As I slowly make headway on my campaign for my SWN hack, I realize that I should eventually tackle what races I'll allow. As is common in many of my "kitchen sink" settings, I tend to allow a very wide array of character races for the players to choose from and the same will be here as well. However, unlike in many instances of running sci-fi games where I have a monster tome of races detailed for the system that I slap down on the table before the players with just marginal details outlined, I'm going to go with a more modest approach this time around. Since the campaign material is written largely from the point of view that they players will start out in Galactic Concord space and will be members of one of the various member species, I'm going to keep the races limited to those cultures that are members of the Galactic Concord. Plus, since this setting is a homage to my favorite sci-fi/fantasy settings, I'll further limit the choices. While this still makes for a long list, it's nowhere near the total amount of species that I would consider playable.
Here's what I have so far:
Humans (various cultures like Terran, Martian, Corellian, etc...)
From Mass Effect: Asari, Salarians, Turians Edit: Drell, Hanar, Volus, Elcor
From Star Trek: Vulcans, Andorians, Tellarites, Caitians, Bajorans, Edosians, Bolians, Betazoid, Deltans, Saurians, Napeans, Trills, and Talaxians
From Babylon 5: Narns, Centauri, and Minbari
From Farscape: Delvians, Ilanics, and Luxans
From Warhammer 40K: Eldar
From D&D: Dwarims (Dwarves), Gnorri (Gnomes)
From Star Wars: Wookiees, Cerean, Bothan, Rodian, Biths, Caamasi, Chagrians, Twi'leks, Duros, Ithorians, Kel Dors, Miraluka, Mon Calamari, Nautolans, Nosaurians, Quarrens, Sullustans, Zabraks, Shistavenens, and Zeltrons.
From Alternity: Fraal, Aleerins, Weren, T'sa, and Shesheyans
From D20 Modern: Moreaus
Finally, there are a selection of droids to choose from and mutations that can be applied to many species.
So 56 races that are considered "core" for the setting (not counting droids and mutants). I still need to get details written up for many of the species, but this at least allows me to focus myself. More species will be added as I go along and detail out the galaxy. It's a huge galaxy, and plenty of room for all sorts of creatures!
A quick edit, I forgot about 4 Mass Effect races that I'm going to allow.
5 comments:
No Vorcarians?
I can't decide if I want to go with SWN or Machinations of the Space Princess?
Vorcarians are, at this point, neutral in galactic politics, so that excluded them from being on the list. They are there, however, like a lot of other species, just not as Concord members.
I'm working on my next post where I've taken my favorite bits from the alien creation rules found in MotSP and Starships and Spacemen to work out a system I like for players to generate their own unique races if nothing on the list sounds interesting. Really, once the hack of SWN is complete, it's not going to look that much like SWN (at least as far as character creation goes).
Cool, I do wish SWN had some alien race creation rules or just more aliens for characters to play!, that's the main thing I like about MotSP is the alien creation rules. SWN seems to have a ;pt less fiddly bits (and IMHO unnecessary) than MotSP.
I agree, there's less to play around with, or at least it feels that way. Once you add in backgrounds, skill packages, cybernetics and/or mutations, and gear there are a lot of options. However, since SWN is so married to its humanocentric, harder sci-fi setting, the idea of playable aliens is, well, alien to what Crawford is trying to do. I would love it if he put out a more tool-kit like version of SWN that scraps the setting altogether. Don't get me wrong, the setting is interesting, but my sci-fi tastes are much more in the sci-fantasy/space opera vein.
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