Scary Dogmatic Aliens
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Basic Information

Aliens whose hat turns out to be an ideology which people are politically afraid of at the moment or who the author/gamemaster wants to anvilize the readers/players about. This could mean the regimented xenophobes who won't stop till they've killed everything that isn't them, insidious collectivists out convinced that individuality is evil and thus are dead set on assimiliating us for our own good, religious zealots who want to kill or convert us because their god(s) say so, interstellar conquestadors seeking new worlds to subjugate and new prizes for their Empire or personal glory, or something else entirely. Whatever the case, their dogma so fervently held to sets them on the path of galactic domination.

Much more amusing when the scary dogmatic aliens are also sufficiently advanced.

Needless to say, this plot can also function quite effectively in non-sci-fi settings.

Sources

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_political_ideologies

Game and Story Use

  • Gives a (somewhat) congruent, but still relatively simple reason for the aliens to be attacking without the GM needing to come up with a more complicated causus belli. It also allows a campaign to be more simply orientated towards violence as the ideological element reduces the chance of a peaceful resolution.
  • This can also explain lawful stupid behaviour on the part of the aliens - up to and including ritual suicides and "banzai" charges.
  • It also means that the enemy doesn't need to be monolithically evil.
    • Indeed, an enemy that is uncompromisingly "good" can be far more terrifying - one that has no tolerance for any gray morality at all, no concept of tact or diplomacy, simply an intolerance of anything they consider evil and an assumption of jurisdiction.
  • This is also a great "secret hat" to pull on the PCs, Babylon 5 style, if the alien's dogmatic wrath is not initially visible to the human PCs.
    • Especially if the humans always knew their (species) allies were fighting a war on the other side of their territory, but weren't aware that it involved genocide (for example).
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