I have been in love with the pentapods since the first edition of 2300AD. They are so delightfully alien, possible to use for all sorts of plots and adventures - and real hard to GM. I'm interested in how other people run their pentapods. Here are some of the main approaches I use.
Overall, I have been tremendously inspired by "Having Seen The Sky” by Jim Long - the somewhat fragmentary form of the manuscript adds to the feeling of a grand unfinished masterpiece. For a very appealing implementation of that adventure, see Mike Montresa's version. Some other good sources of ideas are Andy Slack's Bioadversity and Rob Myer's hillarious Focus Group.
Pentapods do not use pronouns: there is no "I" in pentapod, and they do not get "you", "we" or "our" either. They might denote themselves as "Pentapod concerned with humans" or "Pentapod concerned with walls" depending on their purpose. Humans with uncertain purpose may be impossible to call anything. Pentapods are not very good with motivations and other inner states either (since they themselves are more like stimulus-response creatures). They don't "get" self-awareness, emotions or human goals. But diplomatic pentapods interacting with humans will try to use these terms, often with problematic results.
Pentapods tend to use taste and smell as the main modalities. “How salty is this delightful building? You have been pungent hosts, strewn with cinnamon.” Sometimes the effect is rather eerie: “We will savour your brain-smells and return after a full digestion.”
To pentapods eating and understanding might be the same thing: to understand something you have to become it, so either you eat it or you allow it to eat you. "Could the Pentapod Concerned With Appendage Structure eat your arm?"
Pentapods never act alone. They always form groups (schools, tangles, gaggles?) An isolated pentapod is either doing a job and will ignore everything irrelevant, or lost and trying to go home.
Pentapods either have something to do, and then they do it with all their heart(s?), or they do nothing in particular. Inactive are like living furniture, and will often be used for that purpose by other pentapods. Active pentapods in group are downright dangerous as they swarm to do their job and do not care much for personal safety.
Pentapod society is more like an ecosystem or a free market than a mammalian society. Pentapods prefer evolutionary trial and error: test numerous possibilities, reuse those that worked best, try variants of them. They seldom do exactly the same thing twice, unless it is a very well tested procedure (or rather, species).
Pentapods seldom care about efficiency. Instead they allow solutions to evolve once they are found. Over the years they become better and more efficient even if they started as an absurd kludge.
Shift between the cute, odd, disgusting and horrific randomly. Whenever the players start treating the pentapods in one way, add some opposing element. "Do humans want lives elegantly trimmed? Pentapods Concerned About Shore Debris could suck it up along the shores, excreting tasteful things."
Pentapods have no concept of personal space, and do not naturally understand the human horror of parasites or having creatures crawl on or in them. This easily causes problem with pentapod toolkits, who swarm anything. "It will only micturate for happy recording purposes."
PCs wanting to learn more from the pentapods better put up with all of this, and adopt some of the habits. One of the PCs in the current campaign has established rapport with pentapods fairly well, but he literally licks up pentapod slime from doormats once the sensor polyps have matured...
Overall, I think the great challenge is to come up with plots and plans for the Pentapods in the game. If they have a clear pre-determined purpose, everything is fine. But having a pentaplex somewhere nearby means that they will do all sorts of unexpected things. New kinds of pentapods will show up, different ecological phases will follow each other and various groups of pentapods will implement projects apparently haphazardly. The ecology needs surveying? Breed surveyor pentapods (several kinds, including edible ones that report about what ate them through their digestion-resistant kernels; oops, forgot to tell humans about that one, they thought they were native and delicious - great, new product to sell!) *and* get humans to do ecological survey by asking *and* spreading apparently threatening creatures in the borderland.
I think the inhabitants of Niebelungen are going to discover that they got some annoyingly active neighbours...
Overall, I have been tremendously inspired by "Having Seen The Sky” by Jim Long - the somewhat fragmentary form of the manuscript adds to the feeling of a grand unfinished masterpiece. For a very appealing implementation of that adventure, see Mike Montresa's version. Some other good sources of ideas are Andy Slack's Bioadversity and Rob Myer's hillarious Focus Group.
Pentapods do not use pronouns: there is no "I" in pentapod, and they do not get "you", "we" or "our" either. They might denote themselves as "Pentapod concerned with humans" or "Pentapod concerned with walls" depending on their purpose. Humans with uncertain purpose may be impossible to call anything. Pentapods are not very good with motivations and other inner states either (since they themselves are more like stimulus-response creatures). They don't "get" self-awareness, emotions or human goals. But diplomatic pentapods interacting with humans will try to use these terms, often with problematic results.
Pentapods tend to use taste and smell as the main modalities. “How salty is this delightful building? You have been pungent hosts, strewn with cinnamon.” Sometimes the effect is rather eerie: “We will savour your brain-smells and return after a full digestion.”
To pentapods eating and understanding might be the same thing: to understand something you have to become it, so either you eat it or you allow it to eat you. "Could the Pentapod Concerned With Appendage Structure eat your arm?"
Pentapods never act alone. They always form groups (schools, tangles, gaggles?) An isolated pentapod is either doing a job and will ignore everything irrelevant, or lost and trying to go home.
Pentapods either have something to do, and then they do it with all their heart(s?), or they do nothing in particular. Inactive are like living furniture, and will often be used for that purpose by other pentapods. Active pentapods in group are downright dangerous as they swarm to do their job and do not care much for personal safety.
Pentapod society is more like an ecosystem or a free market than a mammalian society. Pentapods prefer evolutionary trial and error: test numerous possibilities, reuse those that worked best, try variants of them. They seldom do exactly the same thing twice, unless it is a very well tested procedure (or rather, species).
Pentapods seldom care about efficiency. Instead they allow solutions to evolve once they are found. Over the years they become better and more efficient even if they started as an absurd kludge.
Shift between the cute, odd, disgusting and horrific randomly. Whenever the players start treating the pentapods in one way, add some opposing element. "Do humans want lives elegantly trimmed? Pentapods Concerned About Shore Debris could suck it up along the shores, excreting tasteful things."
Pentapods have no concept of personal space, and do not naturally understand the human horror of parasites or having creatures crawl on or in them. This easily causes problem with pentapod toolkits, who swarm anything. "It will only micturate for happy recording purposes."
PCs wanting to learn more from the pentapods better put up with all of this, and adopt some of the habits. One of the PCs in the current campaign has established rapport with pentapods fairly well, but he literally licks up pentapod slime from doormats once the sensor polyps have matured...
Overall, I think the great challenge is to come up with plots and plans for the Pentapods in the game. If they have a clear pre-determined purpose, everything is fine. But having a pentaplex somewhere nearby means that they will do all sorts of unexpected things. New kinds of pentapods will show up, different ecological phases will follow each other and various groups of pentapods will implement projects apparently haphazardly. The ecology needs surveying? Breed surveyor pentapods (several kinds, including edible ones that report about what ate them through their digestion-resistant kernels; oops, forgot to tell humans about that one, they thought they were native and delicious - great, new product to sell!) *and* get humans to do ecological survey by asking *and* spreading apparently threatening creatures in the borderland.
I think the inhabitants of Niebelungen are going to discover that they got some annoyingly active neighbours...