Sharrukin's Palace

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.

My play-through of Bios: Megafauna seems to have reached the rough equivalent of Earth’s Devonian period. All the major families of animals have colonized the land and are starting to spread out, and the continents are also acquiring extensive forest coverage. The next few turns will see some odd developments . . .

Turn Four (90 – 120 million years)

The events this turn are Flood Basalt Traps and ELMO Hyperthermal. Large-scale vulcanism is dumping huge quantities of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere, triggering a period of rapid warming. There actually isn’t much change to the world map as a result, as a few disks move back and forth between the map and the atmosphere tracks. One White Archetype is caught by the formation of a mountain hex on the Alpha craton, but that’s all.

At present, the atmosphere contains 18% free oxygen, planetary albedo is still 0.4, and the climate is Warm (verging on Hothouse). Player Green gets four actions this turn, and all other players get three.

Orange begins the turn by promoting two of his Archetype species traits: Crop to Gizzard Stones, and Endocrine Gland to Pancreas. Increasing anatomical sophistication means that the Archetype now has more green cubes, making it a more efficient herbivore. The Orange Archetype has also acquired the game’s first “Emotion,” as the Gizzard Stones and Pancreas cards match up. The Emotion is colored green, meaning that the Archetype is developing cognitive abilities related to “happiness,” the quest for comfort and a full belly. The Archetype will now find it easier to acquire green traits.

Meanwhile, with his last action Orange promotes the Scutes trait to Carapace, creating a new Armored species which replaces one of the Archetype pieces on Delta. The widespread family of giant slugs and worms has now given rise to something like a species of giant snails.

White continues to invest in his Archetype species. He acquires the Hormones trait and immediately promotes it to Muscle Shivering, moving one yellow cube to his species card and acquiring the white Monster marker. The Archetype species is now endothermic, and gains the ability to escape Endangered status by moving its pieces to an open space. This turns out to be a really good move, although I didn’t see all the implications of it until a critical point a few turns later. Incidentally, with both a blue and a white Monster marker, the White Archetype species effectively has more “organs” (traits) than any other on the planet. White places two Archetype pieces in Newborns.

Green promotes Xylem to Nitrogen Root Nodules, creating a new Burrower species. One imagines a carnivorous plant that spreads by creating extensive root systems, and which grabs prey with tough tendrils springing from underground. One of the Archetype creeples on Gamma becomes a Burrower, and Green places one Archetype and one Burrower piece into Newborns.

Black acquires the Spermatophore trait for his Marine Archetype species. Finally ready to finish moving onto the land, he resizes both the Archetype and the Flyer species to size 2. The Marine Archetype is replaced by the land-based Archetype species, with the remaining off-shore creeple becoming Endangered. Black places two Archetype creeples into Newborns.

White begins the dispersal phase by moving his Endangered piece to an empty hex on Alpha. The White Archetype then spreads to new spaces on Beta. Green places its new creeples in open spaces on Gamma. Black places its Archetype creeples in two spaces on Alpha. One of these placements gives rise to an herbivore contest between a Black Archetype and the White Archetype that just moved out of danger. White wins the contest (one green cube to none), so the Black Archetype moves into the carnivore position. Note that Black could have simply placed his Archetype piece in the carnivore position to begin with; I simply didn’t notice that fact until after the contest.

The Black Archetype left stranded at sea dies, but no others.

Turn Five (120 – 150 million years)

This turn will be busy, since the first tranche of victory points will be counted at the end of the turn, and that’s based entirely on how may creeples are on the map at the time. Every player will be investing in lots of Newborns, and traits that might be useful in winning herbivore or carnivore contests.

The events are Illawarra Reversal Superplume and Calcite Seas. A “superplume” of hot magma rises out of the mantle and impinges on the surface of the planet, while ocean chemistry leans toward the formation of calcite deposits on the sea beds. These events don’t disturb the map much, although several green disks get removed from the atmosphere tracks and placed on the map to indicate the spread of forests and off-shore plankton blooms. Free oxygen rises to 26%, albedo actually falls slightly to 0.35, and the climate remains Warm verging on Hothouse. All players get four actions this turn.

For his Flyer species, Black promotes Antennae to Olfactory Antennae, and promotes Aggregation Pheromones to Mobbing. The Flyer acquires its first Emotion, coded yellow, a “fear” Emotion that involves the flight reaction (or, in this case, the “gang up on the predator and drive it away” reaction). The Black Flyers are starting to take shape as swarms of rather large insects, using swarming behavior to take down prey and deal with larger rivals. Black places two Archetype pieces and three Flyer pieces into Newborns.

White promotes Brainstem to Pituitary Gland for his Archetype, which acquires its first Emotion. This emotion is coded blue, a “jealousy” emotion that’s all about social and sexual competition. White then acquires the Vertical Flexure trait, promoting it at once to Lunate Tail, creating a new Swimmer species. The Archetype in Beta’s one Swamp hex becomes a Swimmer. White places one Archetype and two Swimmers into Newborns.

In the Green player’s turn, I made what was probably a serious mistake. I was thinking about promoting the Archetype’s Haustorium trait, giving it the ability to act as a fully parasitic plant, but that trait requires that the species be of size no greater than 1. I had Green resize his Archetype back down to size 1, not remembering that this would make the species Venom icon effectively useless – carnivores will happily crunch down on a Venomous prey species if it’s smaller, and at size 1 a species is smaller than everything else. The implications of this didn’t become clear to me until later this turn.

Meanwhile Green resizes his Burrower species to size 3 as part of the same action. Green acquires the Oral Disc trait for the Archetype, and the places two Archetype and two Burrower creeples into Newborns.

Orange resizes his Archetype and Armored species to size 3, and acquires the trait Malphigian Tubes for the Armored species. He places three Archetypes and two Armored pieces into Newborns.

Black places his Archetype pieces in open spaces on Alpha, and places his three Flyer creeples into the carnivore position in spaces on Alpha and Beta. The Black Flyers are now preying upon both Black and White Archetypes throughout that continent. White places his Archetype piece in an open space on Beta, and places Swimmers off the coasts of Alpha and Beta.

Here’s where my mistake with Green became obvious. I went to see where I could place Green Archetypes, and realized that the species simply could not compete with either Orange species in any arena, not as an herbivore and not as a carnivore. The only possibility was for me to place Green Archetypes in available spaces on the Gamma craton. To free up space, I placed two Archetypes in spaces already occupied by Green Burrowers; the Green Archetype was a better herbivore than the Green Burrower, so the contests enabled me to move the Burrowers up to the carnivore position in those hexes. I then placed the new Burrower pieces in the carnivore position in other hexes already occupied by Green Archetypes.

Then the full extent of the problem became clear, when it was time for me to place Orange pieces. Orange Archetypes filled up the last few empty hexes in Delta, and then I looked for spots to place the Orange Armored. I realized that Orange could dramatically undercut Green, by placing each Armored in a hex on Gamma already occupied by a Green Archetype and a Green Burrower. The way this worked: the Orange Armored would enter the hex in the herbivore position, setting off a herbivore contest. The Orange Armored would win handily (three green cubes to two). Since the Archetype could not move up to an unoccupied carnivore position in the same hex, it would become Endangered. Then the Green Burrower would immediately become Endangered as well, since Burrowers can’t eat Armored. With two creeple placements, Orange was able to kill off twice as many Green pieces.

On reflection, I realized I hadn’t been playing Green very well. Located on the same continent as Orange’s advanced species, Green was bound to come into conflict sooner or later. Rather than messing around ineffectively with species size and Venom icons, I needed to be pouring investment into traits that would at least make Green’s species better herbivores. Being able to stand up to the inevitable Orange invasion needed to be my top priority, and now Green was going to pay for my neglect.

At the end of the turn, the four Green pieces which had become Endangered all died.

Now I counted populations, and found that Orange, Black, and White were all tied with eight creeples each on the map. Green, on the other hand, was down to four. Orange, Black, and White earned one Victory Point each, while Green was left with nothing.

Turn Six (150 – 180 million years)

Events this turn are Kimberlite Field Eruption and Ocean Evaporation. The major effect is that the Gamma-Delta continent drifts rapidly northward, until it no longer shares any of the latitude bands with the Alpha-Beta continent. This cuts off any possible “rafting” between the two – at a critical point in the planet’s evolution, the Black-White and Orange-Green player pairs are isolated from each other. Meanwhile, some more minor changes in geography take place.

The planet has 34% free oxygen in the atmosphere (comparable to Earth during the Cretaceous period), albedo of 0.35, and Hothouse climate. Player Green gets 5 actions, while all other players get 4.

At this point, Black decides to make a risky move. Instead of investing in his existing species, he uses all of his player actions to take a specific card away from Green. This is the “Medea” card, a balancing mechanism that permits the card’s holder to trigger major environmental changes under certain conditions. In a four-player game, Green always begins holding this card. So far, Green has had little opportunity to use it, but Black is concerned that since Green is far behind, he may try to apply it as a spoiler in some future turn. Black decides instead to make the investment necessary to take the card away from Green and keep its capabilities safe.

Orange acquires the Lateral Line trait for his Archetype, then immediately promotes it to Schooling, creating a new Swimmer species. Orange decides to press his advantage, placing two Armored and two Swimmer pieces in Newborns.

Green acquires the Windpipe trait for his Archetype, and promotes Oral Disc to Whorl-Shaped Tooth Files, improving the Archetype’s capacity for herbivory. He resizes his Archetype species to size 2, and his Burrower to size 4. He places two Archetypes and two Burrowers in Newborns.

White resizes both of his species to size 3. He acquires the Pons & Medulla trait for his Archetype, then immediately promotes it to Hypothalamus, acquiring more cubes and a second blue Emotion. The Archetype now has extremely free access to blue traits. White places two Swimmers into Newborns.

Orange places Swimmers off-shore, and places his Armored pieces in the carnivore’s position over two Green Archetypes on Gamma. Green is now blocked in, and cannot place all of his creeples in legal spaces. White places new Swimmers off-shore near Alpha.

Interim Comments

It’s beginning to appear that Orange and White are in the lead, Orange with three species and larger populations, White with its well-developed Archetype. Black may have fallen behind by failing to use Turn Six to expand, and Green is in serious trouble. The game lasted two more turns, so I’ll be summing up next post.

I’m about to start playing through the Phil Eklund game Bios: Megafauna, working from an opening situation that was defined by my play-through of the prequel Bios: Genesis. The ultimate goal here is to define an alien Earthlike world, with its own unique flora and fauna, and its own sentient species, all for the use of my creative work.

At the moment, the planet is at the end of its analogue of the Proterozoic era, although the situation is a little more complex than what our Earth saw. There has already been plant and animal life on the planet’s small continents for a very long time, it just never developed a complex ecology or life forms larger than the palm of a human hand. Now new families of animal life are finally emerging onto the shores, and land-based evolution is finally getting kicked off in earnest.

The planet’s land masses are strung out along the equator, in the form of four cratons that are in the process of coalescing into Earth-style continents. To avoid the sense that this is really Earth we’re talking about, we’ll assign these cratons Greek letters instead of referring to them by their names. “Siberia” will be called Alpha, “Gondwana” will be called Beta, “Baltica” will be called Gamma, and “Laurentia” will be called Delta.

The four player positions are as follows:

• Player Orange represents a family of hydroskeletal invertebrates. Since he was far ahead of the other players during the Bios: Genesis game, his Archetype species is already on land and has a number of evolutionary developments in place. His initial population is represented by an Archetype “creeple” (a small orange dome piece) on Delta.
• Player Black represents a family of exoskeletal arthropods. His initial species is a Marine Archetype, a relatively primitive creature with no significant traits. The initial population is represented by a Swimmer creeple (resembling a little wooden dolphin) just off the coast of Alpha.
• Player White represents a family of endoskeletal vertebrates. His initial population of Marine Archetype creatures is represented by a Swimmer creeple off the coast of Beta.
• Player Green represents a family of cytoskeletal plants, most of whose member species are likely to be somewhat carnivorous or even motile. His initial population is represented by a Swimmer creeple off the coast of Gamma.

Player Orange has a considerable advantage, especially since the other three players all need to finish moving up onto the land before they can make significant progress. With that summary, let’s begin.

Turn One (0 – 30 million years)

Normally, each turn is kicked off by the draw of at least one, and most likely two, event cards. The first turn is an exception – no events take place, according to the “Boring Ordovician” rule. The motive here is to let everyone get a foothold before the cycle of random events begins, since most of the events range from disruptive to mass extinction brutal. If I were using the game’s Living Rules, I wouldn’t even draw an event card, and everyone would move in a pre-defined player order. Since I’m not, I draw the first event: Ocean Rifting, and use that card to define player order for the turn without implementing the rest of the card.

At present, the planet’s atmosphere has 7% free oxygen, its albedo is 0.4, and the climate is “Eden.” Player Green gets three actions, while the other players get two.

Players Black, White, and Green all face an immediate challenge. They can’t increase the size of their Marine Archetype species without immediately turning it into a land-based Archetype, which will immediately become Endangered because it’s out at sea. Unfortunately, since all of their Marine Archetypes are very small, and none of them have any blue (reproductive strategy) traits yet, they can’t spread very quickly or very far. So, with their budget of actions, they’re probably going to want to acquire some blue traits, prepare to place new creeples on the map, and eventually increase their Archetype’s size to make the transition.

Green chooses to invest in some useful traits first. He acquires the Sensory Hairs and Windborne Seeds traits for his Marine Archetype. The Sensory Hairs trait would normally be illegal for Green, since it comes from the trait deck containing red and yellow cards, off-limits for plants. However, Sensory Hairs is marked with a “horror plant” icon that makes it legal for him to purchase. He closes out his turn by promoting Windborne Seeds to Hitchhiking Seeds, moving one blue cube onto his Archetype and acquiring another. Green’s Archetype now has a reproductive strategy that should be very effective in spreading across the land.

White’s approach is more straightforward. Green’s purchase of Windborne Seeds exposed the Courtship Dance trait in the deck of blue and green cards. White acquires this trait and two blue cubes. He then places two creeples into the “Newborns” pool, ready to deploy them onto the map at the end of the turn.

Black acquires the Air Sacs trait for his Marine Archetype. This is an indirect move, since it provides his Archetype a yellow cube rather than a blue one. However, when promoted, Air Sacs will give Black the opportunity to create a new Flyer species. On this world, arthropods seem ready to take to the air directly from the sea. Black places a single creeple into Newborns.

Orange promotes the Egg Case trait his Archetype already has to Jelly Eggs, moving two blue cubes onto his Archetype card. He moves four Archetype creeples into Newborns. Since Orange is already on the land without immediate competition, he intends to grab as much territory as he can up front.

Once all player actions are complete, it’s time for Newborns to be deployed to the map, and for any Endangered populations to be removed.

White has acquired considerable mobility with the two blue cubes he acquired with Courtship Dance. From his starting position off the east coast of Beta, he places one creeple in a hex on Beta with Swamp terrain. He then uses “rafting” to cross the gap between Beta and Alpha, placing his second creeple in the Swamp hex on Alpha. Swamp terrain is land, so the land Archetype can survive there, permitting White to make the transition next turn.

Meanwhile, Black makes no attempt to move onto land this turn, placing his second Swimmer creeple in the other sea hex near Alpha. Orange scatters his Archetype creeples across land hexes on Delta, one of them rafting over to land in the Swamp hex on Gamma. Green has no Newborns to place, and there are no Endangered creeples to remove, so this ends the turn.

Turn Two (30 – 60 million years)

The event this turn is Tunguska Magma Coals. Somewhere on the planet, a large volcanic province is heating coal beds and dumping lots of methane into the atmosphere. Meanwhile, continental drift gets started, as Alpha moves eastward and collides with Beta, producing a belt of mountains in the westernmost hex of Beta. The two cratons will now move together as a fill-fledged continent. Carbon deposits around the world are “liberated” into the atmosphere. Sea levels rise with the increased greenhouse effect.

The event kicks off a mass extinction, which will be represented by the loss of blue or green traits from each species, an effect called “Darwinian Radiation” in the rules. Effectively, the largest and most specialized members of each family will be driven into extinction, leaving behind more primitive forms. White loses one cube from the Courtship Dance card on his Archetype. Orange loses the Jelly Eggs trait, while Green loses the Hitchhiking Seeds trait. Black is unaffected, since the one card he purchased last turn gave him no blue or green traits.

At this point, the planet has 6% free oxygen in the atmosphere, albedo of 0.4, and a Warm climate. Player Green gets three actions, while the other players get two actions.

White begins the turn by resizing his Marine Archetype species to size 2. The leading members of this family are now larger animals, about 2 kilograms in mass. The Marine Archetype is replaced by the Land Archetype, all of the Swimmer creeples replaced by the little domes of Archetypes. The creeple remaining off the coast of Beta becomes Endangered.

White also promotes the Courtship Dance trait to Territorialism. This moves the remaining blue cube on the card to his Archetype, and gives the species the blue “Monster” marker. This marker is always equivalent to as many blue cubes as the size of the species, so at present White’s Archetype species is heavily invested in reproductive strategy. The Territorialism card also carries the beginnings of one or more “emotions,” cognitive traits that will emerge as the species develops a more sophisticated brain.

Orange acquires the Crop trait for his Archetype species. He also engages in “neoteny,” removing one of the cubes presently sitting on his Archetype card. This is a hedge against a possible mass-extinction event that might occur in the future. The rules state that if any species is forced to give up a “basal organ” – a cube sitting on its core card, representing a well-established trait – then the species simply becomes extinct at once. At present, the Orange Archetype carries four such basal organs; the current limit (determined, for everyone but Player Green, by the level of free oxygen in the atmosphere) is lower than this. Orange hopes to reduce the Archetype’s vulnerability, although it’s possible (even likely) that the level of free oxygen will rise before the specific event he’s worried about takes place.

Green acquires Haustorium (an adaptation of plant roots) and promotes the Sensory Hairs trait to Urticating Hairs. The Green Archetype now has the Venom icon, which limits how easily other species can prey upon it. Green places a Swimmer creeple into Newborns.

Black promotes the Air Sacs trait to Flow-Through Lungs. This automatically creates a new species, a Flyer, which is inherently more mobile (although it can’t survive at sea). Black replaces one of his Swimmer creeples with a Flyer, which immediately becomes Endangered. Black also places a Flyer creeple into Newborns. This is actually a rather aggressive move; each species has a limit of only seven creeples on the map, so having more than one species in play means that a greater population can be supported in the long run.

During the dispersal of Newborns, Green places an Archetype creeple in the same hex on Gamma already containing one of Orange’s creeples. Green immediately chooses to move his creeple into the carnivore role, enabling it to share the hex as a predator on the Orange species. We can imagine this as a parasitic plant starting to prey upon animals in the area. Meanwhile, Black places a Flyer creeple on land in Beta. The White Archetype and Black Flyer stranded at sea both die and are returned to the players’ pools.

Turn Three (60 – 90 million years)

The event this turn is Failed Rifts, which requires a second event, so I draw a card from the event deck for warm climates and get Rivers. One of the continents is “extending,” creating rift basins but not quite managing to break apart into its component cratons. Meanwhile, major rivers are forming, carrying nutrient-rich silt onto alluvial plains and into the seas.

Continental drift pulls the Alpha-Beta continent southward. Delta also moves westward and collides with Gamma, causing an orogenic episode which creates mountains just where the Orange and Green creeples are starting to intermingle. Gamma and Delta now form another full-fledged continent. The Orange and Green creeples in the new mountain hex become Endangered.

This event combination calls for several green disks to be pulled off the atmosphere tracks and placed on the map. For the first time, very large plants are appearing across big areas of continental land – the planet’s first forests. This doesn’t disturb any of the creeples already in play, although the presence of forest can change how species competition works in a given hex.

Orange, with the most creeples on the map, suffers a “crowd disease” event and is forced to remove half of his Archetype creeples. He chooses to remove one from the new mountain hex on Gamma, since that one is already Endangered. The other one comes from elsewhere on Gamma.

At this point, the planet’s atmosphere has 15% free oxygen – probably the biggest, fastest “oxygen spike” in its entire geologic history. Albedo is still at 0.4, and planetary climate is Warm. All players get three actions this turn.

Black invests further in his Flyer species, acquiring the Antennae and Aggregation Pheromones traits for it. He also resizes the Flyers to size 2, although he leaves his Marine Archetype species at size 1 so that it doesn’t automatically convert into a land species.

White acquires more traits for his Archetype species: Brainstem and Periodontum. He places one Archetype Creeple into Newborns. At this point, he is restraining the spread of his Archetype species, putting creeples into Newborns much more slowly than he could. This maintains a large creeple reserve, so that White continues to have better access to upcoming cards in the traits decks.

Orange acquires Scutes for his Archetype species, and resizes it to size 2 to keep up with the leaders. He engages in neoteny, removing one of the blue cubes from his Archetype card.

Green acquires the Xylem trait for his Marine Archetype, and then resizes it to size 2. The Marine Archetype is immediately replaced with the Land Archetype, with its one creeple becoming Endangered. However, even Endangered creeples can still act as the starting point for the placement of new ones. Green places two Archetype creeples into Newborns.

As dispersal begins, White places his Archetype creeple into a hex on Alpha which is already occupied by a Black Flyer. This triggers a “herbivore contest,” in which the two players determine which species is the more efficient herbivore. White wins the contest, since his Archetype has one green cube and the Black Flyer has none. It should be noted that under most circumstances, Archetype species cannot prey upon non-Archetypes, but any non-Archetype can prey upon an Archetype. The Black Flyer can therefore take the carnivore position in a hex occupied by a White Archetype herbivore. Since there is no carnivore species already in the hex, Black moves the Flyer into that position.

Green places his Archetype creeples into two hexes on Gamma. He would like to move onto the Delta craton, contesting Orange control of the area, but he realizes that his Archetype isn’t as efficient as an herbivore, so he decides not to push the confrontation yet. At the end of the turn, the two stranded Green Archetypes, one in the mountain hex and one out at sea, both die.

Interim Comments

Honestly, the game is just getting started. Several players seem to be aiming for different strategies – White is developing his Archetype toward sentience, Black is trying to develop multiple species, and Orange is grabbing for as much territory as possible.

Once every player has two or three species in play, the board is likely to get very crowded, but for now everyone is just jockeying for advantage. Next time I’ll describe the next few turns, in which it should become more obvious who’s doing well.

 

At this point, we’ve worked through ten turns in the Bios: Genesis game, and our alternate Earth is beginning to take shape. It spent a long time in a “tropical waterworld” state, with little or no plate tectonics, and that period ended fairly recently. Thus, what land surface the planet has is still broken up into little subcontinents and island chains. Life has moved up onto the land, but the terrestrial ecology is very simple, nothing but primitive plants and earthworm-like animals.

The four players, and their current organisms in play, are:

• Player Yellow – has Earthworms, so far the only major multicellular family in play. Also has a micro-organism we’re calling the “Gamma Bug,” due to its origins in mildly radioactive beach sands. Yellow is having some trouble generating Catalysts, the game’s “currency,” so his critters are slow to make further progress.
• Player Red – has one micro-organism, the “Mars Bug,” so called because it first evolved in the early oceans of a small neighboring planet, then arrived on the alternate Earth by way of the Meteorite Express. Red has the converse problem to Yellow – the Mars Bug generates lots of Catalysts, but no other player has an endosymbiotic stake in its success, so he has no help spending that wealth.
• Player Green – has the “Smoker Bug,” which originally formed in the hot “black smoker” fumaroles in the deep oceans. Also has a parasite in play, Cyanobacteria which are currently attached to Red’s Mars Bug.
• Player Blue – has the “Mud Bug,” which originally appeared in wet clay mounds in the seas. Has a parasite in play, a Virus which is attached to Green’s Smoker Bug. Blue has been struggling for a long time to get a parasite to “stick” long enough to become an endosymbiont, without much success.

So, let’s see if we can get to this world’s equivalent of the Cambrian era.

Turn Eleven (2.0 – 2.2 billion years)

The event this turn is Orbital Bobbing. The solar system has “bobbed” up out of the plane of the galaxy in the course of its orbit around galactic center. This has exposed the planet to a higher than usual level of cosmic radiation, which in turn may be messing with planetary climate. A minor “smite” event takes place, but the only landform in play is the Deep Hot Biosphere, which is immune.

Interstellar dust causes minor instability in the sun, leading to a weak extremophile event. Most organisms are well-protected against such extremes of heat or radiation, but Green’s Cyanobacteria parasite is killed off, and the Gamma Bug loses its photosynthetic mutation. The Earthworms are forced to make a Cancer roll, but the roll is favorable – they generate some Catalysts and take no errors.

Rather than keep trying its parasite option, Green decides to spend a Catalyst and place its spare investment in the Deep Hot Biosphere. All other players are already committed to their current investments.

Red makes a very favorable autocatalytic roll for the Deep Hot Biosphere. He organizes the last of the available manna, evicts the Green investment, and takes the opportunity to create a new micro-organism. Given its origins, this bacterium is very extremophilic, capable of thriving in temperatures and pressures that would kill most other organisms. We’ll call this one the “Hot Bug.” Once again, Red has an organism that will produce lots of Catalysts (it has plenty of red “metabolism” genes). Yet, by evicting the Green investment before creating this organism, he has all the advantages and disadvantages of sole ownership again.

Darwin Rolls are generally favorable, generating at least one or two disks for everyone. Red, of course, earns so many Catalysts with his two organisms that he maxes out in all four colors. Blue gets a very favorable roll and selects a healthy assortment of disks.

With so much wealth available, every player buys or promotes at least one mutation per organism. One of Green’s purchases sets off a weak oxygen spike, enough to kill off the Blue Virus attached to the Smoker Bug.

Turn Twelve (2.2 – 2.4 billion years)

This turn’s event is Gaia Ozone Layer. The alternate Earth acquires an ozone layer in the upper atmosphere, protecting the surface against any further UV irradiation events. The period is otherwise calm and uneventful – no new refugia appear, a mild oxygen spike inflicts no casualties, and Earth is currently in a Cooling period.

Blue, possibly fatigued by the continued failure of parasitism, decides to keep his spare investment in reserve. Green attaches his Cyanobacteria parasite to Blue’s Mud Bug, stealing a red cube from one of its mutations.

Since there are no active refugia, there are no autocatalytic rolls to be made. All players move on to the Darwin Rolls, which are rather unproductive – only Green manages to harvest a significant number of Catalysts. Several organisms take damage to replication errors, especially Green’s Cyanobacteria parasite, which is driven into extinction again.

During purchases, the major development is the promotion of Green’s Smoker Bug to multicellular status. Yellow and Green both make purchases that end with the creation of Sea Stars.

The new organism takes up the “plant” role in a growing marine ecology. At the moment it’s the only multicellular life at sea (the Flatworms having moved onto the land hundreds of millions of years ago) but it won’t be alone for long.

Turn Thirteen (2.4 – 2.6 billion years)

The event is Pangaea Breakup. A supercontinent is divided by new ocean rifts, sending the planet’s small continents scattering across its surface. The event actually brings two new refugia into play, the Hydrogen Volcano and the Warm Pond (shades of Darwin there). It’s very late in the game, but at least Blue and Green might have places to put their spare investments if they don’t want to keep messing with parasitism. A UV irradiation event takes place, but is blocked by the ozone layer. Earth is again in a Cooling period.

Blue assigns its space investment to the Hydrogen Volcano, while Green assigns to the Warm Pond. Blue’s autocatalytic roll is somewhat productive, while Green makes little progress. The existing micro-organisms do reasonably well with their Darwin Rolls, generating a few disks and suffering no unrecovered errors.

Red dominates the purchase phase, making progress with his two organisms and helping Blue to promote the Mud Bug to multi-cellular status. The growing marine ecology sees the addition of Lamp Shells (brachiopods), which have a lower metabolic rate (fewer red and yellow items in play) and so take up the “plant” trophic level. The Sea Stars are promoted to be “herbivores,” developing a lifestyle of cracking open Lamp Shells to get to the juicy stuff inside.

 

Turn Fourteen (2.6 – 2.8 billion years)

This turn’s event is T Tauri Superflare. Stimulated by an infall of interstellar dust, the sun goes into a period of massive flare activity, hitting the planet with radiation and coronal mass ejections. The Hydrogen Volcano and Warm Pond refugia are damaged. An extremophile event occurs, seriously damaging Yellow’s Gamma Bug. All of the multicellular organisms are forced to make Cancer Rolls, but none of them take any unrecoverable errors. A UV irradiation event is deflected by the planetary ozone layer. Earth remains in a Cooling period.

Blue’s investment is stuck in the Hydrogen Volcano, so Blue invests a disk there to improve his odds of organizing the remaining manna. Green deploys a parasite, this time a Salmonella organism which attaches to Blue’s Lamp Shells.

Blue gets a mediocre result from the autocatalytic roll in the Hydrogen Volcano refugium, and decides to activate a new micro-organism in the hopes that he can make some progress in the time that’s left. This organism’s metabolic pathway is based on the condensation of thioesters found in the outgassing plume of volcanoes, so we’ll call this latecomer the “Volcano Bug.”

Darwin rolls are moderately productive, although Red’s two organisms generate tremendous wealth of Catalysts, maxing him out in all four colors again.

Yellow and Green cooperate to purchase organs for the Sea Stars, eyes and a brain. Both players are looking at what’s left of the event deck, which has two cards in it. If those events are kind, Green should have enough time to finish evolving the Sea Stars and move them onto the land.

Meanwhile, Red’s long-suffering Mars Bug has finally accumulated enough genetic complexity to be promoted to multi-cellular status. He promotes it to become Arrow Worms. The marine ecology is now full, with three multi-cellular sea organisms in existence. The players compare metabolic rates and determine that the Sea Stars are in the “carnivore” role, the Arrow Worms are “herbivores,” and the Lamp Shells remain in the “plant” role at the bottom of the food chain.

Turn Fifteen (2.8 – 3.0 billion years)

The event this turn is Comet Impactor (Aftershock) with Mackenzie Flood Basalts. This brings both of the remaining event cards out in a single turn, and these are not gentle events! It looks as if anyone still hoping to emerge onto the land just had his hopes dashed.

Two “smite” events damage the Warm Pond refugium, leaving it with a single cube, not a good prospect for development. The Geothermal Zinc refugium does appear, but since this is going to be the last turn of the game, it seems unlikely to get anywhere.

Meanwhile, the comet impact and massive volcanic eruption, between them, create a terrible extremophile event, rendering the seas very inhospitable to life. Blue’s Volcano Bug, and Yellow’s Gamma Bug, both take serious damage and are probably knocked out of contention. Even Blue’s Lamp Shells are forced to give up one of their organs. The other multi-cellular organisms wide out the shock, and (appropriately) Red’s Hot Bug pulls through as well. Earth is currently in a sharp Warming period.

Green is the only player with a spare investment, and he decides to attach his Salmonella parasite to the Lamp Shells again. No autocatalytic rolls take place. Darwin Rolls are as expected, although the Gamma Bug adds insult to injury by losing yet another cube to an uncovered error. The Gamma Bug is almost extinct at this point, so it’s probably good that the game is about to end.

Every player does his best to improve his organisms during the purchase phase, but no one is in a position to perform any new promotions. Yellow’s Sea Stars come the closest, being only one cube short at this point – one more turn and they would probably have crossed the finish line. Players check metabolic levels for the marine animals, and end up with the same distribution as before: Sea Stars at the carnivore level, Arrow Worms at the herbivore level, and Lamp Shells placidly being eaten by everyone else.

Final Scores

• Red: 15 VP for cubes, 3 VP for Bionts in organisms, 6 VP for sole share in the Arrow Worms, 3 VP for a one-half share in the Lamp Shells, total 27 VP. Red has 10 Catalysts at the end of the game.
• Yellow: 15 VP for cubes, 3 VP for Bionts in organisms, 4 VP for a one-third share in the Earthworms, 6 VP for a one-half share in the Sea Stars, total 28 VP. Yellow has 1 Catalyst at the end of the game.
• Blue: 9 VP for cubes, 3 VP for Bionts in organisms, 4 VP for a one-third share in the Earthworms, 3 VP for a one-half share in the Lamp Shells, total 19 VP. Blue has 1 Catalyst at the end of the game.
• Green: 14 VP for cubes, 3 VP for Bionts in organisms, 4 VP for a one-third share in the Earthworms, 6 VP for a one-half share in the Sea Stars, total 27 VP. Green has 1 Catalyst at the end of the game.

The scores are much closer together than I might have expected. Yellow wins by a single point, Red is in second place since his wealth of Catalysts breaks the tie, and Green comes in third. Blue is dead last, which doesn’t surprise me – he invested a lot in a parasitic strategy that didn’t pay off very well, and he persistently fell behind in developing his Lamp Shells.

Final Comments and Worldbuilding Notes

This was a very interesting exercise! I suspect if I were to use Bios: Genesis for worldbuilding on a regular basis, I wouldn’t bother taking such detailed notes. The details of which microscopic bug gained which mutation when are probably far down in the weeds. Still, this gave me a plausible Earthlike world, one which is different enough from our own that it ought to give me plenty of interesting details to work with.

One thing I noticed as I was working through this game. The game’s rulebook and supporting materials claim that each turn represents 200 million years, and that’s how I marked the turns in my game log. It makes sense in one respect – the game is supposed to represent the time from Earth’s formation to the end of the Precambrian period, almost exactly 4 billion years. At one event card per turn, a deck of twenty event cards works out to the right length of time.

The problem, of course, is that some turns use two event cards, not one, as a result of the Aftershock rule. It’s also possible for the game to be shortened, if multicellular life appears early and some of the Archean Era event cards are discarded, as happened here. Even if that doesn’t happen, though, you can expect to see three or four Aftershocks in the course of the game. Which means that no matter what the players do, the game is most likely to last on the order of 15-17 turns.

For worldbuilding purposes, then, it might make more sense to treat each turn as covering a longer period of time. A round figure of 250 million years per turn seems reasonable. That would draw out the timeline of this alternate Earth a bit more. Something like the following seems probable, based on the events we’ve seen in this playthrough:

• 0.0 billion years – Formation of the solar system.
• 0.1 billion years – Proto-planetary collision gives rise to a large Moon.
• 0.2 billion years – First life appears on the planet’s surface, carried there by interplanetary dust.
• 0.3 billion years – Period of cometary impacts delivers enough water to cover most of the planet’s surface. A small neighboring planet already has oceans which are giving rise to native life.
• 0.5 billion years – Activation of plate tectonics stalls, leaving the planet in a “tropical waterworld” state in which the formation of continents is long delayed. Micro-organisms arrive from the neighboring planet, carried by meteorites kicked up by cometary impacts there.
• 1.25 billion years – First “native” microbial life appears in the planet’s oceans.
• 1.5 billion years – Long “snowball” period of almost total glaciation begins. Life continues to develop in the seas, near deep-ocean vents and in the more or less ice-free equatorial zone. The first multicellular life appears, similar to terrestrial flatworms. An “oxygen crisis” begins, as the oceans become increasingly rich with dissolved oxygen.
• 2.0 billion years – The “snowball planet” period comes to an end. Plate tectonics finally get under way, beginning the formation of continents. The oceans are unable to absorb any more dissolved oxygen, and deep deposits of banded iron are formed on the sea beds. Free oxygen begins to appear in the atmosphere, as primitive plants and worm-like animals emerge onto the new land-masses.
• 2.3 billion years – Increasing oxygen concentrations and a decline in worldwide lightning strikes lead to a “nitrogen famine.” Life faces a bottleneck, until various micro-organisms invent biochemical methods for “fixing” nitrogen.
• 2.8 billion years – The planet develops a protective ozone layer, fostering the evolution of complex life forms. More families of multi-cellular life begin to appear in the seas, beginning with starfish-like echinoderms.
• 3.5 billion years – Major cometary impact, followed by a massive volcanic episode, leads to a mass extinction which delays the further colonization of the land. The marine ecology is quite advanced by this point, with echinoderms, chaetognaths, brachiopods, and other species filling the shallow seas.
• 3.75 billion years – The “present day.” Many species of coastal and shallow-sea life are preparing to colonize the land, joining the primitive ecology that has already existed there for over 1.5 billion years.

Next, I’m going to break open the next game in the Bios series – Bios: Megafauna – and see how this planet develops through its equivalent of the Paleozoic era.

So, to recap: we’re playing through the Phil Eklund games Bios: Genesis and Bios: Megafauna, with the intention to use the results to inspire the design of an alien world (and possibly a sentient species) for use in some SF writing.

So far, we’ve worked through roughly a billion years of the world’s history. The planet has a large moon, rather like ours. It also has extensive oceans. In fact, the planet has yet to develop active plate tectonics, so it’s in a “tropical waterworld” state, with lots of small islands – many of them volcanic – but no large continents.

I’m playing all four positions in the game. So far, three players have developed at least one micro-organism that’s alive and active in the planet’s oceans. Rather than use the lengthy scientific names for these organisms (derived from their primary metabolic pathways) we have shorthand names based on their places of origin:

• Player Yellow – “Space Bug,” originally developed in a substrate of organic-and-volatiles-rich dust, left over from the proto-planetary nebula. Also the “Gamma Bug,” a new organism that recently arose from radioactives-rich beach sands.
• Player Red – “Mars Bug,” originally developed in an outer planet’s cool oceans, and delivered to this planet aboard meteorites.
• Player Green – “Smoker Bug,” which originated in the “black smoker” vents in the depths of the global oceans.

Player Blue hasn’t developed an organism of his own yet, but through some careful investment and the deployment of viral parasites, he has managed to earn a stake in the Space Bug and will be helping Yellow to build that up.

One note about Player Red: his Mars Bug is particularly well-suited to generate lots of Catalysts, the currency of the game that can be used to purchase improvements. (In game terms, it has lots of red cubes, indicating a very active and productive metabolism.) On the other hand, no other player has any stake in the Mars Bug, which means Red is effectively limited to buying only one improvement per turn. Since random events tend to wear away at every organism’s status, this means Red may have a hard time actually putting that wealth of Catalysts to good use.

Okay, with that summary behind us, let’s move on.

Turn Six (1.0 – 1.2 billion years)

The event this turn is Supercontinent Ur, indicating another consolidation of what continental land-masses there are on the planet – there probably aren’t very many, since the Tropical Waterworld condition is still in effect. Ocean and Coastal landforms are active, and two new refugia are deployed. The Pumice Raft represents floating collections of porous volcanic stone, another place where cell structures might easily form. The UV Irradiated Ocean represents open water in which chemistry is being driven by high-energy sunlight. Earth is still in a Warming period.

Most players leave their existing investments in place, although Green places an investment in the Alkaline Seep refugium that appeared last turn. None of the autocatalytic rolls generate significant results.

During Darwin rolls, every organism generates at least one or two Catalysts. Red’s Mars Bug generates a pile of red disks, so many that Red maxes out on how many he can hold. He takes several yellow disks instead. The Gamma Bug suffers the loss of one cube for the lack of enough genetic code to prevent replication errors.

During purchases, Yellow’s Space Bug makes great progress. Since three players all have a stake in the organism, each of them can spend some of Yellow’s disks to improve it, and they do. At the end of the turn, the Space Bug is so advanced that it’s ready to make the jump to multicellular status. In the process, the Space Bug releases another oxygen spike that’s strong enough to wear away some of Mars Bug’s progress. Grumbling some more, Red spends disks to purchase Chloroplast Symbionts for the Mars Bug, giving it more ability to deal with oxygen in its environment.

Turn Seven (1.2 – 1.4 billion years)

The event is Huronian Snowball. With photosynthesis slowly filling the atmosphere with free oxygen, any methane and carbon dioxide is being drawn down, plunging the planet into a deep freeze. The oceans are freezing over, almost down to the equator. The Cosmic landform is active. The Continental landform would also be active, but the planet (still) has no continents. No new refugia turn up. A weak global oxygen spike occurs, but all existing organisms have enough protection to avoid taking harm. Earth is now (obviously) in a Cooling period.

Most players leave their investments in place. Blue takes another try at the parasitic gambit, this time attaching a Viroid parasite to the Gamma Bug and stealing one of its green cubes.

Autocatalytic rolls are mostly unproductive, but Blue gets a little luck and manages to finish organizing all the available manna at the Clay Mound refugium. He takes the opportunity to create a new organism, based on glycol nucleic acid or GNA. We’ll call this one the Mud Bug.

Darwin rolls are a mixed bag, although they produce plenty of Catalysts for everyone to spend. The Smoker Bug takes a lot of errors, losing all of its Mutations and even one of its basal cubes. Blue continues to have a run of bad luck with his parasites, as the Viroid loses its stolen green cube to a replication error.

Yellow begins purchases by spending a green disk and promoting the Space Bug to multicellular status, producing Flatworms. The new macro-organism is fairly robust, with two endosymbionts (including an algal symbiont that gives it some photosynthetic ability) and a functioning blood network driven by a primitive heart. The flatworms are at the bottom trophic level in the early marine ecology.

According to the rules, the appearance of the first multicellular organism means an “oxygen crisis” that brings the Archaean Era to a premature close. The last two event cards for that era are discarded, immediately sending this planet into its equivalent of the Proterozoic Era.

Notably, one of the events thus passed over was the Late Heavy Bombardment (LHB), a late episode of frequent asteroid impacts on the inner planets. This would have been difficult for our organisms to survive, but would also have broken up the Tropical Waterworld condition.

Worldbuilding Notes: Astronomers are actually in debate over what caused the LHB, or even if the LHB really happened in the first place. It’s possible that the LHB is nothing more than an illusion, a statistical artifact created by the very small sample size of our Lunar rock collection. If the LHB did occur, the leading theory is that our solar system went through a period of orbital instability among the gas giant planets. This “unpacked” their orbits, badly disrupting the Kuiper Belt of leftover comets and planetesimals. Let’s run with this, and assume this alternate Earth’s solar system underwent no such event. Any gas giant planets are in closely packed orbits, probably in a 1:2:4 Laplace resonance, and the Kuiper Belt is very dense compared to Sol’s.

Yellow also spends a blue disk to purchase mRNA for the Gamma Bug, acquiring the “Red Queen” ability that might enable it to absorb its viroid parasite. Other players make small investments in their organisms. Blue is unable to purchase anything for the Mud Bug, having only one blue Catalyst disk and no blue cards currently available.

Turn Eight (1.4 – 1.6 billion years)

This turn’s event is the Cryogenian Snowball. Even more extreme weather conditions than last time – the dramatic draw-down of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere is causing the oceans to freeze over. No landforms are active, and no new refugia appear. The deep freeze is causing enormous drought conditions on what few land-masses exist, but there are no terrestrial organisms yet to suffer harm from it. Another global oxygen spike occurs, this one stronger, enough to destroy Mutations carried by the Smoker Bug and the Mud Bug. The Viroid parasite attached to the Gamma Bug is also wiped out by the oxygen spike. Earth remains in a Cooling period.

Blue is the only player with a free investment to make. He tries one more time to attach his Viroid parasite to the Gamma Bug, stealing yet another green cube from it. Yellow is beginning to get annoyed – if he has to put up with parasites, it would be nice if they would last long enough to become symbionts and actually contribute something! Blue and Green each invest spare Catalysts in their existing organisms, placing them as antioxidants that might defend against any further oxygen spikes.

The autocatalytic rolls are uneventful. Darwin Rolls produce a few disks, and no errors that can’t be covered by anyone’s blue chromosomes. Nobody but Red has a lot of disks to spend, and of course Red has no symbiont partners to help his spend his disks, so the purchase phase is slow too. Yellow gives Blue a mild glare and activates his Gamma Bug’s Red Queen ability, stealing the green cube back.

Turn Nine (1.6 – 1.8 billion years)

The first event is Oceans Rust Out, which is an Aftershock event – the Tropical Waterworld condition is finally broken, and plate tectonics are under way again. The follow-up event is Medea’s Revenge. Lots of oddness taking place here. The increasing load of oxygen in the oceans has reached a tipping point, in which a great deal of dissolved iron precipitates out and forms banded iron deposits on the sea-bed. Meanwhile, the anaerobic ecology’s last hurrah belches lots of methane, carbon monoxide, and other nastiness into the atmosphere, possibly messing up those organisms that were just getting used to free oxygen in their environment.

Oceanic, Coastal, and Continental landforms are active, and the last Oceanic refugium comes into play (the Green Rust Fumarole). Yet another strong global oxygen spike takes place, damaging the Mud Bug and driving the Viroid parasite into extinction (again). The surge of carbon monoxide in the atmosphere damages all of the active refugia, although none of them are destroyed. The Flatworms are forced to make their first Cancer roll and come through with flying colors, generating several Catalysts for Yellow and taking no errors they can’t deflect with blue chromosomes.

Blue is still the only player with a free investment. He doesn’t like his chances in any of the existing refugia, so he tries the parasite gambit one more time. Deciding that pestering Yellow would be a good way to get hit over the head with the rule-book, he attaches the Viroid to Red’s Mars Bug instead, stealing a green cube.

Autocatalysis rolls are uneventful. Darwin rolls likewise, except that the Mars Bug takes an error that it can’t cover with blue cubes, and is forced to give up the Quorum Sensing mutation it purchased last turn.

This purchase phase is notable for the fact that Yellow’s Flatworms acquire the last of their organs, automatically promoting them to Earthworms. The first precocious animal life has crawled onto the land, strikingly early in the planet’s history. Notably, no other families of land animals will appear for over a billion years.

Worldbuilding Notes: Here we have a water world, just beginning to generate continental landforms for the first time. There’s nothing but simple plant life and the equivalent of earthworms to form a simple ecology on land . . . and that’s how the situation remains for whole geological eons. It’s as if the planet is stuck in evolutionary stasis for a very long time, all the further progress taking place underwater.

Otherwise, the players make routine progress on their existing organisms. Red activates the Mars Bug’s Red Queen ability to steal back the green cube from the Viroid. Red is really hoping that the Viroid will last long enough to be absorbed as an endosymbiont in the Mars Bug – he would like some help spending all those Catalysts he’s accumulated.

Turn Ten (1.8 – 2.0 billion years)

This turn’s event is the Nitrogen Famine. This is a major development, a hypothetical period in which most of Earth’s nitrogen budget is lost, becoming nearly-useless molecular nitrogen in the atmosphere. This leaves almost no nitrogen for organisms to use in their metabolic pathways, until life develops the ability to “fix” nitrogen on its own.

This card triggers a massive “Smite” event, destroying all of the existing refugia except for the Deep Hot Biosphere. Generally, after the Nitrogen Famine, Earth is a lot less likely to produce new micro-organisms. Fortunately, an associated extremophile event and oxygen spike are both too weak to harm any existing organisms. Oceanic and Coastal landforms are active, and Earth remains in a Warming period.

With no refugia to invest in (aside from the Deep Hot Biosphere, which is unattractive since Red has a dominant position there), the temptation to indulge in parasitism becomes irresistible. Green gets into the game by attaching his Cyanobacteria parasite to the Mars Bug, displacing the weak Viroid parasite there and stealing a blue cube. Blue responds by flipping to the Virus version of his parasite card, attaching it to Green’s Smoker Bug, and stealing a green cube.

The autocatalytic roll in the Deep Hot Biosphere makes incremental progress. Darwin Rolls produce plenty of disks for everyone but Yellow, who instead loses one Mutation from the Gamma Bug.

At this point, Yellow is actually starting to feel the converse problem of Red’s. He has plenty of symbiont partners to help him spend Catalysts, but the Gamma Bug just isn’t generating any income for lack of an active metabolism. Yellow has attempted to correct this, but the cost of dealing with Blue’s parasites has held the Gamma Bug back, and now his stock of disks is depleted. Unless Yellow finds a way out of this bind, his further progress is likely to be stalled.

Purchases are uneventful. Both Red and Green activate their organisms’ Red Queen genes to steal back cubes from the parasites. Blue and Green make progress advancing their micro-organisms.

Interim Comments

We seem to be moving into a period that’s sometimes called the “boring billion,” a time in Earth’s history where geology, climate, and ecology were all remarkably stable. With the Nitrogen Famine in the past, and almost no refugia available for investment, every player is in a position of just trying to stay ahead of chaos. Who else is going to be able to produce multi-cellular life, and follow those earthworms onto the land? And will anyone be able to get something out of the exercise of parasitism? Find out next time . . .

So, let’s begin. The exercise is to play through Phil Eklund’s games Bios: Genesis and Bios: Megafauna, and use the results to inspire the design of a solar system, world, flora and fauna, and possibly a sentient species, all for my Human Destiny setting.

We’ll begin with Bios: Genesis. Rather than use the solitaire version laid out in the rulebook, I’ll play a complete four-handed game, making decisions for each position in turn. As best I can, I’ll resist the temptation to manipulate random chance in any given direction – the point is to let the cards and dice fall as they may, and adjust to events as they occur.

At the beginning of the game, our alternate Earth has just condensed out of the proto-planetary nebula, orbiting a star that is likely still in the early T Tauri stage of development. Things have cooled off just enough for there to be a solid surface and the beginnings of liquid-water oceans. The atmosphere is probably composed mostly of methane, carbon dioxide, water vapor, and other simple volatiles. Complex chemistry is starting to take place on the planet’s surface.

The four positions are Red (representing amino-acid chemistry, and controlling metabolism), Yellow (lipid chemistry, giving rise to cell structures), Green (pigments, controlling energy generation and storage), and Blue (nucleic acids, controlling template replication). Bios: Genesis is a competitive game, but many of the moves are cooperative in nature, and indeed some moves that might appear competitive actually open the door to closer cooperation between players. A certain amount of cooperation is, in fact, essential – the game’s random events can be brutal in their hostility toward life, so players who spend all their time tearing one another down will almost certainly fail. In its essence, the game is a matter of acquiring shares in specific assets (types of self-replicating chemistry, later species of micro- or macro-organisms), then deciding how much to invest in those assets, how to maximize value, and when to abandon a bad position.

Turn One (0 – 200 million years)

Each turn in Bios: Genesis begins with a random event from the card deck. The (first) event this turn is Theia Big Whack. This is an “Aftershock” event, which requires us to draw the next event card in the deck and implement it as well in the same turn. The second event turns out to be Mars Paleo-Ocean.

This is an interesting combination. It implements the “giant impact” theory regarding the formation of the Moon: a Mars-sized proto-planet coming along and colliding with Earth in the first 100 million years or so of its existence. Consequences for any early life on Earth would have been dire: the entire crust of the planet would have been stripped off and hurled into space!

Meanwhile, the Mars Paleo-Ocean event activates two refugia, limited spaces which are unusually friendly to life, both of them off Earth entirely. Random selection produces the Interplanetary Dust refugium, and (appropriately) the Mars Paleo-Ocean refugium. These are two locations where life might get started, moving to Earth later aboard cometary bodies or meteorites. Worldbuilding Notes: This alternate Earth will have a Moon, and it will also have a smaller neighbor planet which had life-encouraging oceans very early in its history.

With two refugia in play, the four players decide where to make their first investments. Red and Blue choose to invest in the Martian seas, while Green and Yellow both invest in the Interplanetary Dust as a possible place to form life.

The next step in the turn is to perform autocatalysis, an essentially random dice-rolling process (although the players do have some ability to manipulate the outcome) in which the “manna” or pre-biotic chemistry can be organized into a self-replicating organism. Yellow gets an unusually productive roll, organizing all of the available manna in the Interplanetary Dust refugium. Yellow takes the opportunity to produce the first micro-organism in the game, proto-bacteria from space that drift down onto Earth as it cools off from the Big Whack. In the game, this organism has a long jaw-breaker of a name (Photocarboxylation) but I’m going to label it the Space Bug.

Since Green had invested in the Interplanetary Dust refugium as well, that investment carries over to the Space Bug: Green will have a stake in that organism’s success, and will be able to help Yellow to spend resources to improve and protect it.

The next step is to carry out Darwin rolls for each micro-organism, a test to see whether the organism can replicate itself without fatal errors while also developing beneficial mutations. The Space Bug struggles with this a little, losing some of its early genetic coding, but surviving the experience.

Finally, in each turn the players have the opportunity to “purchase” mutations for their micro-organisms, genetic quirks that code for useful bits of chemistry or structure. Only Yellow has anything to buy for, and he has none of the “catalyst” disks that serve as currency, so we skip this step.

This alternate Earth already has life, but it’s barely hanging on, and there’s a lot of hostile gigayears to get through.

Turn Two (200 – 400 million years)

The event this time is Bolide Water Delivery. Comets are dropping down from the system’s outer reaches, some of them hitting this alternate Earth and delivering lots of water and other volatiles. Worldbuilding Notes: This alternate Earth, like ours, will have extensive oceans.

The arrival of lots of comets causes two new Oceanic refugia to appear: the Clay Mound and the Hydrothermal Vent. The latter refugium is particularly attractive. It’s slow to develop, but it’s very stable, and immune to many of the events that might otherwise destroy refugia before they can come to flower. Red is stuck on Mars and can’t move its investment, but Blue and Green both invest in the Clay Mound, and Yellow uses a feature of its existing organism to invest in both of the new refugia.

Autocatalysis is not very productive, although several players get a disk each out of it. No new life forms appear. Yellow’s Space Bug gets a good Darwin roll, producing another disk.

Green and Yellow each have a stake in the Space Bug, so they cooperate to purchase new mutations for it: the organism acquires Mitochondria and Chemiosis Respiration.

Turn Three (400 – 600 million years)

The alternate Earth now moves out of the so-called Hadean period – the solar system is calming down into its more or less final configuration, and there’s no longer the same degree of threat from space as before. We’re now drawing cards from the events deck for the Archaean period instead. The event this turn is an interesting one: Tropical Waterworld. The idea here is that despite the presence of extensive oceans, the planet’s crust is too warm and soft to form tectonic plates. As a result, the formation of continental crust is going to be delayed, leaving the planet covered with a world-spanning ocean, broken up only by the occasional cluster of volcanic islands. This will last until something comes along to get plate tectonics started, if that ever happens.

One thing to be concerned about: with no plate tectonics, there isn’t any way for the planet to set up a robust carbon cycle. As a result, greenhouse gases will tend to build up in the atmosphere, and a runaway greenhouse leading to Venus-like conditions is somewhat more likely. We’ll have to watch for that. Meanwhile, the whole class of Continental refugia will stay locked up behind the Tropical Waterworld card for the foreseeable future.

Worldbuilding Notes: On our Earth, plate tectonics and the early proto-continents were in existence as far back as 3.5 billion years ago. If the Tropical Waterworld event stays in effect long enough, that may mean that this alternate Earth doesn’t get started with continent-building until later in its history. That would suggest smaller continents and more surface area covered by oceans. To be resolved later, once we see how long it takes for plate tectonics to get started (if it ever does).

As in the last turn, Red is still stuck on Mars, but the other players all invest in the Oceanic refugia that are available. The Oceanic refugia are not very productive, but Red gets a good roll for the Mars Paleo-Ocean. Although not all of the available manna have been organized, Red decides that standing fast is likely to mean that he loses ground on Mars. He therefore takes the opportunity to generate a second bacterium, which we (and, apparently, a lot of Bios: Genesis players) will call the “Mars Bug.” The Mars Bug hitches a ride to Earth aboard a series of meteorites, kicked out of the Martian seas by comet impact, and takes its place beside Yellow’s Space Bug.

Both organisms do okay with their Darwin Rolls, suffering no errors and generating a few catalyst disks for spending. Yellow’s one disk is used to promote the Chemiosmosis Respiration mutation to Hyphae – this signifies the invention of DNA, and gives the Space Bug some additional protection against replication errors. Red spends two disks to purchase Riboswitches.

Turn Four (600 – 800 million years)

The event this turn is Vaalbara Breakup. The event flavor text refers to the breakup of the first “supercontinent,” and with the world locked into a Tropical Waterworld state there probably aren’t any real continents in existence. Of course, looking up Vaalbara tells me that it wasn’t much of a “supercontinent” in the first place – the two cratons involved make up only very small portions of present-day Africa and Australia. So maybe there’s not much of an inconsistency here after all.

Two new refugia are activated. The Deep Hot Biosphere reflects the possibility that life could exist very deep in the Earth’s crust or even in the upper mantle, in tiny cracks and fault-lines in the hot rock. The Radioactive Beach refugium is more bizarre, a theoretical structure in which natural radioactives (notably uranium) are deposited on a coastline, forming a crude natural reactor and providing energy input for primitive life.

As far as natural hazards go, there’s an episode of UV irradiation, weak enough that the existing organisms have no trouble dealing with it. Earth is in a cooling period, and has been for the last few turns; if one more such turn happens, it may trigger the premature end of the game as the planet becomes permanently glaciated.

All four players mostly stick with their current choices of investment. Red places an investment in the unstable Radioactive Beach refugium, less in the hopes of a second organism, more in the hope of generating some catalysts for use elsewhere.

Blue is the first player to invest in a parasite, attaching a Virus to the Space Bug’s tableau and stealing some of the resources associated with its Mitochondria. In this game, parasitism can be a hostile move, seeking to hinder the victim organism from making progress. It can also be viewed as a bid for further investment, something like a hostile takeover of a corporation! The player who deploys a parasite may be hoping that his victim will use something called the Red Queen ability to first take back the stolen resources, and then take the parasite itself into its genetic makeup. This mimics the process in natural evolution in which a parasite sometimes becomes a symbiont, benefiting both parties. In game play, the process gives the parasite player a stake in the “victim” organism, permitting him to contribute to its success in exchange for a share of the rewards.

During the autocatalytic rolls, Green’s position in the Hydrothermal Vent is very productive, bringing all but one piece of the available Manna into organization. Rather than form life at this point, Green decides to stand pat and hope for that last item to fall into place. Rolls on the Clay Mound and the Radioactive Beach make no progress, but generate several disks for various players.

The Darwin Rolls are very mixed. Red’s Mars Bug does very well, generating a whole pile of Catalyst disks. In fact, from this point on, Red’s problem is never a lack of Catalysts to spend. Instead, Red is limited by the fact that it built the Mars Bug entirely on his own, with no other player holding a stake in the organism’s success. As a result, Red is only able to spend one disk per turn, barely enough to make progress against all the forces that tend to tear down an organism as the turns pass. There is a special ability that comes with some mutations – the “Fission” ability that indicates that an organism can reproduce very quickly, spending two disks per turn. Unfortunately, the Mars Bug never seems to get the opportunity to acquire Fission.

Meanwhile, the Space Bug has almost as bad a roll as the Mars Bug had good. Even with the extra fidelity that comes with its new DNA, it accumulates so many replication errors that it has to give up the Hyphae mutation and go back to an RNA-only scheme.

Fortunately for the Space Bug, it does have the Fission ability, associated with the Mitochondria it still retains. That mutation also gives it the Red Queen ability. The Space Bug therefore uses the Red Queen twice, recovering resources from the Virus parasite, and then absorbing the Virus directly into its genetic machinery. Which is what the Blue player had in mind all along, of course. In his turn, Blue then uses his new position to promote the Mitochondria, taking the Space Bug almost back to the level of progress it had before the Darwin Roll.

Red, meanwhile, promotes its own Riboswitches mutation, developing its own form of DNA.

Turn Five (800 million – 1.0 billion years)

Another event with a Cooling Period marker will threaten the end of the game, but the next event card is The Clathrate Gun. This event represents the release of deep methane clathrates in the sea bed, acidifying the oceans and pouring methane into the atmosphere. Since methane is a very effective greenhouse gas, this flips the Earth into a warming period, postponing the threat. Some of the existing refugia are damaged by the acid oceans, removing Manna entirely from play, but a new refugium (the Alkaline Seep) appears as well.

The players assign their spare investments around the board, all of them pursuing a mixed strategy that might generate more disks to spend. Some of the autocatalytic rolls are indifferent, but both Green and Yellow get very good results.

Green finishes organizing the last of the Manna at the Hydrothermal Vent, and produces an organism whose metabolic pathways rely on acetyl coenzyme A. Since this organism came from the Hydrothermal Vent, we’ll call it the Smoker Bug. Meanwhile, Yellow gets a surprisingly productive roll from the Radioactive Beach refugium, and decides to produce a second organism, which we’ll call the Gamma Bug.

Darwin Rolls are mixed, as expected. Red’s Mars Bug again generates a bunch of disks, more than Red can easily spend. The Smoker Bug suffers a few replication errors, but not enough to do mortal damage.

During the purchase phase, Red and Yellow get into a minor tit-for-tat conflict. Some mutations or promotions lead to “oxygen spikes,” cases in which the organism’s chemistry is actively polluting the environment for others. This often involves the release of oxygen into the environment – at this point, most of the organisms are still anaerobic and have a hard time dealing with the presence of free oxygen.

In this turn, Red purchases a tmRNA mutation, which causes a weak oxygen spike that Yellow’s Space Bug has no trouble with. However, Yellow purchases Bacteriorhodopsin for the Space Bug, which triggers a stronger oxygen spike that is too much for the Mars Bug to handle, leading to the immediate loss of the tmRNA. Red grumbles, and considers ways to avoid being out-polluted. Meanwhile, Green begins to buy new capabilities for the Smoker Bug.

Interim Comments

I am very impressed with the elegance of the design of Bios: Genesis. Players tend to joke that “you don’t need to be a molecular biologist to play this game, but it helps.” Some truth to that, but if you cut through the jargon and focus on the game’s mechanics, gameplay isn’t all that difficult and the thematic elements become transparent. The mechanics themselves do a superb job of simulating the processes of natural evolution: selection pressure from the environment, innovation, “arms races” between organisms, cooperation-competition cycles, it’s all here.

For the worldbuilder, then, this game can point toward useful research, provide inspiration for creativity, and still impose the constraint of plausibility on the results. More progress next time.