Well, the picture I linked is that of a male Ygwans. In fact, Ygwans are only male, with a unique female queen (per nest). Their only goal in life is to prepare for the mating ritual, where all who want fight it off until only one is left (survival of the fittest). This gives Ygwans a rather different approach to life.

I was thinking the picture would be very good for a male in your society. I dont remember if you have different castes for the males, but certainly, having pronounced sexual differences would be nice.

I _personally_ dont really like the whole judgind a book by its cover mentality, but you have to remember that we are in the domain of fiction. Your Ceticians are already rather disturbing and will test your players xenophobia, so maybe you can give them a break with the Kovaunn.
I think my problem is that when I saw your model I thought "Spiro the Dragon" :-S
Maybe you could inspire yourself from Dinotopia ? I thought the dinosaurs were rather cool in that movie, and a species based on the velociraptor would certainly work.
Although I dunno why I still think something looking like the Ygwann would look rather cool :-P

The fact that you are doing fiction means that it would be prefereable IMHO that you stick to some basic rules that are used in comics and animation.
As SnS points out, using cliches allow you to convey the big strokes of a personality. Dialogues can then allow you to surprise the player, or add finer details.
Just like in the best animation movies, the bad guys might _look_ like bad guys, but turn out to be rather nice people, or have plausible motives.
No need to shy away from using cliches "just because" :)
As long as you dont go into the "let's take fantasy races and put them in space", I really dont see the problem.
Use things like "square jaw means strong willpower" or "low brow means low intelligence", even if it seems insulting or politically incorrect, it is something that we are used to.
It's up to you then to play on this to surprise or teach a thing or two about tolerance.

IMHO :P

I wish I hadnt hurt my wrist, I'd love to see if I can come up with a better look for your race.

I think that most species should fit with standard types, but there should be one or two that go against the types. Also, when you mentioned killer Teddy Bears, I immediately thought of Bubbacub from Sundiver. And speaking of things that you thought couldn't hurt anything, but it turns out they're pretty kick-ass - remeber Yoda.

Or those cute little aliens in SpaceQuest :) LOL

Your post looks good. I haven't read all of the replies, so forgive me if what I'm about to say has been said already...

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Original post by Wavinator Males have been reengineered into 3 different genetic castes: Laborer, Technician, Servant Males are forbidden the combat arts, especially the martial arts Kovaunn naturally have retractable claws, can spit poison and inject poison through a stinger on their tail. These traits have been removed for males, but amplified with nanotech among females.

This is the only part I didn't like. With all of the pheremone technology and genetic engineering I don't see why the females have to fear the males this much and make them quite so weak. After all, we're talking about 4/5 of the population being basically incapable of defending the clan.

Can't you just make them _slightly_ smaller and weaker than females, perhaps with no poison - so they are still capable and useful, but could never hope to beat a female in ritual combat. They can still be used as cannon fodder if it comes to it...

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Original post by Wavinator Basics: The Kovaunn are a playable reptilian race whose core cultural focus is "survival of the fittest," covert competition and constant change.

What does reptilian mean in this context? What are their reptilian features?

The society strongly reminds me of the Scarrans and Klingons.

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Females are winged, but the gene has been excised from most males (concept model)

Why?

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An Executrix must maintain an alliance of Brood Sisters composed of the engineering, support or bridge command staff and their harems. A Kovaunn ship is therefore democratic, like a pirate ship, and an unreasonable or weak Executrix can expect to “have an accident.”

That's not democracy, that's despotism.

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Overt warfare is the way of the male, and therefore inferior: Instead, ritual combat, stealth attack or subversion is preferable

I don't buy that explanation. The male cannot engage in overt warfare. He has not the training: the combat arts are forbidden to him.

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The Kovaunn are more developed, but I’d still appreciate comments, improvement, ideas for history or vignettes, or any other thoughts you may have. Is there anything that doesn't make sense, or is too derivative or unbelievable?

I think that matriarchal societies are rather dull. If your intention is to shock the player with something unexpected, this won't do it.

I don't know how long after the Sieger invasion this is set. Unless it's been many generations, I would still expect resistance to the new order, perhaps even some male-dominated Kovaunn colonies hidden away from the busy areas of the system. Why are there no Schisms?

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Original post by Mayrel What does reptilian mean in this context? What are their reptilian features?

Snake-like skin, tail, lizard-like physiology. Egg-laying, that kind of stuff.

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The society strongly reminds me of the Scarrans and Klingons.

:P The Klingons command such presence of place in the sci-fi cannon I don't see how anyone can design a warrior race without running up against them.

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Quote: Females are winged, but the gene has been excised from most males (concept model) Why?

Making males ground-bound helps makes them tactically inferior and easier to control.

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Quote: An Executrix must maintain an alliance of Brood Sisters composed of the engineering, support or bridge command staff and their harems. A Kovaunn ship is therefore democratic, like a pirate ship, and an unreasonable or weak Executrix can expect to “have an accident.” That's not democracy, that's despotism.

Call it democratic despotism, then. As mentioned, this is like pirate ships in the Carribean in the 1600 - 1700s, where the crew submitted to a strong captain but expected to have a say over the operation of the ship.

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Quote: Overt warfare is the way of the male, and therefore inferior: Instead, ritual combat, stealth attack or subversion is preferable I don't buy that explanation. The male cannot engage in overt warfare. He has not the training: the combat arts are forbidden to him.

The male can NO LONGER engage in overt warfare to the level he was able to in the past. However, like deeply ingrained sayings that stay with us despite the changing of the times (don't put the cart before the horse; for want of a nail the kingdom was lost) the idea that mass warfare, which was wasteful in lives and material is tactically inferior has stayed with them. In fact, it can be likened to stereotypes about groups that have stayed with us despite ample evidence to the contrary (women are bad at math, for instance)

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I don't know how long after the Sieger invasion this is set. Unless it's been many generations, I would still expect resistance to the new order, perhaps even some male-dominated Kovaunn colonies hidden away from the busy areas of the system. Why are there no Schisms?

I don't have an exact timeline set yet, but it's probably about 8 to 10 generations after the event, with the culture really getting back their spacefaring capabilities (interstellar rather than interplanetary) at about the time the player starts playing.

I think that there's still plenty of intrigue and resistance, but it has gone underground in the way that subversives must do when they're fighting a strong empire. You probably have pockets of terrorism and sabotage with sympathetic females and not-so-engineered males cooperating. Maybe you even have some tribal regressed techno-savages living out existences in now secret deep outposts here and there in the system. I'm not opposed to that.

I think a true schism would need ideological nurturance which given what the Kovaunn have been through, I don't see a space for (but am willing to entertain if it's good enough!)

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Original post by g Quote: Original post by Wavinator Males have been reengineered into 3 different genetic castes: Laborer, Technician, Servant Males are forbidden the combat arts, especially the martial arts Kovaunn naturally have retractable claws, can spit poison and inject poison through a stinger on their tail. These traits have been removed for males, but amplified with nanotech among females. This is the only part I didn't like. With all of the pheremone technology and genetic engineering I don't see why the females have to fear the males this much and make them quite so weak. After all, we're talking about 4/5 of the population being basically incapable of defending the clan. Can't you just make them _slightly_ smaller and weaker than females, perhaps with no poison - so they are still capable and useful, but could never hope to beat a female in ritual combat. They can still be used as cannon fodder if it comes to it...

For variety's sake maybe some parts of the society haven't been so ruthlessly thorough with the genome, and so you have this. As to cannon fodder, though, when it comes to open war (if it comes to that, a last resort) I saw them actually using VR and drugs to turn the males into meat sheilds.

As a player you won't be able to play a male unless I create a rogue colony somewhere, which I'm not sure works with the theme here.

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Original post by sunandshadow IMO characters and races should look like their personalities.

Hmmm... I have some very strong but mixed feelings about this one. Technically you're right, characterization is one of the most powerful tools a storyteller has to summarize the salient points of a character quickly.

What I strongly dislike about this is two-fold: Firstly, it has no bearing on reality, and if you want to take the position of fiction as conveyor of essential truths (I'm not... or maybe I am) then matching heavy brows/dark skin/snub nose/whatever to stereotypes dominant in the culture is not doing the job of telling the truth.

Secondly, science fiction has one very important job of challenging preconceived notions and ideas. One highly traditional challenge to readers / players is that things that look horrific might think like you, care for the same things you do and even be able to share a laugh. We've switched out of the 1950s, when things with green tentacles wanted to invade us to kidnap our women (for god knows what reason!?!) to a place where we're ready to have our barriers expanded.

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That's not to say that you can't have a shy, tender-hearted cave troll, but you have to express its personality by giving it soft eyes, shy postures, and matching dialogue.

Okay, I'm going to challenge you on this one: Is a demure expression an INATE part of being shy, or is it a series of sociobiological cues which plug in to a whole series of other cues? On this note, Larry Niven did something interesting with the kzinti and the human smile. In the tiger-like kzinti culture, baring fangs is a predatory sign of challenge, and humans get killed for making the mistake of trying to be nice. I think Niven is giving a nod to the fact that just because sociobiological cues look one way to us doesn't mean that there's something set in stone saying it has to be that way for everyone.

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With a race you can't really give it dialogue except through NPCs and books, so it's even more important that the graphics express the personality. Why don't you try looking at velociraptors and other running dinosaurs, they seem to be kind of like your race. Or look at the Kzin, this is like that race with the gender dynamic reversed.

I appreciate the advice, and by challenging the status quo I'm definitely risking a lack of player identification.

But I suspect that identification will come over time with learned interaction. I won't leave the Kovaunn looking like Spyro the dragon, but I also don't just want to run to the most stereotypically convenient thing that's in the mass unconscious.

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Oh, and _The Last Hawk_ is a cool sf book with female leaders and male harems.

Thank you, I'll look for this.

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BTW I think it's cool that you're doing a matriarchy. I've designed two matriarchies and I have to say that yours looks nothing like either of mine, lol, but you have definitely made me curious to learn more about what males are like, what harem social dynamics are like, how nesting is handled, whether females try to find fiercer male mates because they want strong daughters and so work against their own genetic engineering, whether there are throwback smarter males, what females think about their sons, what kind of relationship females have with their sisters, how children are raised, etc.

Wow! Lots of great questions. And to be honest, I've got only the thinnest of ideas on the interpersonal dynamics.

Something I wonder about this society is what their concept of love is like. It seems to me that in a society with such hard strictures around vulnerability that they might take the steam off with rituals. A comparison would be American society where males are sanctioned against expressions of physical affinity, unlike females. It's been argued that one of the outlets for this is contact sports where men can actually express emotions of support and caring so long as it is carefully masked in the overtones of competition and tactics.

What I don't want to do in answer, though, is simply reverse human gender roles from centuries ago.

I'm thinking about things like what if certain types of sniping aggression are signs of affection? A male might perform a task slightly substandard or even criticize (in highly ritualistic bounds) a female as a way of drawing attention.

I like the idea of females being drawn to stronger males and could see this being true if a male was strong in a way that complimented the female. This would definitely work against their engineering, and maybe the institution responsible for maintaining it would be at odds with the mores of the general population (as the clergy versus the youth in Iran).
This could be a meaty source of conflict.

One thing I have to decide is how much faith lies in the tribe versus in the state. This will help me answer your questions about nesting and familial relations. Is a son given away to forge alliances, thus creating a tension between needing to make him the best candidate versus not teaching him too much?

Perhaps Kovaunn are highly patriotic, and given one's male children over to the state for testing and augmentation is one's duty to the state?

Lots of possibilities (I'd appreciate any ideas you or anyone else may have).

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Original post by ahw Well, the picture I linked is that of a male Ygwans. In fact, Ygwans are only male, with a unique female queen (per nest). Their only goal in life is to prepare for the mating ritual, where all who want fight it off until only one is left (survival of the fittest). This gives Ygwans a rather different approach to life.

Haha, now what if that pic were of the females, and the males looked small and feral?

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I was thinking the picture would be very good for a male in your society. I dont remember if you have different castes for the males, but certainly, having pronounced sexual differences would be nice.

I have some ideas about neck length and head shape that represent climate-based ethnic differences among the Kovaunn, but I'm not sure I'm comfortable with the idea of wildly varying the two. More important, if I did, it would again be to challenge stereotypes.

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I _personally_ dont really like the whole judgind a book by its cover mentality, but you have to remember that we are in the domain of fiction. Your Ceticians are already rather disturbing and will test your players xenophobia, so maybe you can give them a break with the Kovaunn.

LOL! That's what the damn Terrans are for!!! [grin] I figure by default everyone's going to start out as a human. One of my strongest pet peeves in junk food movie sci-fi has been the whole "if it's green, slimy and quivering, it must be evil... nuke it!"

I'd like to not simply reverse the stereotypes, but provide a number of challenges: For instance, consider an H.R. Geiger alien replete with multiple jaws that teaches botany while patiently explaining that just because he was once engineered and enslaved to be a killing machine doesn't mean that he has to be. (Okay, so I'm drifting into Finding Nemo territory... "fish are friends!") Anyways... while I won't do exactly that, it catches some of the undertones of what I'd like to achieve.

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I think my problem is that when I saw your model I thought "Spiro the Dragon" :-S

Yeah, again, my crappy modeling. There aren't enough poly's on it to express complexity and so the smooth shape looks like melted cartoon clay.

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Maybe you could inspire yourself from Dinotopia ? I thought the dinosaurs were rather cool in that movie, and a species based on the velociraptor would certainly work.

I'm serious, if I put a velociraptor into this game they're going to be Buddhist monk vegetarians! Defying the stereotypes may disasterously fail, but there's no point in doing this game if I fall a step away from the Star Trek "aliens with funny noses" mentality. (btw, I'd have made the Cardassians the Bajorans and vice versa.... oh, look, a race of sympathetic spiritual reptiles and the smooth, shiny people trying to kill them).

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The fact that you are doing fiction means that it would be prefereable IMHO that you stick to some basic rules that are used in comics and animation. As SnS points out, using cliches allow you to convey the big strokes of a personality. Dialogues can then allow you to surprise the player, or add finer details. Just like in the best animation movies, the bad guys might _look_ like bad guys, but turn out to be rather nice people, or have plausible motives. No need to shy away from using cliches "just because" :) As long as you dont go into the "let's take fantasy races and put them in space", I really dont see the problem. Use things like "square jaw means strong willpower" or "low brow means low intelligence", even if it seems insulting or politically incorrect, it is something that we are used to.

Here's the question: How did we become used to it? There are certain tropes that have become ingrained simply by use (or overuse). Yet at some point someone came along and offered a visual challenge to some of these stereotypes and succeeded. The most successful in sci-fi I'd imagine were the Jawas and E.T. the Extraterrestrial. The jawas were just plain menacing with the glowing eyes, and E.T. with the whole spindly neck thing could have been a monster (except the face reportedly was modeled after Einstein)

I've said to people that I'm trying to do a game that captures some of the essential nature of science fiction. If I switched to velociraptors or more beastly looking things to represent the Kovaunn I think I'd be selling that principle out. Yes, I think it's smart to rely on character cues in some cases, but I really think that if a visual form is going to achieve what a written form has famously achieved you've got to be willing to take risks and break away from the teat of stereotypes.

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I wish I hadnt hurt my wrist, I'd love to see if I can come up with a better look for your race.

Aye! No, definitely take care of something like that-- the last thing people like us needs is carpal.

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Original post by Nathaniel Hammen I think that most species should fit with standard types, but there should be one or two that go against the types. Also, when you mentioned killer Teddy Bears, I immediately thought of Bubbacub from Sundiver. And speaking of things that you thought couldn't hurt anything, but it turns out they're pretty kick-ass - remeber Yoda.

I have to ask what would your personal experience be if you

A) had to interact with creatures that did not fit the traditional feature mold (spread worldwide now by Disney, methinks)

B) got a chance to play them

What setbacks or blocks would you experience? And what, short of altering the character's physical appearance, would warm you to them?

I suspect that when people start interacting as humans (a known quantity) over and over with races that violate stereotypes they will either reject the depiction (claiming bad art quality) or get used to it, just as with E.T. or as you mentioned, Yoda.

before you fall asleep reading : GO AND WATCH FARSCAPE !
(for our current discussion, I would suggest you watch Bone To Be Wild, episode 21 of the first season. A classic tale of judging people on their appearance only)

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Original post by Wavinator Haha, now what if that pic were of the females, and the males looked small and feral?

Actually, I wholeheartedly agree with this idea !
I didn't mention it, but the Ygwan female, from what little I recall (since they are extremely reclusive, hidden deep inside their fortress, a bit like an ant queen, if you will) are probably rather big since once inseminated by the winning male they have to spawn a whole generation of little Ygwans...
that picture shows a male feeding a baby Ygwan.

So yeah, I guess you could go with females being generally bigger than males.
In fact that could be rather a cool thing. I can already imagine females looking like the Ygwan picture, covered in battle scars, with a dozen of yapping skinny males running around them to get their attention.
I think if the physical domination was so pronounced, it would make much more sense for males to be dominated.
Besides if you check your biology books, I believe that species in which males are more common than females would see such an evolution (think "arthropods" here), and female would naturally dominate.

I realise you might not want to alter your history that drastically, but hey, why not if it helps things and makes a better, more interesting race overall ?

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I have some ideas about neck length and head shape that represent climate-based ethnic differences among the Kovaunn, but I'm not sure I'm comfortable with the idea of wildly varying the two. More important, if I did, it would again be to challenge stereotypes.

Well, again, think of spiders... :)

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LOL! That's what the damn Terrans are for!!! [grin] I figure by default everyone's going to start out as a human. One of my strongest pet peeves in junk food movie sci-fi has been the whole "if it's green, slimy and quivering, it must be evil... nuke it!"

Yeah, that's fair enough, but then if your whole philosophy is to challenge the player's expectations, you REALLY need to work on a GOOD mechanism for dialog/interaction with other species.
And I dont mean a dialog tree, I mean something REALLY good. Like an iconic language, with the ability to make faces and gestures (and hope you are not questioning the sexual tendencies of your newly acquainted alien friend in the process *grin*)

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I'd like to not simply reverse the stereotypes, but provide a number of challenges: For instance, consider an H.R. Geiger alien replete with multiple jaws that teaches botany while patiently explaining that just because he was once engineered and enslaved to be a killing machine doesn't mean that he has to be. (Okay, so I'm drifting into Finding Nemo territory... "fish are friends!") Anyways... while I won't do exactly that, it catches some of the undertones of what I'd like to achieve.

Obviously, just turning the cliches on their head is as simplistic as using them straightforward...
"Oh, OK, I get it, in this game all the nasty looking are nice, and all the cute looking are good. Got it." You achieve nothing, then.
Instead you need (IMHO) to do like in, well, all the great manga and anime I have seen throughout my life. Hayao Miyazaki, does it particularly well in every movie I have seen from him, be it Castle in the Sky or Princess Mononoke. With his "baddies" having credible motives and never doing bad things "just because", but rather because they think it is the right thing to do (and the thing that you would probably do if you were in their shoes).

Also, you should remember than the longer you know something that up to now was alien to you, the deeper you analyze them when making your preconceptions.
Say I meet reptilian/saurian aliens. My first perception will be inherited from my experience with reptiles so far : ie snakes. But as I get to meet more and more of the given species, I get to notice and associate various physical traits with various behaviour. This is a process of classification, that's done by your brain whether you want it or not. You can fight it and obviously change your assumptions about elements you had previously misunderstood, but it's still there.
The more saurians I meet, the more I realise they are just like us, there are nice ones and nasty ones, such is life. I'll have, through my positive or negative experiences, prejudices against such and such physical traits (I decidedly assume that all shaved heads with large muscles and jail tattoos are skinheads, and yet I recently met one who is actually a Maori, despite looking more like a Belfast docker, and he is as sound as you can get...), background traits (all people coming from the suburbs are trailer trash material ? Yet that's where _I_ come from), and so on and so forth (you support such and such team, such and such political party, etc).

Now the problem is how can you give that depth of variations in a species...

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Yeah, again, my crappy modeling. There aren't enough poly's on it to express complexity and so the smooth shape looks like melted cartoon clay.

No, no, the modelling is pretty good, I just mean the posture, and the general shape that you suggest, that's all.

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I'm serious, if I put a velociraptor into this game they're going to be Buddhist monk vegetarians! Defying the stereotypes may disasterously fail, but there's no point in doing this game if I fall a step away from the Star Trek "aliens with funny noses" mentality. (btw, I'd have made the Cardassians the Bajorans and vice versa.... oh, look, a race of sympathetic spiritual reptiles and the smooth, shiny people trying to kill them).

Well, the velociraptor in the Dinotopia movie is a pure library rat, a la "Giles" from Buffy, if you see what kind of character I am talking about. A very bright, very posh, and decidedly very British velociraptor.
And who said they are supposed to be bad ? Wouldn't _you_ be a bit prejudiced because you watched Jurassic Park ? Only one movie and you already have prejudices ? ;-)
Check this one out !

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Here's the question: How did we become used to it? There are certain tropes that have become ingrained simply by use (or overuse).

The fool always makes the same mistakes, the reasonable man learns from his mistakes, the wise man learns from other people mistakes.
What's a prejudice but a mistake we make about someone's personality ? :)

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I've said to people that I'm trying to do a game that captures some of the essential nature of science fiction. If I switched to velociraptors or more beastly looking things to represent the Kovaunn I think I'd be selling that principle out. Yes, I think it's smart to rely on character cues in some cases, but I really think that if a visual form is going to achieve what a written form has famously achieved you've got to be willing to take risks and break away from the teat of stereotypes.

That's very much an artistic opinion, and I can hardly question you on that. Besides I agree completely.
When I say velociraptor, I use it because it's, precisely, not you classic man with a scaly face mask on kind of cliche. You have to admit that a race of talking, non humanoid, saurians would be rather original. Maybe just stretch the concept even further, a bit like Giger did with his alien...

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Aye! No, definitely take care of something like that-- the last thing people like us needs is carpal.

LOL ! I actually dislocated the wrist at football, and it set itself back on its own, but the resulting pain in the tendons is very much what I imagine extreme carpal tunnel syndrome would be. Good thing I didnt break anything... now to find a nice idea for this lovely race :)

AND FOR THE LOVE OF ALL THINGS SACRED GO AND WATCH FARSCAPE !