that the writers weren't chemists or biologists and the internet wasn't developed enough at the time for them to easily research whether these biochemistries held up as much as they assumed. I've put a fair amount of thought into these sorts of things and would incorporate that into my own takes.

For example, this essay on hypothetical Titanian life: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/321074597_Oxygen-Free_Biochemistry_The_Putative_CHN_Foundation_for_Exotic_Life_in_a_Hydrocarbon_World or these pages from Orion's Arm: https://www.orionsarm.com/eg-article/494398e092234
Etc: https://www.projectrho.com/public_html/rocket/aliens.php#notasweknowit http://www.xenology.info/Xeno.htm

In any case, speculative biology and evolution is such an idiosyncratic subject that I don't fault the original writers for being biased towards terrestrial standard. It's hard enough to speculate how life using our own biochemistry could evolve, much less other biochemistries.

Quote from: BadApple on August 23, 2023, 07:29:21 AM

Quote from: Aglondir on August 23, 2023, 03:30:05 AM

Quote from: BadApple on August 22, 2023, 09:43:49 PM
I would give one solid recommendation.  Don't do it "system neutral."  I would think that doing a Cepheus Engine and a Stars Without Numbers editions would sell pretty well.  I buy up a lot of Cepheus Engine stuff for myself.  You might also look at Open D6 and Black Star as OD6 has a large following and Black Star seems to be taking on a lot of the OD6 crowd.

What's OD6?

Open D6 or WEG D6

Thanks, should have caught that.

Different biochemistries are interesting but (besides the hard especulative thing), they present a serious challenge or two:

How can two different species interact when their atmosphere is poison for the other?

What is there of value in the world of one or the other for their counterpart to create conflict or commerce?

Why would we be able to communicate with them given that their tech evolved in a very different envoronment for very diferent senses?

There might be other reasons to avoid it or embrace it if you feel inclined to take up the challenge.

Exactly. Particularly in a roleplaying context it just creates additional bookkeeping if players need to separately keep track of food, atmo, etc.

IIRC it was only really used for alien animals and antagonists. The n'sss were intelligent jellyfish who had to wear suits because the pressure differential everywhere else would kill them Byford dolphin-style. The stoneburners evolved on a chlorine planet devoid of oxygen, which is what prompted their tech development into demonology.

I checked google, and apparently you can make fire in an atmosphere of chlorine, fluorine or nitrous oxide. So the statement about chlorine atmosphere being flame-retardant is factually wrong. Oxidizers by definition create fires by reacting with fuels. https://www.scienceabc.com/nature/can-fire-occur-non-oxygenated-reaction.html

The writers seem to have been confused by the use of chlorinated flame retardants. These don't use chlorine gas, they use compounds with very different properties. For comparison, human are mostly oxygen but we don't react with fuel to produce fires. Our oxygen is bound up in a ton of other molecules. https://www.flameretardantfacts.com/about-flame-retardants/not-all-flame-retardants-are-the-same/chlorine/#:~:text=However%2C%20chlorine%20also%20has%20properties,for%20furniture%2C%20and%20other%20materials.

Indeed, halogens are stronger oxidizers than oxygen. https://chem.libretexts.org/Bookshelves/Analytical_Chemistry/Supplemental_Modules_%28Analytical_Chemistry%29/Electrochemistry/Redox_Chemistry/Comparing_Strengths_of_Oxidants_and_Reductants

In Gilet's worldbuilding book, and repeated by SD, he posits that chlorine would be merely tolerated while the life would prefer oxygen. But there's no reason to believe that would be the case. If there was sufficient chlorine that the biosphere could evolve to use it, then chlorine breathers would outcompete oxygen breathers because they get more energy from food pound for pound.

This applies to the plants too. Altho plants produce their own food from ambient materials, they still respire like animals in order to release the energy from it. Oxiziders are inherently reactive: they cannot exist on their own long enough to produce a breathable atmosphere without being constantly replenished by autotrophs like plants. All oxygen in our atmosphere is produced by plants splitting water: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Water_splitting

In actuality, the stoneburners' atmosphere would need to have large amounts of carbon dioxide or something to prevent the invention of fire. At least 30% or more. https://blog.koorsen.com/all-about-co2-fire-suppression-systems#:~:text=At%20CO2%20levels%20of%2030,concentration%20levels%20of%2050%25%20CO2.

I took some chemistry classes in school, but speculative biology and evolution goes way beyond my education.

IIRC Chlorine is also corrosive, you need special containers for it. Glass I think, so Starships made of what? Precious gems? I mean a gigantic ruby carved and shaped to become the fuselage (or maybe syntethic ruby moulded), same for the rockets to achieve orbit the first times they go into space, or you need to postulate them stumbling onto anti-grav BEFORE developing rockets.

Then there's the Commerce vs Conquest thing. The different species need a reason to do either of those, for conquest well maybe they are running out of space and need to "terraform" (not really if their atmosphere is chlorine) planets, but for commerce? I mean I can find reasons for conquest but what do earth like planets have that the chlorine guys need/want and what do they have we need/want and both species need to have about the same level of tech (mutual assured anihilation) and not be raging psychos or xenophobes to establish commerce. War is easier than peace.

It's way too much effort to speculate on what their tech would be so I'm just not gonna bother. It's carbon chauvinism for me!

Meh, "Traveller" (and its direct decedents) are  better Space Opera games than any you listed.

Quote from: BoxCrayonTales on August 23, 2023, 09:31:14 AM
D20 Future is the closest and is currently available on drivethrurpg, but since it's dead I can't expect people to touch it either.

No need.  Use the D20 Future SRD as a base and point to it or make PDFs of it for your players. https://www.d20resources.com/future.d20.srd/ (https://www.d20resources.com/future.d20.srd/)

Okay, so I'm gonna start presenting some concepts for the aliens. First up, the Grays!

I wear my influences on my sleeve. Credits to the writers of The X-Files, Dark•Matter, Stargate SG-1, Animorphs, and Destroy All Humans!, among others.

The Grays are all natural psychics and their mother tongue is telepathy or "thought speech". Their name for themselves is physically unspeakable, so humanity just calls them Grays or (erroneously) Zeta Reticulans. Like Vulcans, they are trained from birth to maintain a tight leash on their emotions and focus on dispassionate rationality. In practice, this means they pull their punches when they could be really dangerous if they tried to be (put a pin in that, it comes up later).

The Grays are so ancient that even they don't know their history. A generational city ship of Grays made its way to the Solar system thousands of years ago and they've been watching humanity ever since. They've made contact sporadically: the first time they inspired myths of fairies and goblins and Viking gods, the second time they inspired UFOlogy, and the third time in our near-feature they became allies of humanity and the two races worked together to accidentally invent the first known FTL drives within 1000 ly of Earth.

Prior to making their alliance, the Grays had this hobby of abducting humans and subjecting them to bizarre medical experiments. The reason for this was... complicated.

Firstly, the Grays are a race of clones grown from pure cell cultures; they don't iteratively xerox their lines because that's obviously stupid. They have no apparent reproductive system and thus no sexes nor evidence of sexual dimorphism. Babies are grown in tanks and decanted rather than born. Only 1 in 1000 embryos grow to term, while the rest spontaneously abort due to their nervous system failing to develop. The Grays themselves have no record of what caused this, but they suspect it was a deliberate bioweapon. They experimented on humans to create human/gray hybrids in the hopes of rescuing themselves from going extinct via Muller's ratchet. After their alliance with humanity, human scientists invented a cure for the genetic degradation and now all grays can get pregnant and the miscarriage rate is reduced to unnoticeable levels. Also, gray babies look like a horrific cross between a giant cockroach and a giant house centipede with a gray-like skull, which pupates at puberty and hatches into a gray. No, I cannot even begin to imagine how they evolved to grow like this.

Secondly, the Grays are arrogant jerks and initially wanted to indoctrinate and engineer humanity into willing slaves, or at best clients in a partnership where the grays were in charge. Some humans understandably distrust them as a result of this. Some grays regret they didn't enslave humanity when they had the chance and are annoyed that humanity has superior numbers and firepower. Other grays regret ever making contact.

In the present day of AD2525, Grays serve the role of Tolkien's elves. They're wise teachers who try to rein in humanity's warlike impulses while cultivating psychic talent.

Also, they live for like a thousand years so humanity's ancient history is within living memory for the Grays.

Now comes the metaplot stuff:

The reason for the Gray's exile and degradation was due to a civil war about a million years ago or thereabouts. The grays were divided into three philosophical schools: one embraced religion and domination, another spirituality and isolationism, and the third science and assimilation. I'll refer to them as the Zealots, the Ascetics, and the Mechanists, respectively.

The Mechanists believed that they should shepherd others species as equals, the Ascetics believed other species were beneath notice unless they matured on their own, while the Zealots believed in indiscriminate conquest and religious conversion of the universe. Typically scifi stuff. The Zealots unleashed a genophage on the Mechanists and Ascetics, who fled in generation ships to avoid being completely wiped out. After wandering the galaxy for a million years, one or more city ships arrived in the Solar system and you know how that went.

Meanwhile, the Zealots went on to build a theocratic empire with themselves in charge and every other intelligent species they encountered enslaved, exterminated, or eternal enemies. By the present day of AD2525, their vanguard forces have arrived on the frontier of human-colonized space. The Zealots serve as the zealous priest-kings of the empire, similar to the prophets in Halo. However, rather than ignorant morons trying to activate space superweapons, they're priests of the old ones and are looking for means to release their gods from their extradimensional prison.

Also, they're the overly emotional cousins of the species. Like Romulans or Dark Eldar.

And that's my ideas so far. I release the text of this post into the public domain.

IMHO, you should append the CC0 to all of this, it's more legally binding than just saying "I release this into the public domain" or CC By if you want to get credited (you should).

Quote from: GeekyBugle on August 25, 2023, 01:51:02 PM
IMHO, you should append the CC0 to all of this, it's more legally binding than just saying "I release this into the public domain" or CC By if you want to get credited (you should).

Thank you for your kind flattering words, but I value my anonymity too much.

I don't believe this material isn't generic enough to warrant a "you must credit me" disclaimer. I stapled a bunch of ideas I saw elsewhere together into a brainstorming session.

I already have receipts that I wrote it. Even if I don't own the text, people still frown upon plagiarism. It's easy to verify if someone plagiarized public domain text using google.

If I'm trying to make money, then yes I'd use copyright. In this case, my goal is to keep particular interactions of fictional concept structures in the public consciousness rather than forgotten due to lack of preservation.

Quote from: BoxCrayonTales on August 25, 2023, 04:08:25 PM

Quote from: GeekyBugle on August 25, 2023, 01:51:02 PM
IMHO, you should append the CC0 to all of this, it's more legally binding than just saying "I release this into the public domain" or CC By if you want to get credited (you should).

Thank you for your kind flattering words, but I value my anonymity too much.

I don't believe this material isn't generic enough to warrant a "you must credit me" disclaimer. I stapled a bunch of ideas I saw elsewhere together into a brainstorming session.

I already have receipts that I wrote it. Even if I don't own the text, people still frown upon plagiarism. It's easy to verify if someone plagiarized public domain text using google.

If I'm trying to make money, then yes I'd use copyright. In this case, my goal is to keep particular interactions of fictional concept structures in the public consciousness rather than forgotten due to lack of preservation.

Have it your way my friend.

The text of this post I release into the public domain. It's not feasible to copyright species anyway. (https://opguides.info/phil/copyright/#:~:text=For%20the%20furries,make%20a%20'closed'%20species.) I'm just saying this explicitly to encourage people to use the ideas. "Hey, free idea with no legal strings attached here!"

---

Next up are the reformed borg, which I call the Biomechanoids or "Biomegs" for short. This isn't the name they called themselves, it was coined by humans and they adopted it to foster relations. Their shtick is that they're a combination of Spock and Seven of Nine. Their dominant culture (remember, just like humans, aliens are individuals that come from one of multiple cultures) was warlike in the past, but regret committing genocide and now work to turn a new leaf. Most of the time they act dispassionate and rational, but when it comes time to party their friends of other species are surprised by how emotional and hedonistic they are.

Also, they look like this: https://www.deviantart.com/sancient/gallery?q=Reaver Instead of something sexy and non-threatening like Seven of Nine, they look like faceless, tentacled, multi-armed cyborg horrors. Since I'm not limited by a TV budget, I don't need any of my aliens to look remotely human.

Biomegs are born cyborgs. Their bodies are colonized by nanobots that construct and maintain a basic suite of cybernetic augmentations common to the entire species. These nanobots do not self-replicate, but are manufactured by multiple redundant implants. This reduces the likelihood of the nanobots becoming malignant.

The programmable nature of the nanobots renders the Biomegs immune to the cancers and pathogens previously found in the species, and few alien pathogens can infect them unless engineered. As such, they have a much higher tolerance for additional implants compared to other species. Their tentacles double as USB cables and, using their nanobots to facilitate it, can interface with computer systems thru physical contact even if there is no compatible port.

They give live birth and "nurse" their infants by connecting a post-birth umbilicus. Humans can't tell the difference between males and females, although the differences are "obvious" to Biomegs, and vice versa.

They speak verbally via a pair of nostrils that are separate from their mouths. They cannot accidentally choke to death on their food, and thus never invented the Heimlich maneuver. They find it absurd that certain other species use their mouths for eating and breathing.

The interior of their facilities and vehicles have a vaguely similar fleshy appearance because they use similar nanobots in the construction and maintenance of their vessels. These nanobots are not safe for other species to inhale, so they can't deploy their tech outside their colonies.

They exhibit two modes of speech: formal and informal. The formal mode is used most of the time. It is flat and toneless, and sentences are prefaced with "Statement" or "Query" depending on whether the sentence is a statement or a question. Exclamations are never made. The informal mode sounds like relaxed human speech and is only used during one of their rare emotional periods.

Biomegs are an ideal choice if you want to play an autistic computer geek.

The Proud Warrior Race Guys (PWRGs) are a stock scifi trope. Multiple alien races in the TSR IPs fit into this trope and there really isn't much to distinguish them beyond gross physical features like the presence or absence of wings, being furry or scaly, etc. They're not necessarily warriors and can have other jobs like hunter or whatever, but it's always something their culture heavily romanticizes as the best job and their heaven (reserved for competent members of said job) is some variation of The Hall of the Slain, The Happy Hunting Grounds, etc. Their cultural development is often depicted as being at odds with an "expected" FTL capable civilization, if they're not outright preindustrial. There's really nothing else or more interesting I can say about them.

The only part where my inspirations went in new directions was with regard to... *gasp* colonialism!

The PWRGs were at preindustrial levels when human explorers made first contact. The space around their homeworld was colonized by a pretty chill stellar nation that, as part of the treaty signed by the two, allowed PWRGs to maintain their sovereignty and isolationist stance so the PWRGs' independent cultural development wouldn't be infringed upon. Individual PWRGs are allowed to leave, but like the Amish they're not allowed to come back. The end result is that their traditional cultures are declining into nothing as young PWRGs mostly chose to go into space and have space adventures with high technology. It's an anti-colonialist message, but it doesn't beat you over the head with an obnoxious moral message: it's just depicted as an unavoidable tragedy of interstellar relations.

This is contrasted with a second race of preindustrial PWRGs elsewhere, who were colonized by an evil stellar nation that outright enslaved them. This isn't very original either save for one wrinkle: this is how everyone in that stellar nation is treated, regardless of species. The humans have been indoctrinated from birth to take it for granted, but the PWRGs nurture dreams of emancipation. Another anti-colonialist message, but again not obnoxiously so because the stellar nation was already a hellish dystopia that treats it all its citizens as cannon fodder regardless of species.

I'll share more specific examples of PWRGs in later posts.

Again, these ideas cannot be copyrighted, but to assuage concerns and encourage reuse, I state that I release the text of this post into the public domain.

---

On a related note, I also have ideas for a contemporary conspiracy thriller setting retrocloning Dark•Matter. I know conspiracies have been done elsewhere (e.g. Delta Green, Conspiracy X, Bureau 13, etc), but how many use dark matter as their meta-origin for the paranormal? Also, the trademark has apparently lapsed since someone is publishing a Dark Matter far future scifi game for 5e. Go figure.

When's the next post?

Quote from: BoxCrayonTales on August 23, 2023, 09:31:14 AM

Quote from: BadApple on August 22, 2023, 09:43:49 PM
I would give one solid recommendation.  Don't do it "system neutral."  I would think that doing a Cepheus Engine and a Stars Without Numbers editions would sell pretty well.  I buy up a lot of Cepheus Engine stuff for myself.  You might also look at Open D6 and Black Star as OD6 has a large following and Black Star seems to be taking on a lot of the OD6 crowd.

The ideal rules to use would be the original Alternity, but since those are only available via used books market or piracy,

WRONG!  The RULES are mechanics and freely usable.

Quote from: BoxCrayonTales on August 25, 2023, 08:45:36 PM
Biomegs are an ideal choice if you want to play an autistic computer geek.

What a selling point.

Jokes aside, enjoying this thread, it's nice seeing you flex your creativity Box. Do have a quick question, dunno if it's too soon. But I find an important part of space opera are the distances and traveling between (even if we don't focus on the travel much). What sort of time to distance we looking at here? And what makes travel exciting?

I've been posting in another forum, but at this point it's still just undirected idea dumps. I'd really like to just copyedit the original books. I've made some changes to the aliens, but more often than not it's just obligated filing off serial numbers that I don't feel passionate about.

With the conspiracy kitchen sink setting it's easy to draw on existing scifi, cryptozoology, parapsychology, etc. I also have an opportunity to revise poorly written bits of the original like the Aztecs, vampires, and St. Germain. (DM made Germain a vampire and enemy of the PCs, but I made him a time traveler who serves as a mentor to the PCs.)

The space opera frontier adventure setting is harder. Filing off the serial numbers of the stellar nations has been a pain because there's a dozen of them and they're so specific. This shit is why copyright law needs reforming. This is what I had so far:

Quote
Okay, after that conspiracy binge I'm feeling pumped enough to try longer writeups for the stellar nations. Tbh, a lot of the original concepts in SD are uninteresting, haphazard, or silly... but rather than trying to go for completely serious tone I've opted for a tongue-in-cheek tone rather than discarding the concepts entirely. I've given up on unnecessarily inventing new names (http://'https://stagingpoint.com/2010/01/14/on-the-challenge-of-giving-your-interstellar-empire-a-cool-name/') to protect myself from litigation, so I refer to most of these by vague titles. Feel free to share advice and suggestions.

During the Second Galactic War, the stellar nations formed three major coalitions and that context helps to understand them: the United East–West Bloc (named for stretching from "east" to "west" on star charts oriented that way, known colloquially as the "axis powers"), the Alliance of Free and Independent Nations ("free spacers" and "allies"), and the Trade Federation ("war profiteers").

• The United East–West Bloc: They're viewed as the instigators of the war, aggressive and expansionist, seen as the default "bad guys." But there are always expansions to the stereotypes. Their surviving members are the Thulean Empire, SkyCorp, the Dominion, and the Commune. (The Commune's extremists initially thought the war an opportunity to convert by the sword, but ultimately only allied out of self-preservation.)
  
  
  
  • The Thulean Empire: These guys are basically the Nietzscheans from Gene Roddenberry's Andromeda, but with a government loosely styled after Starship Troopers. Technically a democracy, all citizens are government employees from birth and the government is a stratocracy with no distinction between officers, citizens, and civil servants. Thuleans are indoctrinated from birth to believe in the manifest destiny of humanity, but without the racism and pseudoscience of prior eugenics regimes. Thuleans acknowledge that any sensible eugenics program requires a diversity of body types, and thus the optimal model to follow is that of eusocial insects and their diverse caste systems (a la Brave New World). Sapient aliens are considered potential domestic symbiotes (and sources of new genes to plunder) and thus allowed equal citizenship. While they don't preach ceaseless about the evil of machines like the Commune, the Thuleans consider robots, AIs, cyberware and the like to be crutches that hold humanity back from achieving its true potential. Thus, Thuleans make extensive use of genetic engineering, bioware, training in psychic ability, and breeding various mutant organisms. The Thulean Empire has also outright invented several intelligent species by splicing together human and animal genetics, creating the "Moreaus". Originally bred to fight in wars by less enlightened polities subsequently subsumed into the Empire, they've been granted equal citizenship as sapient beings in their own right.
    
  • SkyCorp Industries: Descended from the mergers of Amazon, Apple, Microsoft, Space X, Google, Facebook, Walmart, etc. The government is a single gigantic corporation that owns everything (officially a "Corporate Congress"), including its enslaved citizens or "employees". Since they exist to make profit, they suck at the whole "running a nation" thing because governments aren't supposed to make profits. Right above the slaves composing 70% of the population are the managerial class, who advance through the ranks via nepotism, assassination, scheming, etc. (The name comes from a satirical analog horror youtube channel.)
    
  • The Avan Dominion: The Dominion is a cyberpunk dystopia... but communist. Everyone lives in pods, eats gruel made by grinding up crickets, are happy to own nothing, etc. Their propaganda makes a huge deal about equality and the proletariat and so on, but in practice they're little different from a capitalist cyberpunk dystopia. Just replace corpos with "The Party" and "Big Brother". In many ways they have even less freedom than a capitalist cyberpunk dystopia, since the paranoid authoritarian leaders demand that every citizen be implanted with tracking chips to keep tabs on them at all times. On the bright side, the preponderance of cyberware that should be unaffordable to poor people is explained by their social safety net that pays for implants... all of which contain the mandatory trackers... and often poison pills, explosives, and other means to remotely murder citizenry when the Party desires.
    
  • The Butlerian Commune: Founded by Jehanne Butler and following the teachings of the Orange Catholic Bible, the Commune believes that humanity has become too reliant on technology and genetic engineering at the expense of the human soul. Ironically, Butler herself was a galaxy-renowned scientist who turned to luddism after being horrified by how others misused her research for warfare. The Commune still guards the secret knowledge and discoveries of Butler and her colleagues to this day, believing that one day humanity might deserve to learn it.
    
• The Alliance of Free and Independent Nations: The default "good guys," the Allies to the Bloc's Axis. Their surviving members are the Republic, the League, the Theocracy and the Data Angels.
  
  
  
  • The New Republic of the Noble and Most Ancient Landsråd: Descended from rich pseudo-intellectual Earthers who decided to replace those disgusting lower classes with replicant slaves while proclaiming themselves literal nobility. Since replicants are human by every meaningful metric, they eventually rebelled against their masters. To save themselves from Madame Guillotine, the nobles signed a treaty with the rebels. Every citizen is born with the rank of Knight and there is a House of Lords who oversee the nation... but they're democratically elected. Their highest value is the pursuit of knowledge, so all the galaxy's best universities are found here.
    
  • The United Orion–Cygnus League: An alliance of smaller stellar nations that banded together for survival. Their highest values are diversity and democracy.
    
  • The Alcubierre-Froning Theocracy: A UFO religion that places high value on scientific knowledge and the scientific method, but is simultaneously a neo-hermetic "theocracy" that believes "God" may be found in hyperspace. Although they have a state religion, citizens are not required to follow it and the state protects freedom of speech and worship.
    
  • The Data Angels Liberation Front: A recently formed anarchist nation of whitehat hackers who believe in freedom of information. Seceded from SkyCorp.
    
• The Trade Federation: Initially formed by the more mercenary nations to profit from selling to all sides while protecting themselves behind treaties of neutrality, before the Bloc and Alliance realized they were being played. Their surviving members are the Commonwealth, the Consortium, the Combine, and the Union.
  
  
  
  • The New² Texas Commonwealth: [Flag design placeholder here. (http://'https://www.reddit.com/media?url=https%3A%2F%2Fi.redd.it%2Fbzkcv3ygvs591.jpg')] Founded by descendants of political dissidents exiled from the Americas, the confederados' highest values are personal liberty, personal anti-personnel defense, and breeding carnivorous megafauna. Okay, I admit, I cannot think of a way to write these guys that doesn't sound like the most ridiculous insulting caricature of the American South imaginable. Pretty much the only new idea I had that sounds even vaguely sensible is to make them all ethnically futuristic Brazilian. Imma put a pin in this.
    
  • The Tal-Morian Umbrella Consortium: The Consortium is an outright plutocracy where all citizens are incorporated at birth (a la Jennifer Government and The Unincorporated Man) and everything is for sale. Politics, military, police, everything. Realistically it should completely fall apart, but somehow remains a functional state due to sheer natural selection killing off anyone who can't survive these conditions. Their official language has no words for the concepts of trust or honor, but over three hundred words for the concept of profit. Never ask a Consortium citizen "who scrubs the toilets?"
    
  • The GalacTech Cybersystems Combine: They solved the "who scrubs the toilets?" problem using robots. All work is handled by robots and AIs, allowing the populace to dedicate the rest of their lives to unrestrained hedonism. Although there are numerous conspiracy theories that the nation is actually run by AIs with dark designs on humanity and the galaxy, this is officially dismissed as baseless lunacy by all legitimate authorities.
    
  • The Solar Union of Democratic People's Republics: Claiming Earth and the territories around it smack dab in the middle of human-colonized space, the Union is the cultural, diplomatic and economic center of human-colonized space. They base their arts and culture around historical reenactments of extinct Earth civilizations, with much of their artistic exports being historical documentaries, historical dramas, retrofuturistic fashions, and alternate history fiction. Most citizens are historical lifestylers who live their entire lives loosely emulating a chosen historical lifestyle, such as a cowboy, samurai, Egyptian scribe, or Jane Austen heroine. One of their most important state holidays is the multi-day celebration of Halloween (including All Soul's Day, Día de Muertos and Fèt Gede), in which they dress like mythological monsters, carve pumpkins into makeshift lanterns, children go door to door asking for ceremonial offerings of candy (dentists in particular love handing out delicious candy to children), visit cemeteries to pay respect to the dead by holding raves and ceremonially offering the dead food, drugs, alcohol (typically by sticking an open beer bottle into the grave upside-down so that the beer will drip into the soil), flowers and such, and perform parlor seances using crystal balls and Ouija boards. There is currently no scientific evidence to suggest that contacting the dead is possible.
    
• The All Systems Concordat: A neutral peace-keeping body formed by treaty (hence the name) at the end of the Second Galactic War to prevent another galactic war and repair the damage caused by the last war. Unlike the toothless United Nations of Earth's distant past, they have their own territory donated by surviving stellar nations (mostly losers and castoffs) and have their own military.
  

In terms of player relevance, stellar nations are selected as part of PC backgrounds at character creation. The choice grants free benefits based on the nation's national shtick, such as free skills, cyberware, psychic powers, etc. The GM can use political tensions to drive plots of the week, such as capturing an interstellar criminal, preventing an assassination, etc.

Okay... I'm getting tired again. It's way too much mental effort to file off the serial numbers to protect myself from evil Hasbro. Imma stop here. Let me know what ya think, feel free to offer suggestions, advice...

As for the aliens, this is the gist of the rest of what I posted:

Quote
New alien species up! This time: the Myrmics.

The myrmics are a species of sapient aliens who resemble terrestrial ants in their anatomy and social structure.

Physical Characteristics
Their body plan is loosely similar to that of an ant. Their abdomen and thorax are arranged in a centauroid structure. Their abdomen has two pairs of legs, with the front pair somewhat larger than the back pair. The end of the abdomen has a pair of versatile limbs that are normally held horizontally. The thorax has two pairs of arms, the first larger pair extending from the shoulder region and the second smaller pair extending from the region analogous to the human waist/hips. All five pairs of limbs are joined not unlike an arthropod and end in prehensile clawed extremities.

The fingers/toes are spaced equidistantly around sucker-shaped palms/soles, so their hand/footprints are starfish-shaped. The exact number of fingers/toes varies by limb.

Their limbs are longer in proportion to their bodies and have two knees/elbows per limb, giving their limbs a much wider range of motion and complete access to every part of their body. By comparison, a human struggles to reach every part of their own back.

Their triangular heads are dominated by a massive pair of compound eyes, giving them 360 degrees of vision at all times. Their head sprouts multiple pairs of wriggling antennae and whiskers, used for smelling and tasting. Two pairs of scissor-like mandibles are used to chew food, and their diet is opportunistically omnivorous.

Their skeleton is fairly alien by terrestrial standards, having evolved from ancestors with only an exoskeleton that had to develop novel solutions for larger sizes. They have only a partial exoskeleton of two major layers: their external carapace is mostly leathery but fairly soft and flexible, and only the outermost layer isn't alive. They constantly shed their skin in tiny pieces, slightly more like mammals than reptiles. The hard inner parts of the exoskeleton are composed of living tissue that is grown and digested internally. Their endoskeleton is likewise partial and consists of a series of mineralized chitinous bones and hydrostatic muscles with no analogue to terrestrial anatomy, which also attaches conventional pulling muscles to the few hard portions of the exoskeleton to maintain their overall shape and move around.

Like most terrestrial arthropods, their respiratory and circulatory systems are completely separate. Their lungs are located in their abdomens, spiracles running across their sides, and they circulate oxygenated gas through a network of tracheal tubes mimicking veins and arteries. Their circulatory system only serves to circulate hemolymph, carrying water and nutrients from the digestive system to other tissues. The renal system filters waste products from the hemolymph. Digestive and renal waste is collected in the colon and expelled through the anus at the posterior of the abdomen.

Because they breathe through the spiracles on their abdomens, they don't speak using their mouths and cannot choke to death on food. However, they have difficulty when swimming since the position makes it difficult to rise for air and they are incapable of whispering.

Myrmics have multiple sets of hearing organs located in their heads, limbs and abdomen. This gives them an incredibly fine degree of sensing the direction and timbre of sounds.

Adults mostly consume cultivated plants, fungi, carrion and some animal products.

Social Characteristics
Their spoken language consists of sounds made by carefully controlling the passage of air through their spiracles and by rubbing their posterior limbs together similar to terrestrial crickets. Their language is thus unpronounceable to humans and vice versa. The spiracles produce phonemes and tonemes, while the posterior limbs produce musical notes (compare Solresol). Body language plays a role in communicating meaning and emotion, but because of the different anatomy it is likewise mutually unperformable between the two species.

The myrmics originally had multiple languages with different inventories of phonemes, tonemes and musical notes, but in modern times have largely adopted a lingua franca. This displaced a number of native languages.

Perhaps because of their reproduction, the myrmics organize socially into familial houses. Although their historical organization presumably varied, in modern times these families organize themselves into the equivalent of what other species call guilds, corporations, merchant houses, or mafia families.

Myrmics give out their names in the order of surname first and given name second. Their surname is the name of their guild.

Myrmics have relied on domestication for millions of years.

Reproductive Method
The myrmic's reproductive method is communal in nature. They lack distinct sexes. The single ovipositor is located between the front legs, just below the secondary arms. When reproduction is desired, multiple individuals externally lay unfertilized eggs into a communal burrow. The eggs freely exchange genetic material among themselves, so that the resulting spawn is related to all the parents who contributed. Thus, an ant person's entire home community is also their biological family.

Offspring are born in a larval stage that must be reared by adults. Larvae are fed with a "milk" produced in the adult's crop (a portion of the digestive tract right before the stomach, used to store food for regurgitation). To fuel their rapid growth and maturation during this period, caregivers consume large amounts of meat to gather sufficient protein. After growing sufficiently to digest solid food, children heavily consume animal products until they reach adulthood and growth ceases.

Homeworld
The myrmics evolved on the planet dubbed Myrmex Prime. Most of the planet is hot arid desert and immense mountain ranges routinely swept by enormous sandworms. However, plentiful rainforests occupy the equator. They had already colonized almost a hundred worlds in their local cluster before first contact. The myrmics are the second civilization known to have independently invented FTL drives, after the human/gray alliance.

Hope you enjoyed!

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Another alien species!

[h2]Ferropiscisapien[/h2]

Physical Characteristics
Ferropiscisapiens closely resemble terrestrial lobe-finned fish. Chromatophores in the skin play a key role in communication.

Ferropiscisapiens lack developed ears, but use their entire bodies to detect sound and vibration. Their bodies are dotted with numerous highly sensitive whiskers to assist in this, concentrated on the jaw. Their primary sensory modalities in water are electroreception and sonar. Their eyes perceived both visible and ultraviolet light.

Ferropiscisapiens breathe equally well in both air and water, and have legs to walk on land, but must regularly return to iron-rich saltwater to rejuvenate their tissues. Prolonged deprivation causes their skin to dry out and slough off until death ensues. They wear environmental suits to survive in other environments for prolonged periods.

Social Characteristics
As males never mature past the tadpole stage, they play no role in the management of their civilization. All social organizations are matriarchal by default.

Ferropiscisapiens exhibit a narrower emotional range than mammalian sophonts. They are usually cold and given to rational decision-making, but can be efficiently vicious and merciless when their ire is provoked.

The full inventory of their language includes vocalizations, sonar pulses, body language, color changes in the skin, and shifts in electric field. However, this is only usable to its full extent when the Ferropiscisapien is submerged in water and minimally clothed. Outside the ideal conditions, they speak simplified forms of their language as necessary.

Reproductive Method
Males are neotenous: they reach sexual maturity while still in the tadpole stage. Once matured males cannot survive for long on their own because their organs atrophy, but can be maintained indefinitely with modern medical technology. They attach to a mature female and atrophy into gonads, which release sperm when hormonally stimulated. Females commonly have multiple males attached.

Females externally spawn large amounts of eggs suspended in jelly, which are kept in protected creches. While provided with algae and zooplankton for nourishment, the offspring still cannibalize each other until only a handful survive to grow limbs and lungs. The surviving children are instructed in their culture and granted full rights at adulthood.

Homeworld
Ferropiscisapiens originate from the planet designated The Mavortian Promenade. The oceans are rich in iron, so rich that shorelines are rimmed with characteristic rusty water. Most of the land is in the form of islands, marshes, wetlands, and tide pools, thus most terrestrial life has evolved to be amphibious.

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Humanity and their various client and allied species aren't the only ones in Known Space, but they are the only ones indigenous to Known Space. A number of various outsider species appear on the Frontier, known collectively as the "Outsiders." They come in a couple more specific distinctions, like "Bolters" (nomads, migrants and refugees "bolting" from elsewhere) and "Intruders" (pirates, invaders, etc). Several intruder species are actually the vanguard forces of an alien alliance, probing the frontier in preparation for conquest.

Croakers: The croakers, named for the disturbing croaks they make as a possible method of communication, are intruders known for hit-and-run attacks and mass abductions. Their motivations are unknown. All croakers wear biosuits that conceal their true appearance, or are so heavily augmented that their bodies look like environmental suits. Attempts to interrogate or dissect croakers have thus far failed, as their biosuits automatically release powerful acids to dissolve the suit and its occupant into useless sludge upon capture or death. Several different types of croakers have been encountered, including scientists, camos, brutes and bogies. Scientists and camos look a bit like a cross between jellyfish and spiders (think the sentinels from The Matrix and the tripods from War of the Worlds). Scientists are armed only with pistols but have an extensive surgical suite, whereas camos are armed with rifles and rockets; both are armed with neural disruptor blades for close combat. Camos use visual camouflage to make themselves harder to target, but aren't invisible. Brutes appear roughly humanoid, armed with point singularity projectors in rifle and tripod models and with razor filament whips for close combat. Bogies have enormous phallic heads and move like panthers (think the monster from Alien³), incredibly fast and incredibly stealthy; they're armed with razor sharp claws, a bladed tail, and a point singularity projector.

When a human scientist develops a method to neutralize the acid, horrifying discoveries are made. In truth, the croaker scientists and camos are actually a different species from the others. They're gossamer organisms adapted to the high pressure atmospheres of gas giants, so they cannot survive outside their suits in other environments: they die in agony when their tissues expand and explode. The brutes contain the cadavers of Known Space species! In truth, the actual consciousness of the brute is contained inside the colonial microbes that maintain the biosuits. The bogies appear to have been specifically grown, so heavily integrated with their augmentations that their original morphology (if any) is impossible to determine.

Clickers: The clickers, named for their seeming method of communication, are arthropod-like aliens that have attacked colonies along the frontier to unknown ends. They utilize biotech for their weapons and spacecraft. The clickers produce a telepathic field that causes other species to experience their worst fears and desires, making the aliens difficult to fight within range of this field. Oddly, this field doesn't affect Grays at all even if they have no psychic defenses raised, raising any number of uncomfortable questions about the clickers' origins.

Shades: Shades are intelligent aliens with the ability to manifest darkness into tangibility and teleport themselves instantly between planets. Those encountered outside their homeworlds are actually exiled criminals, though they don't discuss their crimes with outsiders. Their civilization appears to be unimaginably advanced, as shown by the invention of personal transporters. However, nothing is known of their culture. Shades wear skin-suits resembling bald albino hominids, and use a combination of dark clothing, eye cover and head wear to pass for humans. In truth, their bodies look like gelatinous writhing masses of vanta black ink. Without their skin-suits, they are very photosensitive and a UV flashlight or stronger sears their flesh immediately. Earth historians have noted their resemblance to the myth of the Men In Black, and similar stories have been noted in the myths of other species as well. How long have shades been visiting Known Space?

Puppeteers: An alien species composed of tiny parasitic worms that live in colonies. Individual worms are unintelligent, but colonies grow smarter in numbers. By colonizing the bloodstream of a host organism, such as a human, they can combine their limited psychic abilities to control the host's brain. Many such parasitized agents have infiltrated the frontier colonies. The distributed nature of their consciousness and their residence within an innocent victim makes interrogation tricky. Mind probing has thus far proven ineffective and the worms don't respond to attempts at building rapport.

Dark Grays: The so-called "Dark Grays" were initially mistaken for members of the Gray species. Their name derives from their darker behavior, attempting to proselytize their strange alien religion before resorting to violence when that failed. Subsequent dissections have revealed genetic divergence, indicating their population diverged from the Grays many millennia ago. Other species cannot tell the difference, but Grays always feel a dark presence when they encounter their "dark cousins"; in turn, the Dark Grays violently despise their cousins for reasons unknown to the Grays themselves and don't offer conversion before trying to kill them. In contrast to Grays, the Dark Grays exhibit no restraints on their emotions and don't hesitate to use their psychic powers in the most unethical or sadistic ways whenever convenient or emotionally stressed.

The croakers, clickers, shades, puppeteers and dark grays are all part of an alien alliance plotting the invasion and conquest of the Frontier for reasons known only to them.

Nixies: They're techno savants that don't communicate. They look a bit like small monkeys, covered in blue fur, with six limbs ending in fingered hands, six spider-like eyes with nictitating membranes, and a prehensile tail ending in a hand-like appendage. They can quickly scale anything and cling to shear surfaces like geckos. Patagia stretch between their limbs, allowing them to glide short distances. Since they don't communicate, nobody knows what their motives are. Since they maintain and enhance any ships they colonize, captains consider them good luck. In truth, the nixies are the descendants of a civilization destroyed by the Dark Grays' Theocracy for refusing to submit. Their goal is to exterminate the Theocracy in vengeance by tricking other civilizations into doing it for them, all the while never being noticed as the intelligent beings they are. They secretly insert spyware and instruments of sabotage into every system they encounter. They're completely harmless to anyone who leaves them alone, but anyone who mistreats them or gets too close to the truth is disposed of.

Dragons: [Placeholder image: https://www.safariltd.com/products/alien-dragon (https://www.safariltd.com/products/alien-dragon)] A recently arrived species of imperialistic conquerors and enslavers. They look vaguely like mythical dragons, hence their name. Their horizontal pupils resemble octopus eyes and they have insectoid mandibles instead of vertebrate jaws. They are quadrupedal, and a pair of arms with hands grows from a second pair of shoulders just above their forelegs. They arrived on the frontier in a sleeper ship, as they appear to lack FTL drives. The ship was originally assumed to be a derelict, but competing salvaging parties accidentally awakened it and the dragons quickly established a beachhead for their planned invasion. However, they do have wormhole generators and zero point modules. The zero plot modules are installed in the orbit of stars, using gravitational and vacuum fluctuations to harness zero point energy into a useful form.  The males have brightly colored feathers on their bodies, while the females are larger and stronger. Their society appears to be matriarchal and feudal. Dragons have an extremely refined thermoregulation: they don't require as much protection in colder temperatures and they can project intense heat waves from their mouths and extremities, which they use as a method of torturing other species. This projection is unusable in freezing temperatures, as their body involuntarily redirects their heat to keep them from losing it.

Crystal Dragonflies: Another recently arrived species who seem only interested in peaceful trade. They are universally psychic and utilize bizarre crystal-based technology and building materials, resulting in their "cathedral ships" resembling crystal formations. The species themselves look a bit like colorful dragonflies, with two pairs of diaphanous wings, and three pairs of clawed limbs used for walking and carrying larger objects. They have two pairs of arms with fine manipulators, derived from the forefingers of their forelegs.

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Okay, I'm running out of steam to give each of these full writeups so I'm just gonna name and summarize the ones I haven't written up so far.

• The Roswell Grays I already wrote up.
  
• The Reformed Borg I already wrote up as "Biomegs"
  
• The Ant People I already wrote up as "Myrmics"
  
• The Fish People I already wrote up as "Ferropiscisapiens"
  
• The Imperialistic Reptiles I mentioned in passing with the Outsiders as "Dragons"
  

The Lyrans are a mix of Wookies, Klingons and Kzinti. They look like sabertoothed cat people with Kzinti-style finned ears. They were in the middle of their equivalent of the Renaissance before human explorers landed on their world. The space around their planet is claimed by a friendly stellar nation that respects their sovereignty. They're suffering from a cultural crisis where young Lyrans decide to go live in space and leave their traditional conservative civilization to atrophy and die. Although their homeworld's culture is technophobic, Lyrans have extremely dexterous extremities and flexible heuristics that make them excel at technical professions. They can readily enter the focused mental state humans call "The Zone", which was traditionally used for warfare but now used for technical work. Humans cannot tell male and female Lyrans apart; the population ratio is 1 male for every 3 females.

The Hish are basically Salarians. They look like bipedal lizards with elaborate colorful crests on their heads, necks and tails, and also have poison glands in their skin that they can spray as a defense mechanism. They're short lived by human standards but make up for it by being hyper erudite and industrious. They reproduce in a very alien manner: when a Hish reaches sexual maturity after collecting all the experience they can, they return to their homeworld where they enter a spawning pool and dissolve into spawn. Their offspring spend their childhood equivalent in the pools swimming through their accumulated ancestral memories, emerging as adults with all the knowledge necessary to survive. They lack distinct genders/sexes. Hish excel at technical professions and fine manipulation.

The Mothmen look like the cryptid of the same name. They're humanoid moths with large compound eyes, antennae, beak-like mouths and an extremely well-developed magnetic sense. They have light bodies that large leathery wings allowing them to fly through the forests of their homeworld. They are technophobic (their bodies produce electromagnetic interference and technology "itches" their magnetic navigation), nocturnal and photosensitive (requiring special headwear), and prone to emotional frenzies that enhance their time sense to make them frighteningly effective in combat (their bodies react to stimuli they aren't consciously aware of and in motion faster than their opponents can react, like Honored Matres or Adeptus Astartes). They reproduce by laying eggs.

The Plasmoids evolved on an extremely turbulent world where the environment was in constant flux. As such, their bodies are basically giant slime molds: able to change their shape at will and produce as many pseudopods as needed or squeeze through tight spaces. In concert with makeup, clothing and other disguise methods they can contort their gelatinous bodies into a close facsimile of other species that can pass cursory inspection. They are hermaphroditic and reproduce not unlike angiosperms: all plasmoids are female, but occasionally become male/female and release pollen into the atmosphere to fertilize other plasmoids. Anti-plasmoid security systems keep pollen in storage and then release it to deter plasmoid criminals. Plasmoids have sharp senses that can detect this pollen so they (and thus PCs) can move to avoid unwanted impregnation. Plasmoids enjoy philosophy and debates, but they have a poor understanding of human humor that can grate on humans.

And that's basically all the ideas I can think of at the moment. Sorry. Hope you enjoyed!

I also took inspiration from Star Frontiers and Galactos Barrier for the alien concepts.

I've also got concepts for a bug hunters setting that's a pastiche of Aliens, Predator, Terminator and Blade Runner, as well as a bug war setting inspired by Starship Troopers, Halo and so forth. In the bug hunters setting the typical PCs are replicants deployed by the Colonial Authority to fumigate various xenomorphs and terminators that menace colonists, leftovers from an ancient war between two extinct alien species. In the bug war setting humanity is menaced by dogmatic aliens on one side and vicious group mind monsters on the other; I opted to give the alien civs more depth than is typically given, going into detail on their philosophies and drives rather than treating them as strawmen to be easily dispatched by humanity. But I suppose those deserve their own threads, no?