Go See Your Local Astro-Gnome Dealer

In 1956, Richard Arbib Co., Inc. designed the car of the future. Maybe some enterprising scoundrel is setting up a dealership at Gernsbok Station right now!

Found at LooksLikeACar

Inspiration from Gray Morrow

While people are working on their sectors (and yeah, I still need to map mine ... sorry, NOD and Blood & Treasure are time consuming), here's a little something to keep the blog alive. Gray Morrow, who has one of the great names of all time, painted some mighty nice sci-fi and fantasy art over his career. These images were found at Golden Age Comic Book Stories.

Alien Inspiration from Ed Cartier

From one of the great sci-fi illustrators, Ed Cartier's illustrations for Travelers of Space (1951) from Gnome Press. Found at the equally great blog Monster Brains!

Random Alien Plant Generator

Image copyright Paizo Publishing

For those looking to populate their regions with some alien flora, grab some dice and see what you get ...

STEP ONE: Determine Type (d6)

1-4 Plant
5-6 Fungus

50% chance the plant is aquatic

STEP TWO: Determine Size (d8)

1 Fine (no more than 6” tall)
2 Tiny (around 1’ tall)
3 Small (around 3’ tall)
4 Medium (around 6’ tall)
5 Large (around 15’ tall or wide)
6 Huge (around 30’ tall or wide)
7 Colossal (around 60’ tall or wide)
8 Gargantuan (around 120’ tall or wide)

STEP THREE: Determine Form (d10)

1 Clump – grown in a clump, like many grasses
2 Stick – stem with very little branching, usually topped by a flower or a clump of foliage
3 Vines – takes the form of vines or runners
4 Carpet – grows close to the ground like a ground cover
5 Branches – droopy or “weeping” – point downward
6 Branches – upraised, make a sort of v-shape
7 Branches – form a spherical structure around the trunk
8 Bulbous – either grows directly from the ground, stands atop a root structure or floats in the water or air
9 Web-like
10 Subterranean – like a tubor or fungus

STEP FOUR: Foliage (d10)

1 No discernible foliage
2 Leaves (roll 1d3: 1 = Small, 2 = Medium, 3 = Large; roll 1d4: 1 = Elliptical, 2 = Circular, 3 = Multi-pointed or sided; 4 = Rectangular)
3 Needles (roll 1d2: 1 = Soft and flexible, 2 = Rigid and sharp)
4 Fronds – like those of a palm tree
5 Fronds – like those of a fern
6 Ribbon-like
7 Moss-like – carpets the plant
8 Tongue-like (retractable)
9 Spine-like
10 Crystalline

STEP FIVE: Flowers (d4)

1 Large and showy
2 Tiny and plain
3 Flower spikes
4 No flowers

STEP SIX: Fruit (d4)
Note: Plants without flowers have no fruit; all fungus has a chance of being edible

1 No fruit
2 Large (head-sized) fruit; 25% chance of growing in clumps
3 Medium (fist-sized) fruit; 50% chance of growing in clumps
4 Small (berry-sized) fruit; 75% chance of growing in clumps

Roll 1d6: 1-2 = Fruit, 3-5 = Nut or Legume; 6 = Seed Pod)

Roll 1d6: 1 = Edible and nutritious; 2-5 = Edible but worthless or inedible; 6 = Toxic

COLORS (d20)
Colors of any part of the plant can be rolled here

1 Blue
2 Red
3 Purple
4 Orange
5-10 Green
11-15 Brown
16 White
17 Grey
18 Black
19 Metallic – silvery
20 Metallic – golden or coppery

ODORS (d10)
Odor of any part of the plant can be rolled here

1 Musky
2 Putrid
3 Pungent
4 Camphoraceous
5 Ethereal (like ether)
6 Floral
7 Pepperminty
8 Buttery
9 Metallic
10 Spicy

TASTES (d6)
Taste of fruit (or other parts of the plant) can be rolled here

1 Sweet
2 Sour
3 Tart
4 Savory, spicy
5 Tasteless
6 Foul or sickening

TEXTURES (d10)
Texture of bark, skin or foliage can be rolled here

1 Leathery
2 Furry
3 Smooth
4 Soft, downy
5 Prickly, spiny
6 Slimy
7 Moist (maybe acidic or poisonous)
8 Ribbed
9 Irregular
10 Cracked

INTENSITY (d6)
When working with color, taste or smells, you can randomly determine the intensity of the sensation

1-3 Light, mild, slight
4-5 Medium
6 Dark, strong, intense

ANYTHING ODD? (d10)
Assume a 1 in 1000 chance of something “odd” about the plant

1 Slight mobility (like a Venus flytrap)
2 Complete mobility (can actually walk or crawl or slither about)
3 Crude intelligence (about animal- or insect-level)
4 High intelligence (as intelligent as human beings or more so)
5 Emits beams or cascades or auroras of light
6 Weird secretions (may be poisonous or otherwise)
7 Vibrates and hums
8 Communicates with animals via pheromones – can alter moods
9 Non-traditional feeding (carnivorous, eats sound waves or radiation or heat)
10 Non-organic based life (metal, natural plastic, crystal)

SAMPLE PLANTS

Specimen I: A large plant - a tree essentially - with drooping branches covered with brown, crystalline foliage. The trunk is a vivid green color and slick to the touch, and the tree produces large, leathery seed pods that have a sour taste and smell, but are non-nutritious. The foliage gives off a camphoraceous odor.

Specimen II: A colossal fungus that grows like a carpet over the plains. The fungus is composed of thousands of little brown protrusions that stick up from the ground and all connect to the main body of the fungus below ground. Each of these knobs is covered with green, mossy foliage. The fungus has a buttery smell and a sour taste, and is quite toxic to human and human-like life forms.

Specimen III: A huge aquatic plant that grows in lakes. It takes the form of a floating bulb with long, dangling roots. The bulb is white and covered with fibrous strands that look like fur. These strands hide its foliage, long, curly, coppery-colored tendrils that it sticks out during the daytime and retracts at night. The plant smells of ether and no part of it is edible.

Alien Planet

I would assume most of the folks who read this blog have already seen this documentary ... but just in case, those writing an alien hex crawl might find some value here.