Friday, October 29, 2021

The Zero-Template Challenge: The Rejects

 No, this isn't about a race called "the Rejects." I came up with a bunch of races that didn't make the cut because I couldn't quite make them work. I thought I'd lay them out and discuss some of the ideas that I rejected, because they might prove fruitful to you, dear reader, or they might inspire something with a looser set of restrictions than this fairly harsh challenge.

The Arctic Monkey

Features: Blue Skin [0]; Digitigrade [0]; Infravision [0]; Tail [0] Temperature Range (5° to 60°) [0]

So this was my first scratched-pad example that popped into my head.  Most of it works fine, and it even makes sense: this is a race native to a very cold environment and there are likely to be large temperature gradients, so it has learned to "see" by that temperature gradient. IR vision arguably has less problems with it than Ultravision does, so it could even prove to be a useful, if blurry, feature to have.

I have an issue with temperature range, though. A recurring theme you'll see throughout this series is that features look like disadvantages in the wrong context. It's not to say they're poorly balanced, but if you have a tightly defined set of assumptions about play, the more someone veers outside of that, the more of a problem they will have.  This race isn't too bad: they're mostly going to complain that you need to turn the heating down to the point where humans (Ranathim, Keleni, Karkadann, Mogwai...) start rubbing their arms and complaining that it's cold (Asrathi, Gaunt and Traders, in their space suits, might not mind, though). In an adventure, though, they're going to suffer a lot more in the heat. For example, in 90° requires an HT roll every 30 minutes to not lose one FP; the Arctic Monkey would need the same, but would lose 2 FP every time they failed the roll, and would start to lose fatigue at reasonable temperatures, like 70°.  This isn't so bad, not untenable, and balanced by the fact that they'd be fine when Ranathim are questioning their wardrobe choices.  But it does encourage us to ponder a question:

Who cares?

When's the last time you played Psi-Wars and made people roll HT for the heat?  I've run 4 games now, and only one was ever in an environment where characters might be concerned about heat. Much of a game is going to take place climate controlled environments, and characters have access to climate controlled armor.  And I've been fighting to get people out of armor.  If we made a race of sultry Ice Queens, or truly weird and horrifying creatures from beneath the ice, how are you going to know if they're covered up all the time?  Worse, when it does come up, nobody is going to remember, because it comes up so rarely!

There's a few things we can do to fix this, if we really wanted to focus on it.  First, let's change how this temperature thing works.  I quite like the mechanics of Low-Pressure Lungs, as it's easier to remember bands than it is to remember specific numbers. Humans risk losing 1 fatigue every 30 minutes when t's below 35°, or above 80° (though we can simplify this latter number to 90°).  They suffer a penalty to HT to resist this loss at -10° and lose one additional fatigue for all exertions after it hits 90° and 2 additional fatigue at over 120°.  If we wanted to "shift" our arctic aliens one band colder, that would mean they would be fine likely from about -10° to 35° (45°, rather than 55°); we might say they don't start suffering HT penalties for the cost until -60°, and they suffer the increased fatigue cost from 35° to 80° (55° band rather than 30° band) and then +2 additional fatigue from 90° to 120° and they start to burn after 120°.  Is that a feature? Well, I think technically what you're looking at is a slightly reduced comfort band (a quirk) and a slightly increased "hot" band (maybe a weird variation of Temperature Tolerance as a perk?), so probably a feature, and it's easier to remember: if it's normal for a human, it's hot for an Arctic Monkey, and if it's hot for a human, it's double-hot for an arctic monkey, and it's Cold for a human, it's normal for an Arctic Monkey, et cetera, you get the idea.

Next, I'd want to make the player of the Arctic Monkey think about temperature a lot. I'd give them technology that depends on low temperatures (quantum computers? Superconductors?) or some sort of benefit from natural ambient cold, as opposed to climate-controlled cold (or at least some reason to take the armor off and be subject to natural environmental conditions), and possibly some ability to adjust temperature (Cryokinesis).

That brings us to the second problem with this design: it doesn't really do anything interesting. You're hot everywhere, and you see in IR you look funny. A funny look is already "enough" for a visual medium, but for a game, we want a funny mechanic to emphasize our alien nature.  The proposals for making temperature more important would help, though.

I think if I turned this into a final race, I'd keep the blue skin, the lowered temperature band rather than the weird temperature tolerance, the IR vision and ditch the digitigrade and tail.  Add some temperature mechanic gameplay and I think we'd be alright.  I think blue-skinned, red-eyed people with white-or-black hair would be great.  Put them in the Arkhaian and make them allies of the Empire, perhaps with one achieving great success in the Imperial Navy, I dunno.

The Gasping Maggo-Pillar

Features: Born Biter 1 [0]; Light Exoskeleton [0]; High Pressure Lungs [0]; No Legs (Slithers) [0]; Potential Form [0].

Most of my flailing about with Zero-Template races was an effort to find a truly bizarre and physiologically strange race that I could do for zero points and fit into the Sylvan Spiral.  The zero point No Legs options seemed promising, so I started with Slithers.

"Slithers" would imply something like a naga: the race would still have a head and two arms, but would have a serpentine tail.  However, that also implies a degree of flexibility, or possibly a constriction attack, etc, all of which would cost points, so that was out. Rolls would almost be better, with something like a robot that has a humanoid torso and head atop a ball-structure that it moves around on, but that's not an alien, that's a robot.  

What else could reasonably limit the flexibility of a slitherer?  Well, what if we gave it an exoskeleton? Worms are still highly flexible, but maggots might not be. Can you have a 0-point exoskeleton? Here's what Space has to say:

On small insects (a rigid exoskeleton) is not much different from skin
Hmmm. Okay. Maybe. But it also doesn't cover the costs of much.  If a light exoskeleton justified buying DR and allowed you to avoid sunburn, it's a perk, right? Plus I think most people would imagine at least a DR 1. And in any case, a man-sized maggot is going to be horrifying.  That means a disad, and we can't do that.  What sort of slithering insectoid can we have? Oh, what about a caterpillar? Why must I always go with maggots? Ugh, anyway. They don't really slither so much as have lots and lots of legs, but I think we could arguable wave the difference; it might be a slithering thing that looks like a colorful caterpillar and have nice, soft fuzzy bits that make people go "Aww, I don't feel the immediate urge to murder it."

Born Biter is more me playing with whatever features I could jam on, and High Pressure Lungs might be, I dunno, it comes from a dense jungle world rich in oxygen (explaining its large size). The X-pressure Lungs are another good example of "features that feel like disadvantages" because I've never seen a Psi-Wars game take place in an environment with high atmospheric pressure.  At least you can sort of justify Low-Pressure Lungs by claiming that an asteroid has Trace atmosphere, you can treat it as Very Thin (You'll still suffocate, but you can walk around without a space suit on), and a moon might have Very Thin atmosphere, which you can breath like Thin, so it's plausible that it will come up, but it's implausible that high pressure worlds will come up unless we went out of our way to make them, likely the world the race is from, making them a "Dryad" race that never wants to leave its "Tree."  So, it's neat, but I'd ditch it.

Finally, if we're talking a magg... caterpillar, then we're talking about a larval form. Template Toolkits 2 has an interesting feature called potential form. It means that the character can make a one-way transformation at some point.  Our maggot caterpillar can become a horrifying beautiful fly-demon butterfly.  This means we can push our complex, expensive template down the line.

But why stop at one thing it can become? One interesting concept might be a race with more than two genders. How would that work? I don't know, we could do some research.  There are options like all three need to be involved (very exotic), or you run into things that are all able to breed, but the result of their breeding creates different things (an X and a Y always result in more Xs and Ys, but a Z and an X might result in a Z or a Y, and a Z and a Y might result in a Z or an X).  I seem to remember reading about actual animals that have this sort of construction.  But we might also imagine our race a bit like an ant: after it hits maturity, it morphs into one of the "Castes" of the hive and is permanently in that state: warrior, worker, queen, etc.  So we could give the player a choice of templates to choose from once they mature.

This is neat, but I'm not sure how nice this is when it comes to gameplay. In practice, you're just delaying your choice of alien race, and then choosing one later on. If you knew up front that you wanted to play a maggo-pillar queen why not, just, play a maggo-pillar queen right off the bat?  There's some narrative tension to be gained from the change, especially if the player has no control ("Let's roll to see what you become") but whatever benefits you get are lost once the change has happened (and a random change has, uh, some potential downsides as far as player experience is concerned).

I think a more interesting mechanic might be a race that can change its form at will.  Perhaps they cocoon for a day, and when they come out, they're in an upgraded form that can only last for so long before they tire, sleep and revert to their original form. This becomes like an intense, physical form of spell-preparation, where you know what you want, what you plan, and you build for it, but once you're set, you're committed.  But only for awhile, and then you can play with something else.

This concept arguably encroaches on the schticks of the Vikuthim or the Ithin-Kor, but I think there's enough room for multiple shape-changing bug-things, given different bug forms.

Incidentally, one concept I toyed with and discarded was this, from Template Toolkits 2:

If a race has a mouth, as most biological races do, and its parts offer more extensibility, flexibility, and opposability than do human mouthparts (e.g., a parrot’s beak and tongue), this can be pressed into service as an arm, usually Short and with No Physical Attack
"Is that maggo-pillar holding a blaster in its mouth? Can it shoot like that? Oh he just threw the safety with his side mandible. He's... gargling something threatening around the gun, I think we better listen to... whatever it is he's saying."

If I had points, I'd be so tempted to have an armless maggo-pillar with a crazy flexible mouth that has the sort of precision and dexterity to pick locks, fire blasters, type on a computer (leaving wet, sticky keys), etc.

The Deep-Song Walrus-Man

Features: Doesn't Breath (Gills) [0]; Semi-Aquatic [0]; Subsonic Speech [0]

Did you know a Tritonoid morphology is a feature? You can be a fish with a man's body for zero points.  Of course, this is useless in most Psi-Wars games, because the action generally doesn't take place in the water.  Doesn't Breath (Gills) isn't such a problem: we can give the character some sort of water-breathing apparatus to walk around in the air. But being unable to walk on land is a problem.  Semi-Aquatic allows it, though.  The character would have a lower half of not a fish, but a seal: walking its four flipper-legs.  Well, waddling.  It would average a ground-move of 1. But hey, water-move of 5!  Finally, subsonic speech is a feature if it's the only thing you can do. Does that give you Subsonic hearing [5] or [0] for free? I don't know. I hope not the latter.

The problem? Nobody would play this thing. This is the prime example of "feature as free disadvantage." You swap water for air, but air comes up a lot more than water.  You swap sea for land, but land comes up more than sea.  You swap the subsonic for the sonic, but that just means you can talk to the Menhiri and nobody else.  Good job! It's possible you can't even hear humans!

There's some interesting ideas in a race that breaths a different medium than humans do. It's not the end of the world to give them a breathing apparatus, like the Kel Dor from Star Wars, and it just becomes part of their aesthetic. But this does mean that they have a vulnerability nobody else does (their gas mask) and how often will this be reversed, so that they'll be in an environment where they can breath, but nobody else can? We could introduce such environments, but then we're introducing such environments and it's another thing to track. It's also another reason for everyone to be in armor all the time.  I'd also want the character to get something out of their unique atmosphere. Water, thus, is a more plausible option.

But I can't see the rest working.  There's no hook to intrigue a player other than "Water!" and it's more hassle than it's worth.

The Void Dancer

Secondary Characteristics: SM +1 [0]; 

Features: Doesn't Breath (Anaerobic) [0]; Native Gravity 0g [0]; Native Pressure 0 atm [0]; Signals (Vague) [0]

So it seems possible to have "Doesn't breath" without needing any air at all (again, Template Toolkit 2), and you seem to be able to define your own native pressure and gravity. Zero-G natives are certainly acceptable. Is 0 atm permissible? Can you be "native" to vacuum?  That might seem like "vacuum support" for free, but we can suggest that the race would really struggle in atmosphere: if we treated as "Trace Pressure Lungs" then they would treat Very Thin as Dense (breathable, but with difficulty), Thin as Very Dense (It could potentially visit a Vithani girlfriend, but it would need a resperator) and Normal atmosphere as crushingly heavy Super Dense. That seems plausible.

Signals (Vague) is from Template Toolkits 2: the race is able to flash a light or change color in a way to communicate with others of its kind, but it does so in a way that's not as good as proper speech.  This makes it a feature, and explains how they can "talk" in space.  

What it in effect means is that our gangly, strange void-walker would need to be in a space suit to be in a normal environment, but could skitter about free outside of the ship.  That's... not the worst mechanic.  Vacuum happens, so its traits don't completely isolate it from the game.  However, I don't really see a sufficient upside to make it an intriguing character, and most void-based characters or races aren't built like this.  We might expect instead a race that had Doesn't Breath of either the Oxygen Storage variety or it just straight-up doesn't need to breath, and Vacuum support, so it can enter a spaceship just fine without a suit.  We might also expect some form of space-based propulsion, so it can maneuver around in space too.

The idea of a space-based race seems fine to me, it's just not something I'd do with features.

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