Bay 12 Games Forum

Please login or register.

Login with username, password and session length
Advanced search  

Author Topic: Ugly Little Things (Kind of a god game? But Aliens + Evolution)  (Read 1310 times)

Kimino394

  • Bay Watcher
    • View Profile

I'm not much of a writer so I'll keep this "backstory" bit rather simple, blunt and to the point. I'm not sure if you'll even need to read it-If people don't want to 'roleplay' this, then you pretty much wont need to look at the backstory (Even if I would personally love to see some roleplay). It's mostly their for my enjoyment and aid in visualizing what's going on.

Backstory type thing
Sorry humanity-(And other species, whatever you may be)-But we're all wiped out. The entire known galaxy has been conquered and absored by an alien species who use the harvested biomatter as tiny capsules of currency. Why? Well, it's obvious. Everything in the galaxy is 'wrong', so they've decided to start over! ..With a game!
Upon each of this unnknowable entities ships lies a massive biomatter converter, shaped roughly into a sphere. Inside this sphere, a habitable planet is created by the biomatter owned by the ships pilot-Who in turn charges currency from each person boarded onto the ship-A fee for him creating a playing space for them, as WELL as allowing them residency in the quarters of the ship. From there, each player will spend his biomatter capsules in trying to influence the life growing on the ship in the way that he feels best. There isn't really a way to 'win', as the creatures growing upon the ships have no idea of the existence of the aliens. However, creating marvelous creatures-Whether beautiful, extremely strong (Maybe the aliens think new threats might be coming to challenge their dominance of-You know-The ENTIRE galaxy?) or even just very durable. Livestock for those among their people who can't afford biomatter. All-consuming alien life's gotta eat too ya-know. It's in the name.
As it turns out, YOU players are the aliens mentioned above. You'll be guiding the life that springs up over the course of time on one such ship.

Rulings
The planet already exists. You can't create new planets or "planes" or other such things. Atleast for now-Maybe the rules will change. This is only the first addition, so to speak.
If creatures grow eyes strong to see high into the sky, there will be a sky there. The ship generates it.
Flora will evolve in the background as the fauna evolves. Unless players take a specific interest in plants, it will be assumed that they evolve at a steady rate with everything else. So the planet begins essentially barren, but by the times things start to climb out of the primordial ooze, we'll have primitive plants. A good way to think of it.
There isn't a definite time between turns. I'm not going to say, a year, a thousand years, a million years. No. The time between turns is "Enough for 'stuff' to happen". This simply allows things to stay fluid and fun without me having to drag things out simply because we're not working with simple organisms anymore, if that makes sense. If it helps your roleplaying mind, we can assume the ship the planet is stored in artificially simulates time speeding up between 'turns'. Perhaps the aliens are just as vexed about how much time this stuff takes as I am.

The System: How to Actually play
I had quite a thing typed up here, but I sort of realized I was sort of sounding up my own arse. Here's the gist of it-You know those "type what happens next" games, where players will all say what they think the main character should do, then the game master tallys them all up and the highest number wins? It's similar to that, except multiple things can happen on one turn. One player certainly can offer more than 1 thing happening (Though certainly, the more you offer the less and less likely what you ask to happen will happen. As if your "character" was spreading his resources too thin?").
As well as this, I'd like to keep it rather grounded in reality. ..To an extent. There wont be any magic. And we wont go from microscopic organisms to wolves in the space of four turns. It takes times for limbs, or senses or so on to develope.

More Notes
As I mentioned above, I deleted quite a bit of what I typed as I felt I was getting a bit pretentious. I'm not sure if this would garner any interest, and if it did, I'm not sure if it would gather the interest of roleplayers.. Or competitive people. Or what have you. The short of what I mentioned is that I did want to develope a little bit of a "system" for myself (You guys have seen the "Gridhood" game on this forum? That's what helped me come up with the idea) to measure how strong particular creatures were in different areas, how much currency each players character had.. How much they were impressing potential investors who were watching them and their creation... That type of thing. But I don't have a system like that yet, so I'm not going to pretend like I have this whole cool thing set up behind the scene. ESPECIALLY when the people playing might only be interested in the controlled evolution aspect of the game (Which would be perfectly fine too :3)

The images for the creatures are being done using the spore creature creator. I was part of a game that did something similar with the creature creator many, many years ago and I thought it was alot of fun. SO! Here we go  :)
Next post is the games first post. Hope you join up!
« Last Edit: June 15, 2018, 05:08:24 pm by Kimino394 »
Logged
I have lots of ideas! They're just not always.. GOOD ideas.

Kimino394

  • Bay Watcher
    • View Profile
Re: Ugly Little Things (Kind of a god game? But Aliens + Evolution)
« Reply #1 on: June 15, 2018, 04:58:29 pm »

As we look upon the planet, we see the first vestiges of life unleashed into the primordial ooze, crazily scurrying about for the chance to consume and reproduce.

Planetary Alpha Species: Comedenti
Species List
Spoiler (click to show/hide)

What changes shall begin to take place?
« Last Edit: June 15, 2018, 05:10:49 pm by Kimino394 »
Logged
I have lots of ideas! They're just not always.. GOOD ideas.

MonkeyMarkMario

  • Bay Watcher
    • View Profile
Re: Ugly Little Things (Kind of a god game? But Aliens + Evolution)
« Reply #2 on: June 15, 2018, 06:00:19 pm »

PTW

Also what you call, The System: How to Actually play, is kind of how I have my game(Cones Rework(shameless plug)) play.
Logged
My Forum game(s):
None for now

Any future games will be simpler in nature, I have a bad habit of biting off more than I can chew. Also hoping for more players in them.

I have Discord for my games now(not necessary to play, tho might be easier to contact me): https://discord.gg/DuaARAZ

The_Two_Eternities

  • Bay Watcher
    • View Profile
Re: Ugly Little Things (Kind of a god game? But Aliens + Evolution)
« Reply #3 on: June 15, 2018, 06:38:33 pm »

PTW.

So, how exactly do the Biopods work? Are they just magic, or what?

And what exactly am I supposed to do?
Logged
http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=177472.0
Roll to Multitask, seeking new players.
Yeah sorry, someone blew up a street in my state and took the internet down for multiple days with it.
This really happened. 2020 was wild.

Pavellius

  • Bay Watcher
    • View Profile
Re: Ugly Little Things (Kind of a god game? But Aliens + Evolution)
« Reply #4 on: June 15, 2018, 08:36:28 pm »

Some of the comedenti grow extra tendrils, which allows then to consume food at a higher rate. These organisms tend to grow much larger before reproducing.
Logged

Kimino394

  • Bay Watcher
    • View Profile
Re: Ugly Little Things (Kind of a god game? But Aliens + Evolution)
« Reply #5 on: June 16, 2018, 06:11:57 am »

Also what you call, The System: How to Actually play, is kind of how I have my game(Cones Rework(shameless plug)) play.
I'll go check out yours for ideas on how to run mine better then :D. Who knows, maybe I'll want to join in, too!

So, how exactly do the Biopods work? Are they just magic, or what?

And what exactly am I supposed to do?
Thank you for asking. I apologize for not being too clear on everything, this is my first time trying to run something like this.
The Biopods: A good way of thinking of it is that they're the lowest form of plankton imaginable. They can't move about on their own accord, they have no sensory system. Nothing. They simply absorb energy from "The sun" (If you're paying attention to the roleplay aspect, from the light cast down by the ship during the planets day time cycle), internalize it and use it to feed themselves. They then split into two identical parts. They exist almost entirely to be fed upon by other low lifeforms. I believe the correct word for them might be phytoplankton?

What you're supposed to do: This is difficult for me to explain beyond what I've already said. Pavellius below you hit the nail on the head though, tell me how things evolved (Or tell me how the alien you're playing made things evolved, if you're interested in the roleplay aspect!), feel free to tell me the why, and what you think would happen because of the evolution. Whether I take everything or just some of what you say and incorporate it depends mostly upon if it makes sense. If you tell me one of the basal, germ-like lifeforms suddenly grows legs, a mouth, eyes and becomes the size of a rhino.. That's not going to fly. However, you could over the course of many turns work towards that, if it was your wish.

TO THE GAME
My post
Some of the comedenti have sensory growths sprout up across their body, allowing them to feel as the liquids around them shift, and tell in which direction there are.. "Things". Whilst they have neither the senses nor intellect to differentiate danger from food, this does allow them to better position themselves so that atleast their feeder tendrils are pointed in the correct direction.

Main Post
While the numbers of the proto Comedenti species bloom, consume and spread across the primordial oceans of our new world, we see two competitors rise from their dust. One offshoot has its feeder tendrils spread across its form allowing it to devour much more biomass in a much shorter time. As a result, it and its offspring grow much larger and fatter than their ancestors. Little to no other single creature would be able to feed off of this new "Devoradenti" as even if they got their mouths on it, it would be feeding off of two or three other things as well as its predator at the same time! ..However, due to the need for much greater sustenance, the Devoradenti's actual numbers would be lower than any other current species upon the world.

As well, a more subtle adaptation. With sensory growths sprouting up over their body, the "Sendenti" were quickly over-consuming and spreading at a tremendous pace. However.. Their own newfound strength wasn't all boon. Not able to differentiate food from predator, they'd often run straight into the Devoradenti, quickly becoming its primary food source. Atleast they were doing better than their ancestors?

Planetary Alpha Species: Devoradenti
Species List
Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Pavellius, your signature text upsets me greatly.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)
« Last Edit: June 16, 2018, 06:22:41 am by Kimino394 »
Logged
I have lots of ideas! They're just not always.. GOOD ideas.

Urist Mc Dwarf

  • Bay Watcher
    • View Profile
Re: Ugly Little Things (Kind of a god game? But Aliens + Evolution)
« Reply #6 on: June 16, 2018, 12:24:29 pm »

The Devoratendi are stimulated by Serenity-Through-Evolution to gain the ability to use some of their tentacles as cilia.

Leonardo8

  • Bay Watcher
    • View Profile
Re: Ugly Little Things (Kind of a god game? But Aliens + Evolution)
« Reply #7 on: June 16, 2018, 05:53:34 pm »

Sendenti  starts developing photosensible patches of skin atthe base of the tentacles, a sort of primitive eyes.
Logged