Boo! Hiss! Imperial!! Human Supremacist! Why are you even playing Star Wars?

Yeah, I guess I am a bit of a human supremacist, but to me players just never seem to connect with the aliens and robots they create. Their characters are always basically sidekick material. They don't try to engage in anything relevant to their culture or physiology unless it involves removing setbacks or adding boosts, and they are basically there to be the cool X-Species of the group. They play most of the time as a re-skinned human, and forget that they are not human a lot. I have had players hitting on human dancers as a methane breathing bug, have had droid players constantly lapse into Bro mode, and most other aliens end up not having any meaningful relationships with the group or NPC's because they can't really relate to their character in that way. Aliens/Droids make the world more interesting, but they seem to make Player Characters less interesting usually. Players will complain that an all human game is boring, but when I asked them what they meant they gave examples of character development that had nothing to do with being an alien or a droid, or more often than that they just pointed at the exotic nature of the alien/droid. There are few things more boring to me than a Dark Elf Assassin, and I am quickly approaching the same feeling for the Star Wars analogues, bereft of character traits and built to be something of a sidekick in PC clothing.

On a related note but not having to do with aliens: I also seem to have a glut of guys wanting to play girls, and not because they are gay or transgender (which I would happily accommodate), but just because they want to play a woman like how they wish women would be: having a suspiciously male view on sexuality and also being into girls. They play women with no signs of the things found in real women, and essentially just play a dude re-skinned as a hot chick. I would actually welcome a genuinely gay character, as I have no hang ups on that subject, but I have had my fill of sexy lesbian star wars characters.

So while I like to have people make characters that are what they want to play, I am thinking about instituting limits on how many Aliens/Droids can be in the party, as well as gender restrictions unless I get some sort of commitment to realistically play their species/gender. I am fully ready for players to vote with their feet, and I won't use my standard for party building all the time, just for when I announce a heavy RP game.

This is of course a thread concerning my game, and I don't expect anyone else will even share my point of view, but maybe you can tell me how you make aliens and non-type characters work in your games. What do you most enjoy about Star Wars multiculturalism?

3 hours ago, Archlyte said:

I also seem to have a glut of guys wanting to play girls, and not because they are gay or transgender (which I would happily accommodate),

Why would being gay make you want to roleplay girls in Star Wars?

The current PC roster for my campaign is 4 humans and 2 Chiss (one of the players just really likes Chiss, and she and her sister wanted to play twins). While I'd never bar a player from playing an alien, I do always caution them that A) there's a lot of racism in the galaxy and B) there's a lot of places where an alien is going to significantly stick out.

3 hours ago, Archlyte said:

but just because they want to play a woman like how they wish women would be: having a suspiciously male view on sexuality and also being into girls.

*wince* Yea, I've had a few players like this in the past; and I agree that it is cringe city.

Hm, no problem here, my group has actually no humans. 1 Mon Calamari, 1 Twi'lek, 1 Nikto and 1 Ewok. All playing out more or less the characteristics of their species.

4 hours ago, Archlyte said:

This is of course a thread concerning my game, and I don't expect anyone else will even share my point of view, but maybe you can tell me how you make aliens and non-type characters work in your games. What do you most enjoy about Star Wars multiculturalism?

Aliens don't tend to differ much from humans in our game. That's mostly because playing alien requires additional work from player. In our group we only have two aliens (Sakiyan bounty hunter, and Neimoidian force user), other are human. IMO, having player play aliens like humans is not inherently wrong. It's wrong if it annoys someone. Personally as GM, I try remind player about aliens thru NPCs. I try to hilight alien aspects of alien NPCs. Unfortunately I have managed to do this for only small amount of NPCs. Sometimes the two alien PCs encounter speciecism, because they are not humans.

IMO problem with aliens is that players (including me) don't really have a good idea how they should be played correctly. What actually separates them from humans. Inherently they are all sapient species, so what should really change? I don't think there are clear and correct answers. More stereotypical the alien species is, easier it is to play it correctly. Do you know how different aliens should be played? Can you put it into words? If not, (I cannot) then no wonder your (and my) player default to very human like behavior.

On side note, what's the average age of players in your group? I have noticed that growing older has given more depth to roleplaying aspect regarding aliens (or otherwise other species) in our group. Personally I play an elf in our Pathfinder game, and I have to admit with shame, my elf could be substituted with human whenever, and result would be viable, but weird, human.

If this post has one point, it is that don't be too hard to yourself and players. Playing aliens correctly is very hard. Have fun! And if you feel that restricting species selection might work, try it. I have done it other games, and it has been more or less successful.

P.S. One option for our next campaign is all gungan mercenary group.

[Lecture Mode On] Gay men are men who self-identify as men and are sexually attracted to other men. Trans-gendered individuals self-identify as the opposite gender; it doesn't necessarily affect who they are sexually attracted to. [Lecture Mode Off]

This is a topic I've ruminated on from time to time and I both agree with some of your conclusions and disagree with them. Straight white men who want to play sexy lesbians is an unfortunate phenomena that's been a part of this hobby for decades. They want to interact with women characters and bring more gender diversity to the shared fiction of the game... but they don't want to deal with women being heterosexual women, i.e. having romantic feelings for men. It's an offensive behavior; though I don't believe most gamers are being malicious and most healthy men grow out of it. As someone who runs a table with both men and women, I've preferred to talk adult men out of playing women because, unlike elves and Wookiees, women are real. I don't want the women I game with feeling like they have to have their emotional guards up during our leisure activity.

On the flip side, Star Wars aliens, like Star Trek aliens, are neither real nor particularly alien. They tend to be monocultural representations of some aspect of Human society. The non-Human protagonists we've seen in the films and the TV shows are all Humans with funny head tails or odd coloring. Yoda is a stereotypical Hollywood-esque portrayal of a wizened martial arts master, complete with choppy English and zen koans. The Clone Wars -era Ahsoka is a typical perky American teenage girl. Hera is a perpetually frustrated young mother type. Zeb is the grumpy, "too-old-for-this-s--t" soldier.

I would be less concerned with properly portraying a non-Human as an alien (whatever that means), and more concerned about a character bringing an interesting character take to the table. If their motivation is "I want to get rich" or "I hit it with my axe," they're not going to contribute much to the shared narrative of the game.

6 hours ago, Archlyte said:

Yeah, I guess I am a bit of a human supremacist, but to me players just never seem to connect with the aliens and robots they create.

In my case, other than my son, my players aren't even Star Wars fans, so I really tone down the alien thing, and I don't expect them to know anything about what their PCs are looking at. In some ways I treat it like E4: everybody's human until you walk into that "most wretched hive of scum and villainy". I do regularly include aliens as NPCs, but only a couple of times have I made what defines them an important part of the story.

Personally I'm not that interested in playing aliens, with a few exceptions that I would happily inhabit fully: Weequay (because Hondo), Togruta (because Shakti and Ahsoka), and KelDor (because Plo Koon). But for the most part the meta-gamer in me notes they are generally inferior specs, and/or I really despise how they've been fleshed out in the SW universe. I wouldn't be caught dead playing a fish dude or a bat face, or heaven forbid, wolf-boy and tiger-girl.

As for the "playing a girl", it's never come up in my group. Maybe we're just old. This seems to have started with video games (which didn't exist with decent graphical detail until we were 30+), and just MHO but it's so the nerd behind the screen can watch chicks running around and pretend it's not porn. After hearing about this for the first time with KOTOR, I made a female character on a whim and...I get it. There are some fine anatomical algorithms at work as you follow your character around, but I couldn't relate to any of the character development dialogue, unless I did a mental flip to identify with Carth. I never played the character past Taris.

3 hours ago, Stan Fresh said:

Why would being gay make you want to roleplay girls in Star Wars?

I guess it wouldn't, I was merely pointing out that this was not the case, not that the opposite was right or wrong. That they were doing it for other reasons.

#AlienLivesMatter

And also:

Boo! Hiss! Imperial!! Human Supremacist! Why are you even playing Star Wars?

And also:

Humans have no culture. Read the society pages. Pretty much every species has some sort of interesting culture, except humans. This makes human characters generic.

And also:

Especially considering Rogue One, main characters have always been biased towards having more humans. (In comparison to background characters, which demonstrate that humans are probably less than 1/2 the population.) That racist trend needs to be broken.

The aliens are mono-cultured, but for whatever reason, I have less problem accepting that than I do the mono-cultured Corellians and Mandalorians.

However, I hate droids as PCs. I make no effort to hide this from my players, and if you choose to play a piece of gear that happens to.sound a name out of its designation, then expect the rest of the galaxy to treat you like a tool.

6 minutes ago, Yaccarus said:

#AlienLivesMatter

And also:

Boo! Hiss! Imperial!! Human Supremacist! Why are you even playing Star Wars?

And also:

Humans have no culture. Read the society pages. Pretty much every species has some sort of interesting culture, except humans. This makes human characters generic.

And also:

Especially considering Rogue One, main characters have always been biased towards having more humans. (In comparison to background characters, which demonstrate that humans are probably less than 1/2 the population.) That racist trend needs to be broken.

See, I think that humans are the main characters in every movie on purpose. They are the characters that we can most readily identify with, and therefore they are the characters that players are almost always going to identify with if the character is made with care. The Aliens and Robots are what players choose when they don't really feel like identifying with a character, so they tack on a crazy head or play as a machine. This isn't what I want, but it's what I have noticed over the years in various role-playing games.

Not really sure what you mean by culture lol.

Hm, addressing gender issues in a roleplaying game seems like a great use for the X card.

3 minutes ago, HappyDaze said:

The aliens are mono-cultured, but for whatever reason, I have less problem accepting that than I do the mono-cultured Corellians and Mandalorians.

However, I hate droids as PCs. I make no effort to hide this from my players, and if you choose to play a piece of gear that happens to.sound a name out of its designation, then expect the rest of the galaxy to treat you like a tool.

Yes, same here. I tried to like this post but it says you can only do 50 likes in a day So why would you possibly have a hard time with Corellians and Mandalorians lol? I mean you have the entire breadth of human experience to draw on there and relate to with pretty much zero filter? This has to be a choice, an attitude bent toward the opposite view you know? I'm not saying you're wrong, just that to be able to identify with an alien over a human makes no sense to me unless you are making a conscious choice. The human is like you in every way. Isn't it?

1 minute ago, Archlyte said:

See, I think that humans are the main characters in every movie on purpose. They are the characters that we can most readily identify with, and therefore they are the characters that players are almost always going to identify with if the character is made with care. The Aliens and Robots are what players choose when they don't really feel like identifying with a character, so they tack on a crazy head or play as a machine. This isn't what I want, but it's what I have noticed over the years in various role-playing games.

Not really sure what you mean by culture lol.

What I mean is that humans don't have a cultural description. Aside from the occasional ones who come from a specific society (overused Mandos, Corellians) they tend to be generic when it comes to their culture. The nonhuman species, however, all come with unique traits that create better characters. Trandoshan religion, Chiss avoiding pre-emptive strikes, Elomin obsessing over order, Polis Masans trying to find out about their ancestors... these make interesting stories. But humans lack that aspect. They're generic in personality.

4 minutes ago, themensch said:

Hm, addressing gender issues in a roleplaying game seems like a great use for the X card.

What does that mean? I don't see why it shouldn't come up when it's a valid role-playing concern in the game. I don't generally do beer & pretzels games so it's not just about a feel good romp with that zany galaxy far far away. I need to have a certain amount of "let's not just F off tonight."

1 minute ago, Yaccarus said:

What I mean is that humans don't have a cultural description. Aside from the occasional ones who come from a specific society (overused Mandos, Corellians) they tend to be generic when it comes to their culture. The nonhuman species, however, all come with unique traits that create better characters. Trandoshan religion, Chiss avoiding pre-emptive strikes, Elomin obsessing over order, Polis Masans trying to find out about their ancestors... these make interesting stories. But humans lack that aspect. They're generic in personality.

/Like

Yeah but they don't have to be, the person trying to bring the Aliens to life in the writing does this to give the aliens a handle for the reader. This is because a writer looks at an alien and says ok here is an interesting feature of the world I can use to show an experience to my human audience. A player who dons the rubber head is just looking for distance from those things, or they want to look cool, or see in the dark. The human characters always seem to end up in relationships or having conflict with one another, while the alien characters are always aloof until you include another member of their race and then they get human all of the sudden.

Just now, Archlyte said:

/Like

Yeah but they don't have to be, the person trying to bring the Aliens to life in the writing does this to give the aliens a handle for the reader. This is because a writer looks at an alien and says ok here is an interesting feature of the world I can use to show an experience to my human audience. A player who dons the rubber head is just looking for distance from those things, or they want to look cool, or see in the dark. The human characters always seem to end up in relationships or having conflict with one another, while the alien characters are always aloof until you include another member of their race and then they get human all of the sudden.

To be honest, it depends on who is playing them. A poor roleplayer will do as you describe if they're a nonhuman PC or be human and do as I described humans. A good roleplayer will do your description of a human if they're human, and my description of a nonhuman if they're nonhuman. Wow, that is confusing when I read it over.

There is certainly that issue. Personally I tend to play non-humans fairly often, partially because I've played humans in a lot of games, mostly because it's Star Wars.

Quite enjoy my verpine when chat about sexy aliens come up and I just look blank and confused at the GM.

1 hour ago, Concise Locket said:

On the flip side, Star Wars aliens, like Star Trek aliens, are neither real nor particularly alien. They tend to be monocultural representations of some aspect of Human society. The non-Human protagonists we've seen in the films and the TV shows are all Humans with funny head tails or odd coloring. Yoda is a stereotypical Hollywood-esque portrayal of a wizened martial arts master, complete with choppy English and zen koans. The Clone Wars -era Ahsoka is a typical perky American teenage girl. Hera is a perpetually frustrated young mother type. Zeb is the grumpy, "too-old-for-this-s--t" soldier.

I would be less concerned with properly portraying a non-Human as an alien (whatever that means), and more concerned about a character bringing an interesting character take to the table. If their motivation is "I want to get rich" or "I hit it with my axe," they're not going to contribute much to the shared narrative of the game.

Yes, this. From the word go, Star Wars aliens have been people in masks (and sometimes full suits). They aren't culturally that alien at all, so playing them as a reskinned human should be no issue at all. I'd say the same goes for droids; their either humans with certain neuroses (like 3PO and K-whats-his-name from Rogue One), or they're plucky sidekicks by design (like R2 and BB3). As long as they bring something to the table aside from murder-hobo-ery, I don't have an issue with them.

57 minutes ago, Concise Locket said:

[Lecture Mode On] Gay men are men who self-identify as men and are sexually attracted to other men. Trans-gendered individuals self-identify as the opposite gender; it doesn't necessarily affect who they are sexually attracted to. [Lecture Mode Off]

This is a topic I've ruminated on from time to time and I both agree with some of your conclusions and disagree with them. Straight white men who want to play sexy lesbians is an unfortunate phenomena that's been a part of this hobby for decades. They want to interact with women characters and bring more gender diversity to the shared fiction of the game... but they don't want to deal with women being heterosexual women, i.e. having romantic feelings for men. It's an offensive behavior; though I don't believe most gamers are being malicious and most healthy men grow out of it. As someone who runs a table with both men and women, I've preferred to talk adult men out of playing women because, unlike elves and Wookiees, women are real. I don't want the women I game with feeling like they have to have their emotional guards up during our leisure activity.

On the flip side, Star Wars aliens, like Star Trek aliens, are neither real nor particularly alien. They tend to be monocultural representations of some aspect of Human society. The non-Human protagonists we've seen in the films and the TV shows are all Humans with funny head tails or odd coloring. Yoda is a stereotypical Hollywood-esque portrayal of a wizened martial arts master, complete with choppy English and zen koans. The Clone Wars -era Ahsoka is a typical perky American teenage girl. Hera is a perpetually frustrated young mother type. Zeb is the grumpy, "too-old-for-this-s--t" soldier.

I would be less concerned with properly portraying a non-Human as an alien (whatever that means), and more concerned about a character bringing an interesting character take to the table. If their motivation is "I want to get rich" or "I hit it with my axe," they're not going to contribute much to the shared narrative of the game.

Yeah you're absolutely right, and I really wasn't trying to be offensive, just trying to point out that their reasons were not something that I felt needed sensitivity or respect as part of their real life. So I apologize for that indelicate point I made if it offended anyone.

One thing I didn't talk about was the very anthropomorphic near humans (Twi'lek, Zeltron, Chiss, etc.) which basically allow you to play a human but with some exotic features. These are the exception as people seem to be able to fully relate to characters such as this in my experience.

I think some of the examples you pointed out are typical of the "everybody is a human" mindset, which is both very nice and also very much leads to the Human Re-Skinned play imo. Zeb is exactly what you said, and he can portray a certain slice of charcateristics, which is fine for a written character, but for a role-playing character he is a bit of a one-trick pony. That player will gravitate toward combat and coercion, and that will be about it save for 1 vice or pleasure they will identify (drinking Corellian Whiskey or something). Other than that, in my experience, that will be it for that character. His arc in the game will be purely mechanical (Trees) and the character will be the same as it was at creation. Meanwhile the humans (and near-humans) will demonstrate an arc, they will change and grow, will be actual characters.

2 minutes ago, SavageBob said:

Yes, this. From the word go, Star Wars aliens have been people in masks (and sometimes full suits). They aren't culturally that alien at all, so playing them as a reskinned human should be no issue at all. I'd say the same goes for droids; their either humans with certain neuroses (like 3PO and K-whats-his-name from Rogue One), or they're plucky sidekicks by design (like R2 and BB3). As long as they bring something to the table aside from murder-hobo-ery, I don't have an issue with them.

The system won't let me Like , so I owe you one. Yeah and if this is good enough for you then you wouldn't have a problem. My concern is that I get disproportionate performance from players with human characters verses the alien ones. I started out long ago playing role-playing games and I liked the demi-human characters, but over time I have grown to see the non-human characters as the non-performers. It's a shame to me when a player chooses one because I know I have lost a portion of their potential for interaction for the duration of the character.

1 minute ago, Archlyte said:

The system won't let me Like , so I owe you one. Yeah and if this is good enough for you then you wouldn't have a problem. My concern is that I get disproportionate performance from players with human characters verses the alien ones. I started out long ago playing role-playing games and I liked the demi-human characters, but over time I have grown to see the non-human characters as the non-performers. It's a shame to me when a player chooses one because I know I have lost a portion of their potential for interaction for the duration of the character.

First, I'm embarrassed I wrote "their" when it should have been "they're."

Now that that's out of the way: Yeah, I wonder if it's just your luck? Or the kinds of role-players you hang out with? I've always flocked to more unusual character types, not only in terms of species or gender, but also age. My first D&D character was an elderly female Halfling cleric, whom I really felt an attachment to and really tried to role-play fully, while the other players were just casting Magic Missile and bashing in every encounter. But I didn't start roleplaying until I was an adult, so maybe there are habits people pick up along the way.

Maybe the key is that next time you start up a new campaign or integrate a new player, and someone wants to go alien or droid, you work with them on their backstory and motivation to make their identity as alien or droid an integral part of the character concept. For instance, I've got a Bardottan entrepreneur in an EOTE game, and for him, humanocentric policies in the Empire are the reason he's been forced to truck with galactic ne'er-do-wells to sell his artifact-authentication gear (also a tie into the Bardottan species' culture.) In other words, make it a point that if they go alien, they're going to have to justify it somehow other than "I want a dump stat and night vision."

8 minutes ago, Archlyte said:

The system won't let me Like , so I owe you one. Yeah and if this is good enough for you then you wouldn't have a problem. My concern is that I get disproportionate performance from players with human characters verses the alien ones. I started out long ago playing role-playing games and I liked the demi-human characters, but over time I have grown to see the non-human characters as the non-performers. It's a shame to me when a player chooses one because I know I have lost a portion of their potential for interaction for the duration of the character.

And yet, my only human PC who played for more than a game had no character or backstory, beyond the fact that he was a drug addict.

8 minutes ago, SavageBob said:

First, I'm embarrassed I wrote "their" when it should have been "they're."

Now that that's out of the way: Yeah, I wonder if it's just your luck? Or the kinds of role-players you hang out with? I've always flocked to more unusual character types, not only in terms of species or gender, but also age. My first D&D character was an elderly female Halfling cleric, whom I really felt an attachment to and really tried to role-play fully, while the other players were just casting Magic Missile and bashing in every encounter. But I didn't start roleplaying until I was an adult, so maybe there are habits people pick up along the way.

Maybe the key is that next time you start up a new campaign or integrate a new player, and someone wants to go alien or droid, you work with them on their backstory and motivation to make their identity as alien or droid an integral part of the character concept. For instance, I've got a Bardottan entrepreneur in an EOTE game, and for him, humanocentric policies in the Empire are the reason he's been forced to truck with galactic ne'er-do-wells to sell his artifact-authentication gear (also a tie into the Bardottan species' culture.) In other words, make it a point that if they go alien, they're going to have to justify it somehow other than "I want a dump stat and night vision."

Yeah that is actually a good idea, I can try to do something constructive lol. I have been at it for decades so it can't just be this current batch of players. What it is, I think, is that players tend to feel like they can add Instant Interesting by playing a non-human. Then they usually stop character creation. They may have Motivations, like in this game, but they usually pick something that is easy to play and doesn't have anything to do with their species except in a stereotypical manner. They will not normally play an arc because their character to them isn't relatable, so they won't monkey with it, they just play it in a static manner, like a sidekick. A bit of background decoration brought to the foreground for the humans to play off of.

So what I find is that the players who are least adept at making characters tend to go for the exotic stuff, which would be why I have developed a bias against those types of characters. Those are the characters most mathematically likely to bore me in play.

But this was good advice you gave. I will give it a try. I think it's not going to be easy but hey I can't complain and not try to work the problem.

15 minutes ago, Yaccarus said:

And yet, my only human PC who played for more than a game had no character or backstory, beyond the fact that he was a drug addict.

It's not that Humans are automatically interesting, it's that they are the easiest to relate to if you choose to do so. Your character with the addiction could be a flat character, or he/she could be someone who had great potential but is wasting it, or they may be someone who feels they had no better lot in life so they just used drugs: maybe they will find their strengths? There are a thousand things you can do with that character.