Designing Aliens

Jim Vassilakos (jimv@uia.net / jimvassila@aol.com)

Prior Literature case, the tables are too long to reproduce here, but if
anyone wants a copy of the program, just let me know. In
There have been numerous books and articles published the meantime, I'll have the program draw up one random
about aliens and alien design. Among the books, several alien just to give you a feel for how it works and how I
RPGs come to mind: Star Trek, Star Wars, and Traveller would try to interpret the results.1
among others. These each have numerous alien
compendiums. There was also Alan Frank's Galactic Possible Racial Names: Dallpen, Brakenholm, Metellus
Aliens, the Spacefarers Guides to Alien Monsters and Alien Homeworld Gravity: High
Races, Patrick Huyghe's Field Guide to Extraterrestirals, Natural Habitat: Jungle
and Dickinson's and Schaller's Extraterrestrials. These, of Size: Tiny
course, are all compendiums of imagined creatures. Basic Design: Bilateral
When it comes to alien design, other books spring to Legs (locomotional appendages): 2
mind: Schmidt's Aliens and Alien Societies as well as Leg/Foot Structure: Unguligrade (Walks on toes supported
Pickover's The Science of Aliens, Michael White's Life Out by pad like elephant or rhino)
There, and Cohen's and Stewart's What Does a Martian Arms (manipulatory appendages): 2
Look Like? to name only a few. Likewise, there have been Arm Joints: 2 (shoulder/elbow)
several articles in the RPG magazine literature discussing Fingers (manipulatory digits): 7
alien design. Here's a heavily pruned and edited list that my Wings: None
little RPG magazine database program (still a work in Tail: No
progress) just spit out: Skin texture: Smooth
Skin Color: White
Ares #2: alien life forms: speculation on extraterrestrial Skin Patterns: None (solid)
creatures Number of Horns: 0
Ares #16: creating alien races for traveller Number of Eyes: 2 (short visual angle but good depth
Dragon #51: make your own aliens (traveller) perception)
Dragon #58: traveller alien generation Eye stalks: No
Dragon #123: designing aliens for star frontiers Visual Sensitivity: Infrared
Judges Guild Journal #15: planning ecology (monster/alien Number of Ears: 1
creature design) Audio Sensitivity: Sharp (able to hear faint sounds)
Nuts & Bolts #12: ahh... those aliens (comments on Smell/Taste: Excellent
designing alien races) Poisonous Sting: No
Omni 10/92: how to build an alien (designing aliens & Diet: Carnivore
alien cultures) Sexes/Castes: 2 (f/m, males rare, each is owned by a group
Shred #2: aliens (random tables for alien design) of females)
Troll #2: non-humanoid alien design (soapbox, gygax) Male Genitalia: External
Valkyrie #22: babylon 5's real ancients: incorporating Birth: Live birth
powerful aliens into sfrpgs; dark they were, and kind of Liter Size: Small (1-3)
petty: godlike aliens in sf & gaming; would you let an Feeding of Young: Milk glands on mother
orc babysit? (thoughts on aliens & speciesism) Language: Vocal (similar to human speech patterns)
VIP of Gaming #1: alien races & how to identify them Cybernetics: Uncommon (up to minor accessories such as
(alien design, sf-rpgs) voice-comms)
Society: Restricted Monarchy
Random Aliens Control: Moderate
Status/Power: Slave race (captive associate, powerless,
Several years ago, in preparation for further work on the fully controlled)
Ragamuffin project, I wrote a program called Rand, a Commonality Outside Home Territory: Very rare
random stuff generator for MS-DOS, and as part of this Friendliness: Conservative (business-like but impatient)
program I included some tables for random alien Demeanor: Agreeable (ultra-polite, will rarely speak
generation. Jaron Martin helped to flesh these out, and so openly/honestly)
this section of the program essentially became a Specialty: Starships
collaborative effort which we eventually test-drove, Recent Event: Tournament
generating several aliens in the process.
Unfortunately, there was a bit of a problem in that the Initial Thoughts
program often produced strange results, results so strange,
in fact, that Jaron finally decided (rightly in my opinion) 1
Rand actually has two separate sets of tables for this task. I'm
that this really wasn't a very good method for alien design, using the first set, as the other one sometimes crashes the program
although it could help in terms of brainstorming. In any for some reason.
The first thing that jumps out at me is that the program says
they're tiny, but it also has them walking on padded toes,
usually a feature of heavy animals. Granted, their world's
gravity is high, and being descended from jungle
inhabitants, perhaps their padded toes are a defensive
mechanism against attacks from poisonous plants and
smaller jungle critters.
Secondly, the program has them building starships for
which they'd presumably need either large brains or the
cybernetic enhancements to make due with small ones. The
only other thing I can imagine is that their brains are the
work of design rather than evolution, and hence perhaps
can pack more raw intellect into less volume. Assuming
this to be the case, we're looking a product of genetic
manipulation.
Thirdly, I sort of have a problem with the way these guys
look. At least structurally speaking, they look a lot like we
do. It is not too often that the program generates a creature
with two arms, two legs, two arm joints, and two eyes, so
I'm afraid that you're not going to get a feel for the
weirdness that usually results. Nonetheless, I'm going to
roll with it and see what happens.
Fourth, there seems to be a potential for joining some of
the physical, psychological and social attributes into an
interesting synthesis, a sort of nexus that can give this
species a story by which they might be better understood.
This is something I look for every time I generate a random
alien, so I'm pleased to see it here. I'm looking mainly at
the fact that the females seem to run the show, and also at
the excellent sense of smell. Creatures with such an
excellent sense of smell tend to be highly territorial, or, at
least, the dominant gender (usually the male) is this way.
Yet these guys are apparently psychologically agreeable. In
short, they seem to be anything but territorial. Proceeding
into the social dimension, they're also a slave race. Given
that we're already assuming some degree of genetic
manipulation, why not also assume that their psychology
and, in fact, their whole society has been manipulated as
well? Perhaps, by carefully selecting which males are
allowed to breed, the race has been psychologically
conditioned away from territoriality and confrontation and
toward a demeanor highly amenable to subjugation. In this
way, they might be slaves who prefer slavery to such an
extent that they consider their masters to be their best
friends in the universe.
A fifth and final thought, before I begin this travesty.
There's an alien species on pages 86-87 of Patrick
Huyghe's Field Guide to Extraterrestrials which is based on
a 1951 encounter by Illinois resident Harrison Bailey.
Bailey, a steelworker at the time, purported years later to
have encountered a number of short, walking amphibians
who briefly took him captive. Because the program has
generated this guys to be short, basically humanlike in
structural design, and descended from a jungle
environment, it seems to me that I might be able to draw a
bit from this supposed encounter, although I'll have to
change the color of their skin from solid white to brown
and striped if I want to stay consistent to Bailey's
description of them.
Preliminary Write-Up - The Dallpen
Brakenholm is a large, terrestrial world in the Metellus
system. It is the homeworld of the Dallpen, a small
humanoid species which fell under control of the Hafaru
during their territorial expansion.
Physical Characteristics: The Dallpen are fairly small, only
around eighteen inches (45cm) on average. Normally, such
a small species would never have developed intelligence,
so their genetic manipulation by the Old Ones, even at first
glance, is most obvious.
Humans find them somewhat "froglike" in apperance,
their bellies tan, dark brown mottled stripes covering the
back and limbs. Structurally, they are very similar to
humans, being consistent with the sorts of creatures the Old
Ones preferred to uplift: Two arms, two legs, two eyes.
Their feet, however, despite initial Solian descriptions of
the species dating as far back as the 1950s, are heavily
padded, allowing them to sprint as well as aiding them in
jumping from trees. Likewise, their seven-fingered hands
are idea of grasping tree branches or manipulating objects
in their natural jungle environment.
Natural Senses: Bred to be starship engineers, their vision
extends naturally into the infrared wavelengths so that they
can easily discern temperature fluctuations, a sure sign of
impending power leaks and other containment breaches.
Likewise, instead of having two or more ears, a common
feature of many naturally evolved species, they have only
one, a finely-tuned subdermal ear in the area of their
forehead which they often press to various parts of
mechanical systems in order to aid in diagnostics. As for
their sense of smell, that is handled by their long snake-like
tongue, which can discern scent so well that they can
identify individuals by smell alone and can often tell which
among them has recently been in a particular area.
Society: The Dallpen are matriarchal, using chemistry to
ensure that some 99% of all births are female. The
remaining males are kept solely for their breeding potential,
and most of these are housed at facilities controlled by the
Queen Mother. This queen descends by blood lineage from
the original queen crowned during the time of the
Emancipation when the males of the species were nearly all
killed through targeted biological warfare. Although
originally highly warlike, the Dallpen have since been bred
to be more cooperative, a genetic conditioning program
that the Hafaru have continued into the present day.
Interspecies Relations: The Hafaru claim the Dallpen are a
free species and a close friend of the Hafaru race, yet the
Dallpen are in reality, for all practical purposes, a slaves of
the Hafaru. Their genetic and psychological programming
has conditioned them to defer to their Hafaru masters in all
matters. Noting this fact, the Coalition Assembly has
refused to offer them a seat, regarding them as merely an
arm of the Hafaru. However, there are said to be some
Dallpen who have somehow broken free of Hafaru control,
although such members of the race are certainly a
minuscule minority and likely live in fear of being
discovered.
Needless to say, the Dallpen often serve on Hafaru
starships as engineers, and they, of course, also build ships
for the Hafaru fleet. Also, on a regular basis, they hold a
tournament of starship design, where the best design will
usually go into production. In this way, the Dallpen
continue to stay focused on what they do best.
Afterthoughts:
Obviously, I didn't touch on all the points of Rand's output.
This write-up could (and probably eventually will) be
expanded to cover the Dallpen is a more comprehensive
way. Likewise, the Huyghe book mentions their control
over a species of small bugs. I'd imagine these bugs might
be useful for making repairs in very tight areas. In any case,
I think this gives enough material to make the alien usable
while at the same time leaving enough loose strings that
later expansion is, I think, almost inevitable.
All in all, I still think the program still has possibilities.
Jaron's main problem with it is that, just like the planetary
generation system for Traveller, it generate too many
inconsistencies which either have to be fixed or somehow
explained. In this particular example, I think I was able to
explain away the most obvious inconsistencies, but it's not
always so easy. If I were to rewrite the tables, I'd try to do a
better job, but as it currently stands, I think the program
still has value as a brainstorming device. In any case, it can
do more than just generate random aliens, so if any of you
would like a copy, just drop me an email.
Comments on A&E #361:
Myles Corcoran: re Great Orc Gods write-up: Hilarious 
re AIs & Sub-Personalities: People are known to talk to
themselves from time to time, and it's not always
considered crazy. I wonder to what extent this has been
studied.2 There is also the argument that we humans are not
single personalities but rather amalgamations of multiple
personalities which hopefully fit and work well together.
But not always. For instance, if you've ever experienced a
period of indecision, perhaps you might have argued with
yourself over what to do. Would this be considered
abnormal or healthy? I tend to think that such behavior is
evolutionarily valuable and that self-analysis (and wisdom)
requires the ability to at least try to step outside oneself.
Hence, creating (wise) AIs might necessitate this form of
design, perhaps contributing to the problem of particularly
sophisticated AIs going nuts for various and obscure
technical-psychological reasons. Just some thoughts to add
to the discussion.
Michael Cule: re Darth Vader's theme song played by the
audience via kazoos: Ha! I wish I could have seen that.
Robert Dushay: re Birthrate and Welfare: I found
interesting your points on education, unsupervised time,
lack of employment prospects, and lack of alternative
entertainment. As you will note in my comments to you in
issue #360, I brought up not merely retirement security but
also education and female empowerment, so I'm not sure
that your query, "Still willing to argue that economic
2
I don't imagine it would be particularly easy to do.
incentives trump all?" is necessarily a fair one. You seem to
have missed part of what I was saying.
Also, you make the point that poorer people in all
societies tend to have more children than rich people
regardless of access to welfare. More, yes, but to what
extent? I still think that in poorer countries, having children
is viewed as a critical economic investment. Not so in
modern western societies. Hence, the reasons you
mentioned may tend to dominate in our own society,
whereas I'd imagine that the reasons that I mentioned may
tend to dominate in the third world.
Regardless of all this splicing of the issue, it seems to me
that the central point is that poverty begets people begets
poverty, not only for the reasons I mentioned but also for
the other reasons which you have mentioned, and, in any
case, that was my point, at least as far as I recall. So I think
that regardless of our slightly differing analyses as to the
reasons, we both seem to agree on this central conclusion.
Of course, we are still left with the presently unanswered
question over what to do about it, which is the real bugaboo
in my opinion. I'm presently inclined to think that we won't
do anything until it's too late, at which point we'll start
flailing clumsily and probably ineffectually at the problem
until Mother Nature steps in to solve it on her own terms.
I'm not especially looking forward to that.
re Setting Information and Prediction vs. Planning: You
make good points here. It just seems to me that everyone
has a different idea of what the near future is going to be
like (at least insofar as there are those of us who actually
think about it), so I wanted to spit out my own
cantankerous notions and then round up a few comments
and ideas in response, sort of taking an informal focus
group poll as it were, being that I have such a high regard
for the active membership. However, for some reason you
seem to have taken some offense to my having done this
(see below).
re Ragamuffin Fleet and fabrication technology: Yes, it'll
require fuel, but keep in mind that fusion reactors on
Traveller starships (even small ones) can crank out enough
energy to power whole nations, at least if you run the
numbers in terms of the amount of hydrogen being fused.
I'm also positing such reactors in Ragamuffin, so energy
will not be the limiting factor, not at least in terms of
fabrication technology. I'm thinking instead that the
limiting factors will be more technical in nature. Perhaps
fabricators will tend to become error-prone, and perhaps
creating new ones will be very difficult due to their
inherent complexity. I'm not really sure how I'm going to
handle this just yet.
re the Fairness or Unfairness of asking people for
comments and ideas (or as you term it: "Asking us to do
your future planning"): You write, quite diplomatically, that
your intent was to label the request, not the requestor, yet
I'm still left with the impression that what you're saying is
that I shouldn't ask people for comments and ideas. Is this
true, or am I misreading what you're saying?
I guess part of my problem is that I'm not sure exactly
what I'd said that you apparently find inconsiderate, and I'd
like to know what it was so that I can try to watch myself in
the future. To recap: you wrote in A&E #359, "I think it's,
well, inconsiderate, to ask us to do your future history work
for you...." But I'm still not sure what exactly it was that I'd
said. Just as a guess as to what it might have been, at the
end of my Prognostications essay of A&E #356 I wrote,
"In short, there's a lot more work to be done, so please send
me your comments and ideas." Is this the sentence that you
find inconsiderate? Are you saying that I shouldn't ask
others to toss their ideas into forums such as this in order to
generate discussion on a particular topic? Likewise, on the
last page of my zine in A&E #358, I fired off a wide range
of questions pertinent to an examination of the near future,
and although I didn't ask for anyone to answer them, I did
mean to show just how extensive and detailed the
discussion could have become. Is this what you are terming
"Asking us to do your future planning", this list of
discussion questions?
I'm really trying to understand your point of view on this,
but I also want you to understand mine. As Louis stated to
Michael in A&E #361, "The difficulty with designing
futuristic role playing campaigns on Earth is that one has to
prognosticate on our planet's humble expectations. This is
nearly impossible without in-depth analysis of our current
political problems." And, at least to my way of thinking,
any thorough analysis has to include discussion with
people of dissimilar views. Of course, due mainly to this
two-page limit on politics, I've withdrawn the topic.
Nonetheless, I'd like you to try to understand that I was
certainly not attempting to be inconsiderate but was rather
merely trying to engage some discussion for purposes of
this analysis.
Perhaps, however, instead of straight-out asking for ideas
in A&E #356, perhaps I should have said something like,
"...there's a lot more work to be done, so if you'd like to
comment or send any thoughts, please feel free to do so."
In that way, I could have opened discussion without
seeming to be pushy about it, which I'm guessing is
probably what you perceived. If so, my apologies, and
thanks for bringing your perceptions to my attention. It's
quite possible you are not alone, and I'll be the first to
admit, I can sometimes be the proverbial bull in the china
shop. In any case, please let me know if you think this
would have been an acceptable way to open the discussion
or if it was something else I'd said that you found
particularly inconsiderate.
Lee Gold: re the natural Tragasi environment during
evolution: I'd imagine they were somewhat like beavers
and otters, dwelling in rivers and in the shallows of the
coastline and building increasingly sophisticated dams,
lodges, and canals.
re AIs and Asperger's Syndrome: Asperger's is a mental
condition probably brought on via a bad gene. Some call it
pre-autism, and it may be that there are a larger number of
such people than we realize. In fact, I'd imagine that there
may even be a such a thing as pre-Asperger's that may be
prevalent to the point that we don't even think of it as being
a genetic defect but rather just a personality quirk (sort of
the "nerdly" stereotype). So would AIs be like this?
Perhaps, but not for genetic reasons. I mean, their minds
are designed, perhaps even evolved to an extent, but not in
the biologically genetic sense of the term, so I'd imagine
that they'd have other sorts of conditions, one's which we
can scarcely imagine at the present time. Nonetheless,
bringing forth the whole catalog of known human mental
defects might be a good place to kick-off a brainstorming
session.
re Your assumptions regarding a freedom-based
worldview: I have to agree with your conclusions. I find
myself falling toward the opinion that there should be
universal due process as well as universal passports. Of
course, the former should have led me to vote against
Bush, and the latter would create a world I can scarcely
imagine. Although it would likely become an intensely
political discussion, it might be useful to ponder the
problems and repercussions of universal freedom of travel,
but before I begin, I'll invoke the dubious disclaimers of
"you started it" as well as "I'm only discussing it in the
context of a near-future setting." 
I'd imagine that universal travel would relieve a great
deal of social and economic pressure on poor, corrupt, and
despotic societies, but, unfortunately, that pressure wouldn't
simply disappear. It would be transferred to other societies.
The resulting transfer of populations would likely create
massive low-wage workforces in richer societies (helping
the rich people already there to become even richer), but at
the same time, the crush of people would likely overwhelm
the social safety nets, causing them to fray or even break.
The result would be increasing crime in all its various
forms as well as the subjugation and misery of the masses
at the bottom of the social pyramid. Rich societies would
tend to become even more stratified and more corrupt,
leading either toward Marxist revolution or the slower and
less dramatic revolution of the encroaching welfare state. In
either case, such formerly rich societies could end up
looking something like the societies that the new
immigrants were attempting to escape from in the first
place.
Having said that, however, it's important to remember
that while this outcome may be bad, not relieving the social
and economic pressure on failing states could prove even
worse. My point here is that states don't fail in a vacuum.
There are consequences. For example, if state X is failing,
it's leadership may decide to provoke a conflict with state Y
in order to stir up some nationalism. After all, if they can
blame their problems on the Y's, then revolt will be less
likely. Such a conflict may break out into an open war, each
side supported by it's respective superpower, and such
conflicts could potentially boil into a direct war between
the superpowers. But even if this doesn't happen, state Z
might look at the conflict and say, "Gee, I seem to be living
in a dangerous neighborhood. Maybe I should invest in
some nukes or some other sort of WMD." And when it
becomes their turn to fail, what then happens to those
weapons?
Hence, there really doesn't seem to be any easy solution.
The very policies that I would tend to find myself
advocating on moral grounds would likely result in
outcomes at home which I would prefer to avoid. Yet, the
status quo doesn't seem to be working very well either.
Once again, I find myself befuddled by the complexities
and the seeming hopelessness of Our situation.
re AIs and self-motivation: You raise some interesting
points here. They make me wonder if self-motive is an
essential component of intelligence.
re PC Childhood Scenes and drawing up guidelines for a
GM to create them: Yes, this promises to be a bear, but I'll
see if I can give it a shot. My initial thoughts are to design
some random tables akin to the Central Casting books, but
to make them setting specific, and then use them to
generate a list of scenes which will then need to be played
out. I'd also like add to this a list of setting-specific terms
for the players to learn. Each scene could introduce one or
two of these terms so that the player could get a better feel
for the setting. All of this, however, seems to me like a
rather daunting and convoluted project. Nonetheless, it also
seems to me that it's worth attempting, at least on a small
scale.
ryct Myles Corcoran re "a future of plenty" and plenty of
some things resulting in scarcity of others: In Traveller, for
example, it might be fairly cheap to take a shuttle to the
Moon. From there you could see the stars as never before.
In Star Trek you could perhaps have yourself "beamed"
there in a few seconds, hence avoiding all the traffic
congestion. Likewise, to get a little more down to Earth,
perhaps it might not be too long before somebody sets up
virtual message boards for neighborhoods as a way of
getting people to build community relationships and
improve their neighborhoods, hence solving the somewhat
ironic problem of social alienation in high density urban
environments. In fact, this is something that you and Barry
could start today if you wanted to do it, whereas just ten
years ago it would have been less easy. In short, there are
potential technological solutions to all the problems you
mentioned.
ryct Jonathan Nicholas re space battles: What is the Wes
Ives system you mentioned? Overall, I like your ideas.
Peter Hilbreth: re "Go to town!" and your Int-3 PC's
reaction: Classic.
Spike Jones: re Art in Zines: I've stopped using clipart
simply due to sheer laziness as well as the negative
comments and, perhaps most importantly, because it caused
formatting problems due to Lee and I using different printer
drivers (this apparently being a major failing with respect
to the transportability of MS-Word documents). I still think
A&E would be a better looking APA if people would
include artwork or some form of graphics in their zines,
however, I appear to be in the minority with respect to this
subject.
re Battlestations: It sounds like an interesting game. I'll
have to go snooping around for a copy.
re Medical Marijuana: Yes, I agree. It's really bizarre that
the so called conservatives have apparently abandoned
states rights. I want to read Scalia's opinion so I can figure
out what drugs he's been taking.
Joshua Kronengold: re my presupposed "genetic view of
poverty": Please see my comments to Robert Dushay in
A&E #360 as well as in this issue.
re my future of plenty in A&E #356 being "fraught with
drug war propaganda": I see how you could get that
impression, however, I'm not entirely sure what I can do
about it. I mean, I do have a certain view of human nature,
and it's not at all favorable. I'll admit, I have been
pleasantly surprised from time to time. That's one of the
benefits of being a pessimist, I suppose. However, by and
large, I do tend to view a future of plenty as allowing
various social ills to continue to propagate and become
even worse than they are now. Rich societies, in my view,
tend to have a seedy underside, a festering of human vice,
and the richer the society, I would think, the greater this
festering will become.
Although, of course, I don't have statistics to back up this
claim, so perhaps I'm mistaken. Perhaps my views are
warped by where I happen to live. I mean, just a little while
ago, I saw a guy smoking his bong behind the local liquor
store. He was right there in broad daylight for anybody
walking by to see. I wasn't offended or anything. I've stated
that I think drugs should be legalized. But to ignore the
repercussions of legalization or to pretend that human vice
won't expand when given the opportunity to do so is, at
least to my mind, a somewhat precarious way of thinking. I
mean, it seems to me that you can't just assume that vice
will magically control itself. Either there's something
controlling it, or it's out there having a field day. And, at
least speaking politically for a moment, the first question, I
think, isn't what should be done to curtail vice, but rather
how much vice are we as a society willing to tolerate
whether in the name of freedom, privacy or practicality,
because no matter what we do, vice will always be with us.
It is, at least to my mind, an inescapable part of who we
are, and I also think that our society's views on this are
evolving so quickly with each succeeding generation that
we seem to be sliding down a precarious slope, and I can
only wonder where it will end.
Moving on, you make the claim that more people leads to
more intelligent people leads to greater technological
advancement leads to technology saving us, or at least
saving our society. I very much hope that you're right, but,
of course, I'm rather far from being convinced of it. And
even if your view ultimately proves to be correct, as I hope,
there's still the question of the interim…what will happen
in between now and then, and will there be a collapse
before the reconstruction? In any case, as Robert Dushay
has stated on more than one occasion, perhaps it's really up
to the author, as trying to predict the future with any degree
of accuracy is clearly beyond the human intellect.
Nonetheless, it's sort of fun to try, and I do appreciate your
comments.
re "Why?" wrt telling the players about another
adventuring party and their exploits, even though the
information may not directly effect them: Because it helps
flesh out the campaign setting. Many times in a game, I
tend to wonder to what extent my character or party stands
out or how we are viewed by the society. Are we heroes to
be admired or tomb-looters to be shunned? And in many
games, the GM may not really have thought about this
question in any detail.
If adventuring parties are common enough that everyone
knows what they are, then we'd hear stories about other
adventuring parties, and although Spike just spent several
pages describing a fame system for Eternal Rome, it seems
to me that knowing who's who among adventuring parties
would add even more to a campaign than the inclusion of
such a system. Likewise, hearing about the antics of other
parties would give the players ideas of what's possible in
the world and what the likely repercussions may be for
various choices they might make. The stories of other
adventurers, both past and present, could form a sort of
social tapestry upon which a party could make its own
mark and thus make themselves known to the very
characters they've heard stories about. In this way, when
the GM introduces an NPC, it wouldn't just be some
anonymous hooded figure sitting in a dark corner of the
local watering hole. It might instead go something like this:
GM: You see a blond-bearded man in the corner, the
symbol of "The Wretched Jacks" upon his buckler.
Player: Wait, wasn't it the Jacks who slayed a pair of green
dragons last summer?
GM: So you've heard.
Player: I'll approach him. "Pardon the intrusion, but I
couldn't help noticing your buckler. Are you one of the
Jacks?"
GM: "I used to be," he replies somewhat bitterly.
Player: "Used to be?"
GM: "The Jacks are no longer, such decree the winds of
fate."
Player: "I'm see. Would you like to sit down with my
friends. We're also in 'the business'. The Black Eagles."
GM: "The Black Eagles," he muses. (Rolling some dice.)
His eyes light up for a moment, "Weren't you the party
that bungled the rescue of the princess Idora?"
Player: "Not so badly that we're 'no longer'…."
In reading your points against introducing such setting
material, what I'm seeing is you arguing against
introducing anything that the GM doesn't intend to use, as
such material would just detract from the campaign's focus,
which is, after all, the player-characters. However, it seems
to me to be in the nature of roleplaying games that GMs
don't always know what background material they intend to
use. After all, good campaigns tend not to be so highly
plotted that a GM can plan ten sessions in advance and, like
a script-writer, introduce only those characters and
background devices which will become important later.
Hence, at least for my own campaigns, I try to introduce a
lot of background. Only some of it will end up getting
used, but the more that's out there, the more that I and the
players have to draw from. I think this is probably a major
reason why I enjoy long-term campaigns as opposed to
short campaigns and one-shots, because long-term
campaigns tend to have a wealth of background material
which acts as plot-propellant to keep things interesting.
re Medical Marijuana: See my comment to Spike.
Louis La Mancusa: Thank you very much for Collapse:
How Human Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed. It seems
quite the coincidence that I was planning on buying this
book when it suddenly showed up in the mail. Very
thoughtful of you. 
I have begun reading it, and my initial impression is that
it will be even better than I'd thought. Jared Diamond is an
excellent writer, and he also seems to keep an open mind
with respect to his subject matter, forming his opinions
carefully and with great deliberation. In short, this promises
to be an excellent read.
re Horse Intelligence: Very interesting. I'd like to see
more articles of this type written by people who know what
they're talking about. It seems to me that one of the
problems in writing an RPG is that for the vast majority of
subjects one must inevitably encompass, the designer has
no choice but to approach them from a position of relative
ignorance. It might be interesting to have an igtheme which
prompts the members to write briefly about a subject they
know from long-time, first hand experience, though, of
course, while such essays might provide source material for
fleshing out a variety of RPGs, such a topic is hardly RPG-
specific. Funny how RPG design and real life seem to
intersect in so many potential ways.
Lisa Padol: You talked about tweaking adventures in your
comments to Lee, and Joshua mentioned in his comments
to Lee that you do a good job with this. I, personally, do a
lousy job to the point that I tend to not even use published
adventures anymore. In any case, I'm wondering if you
have any tips and tricks as to the art of tweaking adventures
and what it is you look for in published adventures that
makes them more usable for someone like yourself.
Also, thanks for your comments on the two childhood
vignettes that I wrote for A&E #360. I'm still trying to get a
feel for what I'm doing here, and Lee's comment that I
should establish some guidelines to help GMs construct
these was also useful.
Simon Reeve: re Mice and Birds on Gough Island: Ick!
re www.nationstates.net: Thanks for the link! This seems
to me to be an awesome resource for detailing those
bizarre, balkanized worlds of Traveller. Very, very cool.
Brian Rogers: ryct Louis La Mancusa re common ground:
Although the applicable common ground may be RPGs, as
you say, I think Louis' point was that the practical common
ground was turning out to be politics (not by intention but
rather simply by the force of human nature). How else can
one explain the propensity for politics to inject itself into
the APA? He also stated that with the proliferation of
systems and genres came a fracturing of the market, giving
us more variety and choice but less commonality. I think
your own zine is an example of this. Back in the late 70s
we would have been discussing D&D. Now there are more
choices. As an example fo this, you spent a good part of
your zine discussing superpowers. Unfortunately, I'm not
into that genre. Hence, I see this as a case in point of
exactly what Louis was referring to.
Or is it? In re-reading your twelve questions for super-
hero campaign creation, I think there are concepts here that
can be applied to any genre. "How close were the PCs
before the party is formed?" is a common question in the
fantasy genre. Your second question deals with the
interaction of their personalities, which is also applicable
across various genres and is a rather interesting insight into
characterization. In fact, as I scan through your key points,
I think that nearly the entire thing could be rewritten for
any genre, or, perhaps preferably, rewritten to be genre
non-specific.
To switch gears just slightly, you bring up the term
"shared world", referring in this case to the real world, the
world we all, in fact, share, but your use of the term spawns
a query on my part. I'm wondering if the members of A&E
ever tried to create a shared fantasy world.