Zundy Posted May 14, 2020 Posted May 14, 2020 As the title says. Skrell are supposed to be the second most common species on station and I mean in similar numbers to humans. I hope the skrell devs and you, THE PEOPLE, would consider creating a variant of skrell which have all the cons and no pros (they ain't psionic, slimos do not ignore them etc) and are not whitelisted so that they can be played by all. Lore wise they could be frontier skrell known for their flawed genetics thanks to the genophage. I think this'll work simply because we introduced the unwhitelisted offworlders which have both their own mechanics and lore which people have no problem following. I'd most certainly play a frontier skrell and then utilize my good RP points to app for a good skrell. Thoughts?
Skyglazer Posted May 14, 2020 Posted May 14, 2020 (edited) We had a brief discussion about this in the Skrell Discord but I'm going to leave my thoughts here as well for completeness. I very much oppose this suggestion, and as for why, I'll break it down into (perhaps too many, but I like to be complete in my explanations) points: In the Skrell lore, all Skrell are psionic. They are born with this, it is inherited. The genophage was species-wide sterilization, and relative to a Skrell's lifespan there hasn't been a significant amount of time to justify any sort of evolutionary loss of psionics either. Slimes are also passive to Skrell because they are Skrell, though I will concede to you that the reasoning is left ambiguous enough to where one could possibly make it for some other reason. Even other, lore-friendly "cons" in exchange for the lack of whitelist is a bad idea: the whitelist is not in place because the races are too strong. Skrell psionics as they exist now are not very strong, only allowing for telepathy and psi-pinging, and if these "cons" were trying to gate off powergamers from jumping into Skrell... Well, humans are already perfectly well-rounded enough to powergame with. It's not a problem of the race, it's a problem of the player. Powergamers are going to powergame. Going forward with the idea that whitelist isn't about the race's power: it's entirely about lore understanding. We shouldn't add in a subrace like this for the same reason we wouldn't allow a subrace for Unathi/Tajara/etc. for characters that were "raised by humans." Could they exist in the lore? It'd be weird, but they could absolutely exist, they could even have the "cons" of not being able to know the species languages, and maybe even not be as tough or whatever, akin to what you suggest here. But it would never happen, because the entire reason we have the whitelist system in-place in the first place is to make sure that players understand that they are playing a character that exists in a unique universe, that will not lead a simple life of "oh I'm just a weird frog dude," and even playing a character that comes from outside of their race's homeland requires the same amount of understanding of the lore that one would get from... well, getting the whitelist anyway. This change will not attract people to the race, especially in the form you suggest. If people want to play a skrell character, even one with the very specific lore background that your change would suggest they have, they would absolutely be better off just applying for regular Skrell in the first place. They do not need this "free trial" version of Skrell to play. This is merely a band-aid solution to the problem this is meaning to address: In-lore, Skrell are supposed to be nearly as common as humans, but this is not well-reflected in the station demographic as Skrell are not very commonly played: generally, you'll only see a few compared to the overwhelming human majority. I do not think this is a limitation of the whitelist system- I just don't think people are very interested in playing Skrell characters. I think this is perfectly fine, and if we need to garner interest we should stick to more organic methods like canon events and lore publishing-- Paradox is still new to the seat of Tentacle Tyrant, but I have no doubt they would be able to make Skrell more relevant if they even deem it a problem that needs addressing. It's not too hard to just suspend our disbelief and imagine that Skrell might be quite populous in other Nanotrasen installments, and there just aren't many staffed on the Aurora for a variety of different reasons. After all, the lore is a gigantic setting and the Aurora is one very small place with comparatively very few people. Frontier Skrell already exist in-game without this change. This should be enough said, but for the sake of clarity I will provide further explanation: People do not need mechanical limitations to play limited characters. Within reason, obviously-- you need stuff like the disability system to reflect a character is missing an arm, because an entire damage part, a lack of hands, etc. etc. is a majorly game-changing character trait. But on a more diminutive level, like a Skrell not being a very good psion, or a Unathi not being very strong, or a Tajara not liking lasagna not having very sharp claws, and so forth-- you can show these small quirks without any sort of mechanical restriction in place. Specifically, I have seen a Skrell roleplay being bad at psionics by making their telepathic messages seem a bit jumbled, or incomplete- and then they explain they are not good and why, and the message is conveyed completely and perfectly: no mechanical intervention involved. And even though my Unathi character could technically break handcuffs as per the code, I prevent myself from using it because it is not appropriate for the character: again, neither myself nor this other Skrell player particularly need harsher restrictions put into place. Not only is it more work for the coders to implement things when they could be working on other stuff, but it's just not necessary. There's a very old adage: if it isn't broken, don't fix it. Perhaps this is restating, but I feel the need to say it again. If people want to apply for Skrell, then they should apply for Skrell. The application process is painless and really doesn't require that many people vouching for you: the person reading any given application is a completely reasonable human being that probably wants people to be playing the race that they put so much effort into maintaining the lore for. Not to mention all the resources required to research into any lore you'd need to know for one are in completely easy-to-digest forms on the wiki which you can quickly use to put together a solid character concept in only a couple of hours, which is about the length of your average round on Aurora, so not a very large investment of time. Community members are also always willing to provide help and answers to any questions, and so long as people display an honest effort and an aptitude for roleplaying within Aurora's high-roleplay standards, they will easily pass an application with no problems. In summary, the idea as-posed doesn't make any lore sense, doesn't provide a sensible solution to the problem that it sets out to address, sets out to solve a problem that doesn't necessarily need solving, and goes against the whole logic behind why alien whitelists exist on this server in the first place. People do not need a stripped version of a race to want to play it. Believe me, I wish there were more Skrell on the station too, but this isn't the way to go about it. There are better ways, and we should give Paradox the time to try them if they even deem it necessary. Edited May 15, 2020 by Skyglazer I was mistaken about the existence of damage vulnerability for Skrell.
Peppermint Posted May 14, 2020 Posted May 14, 2020 Whitelist apps really aren't hard to get. They just require some effort. If people want to play skrell, apply for skrell.
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