THE EIGHT TRACK MIND

Number Five

(Is Alive!)


August, 1994


    Well, here we are back again! I see after looking at the last go 
round that I promised nothing specific for this issue, so off to the 
official topic...  


HUMAN NATURE


HUMANS AND OTHER SENTIENTS


    That last bit of the title is my own slant on this whole business. 
What sort of nature should aliens and demi-humans have, and have they 
been portrayed in any convincing way in SF, Fantasy, and RPGs? Can we 
successfully role-play non-humans, and should we even try? Some 
suggest that it is in fact impossible to role-play a non-human and 
forbid them as player characters.  


    In many cases, non-humans are merely humans with slightly odd 
features or humans in unusual bodies. This is particularly true of 
television SF; an alien's only difference from a terrestrial human may 
be a ridge on the nose like Trek's Bajorans. This of course is a 
function of the general necessity to use human actors though 
occasionally puppetry, elaborate suits, or even computer animation is 
used to produce a more "alien" alien. But even if the creature looks 
alien it still often acts fairly human.  Even in role-playing games 
where it isn't necessary for a extraterrestrial or demi-human to be 
physically represented by a human the over all nature of the creature 
is either recognizably human or an exaggerated aspect of human nature.  


    Look at Trek's aliens. Klingons are savage, but honorable, 
warriors.  Essentially they're like some human barbarians. Cardassians 
are pretty much fascists. Romulans are imperialistic militarists. 
Ferrengis are greedy capitalists. These "aliens" are dominated by an 
aspect of human nature or culture. And when a character of an alien 
race gets more developed he or she becomes more like a complete human. 
The Klingon Worf shows compassion and love.  The Ferrengi Quark shows 
devotion and courage, sometimes. They aren't truly aliens.  


    Now in role-playing games as often as not character races end up 
being humans with special abilities. This of course is probably the 
fault of players who don't elect to create a different 
characterization as much or more than a lack in the design of the 
games. RuneQuest Glorantha makes some effort to make the races 
different, but I think to an extent they still are exaggerated partial 
humans and get played as such. One exception might be the Dragonewts; 
the intention with them is that they are incomprehensibly alien. The 
way this is supposed to be simulated is that 'newts start without real 
personality traits and as they grow they develop opposed pairs of 
traits with a certain amount of randomness as to which trait will 
dominate. As they go though the various life stages they have to reach 
balance in the pairs of traits.  Unfortunately this information isn't 
in current write ups of dragonewts and is only available in old 
Wyrm's Footnotes(the old Chaosium newsletter) and was recently 
repeated by Sandy Peterson on the RQ Digest. Most folk aren't aware of 
this so the alienness of 'newts is manifested by the 'newts acting 
like Daffy Duck.  


    It could be argued that a lot of basic human nature will be common 
to all intelligent species. And possibly most intelligent races will 
have a vaguely humanoid bodyshape. What sort of things will likely be 
common in most races?  


    1. An intelligent race will have some sort of appendage for 
manipulating things. These appendages will often resemble human hands, 
though something similar to an elephant's trunk would work fairly well 
and some sort of set of tentacles might work.  


    2. The creatures will probably walk more or less upright, at least 
part of the time. The manipulating appendages must be free to 
manipulate. Two legged designs should be fairly common as you need at 
least two legs and much more than that is not efficient. This doesn't 
mean that there couldn't be a race of centaur-like creatures, or 
tripedal creatures like Niven's Puppeteers.  


    3. They will generally have a verbal language. There's not a lot 
of chance of telepathy and there's difficulties in using visual 
signals or other senses like smell or taste for communication.  


    4. They won't be really small creatures; there is (probably) a 
certain minimum size for an intelligent creature's brain. So we won't 
likely see intelligent mouse sized aliens.  


    5. They will use tools of some sort, though these could take forms 
that we might not immediately recognize.  


    6. They will likely have varied diets as such adaptability is 
probably one of the by-products of intelligence.  


    7. They will invest a lot of effort in raising their children. 
While they might not necessarily have families as we know them, there 
will still be sort of parental or group involvement in child raising.  


    8. They will have some form of social order. It may not be a 
government as such, but they will be organized by law or custom. I 
doubt that there'd be intelligent hermit races.  


    Hmmm, that doesn't narrow things down much, does it? Plus it 
should be noted that when we deal with fantasy races a lot of the 
things I've noted may not apply. However, a race that fits all the 
things I've listed is probably going to be somewhat comprehensible, 
and thus describable.  


    But...what about really alien creatures? How do we portray a 
virtually incomprehensible non-human without just spouting gibberish? 
I'm not sure, but I'd suggest that even a really unusual creature is 
at least going to be slightly understandable in some way since we're 
all subject to the same physical laws. But that's not necessarily the 
case in Call of Cthulhu or potentially other settings. In some cases 
gibberish may be the only way to go, but apparent gibberish that 
really has meaning is better. Observe the Vorlon ambassador Kosh on 
Babylon 5; his speech has meaning but it is strange and cryptic.  


    I guess that while we can't really "become the alien" we can at 
least simulate certain aspects of a non-human that correspond to human 
nature and fake the rest.  


[The Taelons on Earth: Final Conflict, particularly Da'an, convey 
alienness largely by their movements. For all that they are humanoid,
they still seem alien. Hard to do in an RPG.]     
    

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