38: Best Practices for Speculative Species Design

James Mendez Hodes, Independent Game Developer, @LulaVampiro

To close out #MAMG22, I ’d like to discuss how to design a sapient species and its cultures (plural, important) for speculative media, specifically from a cultural consulting and cultural design perspective. I made up this advice to help clients’ orcs, aliens, alien orcs, etc. a) avoid harmful real-life tropes, and b) set players and fans up for good interactions at game tables or fandom spaces. But they also led to more interesting, playable species in a game/narrative design sense.

If you like really tropey fantasy races, I probably can ’t help you here, but you know how to make those already—just do the tropes. You’re set. Speaking as your cultural consultant, though, maybe be careful with the tropes, especially “evil races”: https://jamesmendezhodes.com/blog/2019/1/13/orcsbritons-and-the-martial-race-myth-part-i-a-species-built-for-racial-terror

But if you want your species to go somewhere new, and especially if you want your cultural consultant’s job to be cheaper and easier, bring the points below into your process. You can’t hit all of them. That’s OK—that’s why there’s so many. I’ve split them into 3 sections.

Narrative and Creative Process

These points cover principles to consider through all phases of creation; as well as how careful narrative design supports strong builds. Make sure others get to see your good choices.

• Make up focus groups in your head. Imagine many different identities’ and viewpoints’ emotional reactions to your stuff. Which do you want to create? Which don’t feel right? Is there anyone you want to feel uncomfortable in the space (racists, Nazis, etc.)?

• Imagine these reactions as if they know your demographics in real life. Then, as if they don’t. How much do you want your identity in focus or under fire if there’s discourse or controversy? How important is it to understanding your work?

• Center and protagonize members of the species. Depict them as they see themselves primarily and/or first, before introducing outside perspectives where they’re more easily othered or exoticized.

• The more intense, controversial, or traumatic topics in the work, the harder it is to do each one justice—especially with smaller or shorter works. If you work with or subvert extant harmful tropes, keep just one or two per species.

• Want to invert or satirize tropes? The more clever and subtle you are, the more likely you’ll accidentally recreate what you try to invert. At some point in the audience’s interaction with your satire, your viewpoint must become crystal clear.

• Stay current on the way the bad guys in real life talk. You want to create an environment that’s hostile to their conversations, so if someone starts in with some race science bullshit they can’t cover it as saying “I’m just talking about this species in this game.”

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Biology and Environment

These points cover your species ’s biology and relationship with its surroundings ’ecological and political pressures. We want to biology to inform, but stand distinct from, culture and personality, to avoid bioessentialism.

• Biologically distinguish species in ways which fall outside existing human diversity. Species which are “humans but bigger/smarter/prettier etc.” are more likely to hit stereotypes about real demographics. Fewer stereotypes mention, for example, electroreceptive senses or wings.

• Intelligence is a concept commonly misunderstood and frequently seeded into false, harmful stereotypes. I discourage it as a biological distinction. But if you must give a species Brain Powers, get real specific: spatial reasoning, audio memory, copying movement.

• Same goes for “strength,” “athleticism,” etc.: still risky, but focusing in on reaction time, grip strength, etc. is somewhat less likely to invoke stereotypes. Somewhat. If it’s a thing humans can be or do, some villain somewhere may have ruined it.

• Design your species’ environment, both ecological and social/political, together with biology (and for that matter culture). I know you know this, but: remember they should probably adapt reasonably well to the pressures they experience.

Culture

These points cover cultural traits, informed by biology but distinct from it. I think this section is most important of all, since harmful cultural misconceptions are what I deal with all day both professionally and, well, for other reasons.

• Create at least two cultures per species. Humans have hundreds of cool cultures; interesting monsters and aliens deserve at least a couple. Got space to depict only one culture? Imagine a second as you define your first, just in case. It’ll be more vivid that way.

• Do you want to lean away from cultural associations, creating something no one links to any one real-world group? Or lean into them, drawing intentionally from specific touchstones? Lean Away seems easier, but I’ve never seen it truly work. Lean In is more reliable.

• If you must lean away, remember: your brain is full of cultural signifiers and unconscious bias. So is your audience’s. Instead of only trying to innovate, draw intentionally from diverse, far-flung cultures and influences.

• If you lean in: one, thank you for being brave and trying. Two, rather than casting a wide net and risking cultural conflation, Orientalism, etc, pick a specific time and place. It’s easier to research and less work. You can hire fewer consultants this way.

• “Primitive” species/cultures are hard mode. Noble Savage, Martial Race, and similar stereotypes strongly bias our perception of this idea. Humans were already socially sophisticated, technologically adapted to their circumstances millennia ago.

• Give them space for joy and play. Hobbies, parties, sports, debate, humour, complex relationships, special interests, fashion, religion that’s got art and community, spoiled pets, reality TV, epic poetry, goth poetry, role-playing games, inside jokes, comfort in sadness.

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During the original Twitter conference, Robert Houghton asked for a brief example of a species I’d designed using this system. I replied that I had applied it to orcs in Incredible Dream’s upcoming Kinfire Chronicles board game. Their original orcs were primitive, nomadic, and violent, embodying noble savage and martial race tropes. What nonhuman biology could they have besides tusks and green skin?

The team hit on weather sense. We considered what lifestyles the ability to predict the weather accurately might support, aiming to create two. We decided on agriculture and exploration. So, some orcs raise crops and animals. Their culture prizes long-term investment in community and family, defence and growth. Other orcs are pioneers, traders, or even raiders, always a step ahead of the hurricane. This approach made sense of existing orc art featuring rough-edged animal skins: it’s a wilderness scout look now. Pirate and merchant vessels often have orc weather-watchers aboard.

Thanks for your patience with a sprawling, tough topic. My favourite sapient nonhumans are as diverse and complex as we are. They don’t just avoid offense; they bring excitement. Your audience can’t wait to draw them, play as them, identify with them. Neither can I.

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