This is just an example of how you can create your own aliens tailored for your Cluster.
Diet:
We roll a 12. The alien is a Carnivore.
Size:
We roll a 14. They are Horse-sized. Pretty large!
Body Covering:
We roll a 13. They are covered in Fur.
Average Attributes:
We need to roll for each attribute separately.
STR
We roll a 16 for 8.
COOR
We roll a 16 again for another 8.
AGY
We roll a 19 for a 10. Excellent! It moves well.
END
We roll a 16 for another 8.
CHAR
We roll a 21 for 11. Humans see this creature as very attractive.
INT
We roll a 13 for 6. Moderately smart, too.
PSI
We’ll switch tables for rolling PSI and Luck. We roll a 23 for a PSI of 5. This species is powerfully psionic!
LUCK
We roll a 15 for a LUCK of 2. Quite lucky!
Manipulator
We roll a 22 for Divided Tentacle - DT. This alien has an average COOR of 5, so let’s give it 3 divisions of its tentacles.
Locomotors
A 7. The alien moves on its Tentacles. That is interesting with an AGY of 10!
Life Cycle
We roll an 18. Nymph-Young-Adult, like a grasshopper. No egg or larval stage.
Reproduction
We roll a 13. Interesting! There are two sexes. Like humans, this species is male-female!
Senses
We roll 2d6 and get an 7, so we’ll roll 7 times. We get Electrical 0, Touch 0, Smell 2, Vision 3, Hearing 2, and Taste 0.. So it hunts by sight and smell primarily.
Bailey-Wolfe Index Rating
We roll 18, 9, 14, 17, 8, 5, for Neotropism of 3 - moderately interested in new things, Sociability -4 - fractious and bickering, Instict 0 - neither instinctual nor learned behavior predominates, Logic 3 - a moderately analytical species, Foresight -5 - yow! Severely short-sighted! And Pattern Recognition of -8 - almost everything has to be thoroughly thought out.
Species Traits:
We’ll assign it Lithe 2 for it’s AGY, Fluid 3 for its writhing movement, and Slick 2 for its pretty fur.
Own Name:
We’ll make up something - avoiding apostrophes, as they’re rather cliche! How about “Yustrim”?
Familiar Name:
Its most obvious feature is its locomotors/manipulators. Let’s call them “Ocs” for its resemblance to an octopus
Prejudicial Name:
With that PSI rating, nothing but “Spooks” will do!
Shorthand Descriptor
CA.HO.FR.DT.TC.SS.3.-4.0.3.-5.-8
Very, very cool. I could build up a picture of the alien in my mind's eye as I read down the construction sequence, and it made sense, and I've never read Starcluster so I had no scale concept on the results, except for your descriptors.
ReplyDeleteOne thing I missed was method of communication - do you define it in your construction sequence, or work it out from the picture you build as you go? For example, being strong Psionics, the Ocs may use Psionic communication (and if so, can they then communicate with non-ocs who will have a different brain structure? And do you have to be psionic to hear them?) or, given their tentacles, do they communicate in an elbaborate sign language, perhaps assisted by psi?
Also, what is their native environment? Are they aquatic, land dwelling or aerial/arborial? Is this something that needs to be added in a table or worked out when the basic structure of the alien is created?
Sorry about all the questions, and I hope I'm not being boring and repeating stuff already covered, but I really like this construction system.
These are great questions, Kobold! I considered both communication and environment for parameters, but they seemed to be to be dependent parameters - the make up of the alien in other respects may dictate the method of communication or environment - so I left it to the GM/group's judgement. Otherwise, the random method might give you a hooved leg as a locomotor for an aquatic species, or voice communication for an essentially deaf species. For the Ocs, either telepathy or sign language would be appropriate in addition to vocal communication - they have excellent hearing.
ReplyDelete-clash