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moosher12 wrote: So basically making them little Zims? I'm down. I could 100% see an Invader Zim inspired Greys in 2e.
You Might...
•Want to examine and understand everything you observe
•Instinctively "abduct" irrelevant things and claim remote locations as conquered territory
•Have an ego that betrays your stature
Others Might....
•Have complex social rules and norms you don't understand
•Assume you're a megalomaniac cownapper- or even worse, that you're an UNPROFESSIONAL cownapper
•Laugh at the idea that you could take on this whole stinking Galaxy with a laser pistol and a dream
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Loosely related, but this reminds me of in my Rise of the Runelords game, they tried to rehabilitate Erylium the Lamashtu-worshipping Quasit (Guess Imp now?), alongside various goblins.
They banned them from performing sacrifices on live animals, they ended up sacrificing jelly donuts and the term "Snackrifice" came up. Needless to say, a bunch of goblins were born with very pretty faces in the near future.
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Zim!
"Snackrifice," I already loved Paizo goblins, but love them even more!
Today I found a set of space-themed erasers that are the right size for Starfinder miniatures. One of them is a green skinned, Gray looking alien. If Grays are natural erasers, then I think we know who caused the Gap.
My Views on Grays might be a little skewed. I have friends from Roswell, New Mexico, who happened to have gone to the high school featured in the 1999 Roswell TV show. When I visited them, they took me to the International UFO Museum and Research Center and Gift Shop. We met the owner of the museum, who said he had been abducted by aliens. He seemed to think the aliens were rather nice and was waiting for them to come back because they promised him a ride to their planet. So that's what I think of when I see Grays in Starfinder.
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Driftbourne wrote: Zim!
"Snackrifice," I already loved Paizo goblins, but love them even more!
Today I found a set of space-themed erasers that are the right size for Starfinder miniatures. One of them is a green skinned, Gray looking alien. If Grays are natural erasers, then I think we know who caused the Gap.
My Views on Grays might be a little skewed. I have friends from Roswell, New Mexico, who happened to have gone to the high school featured in the 1999 Roswell TV show. When I visited them, they took me to the International UFO Museum and Research Center and Gift Shop. We met the owner of the museum, who said he had been abducted by aliens. He seemed to think the aliens were rather nice and was waiting for them to come back because they promised him a ride to their planet. So that's what I think of when I see Grays in Starfinder.
"Hey, why is nobody flying to e-arth anymore?"
"Ugh, the locals keep asking for a ride off world. And you know how much paperwork that would be!"
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Justnobodyfqwl wrote: I think I might have accidentally helped given OP the impression that they weren't coming back, I made a big post about it a few weeks back.
Justnobodyfqwl wrote: I think Greys are in a kinda awkward spot right now for Paizo. They're a very classic alien archetype, exactly as tropey and archetypical as Lashunta or Vesk. But in 1e, they kind of don't have any lore or culture. They're hardcore, explicitly leaning into the adventure they were made for, and their role as "spooky mysterious evil guys". That's already kinda limiting for roleplay in itself, but...
The adventure they're made to tie into...is NEVER going to be revisited by Paizo in ANY way whatsoever at all. A tropey throwback to genre fiction and schlock that just so happens to be entirely built around two simultaneous conspiracy theories that have had VERY RAPID cultural turnovers in perception.
So....what do you do with them now? The obvious answer is just "Idk, make new lore for them unrelated to Threefold Conspiracy, it's not like THEY'RE the part people have a problem with". But I think the fact that doing anything with a Grey would involve just making up a whole new ancestry... probably means they'll be on the backburner for a while.
And it's a shame! There are very few universal pop culture aliens the same way people will immediately understand an Elf or Dwarf, but Greys are one of them. They're honest to God cattle abducting, UFOs and Lasers, disappearing little big headed freaks. Who DOESNT want to play as one?
If I have to guess what'll happen to them, I think the current SF2E team really likes quirky and funny stuff. I think we'll probably see a reimagined Greys that leans into the idea that they're harmless and quirky, in a way that makes them seem off-putting and strange to Pact Worlds aliens. Maybe they have big eyes and abduct people because they're naturally inquisitive and curious, but don't know that studying people without speaking freaks out other aliens.
The point about quirky is well made, I think. Narrative Declaration had a grey as one of their PCs when they ran through "Junker's Delight" in SF1E.
His name was something like Ulioo--or something like it, I can't find it written down where I can read it--and he was a silly lil guy who flew into Pact Worlds space from a distant mothership to prep the solar system for invasion.
Then he landed his ship in a no-park zone, got it impounded, and adventures with the others to stump up the cash to pay off the fines.
He's a very silly and fun character, and I think something of a fan favorite. I could see the Starfriends trying to thread the needle of greys in that way; representing and playing up this cultural divide and friction between the greys who really only know their own society, and buy into their own hype, and the greys who communicate with other species and adjusting to the wider galaxy as something more than spooky pairs of eyes looking out of the dark.
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Mangaholic13 wrote: As for the Greys? I think that part may be speculative. Not speculation. Jenny Jarzabski mentioned in the unofficial Starfinder Discord server the following:
Jenny Jarzabski wrote: Good news! No more reptoids ever! Probably no grays either. Jenny Jarzabski wrote: Grays are just low on the list but not a no go. There’s more interesting aliens to stat first. Jenny Jarzabski wrote: Personally I am not into them but it’s not all about me. Reptoids should have never existed though. As for the original confirmation of Reptoids not being in SF2E, it was Jenny last year that confirmed (on the same Discord server) that Reptoids would not be seeing a return:
Jenny Jarzabski wrote: No reset. The team wants to preserve and add on to classic lore. There are a couple of changes but they are either legally necessary or a result of sensitivity concerns nearly 10 years later; for instance, spoilers, reptoids are not showing up again (but you can have them in your games, we're just not touching them with a 30 foot pole at this point.) Most changes we want to make are things we'll show narratively, for example, Drift Lanes popping up after the Drift Crisis and creating a new golden era of piracy, or Aucturn hatching and sending a wave of TrAnSdiMenSiOnAl PsYcHiC EnErGy across the galaxy.
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Perpdepog wrote: The point about quirky is well made, I think. Narrative Declaration had a grey as one of their PCs when they ran through "Junker's Delight" in SF1E.
His name was something like Ulioo--or something like it, I can't find it written down where I can read it--and he was a silly lil guy who flew into Pact Worlds space from a distant mothership to prep the solar system for invasion.
Then he landed his ship in a no-park zone, got it impounded, and adventures with the others to stump up the cash to pay off the fines.
He's a very silly and fun character, and I think something of a fan favorite. I could see the Starfriends trying to thread the needle of greys in that way; representing and playing up this cultural divide and friction between the greys who really only know their own society, and buy into their own hype, and the greys who communicate with other species and adjusting to the wider galaxy as something more than spooky pairs of eyes looking out of the dark.
As the main video editor for Narrative Declaration, I'm really glad that Uliu-451 (his name plate, minus the numbers, on the video version is right below his animated avatar!) resonated with you!
I'd love to see the ancestries the team played in Junker's Delight (Ramiyels, Moyishuus, Wrikreechees, SROs and Greys) brought back into SF2E so we could run it back with that team again. But totally understandable to try and prioritize other ancestries with more interesting stories to tell before them.
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Well I'm glad for the grays she said "Probably," and that they are low priority, but not nixed. I'll reiterate, I think it was a misstep writing them the way they were written for whoever handled their 1E draft, but I don't think it's impossible to give them a more acceptable coat of paint. For the greys at least, I'd like to see them get the Ikeshki treatment. So I'm glad they are not automatically nixed, and are just being considered low priority.
But for now, I've long felt that 1E's (for both PF and SF) ancestry system for Bestiaries and Alien Archives is not as intended for player characters to use (It's allowed, but it's always with a use-with caution for GMs, and is more for making custom NPCs, than player characters). And I feel like there never was enough information to make a proper grey as a result (For example, after this thread, my partner started looking into the Threefold Conspiracy, only to find that even that didn't add that much context to their goals). Greys coming would probably have to come with more details about their actual culture and goals for a 2E style ancestry to work. Otherwise players are left to make a grey that might not even be what a Starfinder Grey should be at all. So a Grey would likely have to wait until a bigger reveal on their race to become an ancestry methinks. This is to say, their place would probably be better as part of an Adventure, Deluxe Adventure, or Adventure Path, than in a Core Book or Lost Omens equivalent.
Ezekieru wrote: Perpdepog wrote: The point about quirky is well made, I think. Narrative Declaration had a grey as one of their PCs when they ran through "Junker's Delight" in SF1E.
His name was something like Ulioo--or something like it, I can't find it written down where I can read it--and he was a silly lil guy who flew into Pact Worlds space from a distant mothership to prep the solar system for invasion.
Then he landed his ship in a no-park zone, got it impounded, and adventures with the others to stump up the cash to pay off the fines.
He's a very silly and fun character, and I think something of a fan favorite. I could see the Starfriends trying to thread the needle of greys in that way; representing and playing up this cultural divide and friction between the greys who really only know their own society, and buy into their own hype, and the greys who communicate with other species and adjusting to the wider galaxy as something more than spooky pairs of eyes looking out of the dark.
As the main video editor for Narrative Declaration, I'm really glad that Uliu-451 (his name plate, minus the numbers, on the video version is right below his animated avatar!) resonated with you!
I'd love to see the ancestries the team played in Junker's Delight (Ramiyels, Moyishuus, Wrikreechees, SROs and Greys) brought back into SF2E so we could run it back with that team again. But totally understandable to try and prioritize other ancestries with more interesting stories to tell before them. Yeah, I figurd it was there. Sadly doesn't do me much good, I'm blind so the actual images on the streams are a nonstarter, including name plates, but everyone in my friend group loves that lil goofus.
I also think, as ancestries go, grays have got enough to try homebrewing an ancestry should you want to. Give them a feature or feat that allows them a limited form of their phasing ability from 1E, expand it with later feat support, give them a few feats linked to things like telepathic communication, removing, or maybe restoring memories, and you've already got a nice grab bag of concepts to build feats from.
And of course there are the ever-present "you can cast spell X" types of feats, though they'd bleed into memory and telepathic stuff, I suppose.
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Perpdepog wrote: Ezekieru wrote: Perpdepog wrote: The point about quirky is well made, I think. Narrative Declaration had a grey as one of their PCs when they ran through "Junker's Delight" in SF1E.
His name was something like Ulioo--or something like it, I can't find it written down where I can read it--and he was a silly lil guy who flew into Pact Worlds space from a distant mothership to prep the solar system for invasion.
Then he landed his ship in a no-park zone, got it impounded, and adventures with the others to stump up the cash to pay off the fines.
He's a very silly and fun character, and I think something of a fan favorite. I could see the Starfriends trying to thread the needle of greys in that way; representing and playing up this cultural divide and friction between the greys who really only know their own society, and buy into their own hype, and the greys who communicate with other species and adjusting to the wider galaxy as something more than spooky pairs of eyes looking out of the dark.
As the main video editor for Narrative Declaration, I'm really glad that Uliu-451 (his name plate, minus the numbers, on the video version is right below his animated avatar!) resonated with you!
I'd love to see the ancestries the team played in Junker's Delight (Ramiyels, Moyishuus, Wrikreechees, SROs and Greys) brought back into SF2E so we could run it back with that team again. But totally understandable to try and prioritize other ancestries with more interesting stories to tell before them. Yeah, I figurd it was there. Sadly doesn't do me much good, I'm blind so the actual images on the streams are a nonstarter, including name plates, but everyone in my friend group loves that lil goofus.
I also think, as ancestries go, grays have got enough to try homebrewing an ancestry should you want to. Give them a feature or feat that allows them a limited form of their phasing ability from 1E, expand it with later feat support, give them a few feats linked to things like telepathic... Regarding Phasing, I just recently noticed that Gnomes had a defensive phasing ability in premaster. Unexpected Shift and Fortuitous Shift. They were from the Character Guide and have not yet been remastered, so they might be a bit too strong for PF2.
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