Aliens - How to introduce them to a campaign (High-Fantasy) without breaking stride

[atemu1234]

I want to get a little bit more sci-fi peanut butter in the high fantasy chocolate, if you catch my drift. Therein, I need to find a way to introduce several alien races (the Fraal and others from D20: Future), and I want to do it without breaking the campaign world. So how should I do this?

[Urpriest]

Slaves on a Neogi ship perhaps? Neogi aren't setting-specific, and canonically travel in space.

[Auron3991]

You could always go the Stargate and Questorverse route of saying the magic is simply science not yet understood, but that doesn't seem right here. My suggestion is to take the Tales of series route and have magic powering their technology. Magitech solves all those messy problems.

[Mr Adventurer]

Start with illithids, neogi and/or other traditionally space faring races from Spelljammer. When your players have acclimatised to that, start introducing the other stuff in a coherent way.

Or did you mean those races have specific abilities that might break D&D?

ETA: Damn, double-Swordsaged

[Heikold]

Kythons from BoVD are basically xenomorphs anyway...

[daremetoidareyo]

The worst and most jarring way to introduce alien races is with a spaceship crash.

Neogi slave traders/merchants can introduce anything into a campaign pretty easily. Have the Neogi make a bi-annual circuit that includes a stop on your homeworld in a lawless (or lawful evil) place of commerce. Maybe it's hosted by a collection of thieves guilds or something. You could even have the PCs start a campaign to deal with a mundane thief who uses some weird alien technology that expressly isn't magic like a laser pointer on his crossbow.

Take a page from 'District 9' and introduce the alien races as refugees...Maybe a cabal of fraal slaves made a daring escape from a beholder dungeon, only to find themselves trapped in the lower levels of a temple's tomb.

Distilling my suggestions, it seems the best way to legitimize the introduction of alien species is to use a fantasy intermediary. Focus less on the alien's being from outer space, and more on them being foreign beings trying to get by, just like the rest of the humanoid races.

[Extra Anchovies]

Maybe run Expedition to the Barrier Peaks?

[Psyren]

Plane of Shadow goes anywhere Material, even there. You can have all kinds of extraterrestrial interlopers pop over that way, possibly fleeing a cataclysm of some description back home.

[dysprosium]

All of these suggestions have been good though they all seem to imply the sudden introduction of aliens.

Another possible approach is the idea that the aliens have been here all along and are watching/guiding/reporting on the progress of the world's inhabitants.

Considering the fraal are essentially the iconic grey aliens you could use them in the same regard as the Asgard from Stargate, which are also pretty much supposed to be the iconic grey aliens.

In a similar vein you could follow how the Federation watches potential worlds preparing for first contact.

A twist on the idea is that these aliens are making sure that this world does not advance technologically/socially/what have you. They have been doing all they can to make sure of it.

And once they are discovered through some kind of mishap or PCs stumbling upon an alien watchpost or somesuch, the aliens are to be defeated for the greater good of the world.

[Chester]

Tsochari in "Lords of Madness." Basically body-snatchers, in a sense.

[Ssalarn]

Plane of Shadow goes anywhere Material, even there. You can have all kinds of extraterrestrial interlopers pop over that way, possibly fleeing a cataclysm of some description back home.

Coterminous planes was going to be my suggestion as well. Don't even really introduce them as aliens; there's enough weird **** in the world that's never been explained, no reason the party should think an extra-terrestrial is any more strange or unusual than an extra-planar.

Alternatively, you could have the party be the catalyst that actually introduces these alien species to the campaign world (assuming they didn't exist there previously). Throw in a McGuffin that is actually a planar travel device, let them spend a level on a strange alien world, and then when they finally figure out how to get back home they inadvertently opn the door for the inhabitants of that other realm to follow them back. Bonus points if that alien world is itself in the middle of a struggle against another alien force and the party's actions while there determine which faction is likely to discover their escape route.

[Magesmiley]

If you really want to turn things on end...

Maybe the fantasy world the PCs have been playing on is a result of the warping of space due some stellar phenomenon. They're in a sci-fi universe, but what they view as magic is a side effect of the world's proximity to a black hole or something.

The extra-planar beings they've been facing are really aliens and various planar spells are really transporting them to other worlds.

It might be fun to unveil this to the players in stages, that how they thought things worked isn't really what is going on under the hood.

[KingSmitty]

i've always thought of outsiders as aliens anyway, its the same concept