Exquisite Biome - an ecosystem-crafting game

Howdy y'all, I'm jonesing for a little play-by-post action and would like to host a little ecosystem-building get-together, using Exquisite Biome by my good friend Caro.

How this game works is using a standard 52-card deck to provide questions and prompts that let us make several creatures, hopefully building a neat little ecosystem. There's no win condition or end goal, and whatever we make we're free to reimagine and use elsewhere after the game is done.

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Game One
With Schaz, btp, and Andrea

Blood loss (mosquitos ok, leeches no, giant bloodsuckers draining you dry no), parasites which kill their hosts, parasites which live in skin/muscle), vertebrate reproductive organs

Reproductive strategies/copulation, internal parasites, eating prey alive

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You can sign up by filling in the following form, then as soon as I've got enough folks can join me on our first foray into the wilds.

For this first game, I'd like to keep things relatively realistic. Sticking to plausibly earth-like creatures. Once folks get in the swing of things, I'd be happy to try a game in more of a fantasy or alien setting.

Name:
Lines: themes or subjects that you do not want to explore in this game.
Veils: themes or subjects you are ok including, as long as we don't go into vivid detail.
A cool real-world plant:
A cool real-world animal:

Lines and Veils are here as safety tools; this also lets me curate/tweak prompts on cards if they stray into territory the players may not enjoy. Possible Lines or Veils could include (but is not limited to) stuff like: infestations, parasitism, copulation/reproductive strategies, deep ocean, gore, etc.

Name: Schaz
Lines: I'm pretty much down for whatever
Veils: Copulation/reproductive strategies
Your favorite real-world plant: right now it's the Last Chance Townsend Daisy; a rare and threatened flower of Utah which I only learned about because of Blaseball.
Your favorite A cool real-world animal: I saw a satin bowerbird's bower (a dry-grass tunnel-stage decorated with blue things) when I was visiting Canberra. Did not meet the architect but admired his handiwork much the same

Name: btp
Lines & Veils: Nothing comes to mind at the moment.

A cool real-world plant: It's gotta be Pando. Aspens in general are top tier trees. When a good wind blows through an aspen forest, their almost-circular leaves with thin petioles do a full 180 and makes it looks like the entire tree is shimmering. (I suppose a lot of deciduous trees to this, but I have distinct memories of being awestruck by aspens.) The fact that it is also the largest clonal organism is just icing on top.

A cool real-world animal: In case someone's Line/Veil is any creatures that lives inside your skin I'll tuck this in a spoiler.

SpoilerShow

I get a kick talking to students about Demodex mites. The little sweat-suckers are the perfect blend of harmless and unnerving and do an excellent job of reminding us that our consciousness and self-perception is still entwined with our fleshy monkey bodies.

As for a non-arthropod option: I lifted up a big rock and saw a gecko living under it. I am reasonably sure I did not squash it when I set the rock back down but just in case I'll memorialize it here.

Name: Andrea!!!

Lines: Blood loss (mosquitos are fine, leeches not, gigantic mosquitos that drain you dry definitely not), particularly gruesome parasites of animals (those that kill their host or live in skin/muscles), reproductive organs of vertebrates
Veils: Internal parasites, eating prey alive, copulation/reproduction

A cool real-world plant:
Ohhhh I have so many examples for this (dodders, giant redwoods, all carnivorous plants, air plants, lithops, myrmecophytes -- seriously, look up myrmecophytes if you aren't familiar), but I wanted to choose a plant others wouldn't know about. Salal! It grows abundantly in my home biome in western Washington state, and the leaves and berries are both edible. But interestingly, the leaves are appetite suppressants. It's a very interesting defense mechanism, and I don't know many other plants that do that. It's a neat alternative to poison!

A cool real-world animal:
I've been really getting into mollusks the past while. Did you know that some sea slugs in the genus Sacoglossa can absorb chloroplasts from algae into their own cells, becoming temporary photosynthesizers? Or that all cephalopods ancestrally had a shell, and that shell was lost at different points and in different ways? Or that squids and octopi move by breathing water in through one aperture, and then expelling it at high velocity through a jet?

Wonderful!!!!! Let's get started (Lines and Veils are in the OP, so please familiarise yourself):

First up is to draw two cards which help us establish a biome - both the big picture, and then some fun details:

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6 places our exploration in a Snow forest and/or taiga.
Diamonds indicates the current season is warm and wet.

And then for some additional detail/flavour...


A 5 offers an island as an environmental detail.
The time of day is Early morning, as represented by Hearts.

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There's a chance here to discuss what our zone looks like, especially if the prompts are contradictory - I don't see much issue with an island in a boreal lake, but any thoughts with how an island in a snow forest could work???

Oooh actually just had a thought to tie all this together - we could be looking at a particularly large glacial valley, so with a particularly wide river bed that's spread/grown in volume with late spring snow melt you could have a (temporary!) island in the middle of that, formed from particularly large debris washed downstream.

Oooh actually just had a thought to tie all this together - we could be looking at a particularly large glacial valley, so with a particularly wide river bed that's spread/grown in volume with late spring snow melt you could have a (temporary!) island in the middle of that, formed from particularly large debris washed downstream.

Oooh I love that! A floodplains or river delta kind of situation, but much colder than we normally think of those places.

I think we shouldn't restrict ourselves to just the area on and around the island though -- it's a feature, but probably not large/isolated enough to have its own unique biosphere.

I think we shouldn't restrict ourselves to just the area on and around the island though -- it's a feature, but probably not large/isolated enough to have its own unique biosphere.

For sure, the creatures we "build" can definitely have a much wider range than just this temporary springtime island in a river, particularly as we'll only be designing three (and of course, each of those creatures will have interspecific interactions with any number of other creatures not appearing in this game).

In terms of gameplay, After we make a creature, we take a moment to create a scene to showcase the beast (narrating or storyboarding wildlife documentary style is the recommended way but let's see what we end up doing!)... so at that point the island is like our backdrop, where we might observe a particularly interesting behavior from the species.

Its midnight for me now, but unless btp chimes in with major amendments/a different direction for the environment prompts, we can start creature 1's creation in my morning

Don't mind me! I'm happy to go along with what we've got here!

I will say that since Andrea mentioned redwoods, it's got me thinking about large debris, like very large felled trees that were perhaps fallen due to some kind of as yet undescribed creature.

Also I am so down for the idea of a nature documentary.

Brilliant! Now, to start describing some creatures! Every creature will be given some bones via three cards (the first for the general description, the second for a distinctive feature, and the third for its habits, personality and behaviour). We'll finish when we've got three interconnected creatures for our ecosystem, so with three players, we can rotate which aspect of the animal we're responsible for describing.

In the interests of alphabetical order, I'll offer the first card for the first Beast to Andrea:

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Hearts tells us our first creature is a mammal.
The King indicates our first creature's niche is an apex predator.

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Andrea, go ahead and tell us what you reckon our creature's like, based on the above information!

Apologies for the late response!

I'm thinking something very, VERY large, that hunts mostly by size, persistence, and brute strength. It would have to have thick fur and high fat reserves to deal with the cold and the lack of food, although right now both of those would be less necessary.

I'm realizing right now that I've kind of described a bear! But we can make it less bear-like. Maybe it's an obligate quadruped?

Wonderful! Now, btp's turn to explain a distinctive feature of the beast:
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The 7 of Clubs means our creature is possessing prehensile/grasping digits.

The guide prompts us by asking: Fingers? Tentacles? What do they grasp?

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btp, have a go explaining a little more what this apex predator's body plan is, based on the bear-like, potentially never-bipedal outline that Andrea's put down. Make sure you meet the initial prompt, but feel free to explain other physical aspects that may help this "bearlike boreal river-island-frequenting apex predator with grasping hands" fill its niche.

This apex predator is omnivorous, and much like a bear, requires storing fat and bulk to survive brutal winters.

Thus, spring is the time to begin hunting once more and few sources of food are as plentiful as colonial insects. The inner wrists of this creature each has one looong graspy retractable appendage that can navigate the complex corridors found in these colonies. It lacks pain receptors , but does contain chemoreceptors , and is mostly a tough cartilage that can excrete a mucus to adhere to globs and globs of the little insects. (Think: anteater tounge that shoots from the wrist).

The predator is mostly quadrapedial, although it can also use its mighty girth to knock down large myrmecophytes whose habitants have overgrown the structural supports of their host or whose structure has been damaged by the harsh frosts of winter now recently thawed. This action requires the creature to brace its large flat paws against the side of the structure and tightly grip against it with the three large sloth-like claws attached to the end of each digit. It may do this with its forelimbs or backlimbs, depending on what position best suits the task at hand.

So, with the first two cards we've gotten a big, boreal, bear-thing with retractable tongues in its wrists so it can eat a fuckton of ants, among all the other stuff it can eat. Hell yeah. Finally, the third creature card reveals something about the creature's habits or personality:
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8 - this creature is a tool user.

The guide prompts us by asking: This creature can operate crude or makeshift tools. What are they made of? What are they used for?

Diamonds - this species lives in very small groups.

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To try and tie together what we've got of this creature so far...

There's already good examples of tool usage among animals which raid ant/termite nests with sticks, like chimpanzees, however this Beast already has a highly specialised organ/digit for tool usage. In light of that, and thinking about our big hairy lug and the habitat prompt we've got...

I think this thing can haul logs, dislodge rocks, and uses those to help it cross flooded river plains and reach those braid-bars between the currents where the easy food can be found once the snowmelt from up the valley starts making changes to the landscape. This thing could even, potentially, be a more active ecosystem engineer - if a big boulder's come from upstream and things have shifted to make a decent-sized new islet, it may even haul mud to establish it quicker as a microhabitat for fruiting plants/insects.

And given this range of complex behaviours, its apex predator status making it likely omnivorous/opportunistic in its foraging habits, and as a nod to it being bearlike, I think the best explanation for very small groups is that adults don't interact much, but cubs/young will stay with their mother for several years and learn how to survive. This would make its use of debris as bridges/stepping stones to make deeper channels easier to cross much more important for the survival of its young.

I think this thing can haul logs, dislodge rocks, and uses those to help it cross flooded river plains and reach those braid-bars between the currents where the easy food can be found once the snowmelt from up the valley starts making changes to the landscape. This thing could even, potentially, be a more active ecosystem engineer - if a big boulder's come from upstream and things have shifted to make a decent-sized new islet, it may even haul mud to establish it quicker as a microhabitat for fruiting plants/insects.

Oh fuck yeah! I've been vaguely thinking about beavers ever since "temporary island" and "fallen wood" were both brought up in the same thread, so I'm glad you thought of that too!

Do we want to come up with any more specifics about what it looks like? We already know it's huge, it has thick fur, it's strong, it has big, sloth-like claws, and it has some kind of wrist tongue or extendo-finger. What are its teeth like? What colors does it come in? Does it have a tail?

I've personally been imagining it with a very large head, even for its already massive body size (possibly useful for moving large trees). Furthermore, since it might chew through bark to get at insects and honey, it may have one or two pairs of large, multipurpose teeth -- possibly canines, possibly rodent teeth, possibly something else. (Or maybe its claws and ant-grabber are enough)

This thing could even, potentially, be a more active ecosystem engineer - if a big boulder's come from upstream and things have shifted to make a decent-sized new islet, it may even haul mud to establish it quicker as a microhabitat for fruiting plants/insects.

  I've been vaguely thinking about beavers ever since "temporary island" and "fallen wood" were both brought up in the same thread, so I'm glad you thought of that too!

I love this idea of "ecosystem engineer + predator". The idea of crafting a space to farm your food source seems like a great answer to the survival challenge of large animal in a cold climate. It's like a trophic cascade but without all the extra steps.

If the insects it's trying to feed on are also cultivators, similar to leaf cutter ants, then we have a farmer eating farmers situation. It would also be a way for the predator to take advantage of the nutrition trapped in the wood of the forest, without having to have a digestive system specifically adapted for that.

I've personally been imagining it with a very large head, even for its already massive body size (possibly useful for moving large trees). Furthermore, since it might chew through bark to get at insects and honey, it may have one or two pairs of large, multipurpose teeth -- possibly canines, possibly rodent teeth, possibly something else. (Or maybe its claws and ant-grabber are enough)

(Note to self: a way to highlight text and have a quote button pop up directly would be a great plugin to add in the future)

Love the big 'ole head idea. Since it's omnivorous, I'd expect it to have a variety of teeth types. The idea of rodent teeth which are constantly growing may lock it more tightly into a niche that requires continual wear on it's teeth - maybe we could revisit that depending on another creature? Like if there is a prey species with a very tough carapase, perhaps our beardozer uses this to help wear the teeth down? Actually the coloration may also really depend on possible prey species, depending if selection pressure is more heavily focused on camouflage vs finding a mate. Although since their wrist-tounges have chemoreceptors, they can effectively taste with their feet which could help them in locating other members of their species (although probably not as much as just a normal snoz...)(There's always the possibility for wild sexual dimorphism, but maybe that's best saved for another species).

Oh! What if the head is large but fairly flat, and that has reduced their capacity to hunt via smell? Sort of an evolutionary trade-off between being able to move very large bulky boulders/trees and long distance tracking.

A lot of my questions are getting into selection pressures/arms races that would depend on what other species are in the area. I'm happy to move on to the next one and maybe come back to this guy if we see good connections.

Loving all the thoughts so far - I think for teeth it could have a relatively primitive/unspecialised tooth arrangement (I mean, it's still a heterodont like most mammals/has different-shaped teeth, so it's got grindy molors and snippy incisors and not-very-pronounced-but-still functional canines).

It's omnivorous and will absolutely kill and eat anything up to a medium-sized mammal if it's hungry and has the opportunity, but the sticky finger is a relatively new tool in its food-gathering set. Maybe it's a modification on the muscles that let a cat's claws retract, but working for a whole digit where the bone inside has become more cartilaginous????

I can absolutely see this thing "raising" bees or wasps, and generally sticking to lapping up the honey/a couple mouthfuls of workers but cracking the nest open when things get tough.

Another thought for it's face.... if it's it's this specialized digit for gathering hive bugs, it must generally avoid shoving it's face into things. I like to think it's got thick fur on its face to prevent bugs from biting or stinging it, but then it's got a lot of longer whiskers that help it sense what's going on round its head. These whiskers could also give it a good sense of water currents to aid in its riverbed engineering.

Oh also we need to find a name for this guy at some point before we move on to the next beast.

I dig btp's suggestion of beardozer, but would also to chuck "bearver" into the mix

I support any pun or portmanteau based names.

SpoilerShow

Obviously the next iteration of this game is one where we just straight up make pokemon.

Loving all the thoughts so far - I think for teeth it could have a relatively primitive/unspecialised tooth arrangement (I mean, it's still a heterodont like most mammals/has different-shaped teeth, so it's got grindy molors and snippy incisors and not-very-pronounced-but-still functional canines).

Yeah, that makes sense. It's already got that specialization in its fingertongue

Another thought for it's face.... if it's it's this specialized digit for gathering hive bugs, it must generally avoid shoving it's face into things. I like to think it's got thick fur on its face to prevent bugs from biting or stinging it, but then it's got a lot of longer whiskers that help it sense what's going on round its head. These whiskers could also give it a good sense of water currents to aid in its riverbed engineering.

Yes!! Big whiskers! Especially since it's going to likely be semi-aquatic, as you mentioned.

I dig btp's suggestion of beardozer, but would also to chuck "bearver" into the mix

Oooh, that's a hard choice. I like them both! But with the caveat that I don't think this thing actually looks that much like a bear beyond its stout body.

Beardozer is definitely Cooler, but bearver seems more... reasonable. Maybe it has two names?

Wonderful wonderful. Our final step before we move on to our second Beast is to craft a scene to illustrate the beardozer in its natural habitat. There's a few ways the game guide suggests we can do this, but given our play-by-post format and the way we've delegated one card to each player, I'm going to propose this method:

We'll try and make a script for a segment in a wildlife documentary. One of us describes the creature's actions (the choreographer), someone else provides the voice-over narration (the narrator), and the third can describe to us what the environment/weather/etc is doing - what we can hear and see in the scene. Person number 3 (the cinematographer!) also gets to direct the camera movements and how shots are framed - if the choreographer tells us the Beast is crossing a river, the cinematographer can tell us if we're looking at this like a wide panoramic view, or low down at the level of the water while the Beast churns it all up.

Our script can be formatted like this, with the actions of the beast, details about the scene around it, and the movement of the camera staying aligned to the left.

Voice over narration is bold, and centered.

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At first what we'll have in this quote box will be bare-bones as heck, but everyone is welcome to double back to earlier parts of the script and add more detail, or start the next section.

Of course, the choreographer and the cinematographer's sections need to take turns with the narrator's. Those two shouldn't rush ahead and plot out the whole scene.

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Some of these pairs of shot and voice-over might be quite short-

Because there's a moment of anticipation!

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-but we don't have to break it up like this for every individual cut in the "footage".

And it must be stressed that this part of the game, is very much being made up on the fly. One must be flexible in such circumstances.

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If this makes even a modicum of sense, the two of you can choose which role you'd like to take on first! I'm happy to take the third one. If either of you choose to be the cinematographer, you can start us off by giving us our opening shot.

What kind of documentary do we have in mind? Like a peaceful, Attenborough-style appreciation of nature? Or one where the narrator is more a character in the show itself, kind of competing with nature for the audience's attention?

The cooperative, wonder of nature style is probably more in line with the mode we've structured here, although I do enjoy the idea of a narrator who is a little too full of themselves, getting comically wrecked by these predators.

I'm wondering if the play-by-post format supports the kind of collaboration-in-miniature that is suggested by the original game, which I think is designed in part to be played around a table for half an hour or so. I worry about it slowing things down (although nothing wrong with taking our time)

Maybe it would be better if each of us took turns taking on all three roles? Either taking turns writing out a script and then passing it on to the next person, grand battle style. Or we could each write a script (three different shows), or designate one person to write the script for each creature we produce.

I'm happy with any option. I do really like Schaz's script template, so I'll defer to you two.

I was thinking peaceful, Attenborough-style - could be fun to mess with a different framing later though, once I know this format actually makes sense.

Sounds good! I'm happy to give it a go-round before making any tweaks.

I'll take the cinematographer role then.

EARLY MORNING, PANORAMIC SHOT

The sun peaks over the crest of a waterlogged glacial valley, similar to a fjord, but in the distance it is clear this is a wide lake rather than one connected to the sea. Trickles of snowmelt lead to larger streams and waterfalls flowing down the sides of the valley. Large, some massive, trees line the sides of the hills, though a few near the waterside are felled. The lake itself is spotted with islands of varying sizes, some with fallen trees and young growth, others are mostly mud and rock barely poking above the surface. A cicada-like cacophony plays quietly under the narration.