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Bios: An Exercise in Worldbuilding through Gameplay
Shiny object alert! A few days ago, I visited my local hobby shop, and a rare gem on the shelves caught my eye. A new copy of the board-game Bios: Megafauna, second edition, designed by Phil Eklund....
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Bios: Genesis – The First Billion Years
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...
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Bios: Genesis – The Second Billion Years
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...
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Bios: Genesis – Wrapping Things Up
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...
View ArticleBios: Megafauna – Opening Remarks
Having played through a game of Bios: Genesis, now we’re ready to link the outcome of that game to the second game in Phil Eklund’s trilogy, Bios: Megafauna. Bios: Genesis is a game of investing in and...
View ArticleBios: Megafauna – First Moves
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...
View ArticleBios: Megafauna – The Planet Gets Crowded
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...
View ArticleBios: Megafauna – Final Developments
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...
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Building the Karjann System
Okay, for the last few weeks I’ve been logging a play-through of the Phil Eklund games Bios: Genesis and Bios: Megafauna, in a demonstration of how those games can be used to support worldbuilding for...
View ArticleBuilding Toswao
This morning I’ll be focusing on the single Earth-like world in the Karjann star system, Toswao, the focus of my play-through of Bios: Genesis and Bios: Megafauna. Here, I’m getting into world-design...
View ArticleDesigning the Vasota Species
At this point, I’ve played through the Phil Eklund games Bios: Genesis and Bios: Megafauna, and I’ve used some of the results of those games to design the Karjann star system and its one Earth-like...
View Article2018 in Review
I remember the night that I very nearly turned my back on writing for good. I abandoned my writing blog, shut down my Facebook and Twitter accounts, put away every project I was working on at the time...
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New Creative Directions
It’s not the end of the year yet – that being when I usually take stock and make plans for upcoming creative work – but a few things have happened recently that may turn out to be productive. The...
View Article2019 in Review
Well, this has been a year. Twelve months of doing my best to pass by the madness that seems to be sweeping the world, keep my family prospering, excel at my day job, and keep making progress on my...
View ArticlePlanning for June 2021
The last few months have been very productive, and I think this pattern of posting a status report and priority list at the beginning of each month is helping. Not to mention that it’s likely to be...
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