I think that the Dragon Magazine version of Random Alien Generation was
a bit insufficient. I think that Randomized Alien Generation is very
important however. Consider the many millions of worlds that you have
to deal with in the MT universe. While many of the worlds will be
dominated by the Major Sentient races, there are still the creatures
encountered with the random encounter system. In addition, using Random
Alien Generation will cause creatures to come into being which are not
a mix of dog and human or cat and human, or centaurs or dolphins, all
of which are humanocentric aliens. You can develop something really
ALIEN with a random system. Of course you can't depend completely
on randomness for your aliens. You should do alot of work filling in
things like lifestyle, culture, ideology, etc.
Matt