How alien is too alien?

[Aotrs Commander]

I have come to a point where I will have a lot of thinking time in the next six months.

This is as well, as my next campaign world is going to tax all my creative powers.

The basic premise is something I've always wanted to do an entirely alien "fantasy" world. So the same sort of set-up as for typical fantasy adventures (sorta), but on an entirely un-Earth-like world. For starters, the world Andorlaine the Evenstar is a tide-locked planet in orbit around a distant star. The star itself sometimes dims (lasting decades to hundreds of years, with hundreds to thousands of years between dimming periods). (It took me about eight weeks or talking to astrophyicists and crunching numbers to get a suitable "unlikely but theorheritcally plausible" set-up.)

So, from the outset, this world is going to be extremely alien. There is no day, no night and no seasons so speak of. (Nor is this a recent advent.) Timekeeping itself is going to be a bit of challenge... And only really getting anywhere because the baseline is the orbit of the rapidly rotating moon (which takes six Earth days to orbit). I plan to have - of for simplicity of rules for either D&D 3.X or Rolemaster (whichever I in the end choose to use as the mechanics of choice) of having the smaller time units break down into as near as damn it hours/minutes/seconds. ("Days," as a 24-hour period, is another question.) So the players are gong to have a degree of adjustment before we evern start to the unfamiliar.

The actually inhabitants? Currently a blank slate. Given that this is a "fantasy" world there is no limit on the number of sentient/sapient species... Nor, with this being alien, of their shape.

But the crux of the question of this thread is thus: How far is too far?

On the one hand, I emphatically do not want to have analogous not-humans (humans proper are absolutely RIGHT out)... But on the other hand, I don't want to hand out the players a load of non-humanoid creatures that will make their fragile brains bleed because they are so different. (Now, bear in mind my current campaign world has a fair number of non-humanoid races (unicorns, gryphons, giant crow-falcons to name but three), so this is not necessarily a new area for either me or my players in terms game mechanics and whatnot: for 3.Aotrs, I spent some time working out stuff like what gear they could wear/carry and such.)

I have, before you ask, just sent out this question to THEM, but I also wanted to get a wider opinion as well.

So, denizens of the playground, I ask: how alien would something have to be (in terms of physical shape) before you couldn't cope with it as a character to play?

Can you only cope with humanoids or quadupeds or taurids (etc)? What's the point you stop and say "nah, I can't get my head round that, there's too many dangly bits!" or something?

[braveheart]

I think that for most players a sentient race needs to have dexterous arms and hands, however the number of them, as well as the number of legs (or other method of locomotion) need only to be agile enough to easily traverse diverse terrains (no wheels or treads) also I think it would be interesting to see how the players would respond if all creatures had spiderlike mobility on walls

[Segev]

For me, it's when it starts behaving in a manner that is literally insane by human standards. "Alien," even "blue and orange morality," is still logically followable from its starting premises. Human emotion, in all its seemingly irrational spectra, is still actually quite rational if you grasp WHAT drives it gives.

I can handle just about any physical form you can think of, as long as it fits into three-dimensional euclidean space.

[Daishain]

In terms of just dealing with physical form, there are few practical limits. It may take a while for a player to get used to the body and its capabilities, not to mention properly exploiting said capabilities, but most people with a lick of imagination should be able to adjust.

Where it can get... difficult, is in terms of actually identifying with the creatures well enough to roleplay with them. Its all well and good to figure out how to effectively create and control an ectoplasmic pseudopod to pick things up with. But just what the hell would motivate a sentient blob of thick gasses? (aside from perhaps a desire to avoid strong winds)

[Aotrs Commander]

Where it can get... difficult, is in terms of actually identifying with the creatures well enough to roleplay with them. Its all well and good to figure out how to effectively create and control an ectoplasmic pseudopod to pick things up with. But just what the hell would motivate a sentient blob of thick gasses? (aside from perhaps a desire to avoid strong winds)

And that's where the real question lies, isn't it?

Perforce, these creatures will not - cannot - be incomprehensibly alien, because my players will actually have to y'know, PLAY them. But I need to try and hit the right balance between "alien and alien culture" and "ability for lesser mortals to be able to roleplay them."

If you will forgive me, the My Little Pony fandom is a good example - you're looking at something that's an entirely nonhuman body-shape, but they are still, well, people. (And the MLP world is pretty out-there even by fantasy world standards.) I sort of want to go a bit further than that sort of thing - but one needs to know where to stop. Obviously, what feedback I can drag from my players ¹ is the most important factor, but I figured it was an interesting enough question for a wider audience.



¹Plus side of a very compliant group: I can say, "I'mma run this" and they all go "yeah, sure, whatever dude." Downside, when I ask for them to think about it, or what they want, it's like getting blood from a stone...!

[boomwolf]

There is no such thing as too alien, as long inner logic applies.

It need not be human logic, or even earthly logic-but some form of logic that works withing the parameters of that world. as long reverse-analysis can follow why they look like they look, and why they act like they act-its a plausible alien.

I'd even say that getting more alien is better. I'm sick of all the "human with different ears and facial features" or "human/animal hybrid" races.

[Aotrs Commander]

I'd even say that getting more alien is better. I'm sick of all the "human with different ears and facial features" or "human/animal hybrid" races.

Oh, definitely! I abhor the latter especially...!

[DigoDragon]

Communication is a major wall for me. If I can't hold any meaningful communication where we can have translatable concepts, it's just not worth dealing with. For example, In Star Control II, there's a mysterious race called the Orz. For some reason their language is so bizarre that the Universal Translator cannot figure out all the words. Sometimes even context gets misplaced. Their description of what they are is pretty out there, and after a while I get to the point where if an Orz ship tries hailing me, I just open up with Hellbore cannons.

[ComatosePhoenix]

Just a question, is this going to be Fantasy Alien such as warwind? Or a more traditional Sci-fi setting?

Scale of the creatures is an important thing to consider, on one hand its more relistic to have a wide variety of shapes and sizes for the aliens, on the other hand finding out that your selected race is about 4" tall might be a bit disconcerting.

Also a lot of people have mentioned Eldritch tentacle horrors, amorphous blobs, and intelligent gasses, but one of the best non human structures for aliens is Insect, or arthropod bodies. solid carapaces and similarly developed bodies time tested for survival.

[Tengu_temp]

Any creature who is so alien that it's hard to give it a meaningful personality unrelated to its specific racial or cultural gimmicks is too alien to be a PC.

Similarily, creatures too weird for you to imagine them just doing ordinary, everyday things are too alien.

Also, when it comes to language - don't use made-up terms when ordinary ones are readily available. Nobody will take your alien race seriously if they call their children "farmlings".

[Fable Wright]

Honestly, nature itself acts as a desensitizing agent here. Have you ever really looked at the world? At caterpillars, frogs, and spiders? At some of the crazy reproductive cycles at the bottom of the ocean? You get some extraordinarily bizarre stuff. And people are familiar with all those kinds of strange properties, but they still lend themselves to an alien environment. As to your main question? The only thing that I get hung up on are antennae that extend in front of the face. Any more than two and I'm just out of there. I can play as pretty much any arthropod, arachnid, cephalopod, reptile, amphibian, bird or eldritch abomination with any number of dangly bits you could create, just as long as they don't have more than three antennae extending from their facial parts.

Also, if I may make a suggestion? Spider-like creatures, given some kind of polyp-like insect they could raise as a food source that they don't need to compete for, seem like a good place to start with building civilization. The innate ability to make organic adhesive and non-adhesive building materials with higher tensile strength than steel seems useful in laying the groundwork for cross-species interrelations, and they already have cultural aspects you could extrapolate from different contemporary spider webmaking techniques. (Ever heard of Diving Bell spiders? Trapdoor spiders? Scorpion-Tailed Spider colonies? These could easily turn into cultures in an otherwise interbred spider society.)

[SiuiS]

I like the idea of a gelatinous cluster hivemind of philosophical hippies.

[Aotrs Commander]

Just a question, is this going to be Fantasy Alien such as warwind? Or a more traditional Sci-fi setting?

Never heard of warwind, so I can't comment on that... But the idea is that it's basically fantasy-level tech on an entirely alien planet. But the thing about the periodic dimming periods is that it's so far apart (usually) when it happens, the current civilisation usually comes a cropper and gest wiped out. Some of them got pretty advanced (but pre-(significant) spaceflight), so there will be a few sci-fi elements in there are well. (Imagine if tomorrow, the sun suddenly dimmed considerably and all the plants started changing colour (and composition) and their ranges changed, with the attendant climate alterations... Human civilisation would be pretty screwed.) The current nominal thought is that one of the oldest civilisations made to to a bit post-modern Earth (though not necessarily in all the same sort of technologies - some higher, some lower).

The first nominal campaign or adventure path will likely centre on a late paleolithic/neolithic level tribe, driven from their swamp home by a massive flood, with the only way to go down The Long Walk, a dead straight massive road embankment that runs hundreds (at al) of miles, down which they will have to travel, lead by the PCs to find a new place to settle. Being so primitive, it means a) the PCs don't have so much of a culural shift to star with, b) the PCs will actually be DEFINING thing about how the later games set more in the future happen and c) it's pretty novel. Especially when EVERYTHING is treasure. Never mind a Bag of Holding, a BAG is treasure! (And of course, with it being fantasy, I am going to be heavily playing up the superstitious angle that such primitives would have on technological items... When the PCs find something they think is a sword, and someone says not to touch it because it's an evil spirit... That might actually be the case! Or it is made of a metal that is an allergen to the race (as in, it penetrates their DR sort of thing). The point being, the PCs won't know or have any way to find out, which should ad a great deal of fun and experimentation to even basic treasure!

Scale of the creatures is an important thing to consider, on one hand its more relistic to have a wide variety of shapes and sizes for the aliens, on the other hand finding out that your selected race is about 4" tall might be a bit disconcerting.

Also a lot of people have mentioned Eldritch tentacle horrors, amorphous blobs, and intelligent gasses, but one of the best non human structures for aliens is Insect, or arthropod bodies. solid carapaces and similarly developed bodies time tested for survival.

I hadn't thought about size. But I am leaning, as I usually do, to a world very heavily grounded in real-world mechanics (hense the hours spent of orbital mechancis and not just hand-waving it as "magic/technology did it") - from where you can jump up to the fantastic, and have it be more fantastical - so given Andorlaine is 1.018G (it's actually got a surface gravity of 9.9965 m/s², as it's about 7% bigger but only 99.4% as dense than Earth) and brain sizes (to say nothing of not having to bend the game mechanics too far), I envision the primary races will be human-sized.

Communication is a major wall for me. If I can't hold any meaningful communication where we can have translatable concepts, it's just not worth dealing with. For example, In Star Control II, there's a mysterious race called the Orz. For some reason their language is so bizarre that the Universal Translator cannot figure out all the words. Sometimes even context gets misplaced. Their description of what they are is pretty out there, and after a while I get to the point where if an Orz ship tries hailing me, I just open up with Hellbore cannons.

Yes, a race designed for PC use does actually have to be able to be understood! You have to design them as a people, rather than a monster.

Any creature who is so alien that it's hard to give it a meaningful personality unrelated to its specific racial or cultural gimmicks is too alien to be a PC.

Similarily, creatures too weird for you to imagine them just doing ordinary, everyday things are too alien.

Good points.

Also, when it comes to language - don't use made-up terms when ordinary ones are readily available. Nobody will take your alien race seriously if they call their children "farmlings".

Eeh... I think there's a bit of give and take there. If you don't use the English word... you don't use an English word period. If they call children "gruzars" or something, it'd be less distracting... And for some things (not that I think that specific example is one of them, mind) I think having an alien word gives a better flavour.

The real danger is in things like measurements, because people have a hard enough time "seeing" things in real-world measurements as it is, without telling them something is fifteen flurblewanges tall. So there I shal pull a Tolkien and say that the actual units used by the characters would be something different (and, being me, define what those units are compared to metric/imperial) but that in play, we would only use imperial measures (since both D&D and RM use imperial).

Honestly, nature itself acts as a desensitizing agent here. Have you ever really looked at the world? At caterpillars, frogs, and spiders? At some of the crazy reproductive cycles at the bottom of the ocean? You get some extraordinarily bizarre stuff. And people are familiar with all those kinds of strange properties, but they still lend themselves to an alien environment.

Oh hells, yes. As a lay student of natural history, it never ceases to amaze me the sort of stuff you find in the natural world. You couldn't make some of it up!

As to your main question? The only thing that I get hung up on are antennae that extend in front of the face. Any more than two and I'm just out of there. I can play as pretty much any arthropod, arachnid, cephalopod, reptile, amphibian, bird or eldritch abomination with any number of dangly bits you could create, just as long as they don't have more than three antennae extending from their facial parts.

Also, if I may make a suggestion? Spider-like creatures, given some kind of polyp-like insect they could raise as a food source that they don't need to compete for, seem like a good place to start with building civilization. The innate ability to make organic adhesive and non-adhesive building materials with higher tensile strength than steel seems useful in laying the groundwork for cross-species interrelations, and they already have cultural aspects you could extrapolate from different contemporary spider webmaking techniques. (Ever heard of Diving Bell spiders? Trapdoor spiders? Scorpion-Tailed Spider colonies? These could easily turn into cultures in an otherwise interbred spider society.)

Interesting thought. Mind you, I gotta be a bit careful... I am sometimes a bit way too free with spider-like creatures! (The last lot of technoligcal robot aliens the players encountered - while searching for components from what amounted to the alien's old abandonded Space IKEA were spider-like, so I don't want to get too into... type...shape...casting...?

[Palanan]

Two thoughts here:

First, if you haven't read it, I really recommend A Deepness in the Sky for a superbly done alien culture. Their homeworld orbits a variable star which goes quiescent on a cycle of centuries. --Not the same setup as your system, of course, but the book is an excellent example of how alien biology, culture, and even military strategy can be shaped and derived from the cyclical changes in their planetary environment.

Second, when I first saw the thread title, my instant reaction was "Tsochari!" And after reading through a little more, I'm still thinking Tsochari. They're my single favorite creepy thing from Lords of Madness, and I would love to play one of those. They're alien and bizarre, true--but their minds are still capable of communicating with humans, and they're even able to cast some of the same spells.

So that would be my answer. A Tsochari would be decidedly alien, but not incomprehensibly so, and that's what I'd love to play in this setting. Perhaps wearing one of the other races as a comfy overcoat.

[Aotrs Commander]

Two thoughts here:

First, if you haven't read it, I really recommend A Deepness in the Sky for a superbly done alien culture. Their homeworld orbits a variable star which goes quiescent on a cycle of centuries. --Not the same setup as your system, of course, but the book is an excellent example of how alien biology, culture, and even military strategy can be shaped and derived from the cyclical changes in their planetary environment.

Second, when I first saw the thread title, my instant reaction was "Tsochari!" And after reading through a little more, I'm still thinking Tsochari. They're my single favorite creepy thing from Lords of Madness, and I would love to play one of those. They're alien and bizarre, true--but their minds are still capable of communicating with humans, and they're even able to cast some of the same spells.

So that would be my answer. A Tsochari would be decidedly alien, but not incomprehensibly so, and that's what I'd love to play in this setting. Perhaps wearing one of the other races as a comfy overcoat.

That book does sound very interesting - I am going to put that straight on my amazon wish list! I tend now only to get books to read for when I go away on holiday, and stock up over birthday (in October) and Christmas for the following year and with the things of recent years coming to a close, this is a welcome suggestion; thank you for the recommendation.

Tsochari I'm not familiar with, but a google search gave me the idea. I think there was a similar sort of creature in Rolemaster's (well, Spacemaster's) Aliens and Artifacts.

A good point, I think, because that is an example of something that's probably no suited for a PC race (or rather, as a primary PC race); which is good, because we're establoishing boundary conditions! Once the things it can't be are considered, then it makes what it can be more easily defined!

[J-H]

Take a look at some of the writings of Hal Clement. Specifically Close to Critical (high-pressure Venus type environment) and Mission of Gravity (flattened sphere with high rotational period - 500 Gs at the equator, 4 Gs at the poles).

[Dexam]

For me, personally, too alien is still not alien enough - but I'm weird like that.

I guess you really need to judge the attitudes of your players. If most of them are "average" or "normal" (as much as I detest those terms), they will be well and truly comfortable with pop-culture alien species, so I'd suggest trying to take it no more than a couple of steps beyond that. If they're fans of hard-core sci-fi or real-world science, then a couple of steps again beyond that. (Sorry for the fairly generic and loosely-defined advice here).

Strongly recommended reading: "Evolving the Alien: The Science of Extraterrestrial Life" by Jack Cohen and Ian Stewart (if those names seem familiar, they are the co-authors of The Science of Discworld series with Sir Terry Pratchett). Do whatever it takes to get your grasping appendages of choice on a copy of this - it will be well worth it. Then I suggest lending it your players to read.

An additional suggestion: if you want your alien world to make "sense", then start from the ground up and build an ecology (or several). You've mentioned tidal locking, frequent regular dimming of its parent star, relatively Earth-like mass and density. This is a good starting point, but if we want to reach the goal of "carbon-based life with an oxygen atmosphere" (mentioned in the other thread), we need to build from here. Is it tectonically active, and are there active volcanoes? What are the extremes of temperature at each of the poles (i.e. the "day" pole and the "night" pole)? Free oxygen in the atmosphere is incredibly rare - something living needs to put it there, so I'm assuming large bodies of liquid water for bacterial and microbial life to turn CO₂ into O₂. What is the atmospheric density like (i.e. Earth-like or something more akin to Venus)? What's the lithosphere like? I'm assuming a rotating molten iron core to produce a magnetic field to protect developing life from solar and cosmic radiation. I'm also thinking that a tidally locked planet with a decent atmosphere is going to have very extreme weather conditions - nearly constant prevailing storm winds flowing from the high-pressure "day" pole to the low-pressure "night" pole, with sufficient ocean current and geological activity to keep things mixed up a bit - so your life forms need to be able to survive that - assuming that they are land or air based life forms; oceanic lifeforms are a different kettle of fish. I'm also assuming that the regular periods of solar dimming produce an associated planetary cooling? If so, your ecosystem inhabitants will need to be able to take advantage of that, perhaps going dormant for long periods of time.

These are just a small handful of points to consider before we can even start reaching the point of multi-cellular life. Let me know if you would like to read more of my ponderings in this matter.

[Fable Wright]

Interesting thought. Mind you, I gotta be a bit careful... I am sometimes a bit way too free with spider-like creatures! (The last lot of technoligcal robot aliens the players encountered - while searching for components from what amounted to the alien's old abandonded Space IKEA were spider-like, so I don't want to get too into... type...shape...casting...?

Those are different enough from spiders that I doubt the players will accuse you of shapecasting. The legs are far too stocky, there are no fine-manipulation mandibles, and they don't appear to have half their body converted into a materials manufacturing plant. (These being robots, though, it's hard to tell.) The only similarity is the bent-leg shape, and any other distinguishing characteristics added to the arachnoid civilizing race (like a bemandibled ophidian head and neck grafted onto otherwise arachnid body, allowing for far more reach and versatility in the creature's strike range and object manipulation) would probably make the players entirely forget about the semi-related leg structure.

[boomwolf]

If you want another example of an alien mind, from a book I've long forgotten it's name there were some aliens that looked like bipedal wolves.
Body-wise nothing special, but their mind is where it gets weird: up to four of these form a small "hive mind" of sorts, making the four bodies a single mental entity, however while all traits, thoughts, memories and behaviors are shared, each of the original bodies is still the origin of them, so if one dies-the entire psych changes as the traits he brought with him dies, and later of another can take his place and alter the psych yet again as he incorporates his own traits.

This gives some interesting questions, for example one of them was made of bodies A,B,C,D but body D died and later got replaced by body E-so is it still the same "person" any more?
Furthermore, body E actually killed someone (quite brutally) while he was part of E,F,G,H-so is E the killer? or is E,F,G,H? and what does it mean for A,B,C,E? is he the killer? he definally REMEMBER doing it, but he was part of a totally different mindset at a time.

Add in the mix their fear of getting too close to others as the connections might get switched around (the connections are NOT voluntary, they just happen) and the results of that on the most basic things in life, luckily newborns don't form links or even giving birth would have been a threat of a mental mixture, but once they grow-it starts becoming a risk just to take care of them.
And mating as a whole, do you mate with "yourself"? do you risk mixing you mental with "another"? all these things create one weird-ass race.


You want to make seriously alien life, don't decide on how they look and act as your base, just make up a defining feature about them, and then work out what will happen to a creature that is burdened/gifted by that feature.

[Broken Crown]

If you want another example of an alien mind, from a book I've long forgotten it's name there were some aliens that looked like bipedal wolves.
Body-wise nothing special, but their mind is where it gets weird: up to four of these form a small "hive mind" of sorts, making the four bodies a single mental entity, however while all traits, thoughts, memories and behaviors are shared, each of the original bodies is still the origin of them, so if one dies-the entire psych changes as the traits he brought with him dies, and later of another can take his place and alter the psych yet again as he incorporates his own traits.

That sounds like the main alien species from A Fire Upon the Deep, by Vernor Vinge, who also wrote the aforementioned A Deepness in the Sky. (I don't remember them being bipedal, though.) Both are excellent books, with some very interesting ideas about what really alien sentient life could be like.

[Bulhakov]

Also Deepness in the Sky has spider-like aliens ;)

[Aotrs Commander]

For me, personally, too alien is still not alien enough - but I'm weird like that.

I guess you really need to judge the attitudes of your players. If most of them are "average" or "normal" (as much as I detest those terms), they will be well and truly comfortable with pop-culture alien species, so I'd suggest trying to take it no more than a couple of steps beyond that. If they're fans of hard-core sci-fi or real-world science, then a couple of steps again beyond that. (Sorry for the fairly generic and loosely-defined advice here).

Strongly recommended reading: "Evolving the Alien: The Science of Extraterrestrial Life" by Jack Cohen and Ian Stewart (if those names seem familiar, they are the co-authors of The Science of Discworld series with Sir Terry Pratchett). Do whatever it takes to get your grasping appendages of choice on a copy of this - it will be well worth it. Then I suggest lending it your players to read.

That actually is probably worth booting up the list instead of saving for holidays.

An additional suggestion: if you want your alien world to make "sense", then start from the ground up and build an ecology (or several). You've mentioned tidal locking, frequent regular dimming of its parent star, relatively Earth-like mass and density. This is a good starting point, but if we want to reach the goal of "carbon-based life with an oxygen atmosphere" (mentioned in the other thread), we need to build from here. Is it tectonically active, and are there active volcanoes? What are the extremes of temperature at each of the poles (i.e. the "day" pole and the "night" pole)? Free oxygen in the atmosphere is incredibly rare - something living needs to put it there, so I'm assuming large bodies of liquid water for bacterial and microbial life to turn CO₂ into O₂. What is the atmospheric density like (i.e. Earth-like or something more akin to Venus)? What's the lithosphere like? I'm assuming a rotating molten iron core to produce a magnetic field to protect developing life from solar and cosmic radiation. I'm also thinking that a tidally locked planet with a decent atmosphere is going to have very extreme weather conditions - nearly constant prevailing storm winds flowing from the high-pressure "day" pole to the low-pressure "night" pole, with sufficient ocean current and geological activity to keep things mixed up a bit - so your life forms need to be able to survive that - assuming that they are land or air based life forms; oceanic lifeforms are a different kettle of fish. I'm also assuming that the regular periods of solar dimming produce an associated planetary cooling? If so, your ecosystem inhabitants will need to be able to take advantage of that, perhaps going dormant for long periods of time.

These are just a small handful of points to consider before we can even start reaching the point of multi-cellular life. Let me know if you would like to read more of my ponderings in this matter.

Most of these questions I've already asked and researched up on. As you say, the boundary conditions are absolutely CRITICAL in this sort of situation, because it defines everything else. Hense two months of time talking on physics forums and crunching numbers and reading all sorts of scientific papers I could find on teh interwebs. I do try not to go into these things half-cocked!

The answer is, there is tectonic activity; partly due to a bit of "wobble" in the orbit caused by Andolaine's nearest neighbour, a gas giant further in in orbital resonace with it. (Besides, you gotta have mountains, right?)

Pole temperatures are more of a sticky issue. I can really only postulate: while there is a calculatable minimum and maximum, actually getting even a median or mean range is nearly entirely guesswork. In order to answer some of the questions I'd like to, I'd actually have to have some proper atmospheric modelling software and know how to use it properly; like the gentlemen and ladies that did the research for some of the scientific papers I've read up on. And even then, there's not always a concensus. So the temperatures is a bit of a "at best guess." I made a stab and theorhetical minimum and maximum, going from percentage difference recorded Earth temperatures and Earth's nominal black-body temperatures (which give about 104ºC-114ºC at the hot pole and -62 to -112ºC at 85º latitude). (Of course, the global average temperature - including extrapolation for greenhouse effect - was one of the earlier things I calculated, being something modified by stellar flux.)

The atmospheric composition is basically the same as Earth's - largely because if I strayed from that baseline, a lot of factors (like the critical clould albedo and greenhouse effect) then would be completely different and I couldn't even try to extrapolate of scientific data.

As to weather... The substellar point has a continuous hurricane, and air flows out at high altitude towards the cold pole and back at ground level at a fair rate (so there will be a preveiling wind towards the sun in most places). The upper atmosphere also super-rotates (based on one analysis I found).

The magnetosphere question is a more tricky one. Andorlaine is not orbiting a red dwarf star: it's tide-locked at 104AU out¹. (R Coronae Borealis - the titular sample star for an RCB variable star - is a yellow supergiant with a nearly 100 sol radius and only 0.8 solar masses.) Given that the reason they dim is due to (it is thought) carbon clouds given off from the surface, and the distance involved, I don't know how much solar wind actually reaches the planet - though it might be considerable. Annoyingly, it appears to be an area that I can't remember coming up when I was talking on the physics forums (I must go check): but it may be simply a question that cannot be answered, given the poor understanding of RCB variable stars. (Note: Andorlaine's star is noted as being extremely unusual in staying in the yellow supergiant stage vastly longer than is typical; but the dimming periods in undergoes are also a couple of orders of magnitude longer in duration than R Coronae Borealis; it is hazarded that some sort of exotic element int he sun is causing it to burn "slower" or there may be some form of artifical system in place: the denizens of Andorlaine never got that far and it's too obscure for any space faring power to do more than cursorily look and guess, so will remain a mystery.)

The interesting thing about the dimming periods of R Coronae Borealis is that the IR spectrum absorbtion does not significantly tail off, like the apparent brightness does. So the while the temperature will drop, it won't be nearly as significant as the visible light spectrum. That is - it gets darker, but not (greatly) colder. (One of the several good reasons why R Coronae Borealis was an ideal choice as a base model!)

At both poles, life will be mostly micro-organisms extremophiles (and there may be almost nothing on the cold pole; though I am toying with the idea of a sea (possibly frozen) occupying that area, so there may be life there below the surface). The bulk of the life is around the terminator region. Floiage varies in colour the closer you move to the sunward side, gradually become darker (because of the additional pigments requires for photosynthesis) towards the dark side. (Plants will also change colour during the dimming period, going darker via those same pigments... Which of course comes as a terrible shock to an oblivious civilisation...!)

So yeah, I've thought a great deal about the boundary conditions, which is why I'm now in a position to actually start thinking about the flora and fauna in more than very vague terms!



¹Tide-locking is a function of initial angular momentum, not distance. You get tide-locked planets around red dwarf stars or close in most often because the rate of tide-locking increases with distance. Anodrliane is assumed to have had a very low initial angular momentum for what ever reason.

[Palanan]

Originally Posted by boomwolf
If you want another example of an alien mind, from a book I've long forgotten it's name there were some aliens that looked like bipedal wolves….

Broken Crown is correct, these are the Tines from A Fire Upon the Deep. Definitely not bipedal; they used their mouths in concert to manipulate what they needed to.

As I recall, they had special sensory patches which transmitted ultrasonic carrier waves, which was how the different individuals communicated and shared a common consciousness. It's been a long, long while since I've read it, but I seem to recall a sadistic villain who captured and isolated individuals from their pack-mind, with the result being a horrific descent into insanity.

Definitely a long time since I read it, but I remember very well how it blew me away at the time. Some of the references to internet technology are very outdated by now, but the overall concepts are impressive and the book is quite a read. Very much recommended--although if you have time to read just one, I'd say go with A Deepness in the Sky.

Originally Posted by Bulhakov
Also Deepness in the Sky has spider-like aliens ;)

...I was just not gonna mention that.

Originally Posted by Aotrs Commander
Most of these questions I've already asked and researched up on.

It does sound like you've been doing a fair amount of background research.

Do you, by any chance, have a list of references?

[Aotrs Commander]

It does sound like you've been doing a fair amount of background research.

I have a large spread sheet of calcualted data...!

Do you, by any chance, have a list of references?

Not really; most of it was stuff I found by just googling around the subject and terms that cropped up. (Google things ike tide-locke Earth or exoplanets and tide-locking.)

Though this paper about the stabilising effect of cloud feedback was probably one of the more important ones. (Essentially, they did some modelling and found that if you get a planet with a lot of stellar flux (i.e energy from the sun), you get more clouds and the planetary albedo rises and keeps the temperature more stable.

Particularly important for Andorlaine given that it's sun is 20000 times as luminous as Sol. The planet gets 75% more solar flux than Earth does, but because this pushes the albedo up (to an extrapolated 0.54), the global equilibrium temperature is only 4K more than Earth's.

Wikipedia's article on the habitability of red dwarf stars is a good place to start.

I also drew some inspiration from the artist's impression of Gliese 667 Cc; one look at that and I decided I NEEDED to have a distant biarny pair in the background for artistic effect!

[Palanan]

Originally Posted by Aotrs Commander
Not really; most of it was stuff I found by just googling around the subject and terms that cropped up.

Are you familiar with SolStation? They're mainly focused on nearby stars, most within 10 pc, but their individual star profiles are pretty exhaustive and they link to some good resources.

Originally Posted by Aotrs Commander
Particularly important for Andorlaine given that it's sun is 20000 times as luminous as Sol.

Gawd. You say the planet is 104 AU out; how many AU is that from the star's surface?

Originally Posted by Aotrs Commander
[Andorlaine] is assumed to have had a very low initial angular momentum for what ever reason.

Maybe a massive impact early on?

Originally Posted by Aotrs Commander
I also drew some inspiration from the artist's impression of Gliese 667 Cc; one look at that and I decided I NEEDED to have a distant biarny pair in the background for artistic effect!

This is one of my favorites; I have this as my wallpaper from time to time. It really is gorgeous.

[Aotrs Commander]

Are you familiar with SolStation? They're mainly focused on nearby stars, most within 10 pc, but their individual star profiles are pretty exhaustive and they link to some good resources.

Interesting, though I couldn't get the maps too work (something prevented Java from running them.) Work remembering though.

Gawd. You say the planet is 104 AU out; how many AU is that from the star's surface?

104. (Andorlaine is 104.6 AU out - even at a massive 96 Sol radii, the star is only 0.44 AU). It's very hot, though 6900K (it's a G0 yellow supergaint), hense the luminoisty of about 18800 Sol.

(By the by boys and girls, this means Andorlaine's solar year is just under 1200 Earth-years...)

Maybe a massive impact early on?

That was definitely among my primary theorhetical contenders, yes.

[Ravens_cry]

Even typical races like elves and dwarves are pretty hard to get into their headspace when you consider they generally live for hundreds, if not thousands, of years.
I would say, for an RPG, what is alien is too alien when a DM can unequivocally say, without exception in any situation, 'No, your race would not do that'.

[SiuiS]

So did you ever find anything on why scientists believe all sentient life would likely be bipedal, etc.?

[Ravens_cry]

So did you ever find anything on why scientists believe all sentient life would likely be bipedal, etc.?

There was the dinosauroid, but that's pretty much considered to be overly anthrocentric these days. Now, strictly bipedal as opposed to humanoid is somewhat likely on Earth for vertebrates, as they developed on a four limb plan, and evolution largely works with what it has (purposing something into a manipulator) than making something new, but even then, that doesn't necessarily mean bipedal. You might get centauroids like the elephant, which turned its nose into a manipulator. On an alien planet, with an alien evolutionary history, other patterns could emerge, and if you add directed change, through magic or plausible technology, well, the sky is not even the limit then.

[JusticeZero]

As much as I approve of alien settings, have to give my usual warning here. That Is, you are nowhere near as clever as you think you are, and your world is ten times trickier than you think it is. There are going to be loopholes in your world, huge ones that you won't know about until someone, maybe a player, hacks the holy heck out of the world in what will suddenly be obvious as a blindingly obvious way. This will make you go back to start to adapt the world to fit.