Some Advice Please

[Lord Raziere]

Hello everyone.

So, you see I made this star-wars-esque sci-fi/fantasy setting where humans don't exist, there is no one big empire controlling everything and magic is actually admitted to be magic- and said magic is responsible for the invention of the ftl drive. called it Infinicosm, and I thought that it was done.

but suddenly I had like an idea. You see, when I first conceived the setting, it was this star-wars-esque mishmash of a million races everywhere in endless diversity and all that.
but now suddenly my idea is to narrow it down to one race- the race of the protagonist.

the advantages of this are that I can focus more on the cyberpunkish aspects of the setting like robots and cybernetics and a universe-wide internet (also there due to magic), the various inhabitants of planets will be more influenced by the local culture and environment than their alien biology or whatever, it is also more consistent and less of a deluge of various races that you probably won't remember. that and scientifically harder because its more likely that there is only very few aliens if any at all out there.

However the multifarious races thing also has advantages: I can depict a character who is more alien than the others, more flavor,.....and thats really all I can think of.

So I ask you: Should narrow it down to one race? or keep it at its glorious multifarious level? or should I seek some third option? Help please.

[Threeshades]

I think the number of races in your setting should depend on what you are going to do with them and where you want the setting's focus to be.

"races that you probably won't remember" for example aren't a bad thing it adds a feeling of depth just to see how much there is in this universe that cant even be touched on in the frame of the story told.

[Lord Raziere]

well....the races don't really matter THAT much...I am gonna focus more on the effects and consequences of the super-high tech that makes the setting possible rather than anything involving species anyways....so I probably should cut them down cause I'm not focusing on that. that and I could always emphasize the alien-ness of cyborgs instead.

[Comet]

You already seem to have a mix n' mash sort of thing going on there with cybernetics and magic going hand in hand. With that in mind, adding aliens to it seems a bit redundant.

So, my vote goes for keeping it down to one race, with obvious variation by planet and culture.

[Omeganaut]

You could always have genetically altered beings that grew up under the main race. They would have alien thought processes, enhance the high-tech/magic feel, and could be as important or as unimportant as you wanted. They would allow "aliens" while not having to have other races who somehow reached similar tech levels to your main race at the same time (which is the biggest flaw I see in the Star Wars universe).

[Lord Raziere]

well actually, the tech levels in the setting are VERY variable due to a lot of things involving interstellar economics; specifically a "Great Ripple Effect" where it takes ten years for tech to get from one planet to another, twenty years to get to the second planet after that, fifty years for the third, one-hundred seventy years for the next and so on and so forth due to the relativistic effects of traveling at interstellar speeds so that there will always be some planet out there that is hundreds of years behind in tech than another, coupled with the fact that not everyone can afford even the outdated tech and various criminals smuggling and stealing stuff around...

oh and big part of the settings backstory is that the inner worlds went out and conquered the outer planets filled aliens with more primitive tech and wanted to stop them from making the same mistakes they did when they were at that level of civilization and that is a cause for a lot of conflict to....sorta forgot that part...probably means that I WILL have to keep the multifarious races around....(don't worry, that age of imperialism was followed by an age of rebellion that won because the inner worlds stretched themselves too thin and couldn't fight all the rebellions)
and thats only half the reason, the other half is that the inner worlds got overpopulated and robots started taking jobs so lots of people started to go poor and if they didn't do something things would erupt into anarchy so they decided to invade the Outer Worlds so they could push their poor onto new worlds where they can start fresh.

the setting in short, is complicated, but then again it is sorta designed to be a big mess, or a machine that barely holds itself together.

[Omeganaut]

...
the setting in short, is complicated, but then again it is sorta designed to be a big mess, or a machine that barely holds itself together.

Well, most societies are that way. Most current countries are like that, and almost every historical government was that way. It makes perfect sense, especially with more worlds to cover.

[Lord Raziere]

Well, most societies are that way. Most current countries are like that, and almost every historical government was that way. It makes perfect sense, especially with more worlds to cover.

Yay! thank you, that was exactly my intention when I designed it.

hmmm....yes I think it WILL be one race/species whatever you call it.... I don't really want to spend time coming up with so many new ones, that and I can easily make it so that there is a lot of variation within one alien race....high grav guys different from the guys who live in space stations after all.

that and the genetically engineered races is a good idea too, the setting has strong genetic engineeering in it to, so that idea would easily fit, and I could bring one in whenever I want something more alien to write.

thank you all for your advice.