Random Alien Generation

A thread of 4 messages, 15 July 1991 to 17 July 1991, in the order they were sent.

#2606 Random Alien Generation

Sleep...what a concept. · 15 July 1991

I remember seeing a Random Alien Generation article in Dragon magazine waaaay
back.  I do believe it's in issue #59.  The cover has an sci fi theme, an
illustration of a group of 3-6 humans and maybe a robot, along with a shuttle-
type craft. If not #59, then it's in the range of #54 - #76, since those are
the only Dragons I ever bought.

At the time I found the article highly amusing, since I didn't play Traveller,
and ended up using it for monster generation when we were bored with the
typical Monster Manual critters.  I can't comment on how "good" the article
would be for any of the Traveller game systems, since I don't know any of them
that well at all.

There was a short story about Traveller-types, I remember, and an article
detailing a "new" type of Traveller character.  I don't at the moment remember
what they were called, but they were the people who were the second group to
land on a planet.  Only the "real basics" as far as electronic exploration goes
were done by the first group; this second group did the actual intensive
ground-based research.  Thinking back on this, the type of group sounds similar
to the EEC (Exploration and Evaluation Corps) group in Anne McCaffrey's
_Dinosaur_Planet_.



- - --Ananda

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#2615 Re: Random Alien Generation

Dan Corrin · 16 July 1991 · reply to #2606

On the subject of random Alien Generation. The GURPS uplift supplement
does a wonderful job. It has many pages devoted to the generation of
client species suitable for uplift (ie. Intelligence, and society).

			-Dan

Dan Corrin, Network Manager, Mechanical Engineering, UWO, London, Ontario
TML/CZ FTP site coordinator:     [email removed].        [phone removed]

#2616 Re: (2606) Random Alien Generation

Robert S. Dean · 16 July 1991 · reply to #2606

I resist the notion of random alaien generation in general, since this is
supoosed to be a game that makes sense (-8, which random things don't always
do.  I might be inclined to look into the Alien Generation methods in
GURPS (_Aliens_ for Space, and _Uplift_) which are not random.  Translating
the results back into Traveller may or may not be a problem--I haven't
tried so I don't know.

Rob Dean

#2624 Re: Random Alien Generation

Sleep...what a concept. · 17 July 1991 · reply to #2616

I think random alien generation would probably make about as much sense as
random dungeon generation -- okay for bare-bones framework or perhaps
inspiration, but not for serious use without a great deal of additional work
and application of common sense.  (I _did_ say the results were rather
amusing...well, they were the last time I looked at it, which was probably a
good eight years ago.  I remeber the issue 'cause I liked the short story.)
But someone asked about it, so I answered; what anyone does with the
information is up to them.

As far as GURPS stuff goes, I can't comment, since I have no first-hand
knowledge of the system.


- - -Ananda

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