Freelance Traveller

Flynn’s Guide to Alien Creation

reviewed by Jeff Zeitlin

This article originally appeared in the July/August 2026 issue.

Flynn’s Guide to Alien Creation. Jason “Flynn” Kemp
Samardan Press https://www.lulu.com/spotlight/samardanpress
34pp., PDF or softcover
US$4.99(P)9.99(S)/UK£3.74(P)7.49(S)

Aliens have been a feature of Traveller from its earliest days, but alien creation has been essentially ad-hoc—there were no formalized rules for deciding how to choose characteristic modifiers, what the final appearance would be, or how they would fit in with the ecology of their (putative) homeworld.

Flynn’s Guide to Alien Creation changes that. Although “Flynn” explicitly states in the introductory material that the basic assumption for an alien species is what I call ‘humans in rubber suits’, the process he sets out for generating them does allow for non-bipedal body plan and special traits based on the characteristics of the world, but relies on the referee to take the general results from this process and write out the details.

“Flynn” acknowledges that he was “inspired by the animal/life form generation method described in the Traveller core rules”, and explains that additional details were required for aliens that are “usable as a character race”. The process provided lists fourteen steps, starting with “Determine Existence of Sentient Life”, running through defining certain aspects of the homeworld and the alien, and ending with “Apply Common Sense” and “Record Alien Species Details”.

Throughout the process, two races from his Azri Drakara setting are used for illustration.

Step 1, “Determine Existence of Sentient Life”, seems somewhat redundant, as you’re using this book specifically to create some sentients. It’s not, really, though, if you’re working an entire region of space “from scratch” – by applying the guidelines presented in this step, you should expect to end up with four to six sentient species per sector. Obviously, if you’re looking to add a sentient species to an already-developed region, you can reduce this step to simply choosing the homeworld based on whatever “prior image” you may have of the race, or you can pick the homeworld entirely without preconception and see what develops as you work your way through the process.

Step 2, “Determine Homeworld Qualities”, inspects the UWP of the homeworld, and assigns any mandatory traits to the race based on unusual conditions of the homeworld – for example, atmospheres with taints, or atmosphere A+, will force special traits for the alien. This step looks at all three of the physical characteristics of the world.

The world’s climate – or rather, the world’s average temperature – also figures into the alien traits assigned; if you’re sticking to only the core rules, this is effectively determined by referee fiat – but you can use other sources, such as Scouts or World Builders’ Handbook to work out the details of the world and get the temperature information that way.

Once you’ve determined traits forced by the world’s basic characteristics, Step 3, “Determine Ecological Stock”, starts looking at the “unforced” characteristics of the alien. This step looks at what are essentially the tables from the core rules, and will give you more-or-less the same results – your alien will be derived from e.g., Carnivore/Chaser stock. I think “Flynn” misses an opportunity here by not also including the terrain tables as the first step; while it’s reasonable to assume that a sophont alien has mastered controlling its environment and will have spread all over its homeworld, its “terrain of origin” might provide inspiration into the shape of its civilization – for example, the cities built by a Carnivore/Chaser with an origin terrain of desert or savannah might look very different from those of a C/C with an origin terrain of forest or mountain.

Step 4, “Determine Description”, addresses the question of warm-blooded vs. cold-blooded, the number of genders, and how they bear young. This is fairly basic; it doesn’t go into the questions of placental vs. marsupial, sex-selection method (e.g., XY vs ZW vs temperature), or other refinements of these categories (leaving them for referee fiat in the final steps). This is also the step where, if the world characteristics are appropriate, you might end up with amphibious or completely aquatic aliens.

Step 5, “Determine Size”, is fairly straightforward; there are some DMs for world size and certain traits that may have already been established. I believe that there is an error in the list of DMs, and that the signs for the two world-size DMs should be reversed.

Step 6, “Determine Movement”, addresses both how the alien moves (e.g., legs, swim, fly, and certain variations on them), and what type of body plan symmetry and number of limbs the alien has. This step also provides for the type of limbs (e.g., locomotion, manipulation, or both), and for speed.

Step 7, “Determine Ability Scores”, has the designer run through each of the standard UPP attributes and determine how it is modified when generating a character of the alien species. Modifiers are applied separately for each attribute, and may arise from previous steps or from any attribute of the homeworld’s UWP.

Step 8, “Determine Natural Armor”, is a “straight up” yes-no determination of whether the species has natural armor. No determination of the level of protection or what it derives from (e.g., thick fur, scaly skin, shell) is made.

Step 9, “Determine Natural Weaponry”, is also fairly straightforward, indicating whether the species’ natural weaponry (if any) is teeth, claws, hooves, horns, stinger, or thrasher, with stingers automatically being poisonous, and teeth having that option.

Step 10, “Determine Senses”, defines characteristics of a species’ vision, hearing, and ability to smell (or lack of any of them), plus any special senses (e.g., natural telepathy, vibration sense, etc.) the species may have. There is one notable omission in the special senses; an innate ‘sense of direction’ does not appear, although it’s not unknown among animals on Earth.

Step 11, “Determine Alien Traits”, is simply a selection mechanism for Things That Make Them Alien. Some such traits may have been “forced” by results from earlier steps in the process; this step allows adding up to four more traits (to a maximum of six total). These traits may be either physical characteristics (such as “Fast Healing”) or cultural (such as “Haggler”).

Step 12, “Determine Finishing Touches” covers things like height and weight (obviously influenced by the result of Step 5) and how long the species’ life cycle is.

Step 13, “Apply Common Sense”, and Step 14, “Record Alien Species Details”, are intended for the referee to take all of the notes that were compiled from the procedure, and beat them into useful shape.

While each step of the procedure is set up for random generation, there’s no reason why the designer can’t just work from a basic concept and choose the specific result that best fits the mental image of the species – the process works just as well being treated as an outline/checklist.

Following the procedure is a List of Alien Traits. Any trait mentioned in the process of generating the alien species is defined here, and “Flynn” encourages species designers to come up with their own additional traits. Each trait here is described, and where it has effects on play, those effects are outlined (for example, applying DMs on certain checks). Familiarity with the content of this section will allow the designer to spot combinations that might seem unreasonable, and adjust appropriately. It should be noted that the definitions here can be modified by the designer to limit the application of the trait. There’s no specific prohibition on widening the application of the trait, but I would recommend caution in doing so.

Following the trait list is a set of steps sketching out how to develop a culture for the aliens, should you want to (I recommend it). These steps are based on the first part of a four-part series at campaignmastery.com, and “Flynn” has also added some suggestions for further development, such as species-specific career options, constructed languages, expressions or adages that capture the species’ philosophy, and so on.

Overall, a useful volume, if you’re interested in creating aliens.