What influences you when you come up with an alien race? For instance, who do you base their language, names, appearance, technology, and so forth on? This has kind of been bothering me for a while. I like what Stargate SG-1 did, when the Go''auld came to Earth and adapted the personas of mythological figures.

Creating alien races is one of my favorite parts of doing the designwork for a book or a game. ^_^ I would have to say my biggest influence has been Ursula K. LeGuin, with the way each of her races is a sociological thought experiment. There's a writer's digest book on creating alien species, but I personally think it's kinda dumb and I could write a better one myself. I've found inspiration for my own races in anthropological writings about primitive cultures from around the world, including native americans, medieval britons, african, australian, and new guinean bushmen, and scottish clansmen.

Some of the most useful things I have read:

Jared Dimond's Discover Magazine Article on Easter Island

A great book by a well-known male science writer (but damned if I can remember the title or the author >.< ) about how taboos are created.

Assorted sociological writings and mythology, especially the Encyclopedia of Creation Myths and a world mythology motif index.

[edited by - sunandshadow on February 26, 2004 2:08:10 PM]

The majority of my ideas have some basis in mythology. I''ve studied it heavily, or semi-heavily since sixth grade. I''ve wanted to find a way to combine every deity, or deities from most every mythos, into a single pantheon but I''ve yet to find a good way to do it.

Well, dieties come in archetypes just like other characters. You just need to make a list of the archetypes you want and then create one diety of each. It''s traditional to have a god/goddess for: war, fertility/the earth, rain, the ocean, the forest, the underworld, the sun, the moon, love, art, craft, and law, for starters.

Before this deviates further, the original question related to aliens - not gods :-p

Admittedly I've only done the alien bit once. Technically twice, the other time I had to modify work already done - and the "aliens" were really just advanced humans, with the regular humans turning out to be a sort of colony/clone experiment.

The one time I actually created my own alien race I used Judeo-Christian/Hebrew influences, basing them on various aspects of the Christian "pantheon".

Which I guess, from this thread, is a pretty common method

For their technology and society I tried to look at them from a physical viewpoint, as avian beings, and went from there. Architecture, for example, consisted of aeries/skyscrapers with platforms and ladders for those without wings. They had vehicles, but they were large, very roomy craft - sort of like a hotel or convention hall (or sports arena) as a spacecraft, with gardens, trees and water fountains, and high ceilings/wide central shafts for them to fly around inside of.

It was all built around an excess of space for those with wings, and a minimum of space (and maximum of labor) for those without. Think of it like the Bird House at your local zoo; add in a series of hamster habitats, and you've got a good image of how the world looked.

I admit I didn't work hard at an actual language; I didn't need it, since I was writing from the view of the aliens. But in describing it I used musical notes as a comparison - very tonal, broad ranges, with the various octaves for the same note having different meanings (much the way in, say, the Chinese language the emphasis on different syllables of a word changes the meaning of the word entirely).


[edited by - EricTrickster on February 26, 2004 5:35:37 PM]

I find a seed idea and then develop the race from that. Sometimes its as simple as a piece of plastic which, I turn into a scetch of an alien, which leads to ideas on their technology, and then there culture and so on.

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Writer, Programer, Cook, I''m a Jack of all Trades
Current Design project
Chaos Factor Design Document

If you wanted to go with a terrestrial alien idea, you could have a nuclear holocost on earth with the only survivors being cockroaches, who survive on the remains of dead creatures and nuclear waste. Then, they evolve into multiple variations of beasts. You''d have an entire ecosystem based on one creature. Hahaha. Got the idea from an episode of the Powerpuff Girls.

consider developing an alien race by making it extinct before the player ever gets to even see it. For example, stumbling across the remains of a civilization.

This kind of draws from the less is more camp.....if you don't have a bagillion dollars to spend on creating the fantastic artwork, character models, sound effects and hoardes of other assets necessary to give an alien race the kind of awe it deserves in your game, do the next best thing and leave some aspects to the players imagination by only allowing the player limited glimpses...for example maybe the player walks into an alien machine shop and doesnt see aliens, but rather the tools and facilities that were developed by the aliens. By doing this you are casting the player into an investigative role, which is good because it means you are offloading a lot of work by allowing the player to construct the imagery for themselves. There are also obvious plot tie-ins and objectives you can build off of this scenario.

On a somewhat unrelated note, I cant stand seeing alien technology that has just been thrown together for the sake of creating the scene. For example I remember playing Fade To Black many years ago, and you basically wander around these research facilities on some alien planet. I ask you this: Why would the aliens put 3 legged stools suitable for humans to sit on in there labs? Can you imagine trying to sit on a stool when you are a 7 ft tall lizard that has a huge tail?? Or another classic example is when you see some pathetic armless creature and the backstory includes some rubbish about how advanced the species technology is. I mean advanced technology? That damn thing doesnt even have hands! It cant even open a can of soup, let alone build a vehicle capable of interstellar travel!!
I guess the point of this paragraph is dont just throw together an alien race simply to have an alien race. Introduction of an extraterrestrial species will likely be the hottest point of contention in your game as far as reasonability goes, so give it some thought!!


hope this helps,

neko


[edited by - nekoflux on March 4, 2004 2:34:01 PM]