This play-through of Bios: Megafauna is approaching a climax. By the end of Turn Six it was obvious that the game wasn’t going to last the usual eleven or more turns, unless something very strange happened. In particular, one player was making very good progress toward developing a species that exhibited language and tool use.

Turn Seven (180 – 210 million years)

The events this turn are Ultra-Plinian VEI 8 Eruption Winter and Desertification. A large-scale volcanic eruption puts teratonnes of dust and ash in the stratosphere, cutting off sunlight and producing a snap cold period. Meanwhile, continental interiors and rain-shadow areas dry out, pushing back the world-spanning forests. Actual changes to the map are moderate, with a new mountain hex appearing on Beta, and a desert hex appearing (for the first time) on Delta. The placement of these hexes means that one piece for each player becomes Endangered.

The atmosphere currently has 30% free oxygen, planetary albedo is at 0.35, and the climate is Warm. All players get four actions.

White resizes both his Archetype and his Swimmer species to size 4. He acquires Feelers for the Swimmer species, immediately promoting the trait to Tentacles. The Swimmer species now has the green Monster marker, and becomes an extremely efficient herbivore. White places two Swimmer pieces in Newborns.

Black acquires Spinneret Silk Ballooning for his Archetype species, and Wrists & Ankles for his Flyer. (Okay, this Flyer species is starting to look very unlike any flying arthropods – that is, insects – on Earth.) Black places one Archetype creeple and two Flyer creeples into Newborns.

Green acquires Cerci for the Burrower, promotes Cerci to Whiskers and Windpipe to Long Neck, acquiring the green Monster marker for the Burrower. Finally, one of his species might be able to compete with Orange more effectively. Green places two Burrower pieces into Newborns.

Orange engages in neoteny, removing one blue cube from each of his three species. He then resizes all three species to size 4. He places two Archetype and two Swimmer pieces into Newborns.

During dispersal, White and Black place their pieces without incident, filling in empty ecological niches on the Alpha and Beta cratons. Green pushes back against Orange’s encroachment of last turn, placing his two Burrowers to attack an Orange Armored carnivore and an Orange Swimmer herbivore. In both cases, the attack works and the Orange pieces become Endangered. Orange consolidates by placing his pieces to fill in empty spaces, in two cases bumping an Armored piece up to the carnivore position.

Since the White Archetype is endothermic, it is able to move away from the new mountain hex where it was Endangered. Black and Green each lose one piece, and Orange loses three.

Turn Eight (210 – 240 million years)

The events this turn are Eltanin Pacific Bolide Winter with Lignin Crisis. A major asteroid impact (not on the scale of the Chicxulub event, but significant) sets off a major climate tipping point, just as the continents are becoming choked with forests full of dead lumber. Many of the events thus far have been moderate; this one turns out to be a major turning point in the game.

The Alpha-Beta continent slides northward, just enough to match the latitude of the southern parts of the Gamma-Delta continent – “rafting” is now possible between them, for the first time in many millions of years. Forests spread slightly, and sea levels rise slightly as well.

Then all hell breaks loose. As noted last time, Black now holds the “Medea” card, which means he controls the movement of the various terrain disks when an event calls for that. He also has the one-time ability to drastically magnify certain events, at the cost of giving up the card to another player. He decides to do this now: instead of moving one white disk from the Atmosphere track to the Clouds track, he chooses to move all of them, representing a major climate tipping point set off by the asteroid impact. The effect is to drastically reduce planetary temperature, while in turn causing the planet’s surface to be wreathed in clouds, blocking out sunlight. Black surrenders the Medea card to White.

The next major event on the card proves decisive. This is the first mutagen event in the game, essentially representing a mass extinction. Many of the largest and most sophisticated species in play will be forced to give up traits, giving way to smaller and more versatile cousins. The way this is implemented is that each species must be compared to something called the “dark heart limit,” which is based on the oxygen level for Players Orange, Black, and White, and on the planet’s current albedo for Player Green. Every species must give up cubes until it has no more than the dark heart limit. If any “basal organs” (cubes sitting directly on the species’ base card) are lost, the species becomes extinct at once.

The current dark heart limit is 7 for Players Orange, Black, and White, but only 1 for Player Green (all those clouds are blocking the intensive photosynthesis his species need). Here’s how it shakes out:

• White’s two species are highly specialized, especially since the Archetype has two Monster markers. However, literally at the last minute while re-checking the rules for a mutagen event, I noticed a rule that permits endothermic species (with one or more white cubes) to add twice their number of white cubes to the dark heart limit. The White Archetype, since it is size 4 and has a white Monster marker, effectively has four white cubes, meaning that its dark heart limit is actually 15. White is able to preserve the species almost intact by resizing it to size 3, and giving up one blue cube from the Pituitary Gland trait. Meanwhile, the White Swimmer species is not endothermic, but it also has a far smaller set of cubes. White is able to avoid the loss of any traits by resizing the Swimmer to size 2.
• Green is forced to use a dark heart limit of 1 . . . and both of his species have more basal organ cubes than that. Green’s two species both become completely extinct, removed entirely from the map. Green is now a “Lazarus” player. He can move back onto the map later, but for now he has effectively been knocked out of the game. There is much baleful glaring at Black from his side of the table.
• Black smiles, as both of his species are under the dark heart limit and he takes no losses.
• Orange also gets off lightly – this is exactly the event he was concerned about from the beginning of the game, and his repeated use of the “neoteny” rule has reduced his exposure. The Orange Archetype loses the Pallial Lung trait, and two green cubes from the Gizzard Stones and Pancreas traits. Since the latter two cards make up the species’ green Emotion, he retains them even through they no longer carry any cubes (the “Cheshire Cat” rule). Orange’s other species are under the dark heart limit.

With events complete, the planet’s atmosphere has 34% free oxygen, the albedo is at 0.8 (!), and the climate is now Cool. Player Green gets 2 actions, all other players get 4.

White is the first player to move, and he spots a superb opportunity. One of the effects of a “mutagen” event is that it clears the current tableau of available traits and lays out a new set of cards for players to acquire. As it happens, this brings two cards to the fore that White would very much like to snap up. He acquires Long-Term Memory and Olfactory Organ for his Archetype species, and immediately promotes both, to Larder Hoarding and Smelling Nose respectively.

This move enables White to line up all of his cards in such a way as to acquire two new Emotions. One of these is red, indicating “anger,” the “fight” part of the fight-or-flight response. The other is purple, indicating “curiosity.” With a purple Emotion, White is immediately able to acquire a Tool card. He selects Net, which renders his Archetype immune to being preyed upon by Flyers, and also gives his Archetype the ability to prey upon Flyers in turn. The newly sentient and tool-using species is about to upset the ecology on the Alpha-Beta continent in a big way, since the age-old pattern of Black Flyers preying upon White Archetypes will now collapse. Three Black Flyer creeples on Alpha and Beta all become Endangered at once.

The White Archetype now has four Emotions, with three different colors in the mix. This is more than enough for the species to develop language, signaling the end of the game. Under the printed rules, the game would end immediately, whereas under the Living Rules it would continue to the end of Turn Ten. Since this exercise is in service of my worldbuilding work, I decide to play out the rest of this turn and stop there. The development of this new tool-using and language-using species into a high-tech civilization will take place so quickly as to take up a tiny fraction of a game turn!

Green, just going through the motions at this point, revives his Archetype species at size 1 with no traits, placing a creeple in an empty spot on Beta. He acquires the Rhizome trait for his Archetype.

Black promotes Wrists & Ankles to Digitigrade Hopping for his Flyer species. He promotes Spinneret Silk Ballooning to Cocoon for his Archetype, and that species becomes endothermic. Black places two Archetype pieces and two Flyer pieces in Newborns.

Orange sees a lot of space that just became empty, with the extinction of the old Green species. He places two pieces each for all three of his species into Newborns.

Black uses rafting to cross the ocean and reach the Delta craton, filling two spaces with his pieces (Archetypes in the herbivore position, Flyers in the carnivore position). Orange doesn’t try to contest this, instead placing his six new pieces in empty spaces, mostly on Gamma.

The Black Flyers that became Endangered due to the White Archetype’s new abilities all die, setting a bit of punctuation at the end of the biggest mass extinction in the planet’s history.

Final Results

Just for form’s sake, I counted up Victory Points.

• Orange has 1 Fossil in his Fossil Record. He has 7 Archetype Creeples, 6 Armored Creeples, and 6 Swimmer Creeples in play, for a total of 19 Creeples. He has 3 Fossils in his Tableau. He has 1 Emotion. Total 24 VP.
• Black has 1 Fossil in his Fossil Record. He has 7 Archetype Creeples and 4 Flyer Creeples in play, for a total of 11 Creeples. He has 2 Fossils in his Tableau. He has 1 Emotion. Total 14 VP.
• White has 1 Fossil in his Fossil Record. He has 5 Archetype Creeples and 7 Swimmer Creeples in play, for a total of 12 Creeples. He has 4 Fossils in his Tableau. He has 4 Emotions, and has developed Language in one species. Total 24 VP.
• Green has 1 Fossils in his Fossil Record. He has 1 Archetype Creeple in play, for a total of 1 Creeple. He has 1 Fossil in his Tableau. Total 3 VP.

So, as I kind of expected, Orange and White ended up tied for first, with Black trailing and Green in a distant last place. (Poor Green was in last place in the Bios: Genesis game too. I predict that he will call for something different to come to the table, next time these guys get together for game night.)

I conclude that this is an interesting planet to work with for, say, a literary project. We’ve seen several indications that the star system and planet are noticeably different from our own. The physical environment is certainly distinctive, a world with a few small continents and lots of little island chains and arcs. The atmosphere will be very rich in both oxygen and carbon dioxide, breathable by humans but possibly not comfortable for them. It’s also currently a planet of clouds and frequent rain-storms.

As for the native life: one could argue that Orange’s invertebrates are still the dominant phylum, the equivalent of mollusks and annelids, but physically large and capable of advanced behaviors. White’s Archetype is more mammal-like, a warm-blooded creature, somewhat smaller than a human, fiercely aggressive and territorial, but clever enough to live off the swarms of flying exoskeletal creatures that live on all sides. All of these are surviving in the aftermath of climate change and a mass extinction, the planet’s weather probably still wildly variable.

In my next post, I’ll be working up the physical parameters of the star system and primary planet. Then I’ll spend some time designing the sentient species, with a character template and an extensive back story. I’ll be marking those posts with the gurps tag, since they might be of interest to GURPS players. That will conclude the immediate exercise, although I suspect I’ll have an Aminata Ndoye story to write, with this world and its people as a centerpiece. We’ll see how that works out.