Starcraft rip-off with a lore/story that doesn't suck?

[MediumGatoKatr]

I'm a Starcraft fan who is disgusted with Blizzard's abysmally bad writing. I got it into my head to brainstorm a rip-off in the same vein as Atrox or StarFront (or, for that matter, Warhammer 40,000 which heavily inspired Starcraft). I'm posting here because I'm interested in bouncing ideas with others.

Full disclosure: I think Starcraft had a bunch of really interesting ideas in its backstory, but the execution was horrible. It had the potential to be gritty military scifi with deep philosophical themes, but ended up schlock space opera reliant on plot contrivance and deus ex machina.

So the premise is your generic interstellar war between three race archetypes, which I will generically refer to as humans, bugs, and elves. The archetypes by themselves are fairly boring and predictable, so let's give them some quirks to make them standout from all the other generic science fiction.

Humans are extremely predictable (basically they're a left-wing utopia, you probably know the type) and readers/writers have an annoying tendency to focus on them to the point that the other two races become fodder for human space marines. Let's give them a few quirks to change things up a bit:

• Space cowboys
• Cyberpunk dystopia
• Cassette futurism aesthetics
• Giant mechs, because why not? Only a moron would send infantry against space bugs with razor blades for arms.
• Humanity fuck yeah!, because why not? It's a simple reason to justify eternal war, too!
• Their governments and factions are love letters to the RTS franchises of yesteryear: American Confederacy, Soviet Union, Republic of China, Brotherhood of Nod, etc
• They haven't learned anything from climate change and still go around strip-mining planets despite asteroids being more abundant. Conversely, "shake and bake colonies" are commonplace.
• They're fuzzy catboys who run on omegaverse logic. (I can't think of a better way to get readers/writers to ignore them long enough to focus on the other two races. Alternate suggestions are really welcome!)

Elves are also predicable and as I said before tend to be used as fodder for the space marines, so let's just combine all the quirks from various space elves in fiction. (All of these were present in earlier iterations of Starcraft lore, but were basically retconned out of existence. You might notice that the protoss closely resemble the eldar and adeptus astartes, likely because they were inspired by them. Any resemblance to the necrons is probably coincidental since the protoss were published a few years before the first necron codex.)

• They're robotic and/or mineral-based and therefore look like grotesque abstract sculptures, not humans with pointy ears and no mouths.
• Their galactic empire is comparable to the Altean Empire or the Peacekeepers in terms of well-meaning atrocity, but recently the progressives have stopped the genocides and enslavement by imposing the Prime Directive. Gee, I wonder how long that will last?
• They have a telepathic network that let's them create a Na'vi-esque communist utopia and speak with their dead.
• They're prone to emotionally extremes like Eldar or Vulcans, so they focus on aspect paths modeled on the tripartite ideology hypothesis from Proto-Indo-European studies. The warrior caste is basically every proud warrior race in scifi combined.
• They're divided into physically and culturally diverse clans like gelflings, who are socially pigeonholed into certain professions. Their governing body is composed of the elders from each clan.
• Their culture, architecture, and naming conventions are loosely based on the Roman Empire, Ancient Egypt, and other dead human cultures a la ancient astronaut hypothesis. They have names like Xerxes and fly around in pyramids.
• They're militant atheists who banned all religions for being false and wrong-headed, except for ancestor worship augmented by their telepathic internet.
• Although they don't talk about it, there are some elven exiles who rejected the rule of the empire and live in hiding. These range from peaceful ascetics to space vampire pirates.
• Did I mention they can speak with their dead? They can even raise their dead in new bodies to fight!

Bugs are even more predictable and boring than elves, to the point where they're a civic in Stellaris called "devouring swarm," so we need to work extra hard to make them interesting. Very early in its development Starcraft had the novel idea to combine the tyranids with the borg and Papa Nurgle (and Khorne)... for about five minutes before killing the characters off. Let's just recycle that idea and give it the exploration that Starcraft never did. Here's somebody's headcanon analyses to get you started:

UA Plays: Starcraft

I don't know if it was intentional, but the Overmind is the only leader that always respects you, doesn't lie to you, doesn't betray you, and seems to be genuinely concerned with the well being of his people (in the big picture, anyway). You don't think Tassadar meets all those requirements as...

forums.spacebattles.com

Which is better: Zerg (StarCraft) vs Tyranids (Warhammer 40,000)

No this not a verses battle but to see which one people think is better in Aesthetics which one do you prefer Which one do you think is the better-constructed race of hive-mind alien insect dinosaur things

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I totally support multiverse theory, too. So if there's ever a time when two great ideas are competing, each gets their own alternate universe/timeline. Yay!

Feel free to throw ideas at the wall until something sticks.

 

[Zaealix]

Humanity I suspect you could just grab a culture and put it in Space for a brand of humanity that is recognizable while still mundane enough they don't become the star of the show.
The Bugs, uhhh...Maybe look up various ant species and to from there? There's more variety then one might think.
As for Elves, the idea that they're potentially sentient rocks in geometric shapes struck me as potentially an interesting base to capitalize upon, if you could do so.

 

[Gyrfalcon]

So The humans of Starcraft took heavily from the Colonial Marines of the Alien franchise, just with some early space western stuff thrown in there, the Zerg were basically Tyranids with more explicit Xenomorph influence, and the Protoss were basically the Eldar but less human, and I've always suspected the "less human" aspects of the Protoss were at least partially inspired by the Predator, what with their dreadlocks and wristblades.

So I'm going to say take that last part and play with it more. Make your Space Elf faction a little less nice, a little more primal and savage. Their martial culture puts a big emphasis on ritual hunting and the prowess of a hunter. In keeping with the Space Elf side of things maybe add in sci-fi versions of the darker bits of fairy lore, like the Wild Hunt. Hard-light holographic hunting programs that resemble phantom hounds, that sort of thing.

 

[MediumGatoKatr]

Humanity I suspect you could just grab a culture and put it in Space for a brand of humanity that is recognizable while still mundane enough they don't become the star of the show.

Click to shrink...

That's pretty much my go-to strategy. Recycle the American Civil War in space and similar (Starcraft tried that at one point in development, then changed it to schlock space opera about a plucky hero fighting emperor evil). I think I mentioned in OP that my basic idea for the governments and factions was to recycle historical ones like the Confederacy, Soviet Union, Republic of China, East India Trading Company, etc.

While that makes them more interesting than the bland leftist fantasy pervading most popular scifi, that still doesn't solve the problem of readers/writers focusing on them to the exclusion of the other two races. Most scifi with multiple intelligent races suffers this problem, especially video games.

Hence my odious "make them catboys" suggestion.

The Bugs, uhhh...Maybe look up various ant species and to from there? There's more variety then one might think.

Click to shrink...

That's not a problem I encountered. Making up units for a horde of murderous space locusts is easy. Making a generic devouring swarm interesting from their own perspective is really hard. That's why my go-to example is to give them personalities based on the chaos daemons from Warhammer. It's sufficiently recognizable that they aren't boring to read/watch, but sufficiently inhuman that they aren't funny looking humans.

Look at the tyranid campaign from Dawn of War II. It's really boring.

• Compare the zerg campaign from Starcraft 1. The zerg talk, plot, and have goals for the immediate and distant future.
• Compare the flood from Halo. While still voracious monsters, the Gravemind is at least entertaining to listen to.
• Compare the reapers from Mass Effect. Still utterly inhuman and implacable, but Sovereign's arrogant speechifying was still entertaining to listen to.
• Compare the necrophages from Endless Legend. Their quest path exposition touches on philosophy, sad it was so short.

That's why I plugged the analyses made by Unhappy Anchovy. He pretty much nailed the best way to make a devouring swarm interesting by giving them personality without removing their inherently vicious nature. I can provide more information on request.

As for Elves, the idea that they're potentially sentient rocks in geometric shapes struck me as potentially an interesting base to capitalize upon, if you could do so.

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How so? I had a few ideas myself but what are yours?

And how is that more interesting than any of their inhuman psychology that I tried to emphasize, like the extreme emotions and the telepathic communism? Pulling off communism is a huge deal, since humans can't do it. Having emotions so extreme that you can dedicate your centuries of existence to a single profession, or need telepathic communism to avoid galactic war lasting millennia, is also a huge deal... but far harder for human minds to comprehend.

Posing big philosophical musings like that is a huge part of why I like scifi.

So I'm going to say take that last part and play with it more. Make your Space Elf faction a little less nice, a little more primal and savage. Their martial culture puts a big emphasis on ritual hunting and the prowess of a hunter. In keeping with the Space Elf side of things maybe add in sci-fi versions of the darker bits of fairy lore, like the Wild Hunt. Hard-light holographic hunting programs that resemble phantom hounds, that sort of thing.

Click to shrink...

Great ideas. Might be more appropriate for the dark space elves, though. Raging Heroes tried something similar, albeit way creepier.

I tried to make my space elf idea distinct from Starcraft with the whole "benevolent/evil empire" bit. Starcraft actually teased that exact thing early in its lore but never did anything with it. I want to see the space elves waging callous genocide against the humans and the humans seeking revenge on them for it.

Making changes from the Starcraft formula for the sake of change is fine and all (it protects us from lawsuits, after all), but I'm interested in exploring the sorts of plots that Blizzard proved too incompetent to tackle. I can provide more details on request.

 

[Gyrfalcon]

That's pretty much my go-to strategy. Recycle the American Civil War in space and similar (Starcraft tried that at one point in development, then changed it to schlock space opera about a plucky hero fighting emperor evil). I think I mentioned in OP that my basic idea for the governments and factions was to recycle historical ones like the Confederacy, Soviet Union, Republic of China, East India Trading Company, etc.

While that makes them more interesting than the bland leftist fantasy pervading most popular scifi, that still doesn't solve the problem of readers/writers focusing on them to the exclusion of the other two races. Most scifi with multiple intelligent races suffers this problem, especially video games.

Hence my odious "make them catboys" suggestion.

That's not a problem I encountered. Making up units for a horde of murderous space locusts is easy. Making a generic devouring swarm interesting from their own perspective is really hard. That's why my go-to example is to give them personalities based on the chaos daemons from Warhammer. It's sufficiently recognizable that they aren't boring to read/watch, but sufficiently inhuman that they aren't funny looking humans.

Look at the tyranid campaign from Dawn of War II. It's really boring.

• Compare the zerg campaign from Starcraft 1. The zerg talk, plot, and have goals for the immediate and distant future.
• Compare the flood from Halo. While still voracious monsters, the Gravemind is at least entertaining to listen to.
• Compare the reapers from Mass Effect. Still utterly inhuman and implacable, but Sovereign's arrogant speechifying was still entertaining to listen to.
• Compare the necrophages from Endless Legend. Their quest path exposition touches on philosophy, sad it was so short.

That's why I plugged the analyses made by Unhappy Anchovy. He pretty much nailed the best way to make a devouring swarm interesting by giving them personality without removing their inherently vicious nature. I can provide more information on request.

How so? I had a few ideas myself but what are yours?

And how is that more interesting than any of their inhuman psychology that I tried to emphasize, like the extreme emotions and the telepathic communism? Pulling off communism is a huge deal, since humans can't do it. Having emotions so extreme that you can dedicate your centuries of existence to a single profession, or need telepathic communism to avoid galactic war lasting millennia, is also a huge deal... but far harder for human minds to comprehend.

Posing big philosophical musings like that is a huge part of why I like scifi.


Great ideas. Might be more appropriate for the dark space elves, though. Raging Heroes tried something similar, albeit way creepier.

I tried to make my space elf idea distinct from Starcraft with the whole "benevolent/evil empire" bit. Starcraft actually teased that exact thing early in its lore but never did anything with it. I want to see the space elves waging callous genocide against the humans and the humans seeking revenge on them for it.

Making changes from the Starcraft formula for the sake of change is fine and all (it protects us from lawsuits, after all), but I'm interested in exploring the sorts of plots that Blizzard proved too incompetent to tackle. I can provide more details on request.

Click to shrink...

Well, the original Starcraft plot had two factions with nuance (the humans have tyrannical dictators with armies of prisoner-soldiers and the Protoss have Lawful Neutral bureaucrats who view humans as a rounding error, both of them committed genocide) while the Zerg were wholly destructive. In the end though the Evil Humans and the Evil PRotoss were viewed as outliers, villains to be defeated so the true "good" heroes of both factions could prevail. Meanwhile the Zerg were eventually re-written somewhat unconvincingly to be the natural force of evolution and balance, only destructive thanks to the meddling of some Eldritch Gods.

I'm assuming what you wanted was a world of more moral greys against a backtype of archetypal 80s/90s sci fi conceits. Blizzard's never really been capable of moral greys; the best they can manage is fallen hero arcs or villain redemption arcs, sometimes within the same character to an incoherent degree.

 

[Rakaziel]

I have no idea about the omegaverse, but them being catboys could easily be explained with chimeric implants being all the rage these days. Maybe politcal schism between different transhumanist (and purist) factions, and something closer to LARPing furries (i.e. no polical statement, they just do it for fun).

The various factions each have enough skeletons in the closet to keep things interesting, and it fits to the typical human tribalism we see IRL. Communism is incompatible with human nature, so making it work long term would require mind control, maybe via implants ala Alpha Centauri or telepathy ala Red Alert 2. This of course also makes all plots with communist infiltrators much more flavorful.


The Rock Elves could easily be geokinetics (think Magneto but on anything with a crystal structure, and not surrounded by living flesh - which is why they hate the Bugs, they coat everything in living flesh and render the rock elves down to fertilizer). Their geokinetic powers would also be how their necromancy works, by inscribing psychic imprints of the dead into new bodies, their souls can be summoned into them.

Apart from the summoning, it is remarkably similar to their method of reproduction, a merging of the minds until a new one emerges and is imprinted into the surrounding stone. Due to the way their minds are built, they have no true distinction between skillsets and personalities (and perceive other races having them as dangerous insanity), causing their society to naturally extrude into castes with further specialization.

Certain political factions of theirs consider the extermination of all "neurodivergent" or indeed even just organic species as nothing more than pest control, and a good faction of the rest mainly wants to keep them around because they find them aesthetically pleasing. The Rock elves also do not need atmosphere, and many travel the cosmos as nomads, disguised as asteroids.

Some think that the extinction of the dinosaurs on Earth is the result of some Rock Elves taking a dislike to them (albeit these particular Rock Elves miscalculated and killed themselves in the process).


Maybe the Bugs for a change do not have a hivemind, but organize themselves in matrilieal clans. They are not comformist but immensely creative- an entire society of bards and scientists. They could be strong biokinetics (for better contrast to the Rock Elves' geokinesis) and not so much reproduce (while capable of it, they find it boring) but uplift new members of their "species" from the surrounding wildlife - and thus have a minimum viable population of one. They used to be the biomancer caste of a much larger civilization - and the only ones hardy enough to survive first contact with the Rock Elves. The rock-eating bacteria they deployed in retaliation dissolved the entire planetary crust, and whether their inventor escaped is questionable. Some have been trying to recreate them since.

 

[MediumGatoKatr]

I'm assuming what you wanted was a world of more moral greys against a backtype of archetypal 80s/90s sci fi conceits.

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Pretty much. I wanted to depict the Confederacy and Conclave with nuance.

The Confederacy's atrocities are not relatively worse than the atrocities historically committed by Russia or China, assuming that we're working with consistent scales anyhow. I'm sure that, had they not been casually killed off after ten brief 90's RTS missions without any emotional connection (negative or otherwise), then they would have developed a fan base. Especially given that they are based on the American Confederacy. The Dominion was basically identical except instead of multiple Old Families, the Mengsk family killed them all to institute an outright monarchy. People still like to claim that "Mengsk did nothing wrong." Given Blizzard's past writing gaffes, I fully expect Valerian will turn evil for the sake of cheap drama.

I can't take the Conclave serious as villains, except for the obvious callous indifference to humanity and it's not like humans do don't the exact same thing all the time. They're too sympathetic: because of the Khala forcing them to be empathetic (in contrast to human beings), Aldaris and his peers would happily throw away their own lives if it would serve their people. You'd be hard pressed to find a human politician willing to martyr themselves. They also got killed off with no screen time, so no emotional connection there. Aldaris' behavior, while extreme, makes a fair amount of sense when you bother to read the protoss backstory about their galactic war lasting eons, the fact that they practice mind control, and the subtle implication that psychic vampirism is a real possibility. Aldaris had every reason to believe that Tassadar had been brainwashed by a band of murderous space vampires.

The zerg are essentially evil from the human POV, but from their own POV their monstrous behavior makes sense and their leader talks like the Old Testament God. They can still be, if not sympathetic, at least comprehensible and even admirable. Also, sometimes writers/readers just want to embrace their destructive impulses and the zerg are a great way to release that outlet. So Blizzard casually killing them all in favor of QoB really annoys me.

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I have no idea about the omegaverse, but them being catboys could easily be explained with chimeric implants being all the rage these days. Maybe politcal schism between different transhumanist (and purist) factions, and something closer to LARPing furries (i.e. no polical statement, they just do it for fun).

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I'll reply to the rest of your post later, but I need to correct this misunderstanding.

They literally aren't human. They're fuzzy cat people and always have been.

Omegaverse means, long story short, that they're all dudes and reproduce homosexually. It's a kink trope.

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Their geokinetic powers would also be how their necromancy works, by inscribing psychic imprints of the dead into new bodies, their souls can be summoned into them.

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I would prefer to avoid space magic as much as possible.

The explanation I used ties into their telepathic network. They upload their memories and personalities into the Apple iOS cloud like cylons. This effectively makes them immortal and contributes to their martial culture. They don't fear death because of their communal nature and the fact that they cannot really die.

Due to the way their minds are built, they have no true distinction between skillsets and personalities (and perceive other races having them as dangerous insanity), causing their society to naturally extrude into castes with further specialization.

Click to shrink...

Interesting. Great way to avoid the funny looking humans problem and make the caste system impossible to discard.

Creative ideas like this are why I like discussions.

Certain political factions of theirs consider the extermination of all "neurodivergent" or indeed even just organic species as nothing more than pest control, and a good faction of the rest mainly wants to keep them around because they find them aesthetically pleasing.

Click to shrink...

I don't want to make genocide their main priority. I wanted to recycle the forgotten bits of protoss lore where they were basically an extremist version of the Star Trek Federation. They style themselves the guardians and gardeners of the galaxy, destroying any "xenomorphic threats" that don't meet their standards.

They're also environmentalists and dislike the humans for being greedy exploiters of planets. That's a reason for either side to wage war even without the bugs.

Again, recycling from retconned Starcraft plot points (because damn does Blizzard like ignoring good plot hooks in favor of stupid ones), their story would involve a schism between those who don't care about the human lives lost while destroying the bugs and those who want to protect the humans in accordance with the Prime Directive.

Maybe the Bugs for a change do not have a hivemind, but organize themselves in matrilieal clans. They are not comformist but immensely creative- an entire society of bards and scientists.

Click to shrink...

The appeal of the bugs is supposed to be their hive mind with distinct personalities that attempt to marry the strengths of diversity and unity. It plays into the overarching themes of freedom vs control and individual vs conformity et al that I wanted to world build around.

See Unhappy Anchovy's analysis for details:

UA Plays: Starcraft

I don't know if it was intentional, but the Overmind is the only leader that always respects you, doesn't lie to you, doesn't betray you, and seems to be genuinely concerned with the well being of his people (in the big picture, anyway). You don't think Tassadar meets all those requirements as...

forums.spacebattles.com

That and their evolutionary history as vicious killing machines, copious amounts of body horror, etc. They're supposed to be horrifying and monstrous yet somehow understandable and even appealing to audience members who go for that.

Long story short, I wanted them to be the zerg done right. Galactic space monsters that combine the pseudo-arachnids, borg, tyranids, and chaos daemons into something novel.

 

[MediumGatoKatr]

Here are my ideas for the bugs (based on the earlier iteration of the zerg that Blizzard flushed down the toilet in favor of making them space hippies who play second fiddle to the humans):

• Their inspirations include tyranids, borg, Giger's alien, pseudo-arachnids, chaos daemons, flood, geth, chtorr, necrophages, etc.
• The bugs are united by a telepathic hive mind mediated through synapse creatures like brain bugs and queens. This is an actual hive mind more like real eusocial insects or a single human brain, not a master/slave relationship. Even in the absence of synapse creatures, the minion bugs still share brain power.
• The most basic form of the bugs are parasitic microbes/nematodes/rotifers/whatever that infest the corpses or the living bodies of host creatures to assimilate their genomes. The infested essentially turn into space zombies and the bugs acquire all their knowledge and memories by telepathy (assuming no brain damage occurs in the process, which is a possibility).
• The bugs are an invasive ecosystem that will ultimately consume any planet it is introduced to. They have done this to countless worlds already, starting with their home world. Their modus operandi is to use living deep space telescopes to search for worlds that potentially harbor life, then send living deep space probes to survey and potentially colonize the planet.
• The bugs do not use conventional technology, but living organisms bred for every imaginable purpose. While the bugs are smart enough to learn how to use doors and hack computer systems, the concept of manufacturing their own technology is as alien to them as their use of biological weapons is to humans. Their biotech runs on technobabble and copious amounts of body horror.
• The bugs are composed of countless breeds bred for specific roles. Warriors, laborers, breeders, etc. This even extends to their social groupings: individual swarms are born to pursue specific directives and evolve themselves to better fulfill that directive. This specialization is such that most swarms are unable to operate independently, much like human organizations.
• Individual breeds may vary dramatically in intelligence, up to and beyond human-level, and even develop personalities. The hive mind itself is self-aware and has partitioned itself into a sprawling hierarchy of numerous subsidiary intelligences, each with specific roles and personalities developed around those roles (basically they work like the cliffnotes on Hindu deities). This allows them to form politics of sorts, social Darwinism taken to its logical extreme, allowing writers to write fiction from their perspective that isn't boring. As strange as it might sound, they can have character arcs and conflicts. It just requires out-of-the-box thinking on the writer's part.
• The bugs' psychology is as horrifying as their biology. They have no concept of diplomacy, peace, compromise, mercy, or cruelty. They view all other life as food for their offspring and raw materials for their creations. The closest they come to empathy is believing that they are adopting their victims into their quest for self-improvement, gifting their victims with joyous immortal lives of serving the hive. They do have recognizable emotions: they can feel love, hatred, contempt, among others, and emotions that humans have no concept of.

 

[Jane Dough]

Ok. Where the hell are you getting the idea that the Terrans are a "leftist utopia"?
Terran society already *is* a dystopian mess.
For that matter where did you get the idea that sci-fi is "pervaded" by a "bland leftist fantasy"?
Most sci-fi is overwhelmingly either myopic dystopias, or right-wing wingbattery.

 

[tankdrop24]

In fact, isn't the latest Starcraft fiction going for that whole 'rightful rule' monarchy BS with the Terran Dominion?

 

[MediumGatoKatr]

Ok. Where the hell are you getting the idea that the Terrans are a "leftist utopia"?
Terran society already *is* a dystopian mess.
For that matter where did you get the idea that sci-fi is "pervaded" by a "bland leftist fantasy"?
Most sci-fi is overwhelmingly either myopic dystopias, or right-wing wingbattery.

Click to shrink...

I was thinking of Mass Effect when I wrote that. Sorry if I gave a mistaken impression of scifi in general. I know scifi is fairly diverse and that Starcraft was (originally) dystopian.

In fact, isn't the latest Starcraft fiction going for that whole 'rightful rule' monarchy BS with the Terran Dominion?

Click to shrink...

Yep. Starcraft's writing in general is terrible, because Blizzard can't assemble a functional writing team. They wasted a ton of words on the backstory of the Confederacy and their Old Families, only for all that potentially interesting politics to be immediately replaced by Evil Emperor Mengsk. The Sons of Korhal and other rebel groups fought against atrocities for years, but are more than happy to maintain the horrible status quo with themselves as the evil leaders. At least if leaders other than Mengsk existed anyhow, since Starcraft operates on a ridiculously absurd "great man" view of history in which the main characters have mary sue powers allowing them to control everyone around them like puppets and fight armies single-handedly. Rebellion against authoritarianism? Promotion of democratic values? Blizzard flushed that down the toilet in favor of waxing poetic about the benefits of monarchical dictatorship, while at the same time hypocritically destroying the telepathy networks that allowed the protoss and zerg to make communism work.

Gag me with a spork. In my original universe, factions and nation-states are what matters. Not a few obnoxious mary sues or deus ex machina.

 

[Zaealix]

I don't trust myself to be able to describe what I had in mind, but I can do an alien communication for what I had in mind for the 'Rocks'.

"Humans.

We still do not understand your decisions.

Why do you insist that those colonys that have since been rendered into our comrades are no longer your people? We have already confirmed your lack of soulwaves, that you only exist in that specific configuration you call 'the human body.' And you have confirmed with your successful replication of our form that the formation of soulwaves sadly requires more than a proper 'self' crystalline matrix. We defend the sites where you perform research into what we are, within reason, and we accept all willing to be converted. Why do you insist that you must oppose us 'for the good of humanity?'"

 

[MediumGatoKatr]

I don't trust myself to be able to describe what I had in mind, but I can do an alien communication for what I had in mind for the 'Rocks'.

"Humans.

We still do not understand your decisions.

Why do you insist that those colonys that have since been rendered into our comrades are no longer your people? We have already confirmed your lack of soulwaves, that you only exist in that specific configuration you call 'the human body.' And you have confirmed with your successful replication of our form that the formation of soulwaves sadly requires more than a proper 'self' crystalline matrix. We defend the sites where you perform research into what we are, within reason, and we accept all willing to be converted. Why do you insist that you must oppose us 'for the good of humanity?'"

Click to shrink...

Damn, that's good.

But I personally try to avoid speaking in jargon. It makes it easier for most readers to grok, even if sometimes the exact words might be inaccurate.

The bit about conversion is odd. I don't mind actually, but I like to keep racial shticks distinct for philosophical reasons

 

[Zaealix]

Damn, that's good.

But I personally try to avoid speaking in jargon. It makes it easier for most readers to grok, even if sometimes the exact words might be inaccurate.

The bit about conversion is odd. I don't mind actually, but I like to keep racial shticks distinct for philosophical reasons

Click to shrink...

Basic answer: The crystal people would 'convert' via taking the matter of a human colony, humans included, and doing chemistry to make more crystals like themselves. Probably not the best idea given the Bugs right there but that whole archetype...Suffice it to say I don't have great ideas there.

 

[TenfoldShields]

You're going about this in a pretty nonconstructive way tbh.

Like-

A lot of writing is inherently idiosyncratic, but that's not the same thing as saying each approach is as valid as any others or just because there are a few functional avenues there aren't a lot of non-functional ones too. And you're starting from weird, squirrelly details that don't actually matter and some kinda arbitrary conceits and trying to back-engineer your way to a story or a setting. It's like trying to reconstruct a person from a few molars and a nail or two. There isn't really clear idea of the meat and bones of the thing, there's no sense of the overall structure and you're kinda just ad hoc adding pieces on with no sense of coherency.

Like...take a breath basically, start from the top. What are the overall themes you're trying to work with? What do you want this setting to enable? It's the stage with all the props, what's the kind of play you're going to put on? You want it to be about interstellar war, what are you trying to say about war itself? The things that cause it, the things that drive it, is it necessary or is it an unavoidable tragedy or is it a fucked up farce or what? About the fact that x-hundred years in the future we're still blowing the shit out of each other? What do you want to say about the Other? What's the kind of overall aesthetic, what's the mood, what's this all supposed to feel like (and that's something the original Starcraft did very well, the kind of used up, seedy, grimy future out on the edges of everything).

Tvtropes isn't a useful toolkit for building stuff, just for classifying things after the fact. If you want to put something solid together you need an element of cynicism almost. You need to be kinda ruthless in how you approach things. Everything in the Thing You're Building needs a reason to be there, it needs to contribute something otherwise it's kinda just fluff and can probably be trimmed.

(Not that it necessarily should, some indulgence is fine but right now you're kinda All Indulgence.)

Yep. Starcraft's writing in general is terrible, because Blizzard can't assemble a functional writing team. They wasted a ton of words on the backstory of the Confederacy and their Old Families, only for all that potentially interesting politics to be immediately replaced by Evil Emperor Mengsk. The Sons of Korhal and other rebel groups fought against atrocities for years, but are more than happy to maintain the horrible status quo with themselves as the evil leaders. At least if leaders other than Mengsk existed anyhow, since Starcraft operates on a ridiculously absurd "great man" view of history in which the main characters have mary sue powers allowing them to control everyone around them like puppets and fight armies single-handedly. Rebellion against authoritarianism? Promotion of democratic values? Blizzard flushed that down the toilet in favor of waxing poetic about the benefits of monarchical dictatorship, while at the same time hypocritically destroying the telepathy networks that allowed the protoss and zerg to make communism work.

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I mean...all else aside but the Terran Campaign of the SC stuff is basically a low-key drawn out dissection of Mengsk, his image, and what he actually wants. Not speaking to 2 which shits the bed pretty thoroughly, but initially it's a fairly well executed "the charismatic idealist who came riding into be your cavalry has been playing you from the very beginning". It's a gradual, definite, deliberate arc, as Mengsk's self-professed values either decay or are consciously discarded. With him bringing on people like Duke, authorizing using the psi-emitters to lure the zerg to Korhal, abandoning Kerrigan, then attempting to purge Raynor at the PC Commander once his ascension is inevitable and he doesn't need unreliable elements with too many qualms. His goal was always to seize control, liberation was just a useful language for him to rally and motivate people.

Mengsk was always a motherfucker, the PC just didn't realize it until it was too late. That's the whole point of the story.

 

[Entropy Judge]

They haven't learned anything from climate change and still go around strip-mining planets despite asteroids being more abundant.

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So, I'll try to remember to actually go and think about the whole thing in depth, but this stuck out at me. At least in our solar system, asteroids do not offer abundancy. The total mass of the asteroid belt is something like 4% of Earth's moon, and less than a quarter of Pluto. What asteroids offer isn't abundancy, but ease of access. You don't have to go down to a planet (which probably has different gravity/atmosphere/etc) and set up factories and extraction pits and what-not everywhere you want to dig and then have to haul the good stuff back out of the gravity well, you just zip your mobile refinery or whatever next to the hunk of rock you want to chew up, process it, and move on to the next.

Granted, sci-fi, so the trope of the field of giant asteroids really close together probably is something you can get away with. But unless you have really small planets and gigantic asteroids out the wazoo, planets are still going to be the place where you want to go to get a lot of stuff.

 

[MediumGatoKatr]

You're going about this in a pretty nonconstructive way tbh.

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Don't I know it. My motivation is that Starcraft had some interesting ideas and premise, but the execution was terrible. Not only was it composed on the fly without any planning for future installments (e.g. the first game ends with all governments and military being destroyed, so good luck trying to make a believable sequel), but it operates on an absurd "great man" logic in which a few major characters control the fate of the setting regardless of how all the people in the setting around them would act.

So my idea for fixing that was to take the same setting and not execute it that way. Don't focus on a few great men redrawing the galactic political map. Focus on something that feels like it could be actual military history.

This thread is basically one-half retelling the story of starcraft the way I want and one-half changing enough details that I'm not liable for plagiarism. At one point I considered pulling a Fifty Shades of Grey and tried writing Starcraft fanfiction that I would later change into original fiction, but I got too disgusted with the abysmal quality of Starcraft fandom in general to continue. Pretty much everyone I talked to told me that I should just write an original universe rather than Starcraft fanfiction because none of the fans will like my writing style anyway because I don't worship at the altar of Raynor and Kerry.

Again, gag me with a spork. If it's not already obvious, I've have been seething with bitterness and rage for years after recognizing the flaws in the story and being told repeatedly to leave the fandom by the fanboys that didn't already jump ship. It's very difficult for me to come at this from a POV that isn't non-constructive given that I've been conditioned by non-constructive responses for years already.

You telling me that I'm going about this non-constructively and offering a creative writing 101 lecture? That (and the other replies in this thread) are the single most productive responses that I have ever gotten in my many, many failed attempts to get people interested in the idea of "Starcraft, but with good writing."

Truth be told, I don't actually have much motivation to be constructive. I'm driven by rage and bitterness, I've been repeatedly brow beaten in online discussions, I'm not being paid to do this, I have so many real-life issues to worry about, and I have so many better things that I could be enjoying but for some reason I can't focus on doing.

Pretty much the most constructive thing I could do in my position is wait for how ever many decades it takes for me to save enough money to hire someone else to produce a spiritual successor to Starcraft with a decent story where the alien characters don't play second fiddle to the human characters.

Like...take a breath basically, start from the top. What are the overall themes you're trying to work with? What do you want this setting to enable? It's the stage with all the props, what's the kind of play you're going to put on? You want it to be about interstellar war, what are you trying to say about war itself? The things that cause it, the things that drive it, is it necessary or is it an unavoidable tragedy or is it a fucked up farce or what? About the fact that x-hundred years in the future we're still blowing the shit out of each other? What do you want to say about the Other? What's the kind of overall aesthetic, what's the mood, what's this all supposed to feel like (and that's something the original Starcraft did very well, the kind of used up, seedy, grimy future out on the edges of everything).

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Unhappy Anchovy hit upon everything better than I could hope to in his LP threads. Most of it was projecting, but it's still pretty good. I can't hope to sum up everything he said in one post, but long story short he basically proposed that the overarching theme was some variation of "unity vs diversity." Each of the three races represented that in some way through their internal conflicts: the terrans had war between authoritarian governments and rebels, the zerg tried to marry the strengths of unity and diversity while minimizing the weaknesses, and the protoss tried to maintain peace with their khala.

Obviously Blizzard botched that theme by depicting monarchy as good for terrans while at the same time destroying the telepathy networks that maintained zerg and protoss civilizations.

Mengsk was always a motherfucker, the PC just didn't realize it until it was too late. That's the whole point of the story.

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That's all well and good, but the problem is the "great men" thing I mentioned earlier. If you analyze from the perspective of, I don't know, a military historian then it comes across as blatant mythology rather than anything remotely realistic. Episode 1 pretends to be a war story when it is intended to be a character study, so any sense of military realism immediately goes out the window. Events don't happen because they are organic progressions unfolding from prior events, events happen because the plot demands it in order to advance the character arcs. And since this is a 90s RTS game, those character arcs are really rushed.

Why does Mengsk rescue and recruit Raynor? Aside from the PR boost from rescuing a respected vigilante, there's no reason to send Raynor to the installation or immediately promote him to Mengsk's inner circle. How big are the rebels supposed to be, anyway?

From a writing perspective, this is because Raynor is supposed to be the hero and reality will bend to accommodate that.

Why do the zerg mindlessly follow the psi-emitters despite their lore making it clear they are in the sector to harvest humans in mass like they did every other species they encountered? It makes no sense to do that when harvesting the population would yield more results and they know the emitters are probably a ploy since they used the same tactic themselves. If the emitters exploit a flaw in their telepathy, then why do they not develop countermeasures to such a huge weakness?

From a writing perspective, the reason why the zerg mindlessly follow the emitter is to let Mengsk use zerg terrorism to take over. Again, reality bends to accommodate him.

The entirety of Alpha Squadron defects because the plot demands it, even though that makes no sense in a realistic universe. How big are they supposed to be anyway?

The zerg steamroll all opposition, except for that one instance where Mengsk has to defend them from the protoss at Tarsonis, because the plot demands it. This despite other lore explaining that the zerg had been subtly invading for decades and somehow didn't eat everyone in that time. Then they (and the protoss) conveniently leave because if they stayed then Mengsk would be killed.

I could go on, but that's basically the whole problem with Blizzard's writing. I want military scifi that feels believable based on the interactions of factions and logistics, not a band of great men bending reality to suit their whims.

Ironically I don't have the same problem with the licensed expansions Insurrection and Retribution because they have much smaller scales. Not that it makes up for their other flaws.

So, I'll try to remember to actually go and think about the whole thing in depth, but this stuck out at me. At least in our solar system, asteroids do not offer abundancy. The total mass of the asteroid belt is something like 4% of Earth's moon, and less than a quarter of Pluto. What asteroids offer isn't abundancy, but ease of access. You don't have to go down to a planet (which probably has different gravity/atmosphere/etc) and set up factories and extraction pits and what-not everywhere you want to dig and then have to haul the good stuff back out of the gravity well, you just zip your mobile refinery or whatever next to the hunk of rock you want to chew up, process it, and move on to the next.

Granted, sci-fi, so the trope of the field of giant asteroids really close together probably is something you can get away with. But unless you have really small planets and gigantic asteroids out the wazoo, planets are still going to be the place where you want to go to get a lot of stuff.

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Yep. The whole shtick of Starcraft's terrans was that they had mobile refinery/factory buildings that they could just touch down on planets and start strip-mining and manufacturing immediately. I think it was supposed to explain RTS mechanics IRL like Command & Conquer tried to using tiberium. For that matter, the "minerals" in Starcraft behave more like tiberium than real mineral deposits. (Things just get really weird if you read through the Starcraft source threads and wikis. It's difficult to tell if that's due to different writers or whether it's supposed to be that crazy.)

Also, at one point in Starcraft's development the lore tried to emphasize that terrans were greedy strip-miners and the protoss were na'vi-esque environmentalists and that they two might come into conflict over this (e.g. terrans invading protoss worlds for resources). Unfortunately, like most of the interesting plot hooks and cultural quirks, Blizzard discarded that.

That reminds me... couldn't the tiberium-esque minerals have been created by the protoss as a more environmentally-friendly way to harvest resources? Sounds like a convenient way to make those plot points more relevant and less useless trivia. But I digress.

 

[TenfoldShields]

Don't I know it. My motivation is that Starcraft had some interesting ideas and premise, but the execution was terrible. Not only was it composed on the fly without any planning for future installments (e.g. the first game ends with all governments and military being destroyed, so good luck trying to make a believable sequel), but it operates on an absurd "great man" logic in which a few major characters control the fate of the setting regardless of how all the people in the setting around them would act.

So my idea for fixing that was to take the same setting and not execute it that way. Don't focus on a few great men redrawing the galactic political map. Focus on something that feels like it could be actual military history.

Click to shrink...

I feel like- okay there's a lot to unpack here but I wanna kinda zero in on this as probably being the source of a lot of problems. Namely that adherence to realism or, to be frank, what you imagine the reality to be isn't necessarily in the interests of a good or compelling story. Or even a good or compelling setting. Narratives aren't necessarily bolstered by logistical minutiae, how the technology works isn't honestly that important save for how it affects the plot, and most writers don't have a detailed grasp of modern military tactics much less an ability to project that into a futuristic setting regardless but most readers can't tell the difference anyway.

Realism isn't an inherent good and it's not always your friend is what I'm trying to say. Sometimes the fine, obsessive details genuinely just...don't matter and this is an issue that a lot of worldbuilding hits: worldbuilding is constructing something of which, like, easily 75% will never really be all that relevant or important or impact the plot. It's an indulgence. And that's not inherently bad! Like- indulging isn't bad lol, you just have to do it responsibly and understand what it is. Keep a clear picture of what you're actually angling for and make sure you don't get lost in the weeds of Some Shit that you think is cool but is kinda just a cul-de-sac of wasted words in terms of the story you're trying to tell.

And that's being evocative. That's getting the reader invested in the tone and the mood and the atmosphere, that's them caring about the characters and being curious about the world around them. And that's infinitely more important for what you're trying to do.

 

[MediumGatoKatr]

I feel like- okay there's a lot to unpack here but I wanna kinda zero in on this as probably being the source of a lot of problems. Namely that adherence to realism or, to be frank, what you imagine the reality to be isn't necessarily in the interests of a good or compelling story. Or even a good or compelling setting. Narratives aren't necessarily bolstered by logistical minutiae, how the technology works isn't honestly that important save for how it affects the plot, and most writers don't have a detailed grasp of modern military tactics much less an ability to project that into a futuristic setting regardless but most readers can't tell the difference anyway.

Realism isn't an inherent good and it's not always your friend is what I'm trying to say. Sometimes the fine, obsessive details genuinely just...don't matter and this is an issue that a lot of worldbuilding hits: worldbuilding is constructing something of which, like, easily 75% will never really be all that relevant or important or impact the plot. It's an indulgence. And that's not inherently bad! Like- indulging isn't bad lol, you just have to do it responsibly and understand what it is. Keep a clear picture of what you're actually angling for and make sure you don't get lost in the weeds of Some Shit that you think is cool but is kinda just a cul-de-sac of wasted words in terms of the story you're trying to tell.

And that's being evocative. That's getting the reader invested in the tone and the mood and the atmosphere, that's them caring about the characters and being curious about the world around them. And that's infinitely more important for what you're trying to do.

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I feel like you misunderstood me. I understand that most readers don't care for all the technical minutiae and read for the characters and plot. The problem is that Starcraft's writing was 1) a video game story and video games especially at that time weren't known for their stories, 2) not particularly good to begin with regardless of nostalgia, and 3) blatantly unrealistic to the point where these issues only go under the radar due to #1 and #2.

I'm not asking for realism in terms of technology. I'm asking for realism in terms of things like politics and warfare. You know, the stuff that made Game of Thrones so popular before HBO botched it?

Basically, what if Starcraft had been written by George R.R. Martin? That's what I'd like to aim for.

Or think of it in terms like this: what were the zerg and protoss characters thinking during the events of episode 1? What you wrote a television show that depicted the events from their perspectives simultaneously?

Starcraft fails on those accounts because the plot is blatant author fiat rather than an organic progression of consequences.

It makes no sense for the zerg to mindlessly follow the emitters besides being convenient for Mengsk, and it makes no sense for them to only care about Kerry besides being convenient for her character arc.

If I was writing Starcraft and wanted to be "realistic," then what I would do is have Tassadar team up with the Magistrate to repel the zerg and Confederate forces on Mar Sara. And the story would focus entirely on Mar Sara, rather than trivializing the scales of interstellar war by depicting reality warping mary sues engaging in soap opera melodrama.

 

[tankdrop24]

I feel like- okay there's a lot to unpack here but I wanna kinda zero in on this as probably being the source of a lot of problems. Namely that adherence to realism or, to be frank, what you imagine the reality to be isn't necessarily in the interests of a good or compelling story. Or even a good or compelling setting. Narratives aren't necessarily bolstered by logistical minutiae, how the technology works isn't honestly that important save for how it affects the plot, and most writers don't have a detailed grasp of modern military tactics much less an ability to project that into a futuristic setting regardless but most readers can't tell the difference anyway.

Realism isn't an inherent good and it's not always your friend is what I'm trying to say. Sometimes the fine, obsessive details genuinely just...don't matter and this is an issue that a lot of worldbuilding hits: worldbuilding is constructing something of which, like, easily 75% will never really be all that relevant or important or impact the plot. It's an indulgence. And that's not inherently bad! Like- indulging isn't bad lol, you just have to do it responsibly and understand what it is. Keep a clear picture of what you're actually angling for and make sure you don't get lost in the weeds of Some Shit that you think is cool but is kinda just a cul-de-sac of wasted words in terms of the story you're trying to tell.

And that's being evocative. That's getting the reader invested in the tone and the mood and the atmosphere, that's them caring about the characters and being curious about the world around them. And that's infinitely more important for what you're trying to do.

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This is entirely correct.

However, I think not needing to be realistic doesn't mean we have to have a situation where the rightful rule of the Terran Dominion is so important that we're going to keep it around with the evil emperor's son on the throne despite the fact that said Dominion was only established by a rebellion a few years ago in the first game.

 

[TenfoldShields]

This is entirely correct.

However, I think not needing to be realistic doesn't mean we have to have a situation where the rightful rule of the Terran Dominion is so important that we're going to keep it around with the evil emperor's son on the throne despite the fact that said Dominion was only established by a rebellion a few years ago in the first game.

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Oh yeah I'm not like- I'm not at all going to bat for everything that happened from Wings of Liberty on. Blizzard 100% fucked the dog, tip-to-base bareback fucked the dog hard and then didn't even call it an Uber home. For me I'm specifically talking about the original game and Brood War, both which, imo, are still very strong but yeah I'm not defending that dumbshit that came after, started with "I NEVER GAVE UP ON YOU SARAH, FENIX WHO THE FUCK IS THAT" and ended with Kerrigan getting the Phoenix Force from fat cthulu and flying in the sky anus to punch The Real Secret Big Bad.

 

[tankdrop24]

It's funny how basically all of Starcraft II is spent systematically removing any kind of interesting difference between Terran, Protoss, and Zerg societies.

 

[woweed]

OK, are we sticking to a video game setting? Because, in that case, there's a lot of questions to factor. For instance, the question so many poorly-designed video game setting have: What does the player character DO, exactly?

 

[TenfoldShields]

I'm asking for realism in terms of things like politics and warfare. You know, the stuff that made Game of Thrones so popular before HBO botched it?

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Dude, GoT was all about personal melodrama, the rippling effects of a few people's actions, and had a heavy emotional focus. Politics and warfare were important yeah, but they were also...props. Flavor and spice and framing to the narrative. And setting aside the whole dragons stuff, a lot of the politics and warfare stuff wasn't even especially accurate to the time period(s) it was all taking inspiration from and there's people on this board who have actually studied the stuff who have A Lot To Say About That. So what you're saying comes across as- yeah about "you say you want the idea of a thing, but what you describe you actually want is the exact opposite".

Events organically unfolding is a kind of sleight of hand. Everything that happens in a written piece of fiction is author fiat. The writer isn't bound by any rules save the ones they (and in practice their editors) impose.

 

[woweed]

Dude, GoT was all about personal melodrama, the rippling effects of a few people's actions, and had a heavy emotional focus. Politics and warfare were important yeah, but they were also...props. Flavor and spice and framing to the narrative. And setting aside the whole dragons stuff, a lot of the politics and warfare stuff wasn't even especially accurate to the time period(s) it was all taking inspiration from and there's people on this board who have actually studied the stuff who have A Lot To Say About That. So what you're saying comes across as- yeah about "you say you want the idea of a thing, but what you describe you actually want is the exact opposite".

Events organically unfolding is a kind of sleight of hand. Everything that happens in a written piece of fiction is author fiat. The writer isn't bound by any rules save the ones they (and in practice their editors) impose.

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Yeah, did this guy just use GOT as a reference for realism? Really? The show that's set on a continent the size of South America, yet has travel times appropriate to Great Britain, with its North, roughly the size of Scotland, all ruled by four people, and an intercontinental spy ring of nothing but field agents, all of whom report to ONE dude? That should involve a MASSIVE amount of administrative overhead. Not to mention the wall ,which spans the entirely of that massive distance, and stands 700 feet tall, yet which George apparently it possible to shoot arrows at from below and hit the top. A castle built into a mountain that should be the size of San Francisco and the height of the Empire State Building. ETC.