Lifespan & Racial Outlook

(This is an old blogpost I never finished and never will. Just want to put it out as is and reduce my backlog.)

How long you live colours your thinking. Whether you're GMing alien races or playing a member of one, the lifespan of the race should inform your roleplaying.

These are based on real world and fictional examples.

1. Short Lived (10 years or less). Insects.

Good - Follow orders. You owe your life to the queen and the hive.

Bad - Live for today. No time to make anything, just beg, borrow, or steal. Parasitic or exploitative thinking.

Ugly - Burrow into others and fill with your spawn. All other life exists as food for your brood.

2. Half-Century. Dogs and cats.

Good - Find a bigger creature, stay loyal to your master. Die for them if you must.

Bad - Live with your master, but on your own terms. Hunt and leave them 'gifts', whether they appreciate them or not.

Ugly - Stay feral, never be tamed. Take down bigger creatures when you have the advantage of numbers, hunt smaller game if alone.

3. Century. Human. 

Good - Big dreams, chase them in youth, surround yourself with family later on. Grow olive trees you will not live to sit under. 

Bad - It's all abut money and power. Life is short, so get what you can, realize there are more important things too late.

Ugly - Might is right, us vs them. Gaining power for your side should give your life meaning, but never quite does.

4. Multi-Century. Elves.

Good - Wise but sad. See patterns in events, the larger context. Saddened by history repeating itself.

Bad - Fanatics. Life is struggle, so you fight on, regardless of whether your efforts change anything.

Ugly - Nothing matters, nothing changes. Retreat from the world and don't get involved.

5. Millenial. Demigods.

Good - Ultimate aesthetes. Everything you make is a work of art that takes lifetimes of other races to construct. The pommel of your sword is from a tree that has evolved into something else, the blade from starstuff mined when the world was young.

Bad - Living millennia totally warps your humanity. Evil and good are just flips of the coin, what side of the bed you wake up on this century.

Ugly - Other races are teardrops in the rain, bubbles in your morning coffee. Their life or death means nothing in the larger scheme of things.