I Read this book where one race through the eyes of the reader was truely evil (and very ugly I might add) they actually butchred the good (and plant eating) race, waging constant war on them and almost oblitirating them. Anyways the adventurers has this really cheesy (trust me) weapon that they use to almost wipe out the baddies only to realize that they are on the wrong side, problem is that they can''t figure out who is the real enemy (it turns out that the race they think they were helping are that planets cows (no IQ but good to eat and easy to breed)
it turns out that the cows were under mindcontrol from this superior evil psionic race. The story goes on, always chasing this mighty race of psions. At the end it turns out that the real baddies are small pet turtels (that almost everyone had because they were so cute) that are almost unable to defend themselves besides their great psionc powers.

It was a very nice read, but I can''t remember the title, something like that would be soo cool in an RPG

quote: Original post by Relee
Why don''t you have the parasitic, psionic race be humans?

I worked on a storyline that was based on a similar idea,

humans have become technologically advanced and have built lots of massive robots to colonize the galaxy. The player is the avatar of the god of a race of benign creatures who get their asses handed to them by one of these machines.

In the end the player finds out that it''s the humans who were behind the massive robots, and is given a choice wether to kill the entire race. The player would find out that once humans were life-loving creatures, but they were perversed by their own lust for power and conquest and decided that no race could be as great as their own. So they just started killing stuff.

If the player chooses to leave the humans alive, his avatar is banished and the ending is the planet of creatures is overrun anyway.

I thought that was a pretty powerful statement at the time.





www.spforge.com - God created the world in seven days? I think I can one-up him!

quote: Original post by Relee

Why don''t you have the parasitic, psionic race be humans?

That''d be a freaky twist wouldn''t it?

Perfect! I''m going with it!

I actually need a lot of human varients, to show that we have evolved along different paths. This works JUST PERFECTLY!



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Just waiting for the mothership...

quote: Original post by Omnipotent_Q
This post reminds me of the book "Childhood''s End", by Arthur C. Clarke. Take a look at the race of the Overlords.

I never read the book, but I have Barlowe''s Guide to Extraterrestrials, where he drew them (kind of spoiling it, I guess). So I know what you''re talking about (good reference, btw.)



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Just waiting for the mothership...

Reversing stereotypes just for the sake of reversing them strikes me as being little more than a gimmick, and the example in your original post seems a little too simplistic.

We do judge things on appearance, and I think that the appearance of a creature shouldn't be completely incongrous with its actions. It would be difficult to maintain suspension of disbelief if you saw a Xenomorph running around inviting people back to its house for tea and biscuits.

I would suggest that visual stereotypes are useful to communicate ideas clearly to the audience. It is more important to challenge philosophical stereotypes (if you arent a "good" guy, you must be a "bad" guy) than to risk confusing your audience to the point that they cant rely on anything any more.

So perhaps the Xenomorphs aren't evil, they are simply territorial predators whose habitats we have invaded. Perhaps if we move away from their territory they will leave us alone. Perhaps the Angels seem to be very friendly, but they have an ulterior motive in gaining our friendship, perhaps to help them in the war they are fighting with the Demons (who are no more evil than the Angels, they just have a different philosophy)

So rather than challenge the concept that "Angels are good" and "Slimy aliens are bad", challenge the concept of good and bad themselves.... surely a more productive and altogether less arbitrary method.

Edited by - Sandman on October 12, 2001 10:00:03 AM