 January 29, 2018 - 12:42pm | In the description of Dralasites it says "All Dralasites go through male, female and nuetral stages during their lives (these stages can be controlled with medicines). Males release spores into the air, which drift until they become attached to a female. A young Dralasite then sprouts from its mother, until it matures and drops off." As a younger person I thought this was an interesting sidenote to the clowns of the Frontier. Having learned alot since then I now see how this simple statement tells us so much about Dralasites and really should change how they are played. Start with "All Dralasites go through male, female and nuetral stages". It does not say they bounce around and pick stages willy nilly. It gives an exact order and one that makes sense biologically. All Dralasites are born male. They remain male until they reach an age and/or maturity that changes them to female. Once old age begins to settle in they lose the reproductive capability and become nuetral. This makes a great deal of sense since young, strong Dralasites are available for hard work and defense until they reach a childbearing age. By this time they have developed the maturity and knowledge to allow them to successfully raise a child. As they age and have the problems of old age child bearing is removed. The medicines mentioned could be used to bring on the occurence of a sex change or to retard it. Maybe to switch from one to another but that would be similar to a transgender human who has to take hormones and require daily doses. Some implications of this is that most of the positions of power in Dralasite society would be held by those in the female stage. Young enough to have the energy to do it and old enough to have the wisdom to do it. Also the saying "Stop acting like a male" in Dralasite society would be similar to saying "Stop acting like a baby" in Human society. To be honest alot of my perceptions do come from the Wiccan Maiden/Mother/Crone belief which I think really applies well to Dralasites. Sounds like a great job but where did you say we had to go? |
 January 30, 2018 - 9:36am | It doesn't say those are an exact sequence of sexes; you're adding that yourself. For all we know, dralasites cycle through the sexes multiple times throughout their lives: starting neutral, becoming male after seven years, becoming female after seven years, becoming neutral for seven years, becoming male for seven years, etc. My guess is, the primary use of medicine for a working professional is to keep oneself in the neutral stage to avoid budding and to avoid causing one's coworkers to bud. More interesting to me is the idea of family that the dralasite reproductive process suggests. It means that dralasites don't know who their fathers are. And since dralasite sexes change anyway, there is no concept of the "nuclear family." There is a dralasite and its offspring. In the natural state, a dralasite in the female stage has little control over when it reproduces. One could imagine dralasites have inherited some strict rules about the association of male- and female-stage dralasites. |
 January 31, 2018 - 7:44am | Yeah, I agree with Stormcrow. I've tended to see it as a cyclical thing. And the idea of the sexes in their sense might be alot different to, say, how humans and other races see the subject. 'Female' to dralasites might not have the same societal conventions attached to it as it does for humans, for example. In that sense they're more like flowers, and ideas about the different sexes don't have any connotations of imagined superiority WRT who is male, or female, or neutral. So the human concept of male or female may be completely alien to a dralasite, and vice versa. Even if the human society in SF is not a patriarchy, humans would still have a different set of ideas about the sexes than dralasites would. Human ideas that female = fecundity, motherly themes, etc may simply not apply to dralasites in their female stage. The whole maiden-mother-crone thing, if it exists in human SF society, might be a throwback to less enlightened patriarchal times where women were seen as somehow different from men. To me it's just another way that SF is fluid enough to attach various ideas to concepts, in a sandbox kinda way. |
January 31, 2018 - 1:00pm | Actually that is exactly what it says. "All Dralasites go through male, female and nuetral stages". Short sweet and simple, like most things in nature. Constant swinging of gender is something not stated but wished for by players and makes no biological sense. Earth creatures who can change their sex do so usually because of changes in environmental conditions. Dralasites homeworld can be thought of as a rough tough place especially given their very tough skin. Evolution led to their not being able to reproduce and care for young until they were mature and developed. Maiden/Mother/Crone is a modern application of an older view in which a woman is encouraged to take pride in each phase of her life and to accept that at different times she has different strengths and abilities. This fits the three stages of a Dralasites life cycle as they take pride in each one. Answer truthfully: Anyone ever have a Dralasite change sexes during a campaign? If so what were the in game implications? Sounds like a great job but where did you say we had to go? |
 January 31, 2018 - 1:16pm | The construction of the sentence doesn't suggest that is the progression its simply stating the three stages. I think a young dral dropping off and immediately emmitting spore for reproduction is perhaps not the best strategy for a higher species- it seems more likely that the young drals are neutral till they mature. It makes far more sense, at least to me, that the dral might start and end life in the neutral stage but it could also be cyclic in that they also rotate through all three several times in their life. I favor this as dralasite society might quickly become over poplated and they have the fewest number of worlds compared to the rest of the core four. I suspect that the act of bearing young triggers hormone production that triggers the neutral stage for a while a biological species strategy to ensure proper care of the young. Also I suspect that the transition between male and female is punctuated by a period of neutral so that a dral does not accidently insemminate itself (something that probably carries a taboo or genetic complications similar to incest in humans) the medicines mentioned seem to be pretty much the dralasite version of the "pill" that allows them to control their reproduciton which is otherwise uncontrolled I might not be a dralasite, vrusk or yazirian but I do play one in Star Frontiers! |
January 31, 2018 - 3:55pm | Yeah, I just see it as a cyclical thing that happens throught the dralasite life cycle. The whole maiden/mother/crone thing seems a bit tacked on (and it's a modern concept as much as anything anyway). To be honest, I think the whole process as described in SF perhaps is there to make the dralasites seem somewhat like amoebas, at least in terms of themes. That's what they remind me of. I doubt that it's down to their only having a few planets - it's probably been in their life-cycle during their primary evolutionary stage into a specific species, or at least has been a feature of the ancestor from which they evolved. Maybe it's common to other life forms on their homeworld. |
February 1, 2018 - 9:17am | Actually that is exactly what it says. "All Dralasites go through male, female and nuetral stages". Short sweet and simple, like most things in nature. Dralasites cycling through those genders a few times through their lives could also be described with the sentence "All Dralasites go through male, female, and neutral stages." If the writer had wanted to specify that it happens only once, in that order, he would have added "once, in that order," or words to that effect. Constant swinging of gender is something not stated but wished for by players and makes no biological sense. I have never heard a player wish for this. I haven't played a huge amount of Star Frontiers, but I have never known a player to even mention the sex of a dralasite, let alone care about its reproductive cycle. Earth creatures who can change their sex do so usually because of changes in environmental conditions. Dralasites homeworld can be thought of as a rough tough place especially given their very tough skin. A dralasite's tough skin is in no way an indication of the dralasite homeworld's conditions. On Earth we have creatures with very tough skin indeed, then we have creatures like humans with very thin skin and not even any insulating fur. You can't generalize Earth's environmental conditions based on that, and you can't generalize the dralasite's homeworld's conditions based on that either. Evolution led to their not being able to reproduce and care for young until they were mature and developed. That's pretty much true of any species, isn't it? The definition of "mature" here must include the start of the ability to reproduce. This is nothing unique to dralasites. Maiden/Mother/Crone is a modern application of an older view in which a woman is encouraged to take pride in each phase of her life and to accept that at different times she has different strengths and abilities. This fits the three stages of a Dralasites life cycle as they take pride in each one. I suppose that's an interesting parallel to consider, but it's not indicated anywhere in the rules. I certainly don't think the SF authors were inspired by neopaganism when designing dralasites. |
February 3, 2018 - 8:40pm | Many things in SF are left very simple. It was supposed to be a kid's game so the KISS was generally applied. While we are given the idea that Dralasites are supposed to be gigantic one celled creatures this doesn't really work and is more that they resemble this but are multi-celled creatures. The spore method of reproduction is more of a plant method and hints at this biology but nothing is ever really definitive in the description, just hinted at. The cycling of reporductive stages is something that seems thrown in to make them unique but never has any game effect. Some of the other races have differences in the sexes but none of them effect play only the visual of the characters. Since the "medicine" is mentioned but not listed anywhere in the equipment lists. Again not something that has any game effect just mentioned and forgotten. Now this is not a fantasy game. Evolution because of environmental conditions should be used for reasons why these beings have the traits they have. Jed gives some good reasons for the order of the changes of sex might occur but not for the why they occur. What triggers the change is one thing we really need to know. I propose it is a part of their life cycle that happens at certain ages of the Dralasites. Maturity might work for mammals and other higher up species but again we don't know how sexual maturity works in Dralasites. If they are supposed to be one celled creatures then they might be ready to reproduce as soon as they have acquired enough food/fuel to allow them to send parts of themselves off (think Tribbles). Do they need to reach a certain size or do they have hormones triggered by certain conditions or age that trigger their "puberty"? The Maiden/Mother/Crone comparison was just that a comparison for the basic three stages in a particular order idea I put forth. No one said it was the idea behind it or that it was anywhere in the rules. Where did that come from? Sounds like a great job but where did you say we had to go? |
February 3, 2018 - 9:01pm | mentioned and forgotten. cant resist a rabbit trail here but speaking of things mentioned and forgotten: how about shatter drones in the SW2 war game? a ship on autopilot loaded with fussion bombss? What the hell is a fussion bomb anyway?????? I might not be a dralasite, vrusk or yazirian but I do play one in Star Frontiers! |
February 4, 2018 - 6:04am | Many things in SF are left very simple. It was supposed to be a kid's game so the KISS was generally applied. So the trick there is to not think too deeply into the information provided in SF. It doesn't make dralasites unplayable. My players knews these details but it never came up as a factor in our games - dralasites have other abilities which were more of a focus for players. |
February 4, 2018 - 7:37am | You do not have to think to deeply into the game to enjoy it. It is great even in the basic rule set. The same can apply to movies. Many movies are great to watch and enjoy. An hour after leaving the theater you realize that the hero never had left his home planet, had zero experience flying a spaceship and was somehow put not only into a high speed fighter but was flying it in a military formation which generally takes weeks of training just to learn the basics then you choose to just take it as a fantasy movie and enjoy it as is or post a youtube video about Everything wrong with ... Sounds like a great job but where did you say we had to go? |
 February 4, 2018 - 12:45pm | An hour after leaving the theater you realize that the hero never had left his home planet, had zero experience flying a spaceship and was somehow put not only into a high speed fighter but was flying it in a military formation which generally takes weeks of training just to learn the basics then you choose to just take it as a fantasy movie and enjoy it as is or post a youtube video about Everything wrong with ...
I get the reference, however it has been established both within and outside of canon that the T-16 (skyhopper) and T-65 (X-Wing) are not only made by the same manufacturer but have very similar cockpits and flight capabilities. The T-16 (you can see one in the background as Luke is "playing" with a scaled down model of it right after acquiring the droids) is what Luke flies when he is "bullseye-ing womp rats" as he so eloquently puts it during the Death Star briefing. Granted this wasn't revealed back in 1977...but the cut scene with Biggs preceding the launch against the Death Star explains it as well. Had they left that scene in (it's on the revised DVD editions) then the explanation would have been there from day one. |
February 4, 2018 - 6:29pm | So a cut scene explains how he learned all the aspects of flying in a squadron formation much less a multi-squadron of different craft formation? Explains how they even had a fighter for him to use? Explains how they convinced the chain of command to allow him to fly? Okay so the T-whatever is similar to the whatever 65. Modern military are not allowed to fly planes of the different models of the same plane until they qualify on each model. But hey totally different spacecraft with similar controls explains why an unkwown except for the other guy who (now check the timeline here) arrived yesterday knows is allowed to fly. (Yes Wedge leaves and is going to contact a guy who knows a guy who knows where they Rebels might be. But the entire real time of the Star Wars movie with the cut scene is what 3 or 4 days max. Those Rebels are really desparate for pilots. Sure this movie wasn't Independence Day?) Did you really say out of canon? Next you are going to quote fanfiction at me. Sounds like a great job but where did you say we had to go? |
 February 4, 2018 - 5:26pm | Dralasites likely have a very different view of sexuality to the other three core races. For Drals sex and reproduction are completely seperate. Drals might not even have "sex" per se. Sexual orientation is not really a thing for a race that reproduces through spores and budding. Dralasites, even in male, female and neutral reproductive stages might be considerably more gender fluid than other species. I doubt there would be much if any sexism among the Drals as every member of the species could expect to pass through each of the three "sexes" during their lifetime. |
February 4, 2018 - 6:32pm | I totally agree with that. Social interaction with the Dralasites is not based around finding a mate or eating but on debate and jokes. I go with them having a spectrum similar to Nerds and Jocks. A few at each end of the Debators and Jokers and most somewhere inbetween. Sounds like a great job but where did you say we had to go? |
February 4, 2018 - 7:34pm | So a cut scene explains how he learned all the aspects of flying in a squadron formation much less a multi-squadron of different craft formation? Explains how they even had a fighter for him to use? Explains how they convinced the chain of command to allow him to fly? No, like I said it's just one of many. Did you really say out of canon? Yes, I really did say outside of canon. I said so because up until three years ago, everything published under the Lucas-license really was inside of canon. Disney dismissed everything that wasn't their property, so now a lot of it is "out of canon". Had this discussion taken place prior to the Disney-Lucasfilm purchase, I would have simply said "it has been established in numerous canon references". |
February 5, 2018 - 7:36am | Many things in SF are left very simple. It was supposed to be a kid's game so the KISS was generally applied. That presupposes TSR was considering its target audience to be stupid. I think the wealth of biological detail we are given concerning the four races demonstrates their feeling that the audience was NOT stupid. While Star Frontiers was meant to be accessible to kids, it was also designed to be played by adults. There is no adult-to-child condescension here. While we are given the idea that Dralasites are supposed to be gigantic one celled creatures this doesn't really work and is more that they resemble this but are multi-celled creatures. We are never told that dralasites are single-cell creatures. They are consistently described as rubbery blobs. There are certain resemblances to a single-celled organism, but they're just resemblances. The cycling of reporductive stages is something that seems thrown in to make them unique but never has any game effect. Some of the other races have differences in the sexes but none of them effect play only the visual of the characters. Since the "medicine" is mentioned but not listed anywhere in the equipment lists. Again not something that has any game effect just mentioned and forgotten. This stuff isn't there to directly affect game mechanics; it's there to build a consistent, interesting setting. Playing Bob the Blob is one thing; playing Bob the Blob, who is currently taking sex-controlling drugs to remain in its neuter stage while caring for its offspring Betty the Blob, is more interesting. Now this is not a fantasy game. Evolution because of environmental conditions should be used for reasons why these beings have the traits they have. Jed gives some good reasons for the order of the changes of sex might occur but not for the why they occur. What triggers the change is one thing we really need to know. I propose it is a part of their life cycle that happens at certain ages of the Dralasites. And that's certainly possible. But it's not the only possibility. I agree that evolution has brought the dralasites to their current form, but I disagree that we have anywhere near enough information to extrapolate how dralasite evolution came about or further properties of dralasites based on that evolution. If you want more information, you have to make it up, but it should stay in your own game, and not be disseminated as if it were a conclusion drawn from the rule books. |
February 5, 2018 - 8:19am | I present my own ideas for discussion and do not force anyone to use them. Interviews with SF game designers does say the game was made simple because it was aimed at a younger audience. Younger does generally mean not as advanced mentally so yes the game did assume they were not as smart. Game companies do this all the time. I do alot with Lego and all their products have an age range that usually is between 6-14. I wrote we are given the general idea that they are gigantic one celled creatures. Not that they are. Glad to see we agree on this. Why would a Dralasite stay in Nuetral Stage to care for offspring? Female Stage is the caring/nuturing one. And again, I am discussing my ideas about Dralasite life cycle. Taking a hard line and constantly stating I am wrong with quoting everything and picking it apart is not a discussion. Sounds like a great job but where did you say we had to go? |
February 5, 2018 - 10:58am | I can go two ways on drals and sex spore in the air and accidental insemination My problem with this is that where are all the dralasites in the setting? Vrusk, yaz and humans dominate. accidental pregnancy would be common and should drive dralasite population numbers and lead to more colonized planets. I would be happier with a system where two drals like each other and decide to produce young. this leads to debating, tangling and some rolling and rubbing together (call it a mating ritual like that of some animals and birds) that triggers hormonal responses that make the female gender responsive to the the male spore. In this way its not accidental and apparently low dralasite population numbers need not be explained . I might not be a dralasite, vrusk or yazirian but I do play one in Star Frontiers! |
February 5, 2018 - 1:27pm | Pregnancy might not be an issue - if they have drugs to control sex changes then a contraceptive is probably not a difficult thing to manufacture, possibly with male and female stage dralasites taking it. I guess dralasites don't feature all that much in setting because the writers and/or artists didn't favour them as much, aside from the Malthar and some spot illustrations. To be honest I don't think we have to shoe-horn the poor dralasites into human-like sexual behaviour to make any of the AD blurb fit. They spore, and have ways to control when offspring is produced and when their sex changes. Simple really. Maybe the whole sporing thing isn't some long-term ordeal and their young don't require prolonged upbringing and growth stages. IMHO it'd be interesting if instead all of this happens fast, and the child-parent relationship is short and more like an apprenticeship. Possibly a dralasite becomes an adult in less than a year, maybe even one or two months, and as soon as they're 'born' they're simply just small versions of adults and don't require the kind of 'maintenance' that human babies need. |
February 5, 2018 - 2:14pm | Why would a Dralasite stay in Nuetral Stage to care for offspring? Female Stage is the caring/nuturing one. It's this kind of overgeneralization and importation of human ideas (and outdated ideas at that) that I am objecting to. Exactly where are we told that the female stage is the caring and nurturing stage? We aren't. You are taking real-world human stereotypes and applying them to dralasites. Who says male or neuter dralasites can't take care of their offspring, or are somehow less nurturing than female dralasites? Why are you jumping to that conclusion? Or the other conclusions I've objected to? |
February 5, 2018 - 2:39pm | I work from the premise that Earth humans are the boring, beige, vanilla default setting and one must move as far away as one can from that in order to make other things more interesting  |
February 5, 2018 - 4:17pm | Eric tackled sone of this with his social school material. That many times a career oriented or adventuring dral will foster the little ball of puddy with its social school at some point. I might not be a dralasite, vrusk or yazirian but I do play one in Star Frontiers! |
 February 5, 2018 - 11:04pm | I think I remember writing a lot about dral reproduction, life cycles, and upbringing in the core four ptoject. That would have been years ago. Anyway, they are aliens. Their biology and culture developed differently. That's what I find fun about playing a dralasite. I tend to play dralasites most often. I'm browsing on a smart phone so I won't search the core four project as the smartphone browser is not inspiring to use, but I'll search it some other time when I'm on a PC. If someone else searches up the threads in the core four project and posts them, then yeah for them and us. -iggy |
 February 6, 2018 - 8:31pm | The official TSR description for Dralasites are "Hermaphroditic, budding." You have a very interesting discussion going on here... I always thought that maybe Drals when through these male, female and neuter stages several times, but that really isn't clear by the racial description. Of course, I don't think TSR was giving a course in xeno-sexuality. Joe Cabadas |
February 7, 2018 - 5:35am | These threads pop for dralasite reproduction in the Core Four project: Dralasite Reproduction and the AD map http://www.starfrontiers.us/node/5066 New Theory on Dralasite Reproduction http://www.starfrontiers.us/node/8198 Dralasite Physiology http://www.starfrontiers.us/node/3998 I might not be a dralasite, vrusk or yazirian but I do play one in Star Frontiers! |
 March 2, 2018 - 8:43pm | Good discussion. On the one hand I like the idea that they mature differently after budding, but then I am thinking on those choose your adventure books... humm have to check those. Drals are one of my favorite races TSR came up with. "Never fire a laser at a mirror." |
March 3, 2018 - 1:59am | One idea I had the other day was that a bud, when 'born', actually is a partial copy of some of the budding parent's mental capbilities. That way, when very young it already has some understanding of the world around it. This means that from the outset it doesn't need to spend a long time being educated and the learning process that goes along with growing up is much more rapid as these capabilities are already established at birth. As to why they have not expanded onto many other worlds, this might be because there are less dralasites in general. Humans, for example, tend to seek new places because of pressure from population numbers (not always, but sometimes). If there are less dralaistes in general, perhaps there is less need to constantly seek out more places to live. This in turn suggests that dralasite birth rates aren't as high as other races. Not because of any failings of course, but simply because 'pregancy' is less common. There may even be some natural factor that limits population size to some average number, and this is a constant over time. |
March 3, 2018 - 11:35am | @KRingway, I have thought much the same way about dralasites starting life with education while they are in the process of budding. What does a parent do with a bud while it is still attached yet conscious and inquisitive? The parent teaches. I've also thought that there is some form of internal communication that allows the parent and bud to converse more intimately. Not actual telepathy or direct brain communication but the sharing of memories and felt communication. So they don't actually know each others active thoughts but can share memories. Thus the parent is still free and private as well as the bud, but they can choose to open memories to each other. This way they teach by example and keep a history of their lineage. I imagine that dralasites can sense when a bud first becomes conscious and that is what they use to mark the beginning of successful reproduction. Because they naturally cannot choose when to mate due to spores being the reproductive process I postulate that their biology is a bit more discriminative about successful DNA exchange. Thus most fertilizations are not supported but the parent if the embryo bud is not viable in the first few thousand cells. So dralasites drop off microscopic unviable buds all the time. So their population growth is slower. Concerning the sharing of memories. This is a survival mechanism that allowed the dralasites to become sapient. They teach the buds what is safe to eat, touch, approach, etc. by sharing the memory of what is good and what is bad as experienced by the parent and even past progenitors. Consider the primitive dralasite that soaks in poisoned water when seeking a drink. It gets sick and remembers that the water that tastes such a way or smells such a way is bad. It shares this memory with its bud and the lineage of dralasites with this shared and passed down memory prosper. This way, before they ever develop language they have a way to advance to sapiens. As the dralasites continued to develop the shared memories passed on would also be of who they were so that they wouldn't be forgotten. This desire to be remembered by o es posterity is older than language and to later development of writing. Later in the history of dralasite development sharing memories of skills would be desirable and dralasite parents would begin attempting to educate their young as much as possible before they bud free and wander off for their own life. I see this as elementary schooling at best. The bud is attached to the parent so full motor skills is limited in education. The parent has a busy life so the bud is not free to be in education at all times. The duration of budding is not as many months or years either so the time to educate is limited. I worked out a budding time cycle some where. It is longer than nine months but not so long. I reason that anciently having a bud attached for a long time would make the parent a target for predators for too long. So as soon as a dralasite is developed enough to be able to run for its own safety it buds free. The expanded rule boom shows a picture of this happening that makes them look like a small child so I imagine that a new bud has learned enough and emassed enough shared memories and personal memories that it functions a bit like an eight year old. Dralasite society lets these new buds go walk-about for a bit, nothing to exceed a year. This allows the new bud to excercise the pent up desire for personal mobility and freedom. Dralasites allow these new buds to come and see what the adults do and engage their curiosity. It is considered proper and an act of parentage for all dralasites to provide for these new wandering buds. This is also the time that the dralasite stoas begin recruiting these new buds to become members and take up the educational and lifestyle path of the stoa. I just love this view of dralasites and would wrie more but posting from a cell phone gets tiring. Keep up the conversation to I can hit it again at a real keyboard and monitor. -iggy |
March 4, 2018 - 1:14am | One other reason that might explain the lack of dralasite expansion onto many other worlds is that they have a different attitude to personal space and territory. In humans, this can vary from person to person (depending on various factors). However, in a general sense populations expand and move because the collective sense of space may seem to be limited. Resources also come into play, as does perceived control over those resources. Perhaps this is not the case for dralasites. Maybe they evolved to prefer large communal groups and the notion of territory was less of a factor in their outlook. This meant that as their civilsation developed their socio-political outlook was not geared to a version of tribalism and territory and more towards working as a large group: a sort of 'safety in numbers' approach. As their society is therefore much more dense and close knit, raising young dralasites becomes more of a group effort. Young mobile dralasites simply wander from place to place, learning as they go, and this process (both growing and learning) is rapid. Perhaps dralasite schools and other learning establishments are more like a version of their debating halls, but instead focus on discourse and assimilating information. From the outside, dralasite society - to humans, at least - seems a like a teeming mass of individuals living in close proximity, and with a different attidtude to personal space and social responsibilities. As there therefore might not be a huge population of dralasite on any world, even their homeworld, this doesn't stop them preferring dense population centres. |
March 5, 2018 - 8:36am | Or there may just not be as many planets suitable for colonization in the dralasite area of the Frontier. |
