Sci-fi

[Jubal]

What in your opinion are the important good/bad points of different scifi settings? Do they need humans? How detailed do you like them? More humanoids or as alien as possible?

[comrade_general]

Humans are generally necessary because it gives the audience someone they can more readily relate to.

If it's a story then I don't think there are any limits to the amount of humanoid versus non-humanoid species, since it all comes down to a text description. It's more limiting in film obviously, even with CGI (not to mean comrade_general's ingenuity) the represented characters most often have a roughly humanoid shape, particularly in the face.

When asked why so many of the aliens in the various Star Trek series looked humanoid the producers responded, "You find us non-humanoid actors and we'll cast them."

[Jubal]

I'm thinking tabletop wargame, so at least that gives me free rein to go non-humanoid. As for designing non-humanoids that work conceptually as advanced sentient races, that's a lot more difficult...

[debux]

Tabletop wargame? You want to make one?

[Jubal]

More that I'm developing a setting with that useability as its primary outlook, as yet. I really need to finish some projects before I do too much more on something like this.

[debux]

Makes me remember when I played with the risk figurines and made my own AoE, real life style. Too bad my friends weren't smart ( ) enough to understand all the rules and restrictions it had, besides of making it impossible to do their actions at the same time. Ahhhh, when it was fine to have fun by yourself.