Okay. I know I failed miserably as a GM, and never managed to finish a game entirely.
But this one will be different! Or not! Time will tell!
I tried further to refine the niches and shrunk the game. Got rid of the old redundant niche table and nonsensical niche jumping mechanics that resembled cobweb.
Anyways, lets hope this one doesn't flops or collapses under its own complexity.
The premise is very simple. There is a small archipelago with an all year round, temperate climate. You play as species of plants and animals, evolving and diversifying on these islands as the game goes.
The islands are small and uniform in tempature, so is the games scope. Each biome may have only up to 3 species of plant, and 12 species of animals, depending on the biome. And islands have three biomes, at most. And there are 5 islands only (Thought they may combine and separate like jigsaw puzzles. They move and their climate may change as they do).
You can make 5 moves each turn, and moves will have a 10 sided dice for determining the amount of success. There will be modifiers you can evolve such as herbivory, flight and climbing, which will affect the roll results positively or negatively.
You choose which lineage yours will extend emerge from, and once you do in-game, you are stuck with it until it goes extinct.
You may be familiar with how to play. You make new species to fill in empty niches and fight for occupied ones and claim or keep them by rolling a higher number than your opponent in a versus sequence. But there is now bit more nuance to this.
Lets begin with removals.
There are no fitness points. You only need to roll something bigger than 5 to get an empty niche, and successfully attack and defend with a number larger than your opponent. All species are equally fit.
There are no explicit size differences. You may image species' sizes from their niches, but assume that the small size of the islands shall keep animals from becoming larger than a large sized dog, and plants from growing too large, but to a much lesser extent. Imagine a tall fig tree.
Now, it is for what is now new.
You can now play as plants. They are less diverse by nature, and have a lower player count.
In order for a niche to be available, it needs its pre-requisites to be fullfilled. Such as predator niche requiring a herbivore to be present in a biome to be available, or herbivore niche needing a plant. Tree niche requires fertile ground, while anything arboreal requires trees themselves.
You got the point. Just use logic in that. An exception is if a predator and prey, or any other species linked with dependancy speciates to the same space at the same time. Then the current absence of the required species can be ignored. If the prey fail ls to speciate in that turn, however, then the predator automatically fails as well.
And there are the modifiers. A species needs specific adaptations to occupy niches. Anything arboreal requires arboreality, herbivory and carnivory also requires the same thing. Flight requires gliding to evolve first, and gliding comes from arboreality. A plant species first needs to be a bush to become a tree. To be terrestrial, you need the terrestrial adaptation.
You understand.
And adaptation doesn't needs to be repeated; an arboreal species may speciate into other forests, and the new species will inherit the adaptation, free of charge. same thing with others. If you want to evolve into a different direction, then a new adaptation will have to evolve and replace the one before. You can have more than one adaptations in a clade; most niches require that. But those adaptations cannot be in the same category. You can't have a both arboreal and terrestrial, or both a carnivore and an omnivore animal.
To be able to invade an existing niche, the invading species needs to already be in that same niche. An arboreal herbivore can only be competed by another species of such, not a ground or flying one. This will result in gradual monopolies on niches if left uninterrupted, I know. But mass or local extinctions should shake things up to prevent that.
You can use multiple points on one action. This grants you two rolls on that action. If the first roll fails, there will be another roll. Maximum multiroll count is three times. You can't roll five times in a single action.
There are biomes, as discussed. Here are the types of biomes and their available niches. Each has 3 functionally identical tempature variations; hot, lukewarm and cold.
Forest: Centers of biodiversity. Has the most available niches. They are only found along a river or a lake. Needs terrestriality to be lived on.
Flying Predator
Flying Omnivore
Flying Herbivore
Flying Scavenger
Flying Nectarivore
Flying Frugivore
Arboreal Carnivore
Arboreal Omnivore
Arboreal Herbivore
Arboreal Scavenger
Arboreal Frugivore
Ground Carnivore
Ground Omnivore
Ground Herbivore
Ground Scavenger
Tree
Shrub
Weed
Shrubland: The basic variety biome, where there isn't a forest, there is a shrubland. Needs terrestriality to be lived on.
Flying Predator
Flying Omnivore
Flying Herbivore
Flying Scavenger
Ground Carnivore
Ground Omnivore
Ground Herbivore
Ground Scavenger
Shrub
Weed
Rivers and Lakes: Is included in the biome cap of 3, despite being inside a biome by itself. It requires freshwater adaptation to dwell in.
Semiaquatic Carnivore
Semiaquatic Omnivore
Semiaquatic Herbivore
Semiaquatic Scavenger
Aquatic Carnivore
Aquatic Herbivore
Aquatic Weed
Semiaquatic Weed
Semiaquatic Shrub
Semiaquatic Tree
Sea: Surrounds an island as a single biome, and does not count in the biome cap. Includes the shores. Every island has one. Requires saltwater adaptation to dwell in.
Semiaquatic Carnivore
Semiaquatic Omnivore
Semiaquatic Herbivore
Semiaquatic Scavenger
Aquatic Carnivore
Aquatic Herbivore
Aquatic Mesocarnivore
Filterfeeder
Aquatic Weed
Aquatic Shrub
Semiaquatic Weed
Semiaquatic Shrub
Semiaquatic Tree
Mountains: Found at the centers of some islands. Altitude adaptation is needed to live in them. Their tempature is always one notch lower then their islands. A hot island mountain will be lukewarm, a lukewarm island mountain will be cold, and cold mountains will be, well, also cold.
Flying Predator
Flying Omnivore
Flying Herbivore
Flying Scavenger
Arboreal Carnivore
Arboreal Herbivore
Ground Carnivore
Ground Omnivore
Ground Herbivore
Ground Scavenger
Tree
Shrub
Weed
And the list of clade adaptations, or tokens as I like to call them.
Dietary Tokens (Animals only)
Carnivory: Allows for getting into predatory niches, and prevents from omnivory or herbivory. Jumping to omnivory from here causes -3 on roll, and jumping to herbivory causes -5.
Omnivory: Allows being an omnivore. There is no penalties applied for jumping to carnivory or herbivory from this one.
Herbivory: Allows access to herbivore niches. Things are as the same as carnivory in terms of jumping. -3 for omnivory, -5 for carnivory.
Scavenging: Allows access to scavenger niches. Can be got to from omnivore and carnivore tokens with a -3 penalty.
Nectarivory: Can be accessed directly through all other diet tokens, but requires a roll result of at least 9 to get to. Only found in forests, and in one specialised niche.
Frugivore: Can be accessed through herbivory and omnivory with -3 penalty. Pretty much requires one to be up the trees. Only found in forests.
Filterfeeding: Only found in seas. Can only be accessed through carnivory with a -5 penalty. Requires being fully aquatic.
Environmental Tokens
Terrestrial: Anything to do with shrublands and forests needs this. Flying niches are also in this category. There is no direct jump to aquatic. You need to first become semiaquatic. -3 penalty on that.
Semiaquatic: Between the two opposites. Required for semiaquatic niches. Can be occupied by flying clades as well, an animal can be both flying and semiaquatic. -3 back to terrestrial and -5 to progess to aquatic.
Aquatic: Needed for aquatic niches. -5 to return back to semiaquatic.
High Altitude: Required to live in mountains. No penalties to adapt to, but usually comes with a tempature requirement attached.
Water Tokens
Freshwater: Needed for being in rivers and lakes. Needed for saltwater adaptation. No penalties when coming from land, but -4 when coming from the sea and going to it.
Saltwater: Needed for seas. -4 penalty for jumping to freshwater.
Locomotion Tokens(Animals only)
Arboreal: Required for arboreal niches. -4 when coming from the ground and returning to it, and -5 when jumping to glide.
Gliding: Functionally thesame as arboreality, just stepping stone for true flight. No going back to arboreality or terrestriality, -5 to progress to flight.
Flight: Required for- ugh you get it. -3 for a jump for terrestriality, losing flight in the process, or another -3 for returning to gliding, pretty much returning to arboreality in the process.
Tempature Tokens
Hot: Needed for hot biomes. -3 to jump to lukewarm, -5 to jump to cold
Lukewarm: Needed for lukewarm biomes. -3 for jumping to both hot and cold
Cold: Needed for cold biomes. -3 to return to lukewarm. -5 to jump to hot.
Poison Tokens
Poisonous: If a species has thus token, the species abve the food chain which eat it can only do so with a poison resistance token, making the presence of this token may prevent full food chains from emerging. -5 to gain. This token will be automatically lost in 2 turns if no predation happens by a poison resistant species during that time.
Poison Resistance: Nullifies the poisonous tokens blocking effects. -5 penalty when adapted to. Animals that have this token can only feed upon poisonous stuff.
Plant Tokens
Tree: Needed to be a tree. -3 to become a shrub, with no direct path to being a tree.
Shrub: The middle ground. Needed for being a shrub. -3 to tree and weed.
Weed: Needed to be a weed. -3 to become a shrub. No direct path to tree.
Tempature token changes and subsequent dice rolls for success will happen automatically if the local climate changes. They will most likely be mass changes and a significant amount of species will go extinct in the process.
Cladograms must be done by players themselves. Just make the tree of your own clade. This way, the task of making the tree can fall into 10 hands instead of one. You can do it with painting or just text. Just have it orderly.
-Players-
Animals (1/7):
Knightwing64
Plants (2/3):
a1s
TricMagic
Undecided:
-empty-
