Re: (2418) Aliens

>Date: Fri, 7 Jun 91 20:56:26 -0400
>From: [email removed]
>Subject: (2418) Aliens
>
>    I have finally decided to confront a problem I have had for a long time
>with the traveller system.  Why do all the major races breath a nice oxygen/
>nitrogen mix of atmosphere.

Well, there are probably a number of good scientific reasons for this, but
I'll add a few game mechanical and game background reasons.  People not playing
with the official universe can ignore these.  Races would have little reason
to interact (and it would be difficult for them to do so) if they didn't
breathe approximately the same atmosphere mixture.  One of the intentions of
Traveller aliens was that they be playable both in their own cultural context
and in a mixed human/alien context.  Major races, of course, are limited to
humaniti (all three major branches), Vargr (modified Earth life), Droyne (who
presumably fooled around with Earth life because it could live in their
environment without special attention), and the K'Kree, Hivers and Aslan.  I
won't make excuses for them.  Several minor races have been presented in
various Traveller products (some quite 'official') that are not based around
oxygen chemistry, such as the Jgd-il-jagd (sp?) who are gas giant dwellers,
the Ebokin (methane breathers) and the Brinn (also methane? or are they a
hydrogen breathing species?).  The old FASA adventure "Ordeal on Eshaar"
took place on a halogen atmosphere planet, from what I recall from hearsay.


> Why don't any of them breathe chlorine or even
> neon.  Wouldn't this be much more realistic?


Not necessarily.  I could look up (if anyone is interested) a number of science
fact articles published in Analog over the last thirteen years (since I started
reading the magazine regularly) which go over why chlorine and fluorine
atmospheres are extremely unlikely (making life in them even unlikelier) and
why silicon based life won't really work (silicon doesn't actually form the
same range of structures as carbon, making 'silo-organic' chemistry unlikely.
Some silicon/carbon hybrid systems could be possible.).  Breathing neon is
prety unlikely because it just doesn't do much in the way of reacting, and
the whole point of breathing is to fuel some sort of chemical reaction to
keep your lifeform going.  You could probably design a lifeform that could
exist in a neon atmosphere, but it wouldn't breathe in the sense that we use
the term.

>So I am proposing something that
>I have not heard discussed before, that we design a REALLY interesting alien.
>I suggest this because it is my belief that there is enough expertise on this
>list to actually come up with an alien race with could actually function and
>why.

Not a bad idea perhaps, although I think our pool of expertise doesn't include
too many biology types, at least from what I remember of last year's survey.

> It's just a though actually but I think some aliens designed on this list
> (or on a sub-list) could really spice up a lot of traveller campaigns.

No sublists.  Traffic has a hard time sustaining the critical volume required
for good discussion.

> I would
> like to hear what you think.  Hopefully I'm not wasting to much bandwidth.
>
> 						Matt.
>
Sounds good to me.  (Never apologize for presenting ideas!)  It might be
prudent to start with a fairly conventional alien first, though.

Rob Dean