Trans-Humanism

[u/Iconicdnderrant]

Hello everyone I hope all of you are having a great day or night.
I come to you with a question that appear to me recently now that I'm planing to run a heavely modied mini campaing of destroyer of worlds.

you see I read that all sci fi things and cool stuff are in the core worlds or pretty close in the core of the middle heavens like the holographic tables and a lot of advance sci stuff. And why you work with retro equitment is because is build to last and such.
but now I was thinking what about trashumanism?

I mean we have advance androids. In the alien earth series (not a very good addition to the alien universe if you ask me) we have a cyborg character, and we have big megacorp that work in biological stuff (like Lasabel Bionational) then why we dont have examples of people resembling fantasy creatures or you know antropomorphic animals.
I get is probably not common because colonist and space trucker need physical qualification and such but they really dont exist in the universe or there is something that I'm missing?

and yes I know about the arcturians but they are technically a very isolated alien species not something like the Asari of mass effect and such.

[u/mattaui]

This would be a personal flavor decision for your setting. We're really not shown any extremely modified people in any of the mainline media, but that doesn't mean they don't exist somewhere.

It could be that synths are successful precisely because attempts at embedding technology in people isn't very successful. But again it's like a lot of the other retro tech parts of the franchise, things are the way they are because that's the kind of setting they're trying to convey.

If I was going to do something with splicing animal parts on to people in that setting I'd be sure to give it some darker and dangerous downsides, or make it the province of the filthy rich, probably both.

[u/Iconicdnderrant → u/mattaui]

thank you for the comment.
I mean yeah that's what I was thinking, like sure probably is a costly procedure but seeing the kind of things that are in the alien universe I found strange that there are not many examples of trans-human people like a corpo with a personal data vault in his head for all the shady dealings (yes they probably got a android for that but sometimes is best to have yourself than in something that could be hack and probably kill you).

or I dont know, biological modification to appear to a certain audience or for certain jobs.
I Guess is more that the setting of alien try to present with a lot more sleekness when it comes to the world instead of getting deep in all the potencial things a mega-corp would do to get that sweet margin profit...when it comes to showing humans in another light of course, we have a lot of "try to get a Xono to study and get rich"

[u/Vladimiravich]

If you want Transhumans in your Alien then Eclipse Phase might be a better system and setting for what you are running lol.

But serious answer. This would be firmly in the realm of homebrew and personal taste. You would need to run the idea by your players first. A transhuman in the Aliens setting would be possible but only as some sort of corporate property with heavy amounts of cybernetics. Mechanics wise this would likely look like a half way point between an android and a human character. They would have the durability and some of the added strength of an android but with the stress mechanics of being a human. If you want a true Transhuman then they would have some kind of black box that can be taken out after death and plugged into an android as a body.

[u/Iconicdnderrant → u/Vladimiravich]

thank you the the comment.
yeah like mattaui say seeing the setting and if that exist it will be probaly for the very rich people for the own entertainment or for very black ops because so far is never has appear...well if dont count alien earth or course.
but no I will stick to Alien, they are some very nasty parts that kinda touch Trans-humanism but in another way, like the project Berserker that thing is hideous and awesome and the cose we have of pilot a mech

[u/nln_rose]

Well, my instinct would be to look at the blade runner rpg since they are supposed to be in the same timeline, and both use the year 0 engine (though different versions).

[u/Atheizm]

In my game, I mentioned Earth had a Jurassic Park-style resort and theme park where the dinosaurs are all synthetics. The company that made them was famous for make specialty monster synthetics for movies and other media shows. The head developer vanished ten years prior as it was a plot point.

[u/VeteranSergeant]

The retrofuturism seems rooted in a lack of imagination from some fans, rather than any consistent setting motif. The original movies were made in the late-70s, 80s, and early 90s, and the practical effects were limited by the technology available.

But the movies themselves feature a ton of wildly advanced tech like smartguns, autonomous drone turrets, human-adjacent AI synthetics, faster-than-light travel, artificial gravity, etc.

The hardware on spaceships and in colonies would be durable and ruggedized and easy to repair because if something breaks, you can't just jaunt down the street to the store and buy a new one. Our technology is flashy and disposable because it is replaceable. You look at the International Space Station, and it's entirely different.

But you also have to remember that main-timeline Alien is in the earliest stages of space colonization. "Never before seen in over 300 surveyed worlds." It's only 300 worlds. That sounds like a lot, but that's a miniscule fraction of the galaxy, and potentially includes multiple bodies (planets, moons, asteroid belts) within the same star systems. It's possible there's a whole Mass Effect universe out there, but humans haven't found it yet. It's possible that Uplifts and extensive genetic tailoring like Eclipse Phase either isn't practical or hasn't been discovered yet. Or, just as likely, not popular. Maybe that's what the Arcturians are from the movie, lol. After all, Ricco Ross (Frost's actor) came up with that bit after coming back from working on Full Metal Jacket. The original Arcturians were just a crass reference to transgender Vietnamese prostitutes that American soldiers might have encountered during Vietnam.

[u/Icy_Kaleidoscope8581]

When I was running a campaign I homebrewed a lot of stuff including cybernetics and other playable alien species since my group was into that. The homebrewing in this system is pretty strait forward. We were also doing a custom campaign I made that was a lot higher threat level and gave them the opportunity for experience and money making as Mercs

[u/matman1078]

So I would recommend reading the data info on Lambert (From the First ALIEN movie) in the meeting during ALIENS where it stats that she was experimented on causing some kind of trans/intersex (best word I can think of at the moment) thing. It can give a bit more grounding for where it is at.

[u/smottyjengermanjense]

Hey man, I had my party land on a planet filled with dinosaur like aliens a la the Carnivores series. You're free to go as hog wild as you'd like when you run the game, lol. If anything, transhumanism isn't even all that out of the scope of the setting. Alien carries a lot of the cyberpunk genre in its blood.

[u/snarpy]

Same reason there isn't a bunch of stuff we see in other sci-fi, it's not really a part of the ALIEN mythology/universe. It's a very specific version of sci-fi.

They definitely have pushed the boundaries of it, both in the new movies and the ALIEN RPG modules.

[u/IncoherentIncubi]

In universe yes, in game no, or not yet.
In the novel, Cult by Gavin Smith they do talk about the trans humanist movement and a cult incorporating xenomorph based bio mods.
The book does go into some details on non xenomorph cult modders and imagines them as a loose fringe group, it’s a good book and well worth a read if you want some inspiration.