by Scott Roberts
July 16, 2001

Kirk: "Bones, there's a thing out there!"
McCoy: "Why is any object we don't understand always called a thing?!"
— Star Trek: The Motion Picture

The main reason last week's column didn't get done is because its author was diligently working to get the new Skotos game, Galactic Emperor: Succession ready for prime-time. While the previous column advertised coverage of romance in online prose games – and I'll cover that subject in the future – this week, I'd like to talk about the challenges inherent in playing races other than the standard human in online prose games.

Stranger in a Strange Land

Robert Anson Heinlein's book "Stranger in a Strange Land" presented the story of a young man, Valentine Michael Smith, who was brought up by an alien race. An interstellar take on the boy-raised-by-wolves tale, this outstanding novel investigates how someone with no knowledge or experience of human society would interpret our customs, cultures, and behaviors. Notably, perhaps, it provides us with more of a truly alien viewpoint than many previous works dealing with actual aliens do.

The predominant difficulty in creating and crafting alien characters (or in fantasy worlds, humanoid or monstrous races) is that we can only imagine what sorts of societies might arise outside of the human. In writing the Galactic Encyclopedia, I tried to provide players in GE: Succession with enough of a concept of an alien society and mindset to be able to convincingly play alien races without resorting to making them simply menacingly human. Having been given nothing but artwork depicting alien forms and one-paragraph general descriptions, it was my task to give players in these games a picture of why the society of Succession worked the way it did.

The aliens had to be interesting and definitely different from humans, yet they needed to also be easily understandable. While it's unlikely that humanity will encounter societies as easily understood as those in Galactic Emperor in the real world, trying to create aliens that are truly alien doesn't work in an online prose game. Such aliens as one discovers in some of the best hard science fiction work well only in novels. Players need to be able to get into the concepts and society of the alien race they're going to play, and be able to do so well. Those who encounter such aliens need to have a basic idea of how to interact with them. For the truly alien, not only is roleplaying them incredibly difficult, it's also too much like work.

Biology and Behavior

Each of the alien guides for Succession contains data on the basic questions a human might ask about a species. How does its body work? How does it reproduce, and does it have family units? How does it perceive the world around it? I attempted to take these starting points and turn them into a society which seemed plausible, given the starting environments of each species and the equipment they had to deal with them. What culture would develop from a jellyfish-like aquatic race? What sort of art would a species that sees the universe only psionically – through the senses of others – create? How does a former slave race conquer other star systems? Fantastically different biological structures lead to a variety of different ways of looking at the world and a dramatically varied range of possible personalities for these species.

Often overlooked by players of alien and fantasy races alike is the means by which their biology will determine their behavior. Long-lived races like elves (with the concomitant reduction in fertility rates) probably do not feel the same biological imperative to reproduce that shorter-lived humans do. Yet the sexually-charged elf is one of the more common non-human character types encountered on online prose games. Races with different numbers of fingers or other appendages probably use different mathematical systems – our base-10 system is ultimately a product of what we started counting with, after all. A race that has a more difficult time finding food than humans might consider post-death cannibalism to be not only the norm, but a moral obligation on the part of the person involved; wasting calories which might keep others alive would be the sin rather than the act of consumption itself. Races with different types of senses, ranging from color blindness to a radio sense, would produce radically different types of art than our own.

Thus, players who are running characters of a different race – be it fantasy or alien – should strive to do a little thinking and research in their characterizations. Don't blindly accept stereotypes to base your character off of. Instead, try to imagine what the effects of biology and evolution would do to the being you're creating. Consider lifespan, reproductive habits, diet, family structure, senses, and whatever data you can get on the culture that you're trying to emulate.

Elves Behaving Badly

One of the things which I have seen done badly far more than I've seen it done well is the portrayal of "stock fantasy races". Elves – those ephemeral, long-lived beings – are often played as either too flighty or haughty. Dwarves, short and squat, long-lived and hardy, are all too often played as gruff and dour stereotypes. Most roleplaying I've encountered on online prose games of fantasy races brings to mind the blackface shows of the past, where white actors would blacken their faces and pantomime, in ways we today find quite offensive, stereotypical black people. Rather than any attempt to actually get into the minds and conceive of the cultures of their subjects, those who try to play aliens or fantasy races instead focus on the sharp differences between their culture and the player's culture. Things which seem odd or strange – distinguishing traits of the race – are overexaggerated and become, ultimately, common.

The sad part about this is that even when an alternative viewpoint becomes available, it quickly is absorbed into the mainstream and turns into another stereotype. After R.A. Salvatore's Drizzt Do'Urden character became popular amongst fans of the Forgotten Realms Dungeons and Dragons campaign, players around the country started playing rebel dark elves who became good "against all odds". You could probably populate an entire city at this point with the number of totally good drow elves that were created in the wake of Salvatore's novels.

Striking a Balance

Striking a balance between playing a stereotypical representative of a race and playing an alternative take on one can be a difficult task. Most folks want their characters to be memorable; but there's significant pressure (especially in the realm of established fantasy-race types) to conform to a standard. Dwarves must speak in gravelly voices and have beards. Vulcans need to be coldly logical (unless they're half-human, like Spock... an example of uniqueness turned into stereotype that predates the Drizzt example above).

A good measuring point for balance in your characterization of an alien or fantasy race is to compare it to the deviation from the norm you would normally use to create a human character. One might say, "Most humans in culture X in profession Y have these traits; but my character has the following differences." The same thing can be done with fantasy or alien races. Begin with an acceptance of the norms for the race in question, then ask yourself how you want to differ from those norms to make that character unique. Most individuals don't polarize at one extreme or another when they play humans; they shouldn't do the same thing when they play different races. Variations on a theme are what makes different characters interesting to interact with; not all halflings should be thieves, and not all Vulcans should be science officers.

Mannerisms

Another key to effective roleplaying of nonhumans is the variety and difference in mannerisms and speech that an alien might display. A simple example from the annals of fiction is the handshake. Humans consider handshaking to be an important social ritual in most cases; yet highly telepathic or empathic races might well eschew the intimate forced contact of flesh-on-flesh which would bring them too close to the other individual's mind. Quirks and differences in the social mannerisms of aliens can make the difference between a human-in-an-alien-suit and a convincingly-played alien.

Speech (if your alien speaks) can also differ. Accents are used to great effect in roleplaying face-to-face; peculiar idioms and phrases make the difference between Sean Connery as James Bond and Kevin Costner as Robin Hood. For example, the Iyali from Galactic Emperor: Succession effectively worship numerical constants and the logic of mathematics (though they are not, by and large, entirely logical creatures). It's entirely plausible that an Iyali might have superstitions about non-prime numbers, eschewing joining groups of four people or refusing to vote on resolutions which involve the number six. They may even speak in sentences only comprised of odd numbers of words! Developing speech patterns that are distinctive and different can make your aliens truly unique.

Coming Soon

Next week, we'll take a look at romance in online prose games. You may even see a few tips on how to meet some of those sexually charged elves. Until then, please give your feedback on the Forums!