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Winddbourne · Site Admin Joined: 31 May 2008 Posts: 217

The Most Common Race Creation Strategies

Players get 500 primal soul points for use in creating races of sentient worshippers. These are the only Primal Soul Points you get, and without them all you can create in the game are dumb animals, various spirits, and machines. Which means how you use your points is an important strategic decision. There are Several Popular Strategies as follows:

1) The Uber Race: The uber race player only needs one set of followers. His people are both complex and powerful. They start with a lot of abilities and potential. But they are all he has. An Uber Race player blows all 500 points making one small breeding population at the start of the game and ties his fate to theirs. If they prosper and grow in numbers he will have one of the most powerful empires on the map. If not he'll lose in a big way. It's a gamble and the player only has one try.

2) Scatter Shot: The Scatter Shot Player also makes one race, but it's not as powerful as an Uber Race and costs a lot less. He then uses his points to create breeding populations at widely seperated locations and spends his time building up several different cultures within his square. If something happens to one culture the other may survive. Even if everyone dies the player often still has enough Primal Souls stored away to start over again from scratch.

3) The Fearie Queen: A Fearie Queen creates many different specialized races. His or her people aren't the most powerful, but together they have as much potential as the Uber Race. Different races can be adapted to various conditions. One may fly, another burrows, a third swims . . . One specializes in magic, another is an expert tool user, the third is a psionic wizard. This is a very powerful strategy that lends itself to a lot of different playstyles.

4) Weak Man's Bluff: In this strategy the player creates one very weak race at the begining of the game and does his best to play with it, hoarding the majority of his Primal Soul Points for later as he builds up faith points and sets up his area. If he survives he can use the remaining points later to create the race he really wants, or to suppliment his rising civilization's power and glory.

Winddbourne · Site Admin Joined: 31 May 2008 Posts: 217

Starting The Process

To start making a species all you have to do is tell me your intention as an action within the turn. It costs 2 faith points to get the process started and every deity starts out with 500 primal souls for use in creating various races of worshipper.

When I read the action I'll reply and make a blank post specifically for discussing your race ideas. Within this post different replies relate to specific concepts of your race. Obviously it takes less time to work out a simple race than a complex one, but more complex races often have more potential within the game world.

All my original post in the The Sample Game said was "Lets get started". Later in the I changed the opening post to reflect the race we made.

Once there is a topic discussing your race you need to write several posts describing it's powers in detail. The Following sections in this topic will discuss these posts in the order I want them from you.

Winddbourne · Site Admin Joined: 31 May 2008 Posts: 217

Race Description Post

At the top of the post list your races name in large bold letters, and below that all you need to do is describe the race as best you can. It is important to be as clear and detailed as you can be because this is my first introduction to your race idea in the game. It is also your time to think outside of the box, to use your imagination and suggest concepts that we can revisit later in the race creation process.

Our sample player, simplicity, has decided to try for a Uber Race style and will be giving us a lot to look at. Read his opening post here: http://godhead.forumsland.com/godhead-about40.html

The first thing we can see about his race the "Conservataur" is that they have a very unique life cycle. They are a herd race that starts out as dumb animals and mature into four different castes. The smallest unit of their civilization seems to be the family. Simplicity has also imbued the race with his own republican values by barring telepathic communion outside the family groups and adding in a caste of "shamans" to serve as randomly elected representatives travelling between the various groups within the herd.

Already several things point to this being an "Uber Race". First we have the female All-mind in each family. Imagine them as scouts? Or worse shooting six bows at you all at once. Ouch. Then we have the heavilly muscled Alpha Male and his intelligent steed. This combo has a strong punch. They are strong, fast, and have both horns and hooves. They are probably a match of a bison or even a small mastadon.

This is already a strong race, though perhaps not an "uber race" yet, lets see what Simplicity does next.

Winddbourne · Site Admin Joined: 31 May 2008 Posts: 217

The Birth, Death & Diet Page:

Simplicity already told me a bit about his races family structure and lifestyle in the first post, but it's not enough for me to calculate population growth. On this page he will go into more detail about the races life cycle. In particular I want to know the following:

(1) How Long Does the race live?

(2) When do they hit sexual maturity?

(3) Does the race hit menopause at some point in their life and stop breeding?

(4) Does anything take members of the population out of the breeding pool early?

(5) What is the required/average breeding group? One organism that undergoes mitosis? A male and a female? Seven different sexs? A "bee" like insect and a number of "flowers"? The options are endless and I need to know.

(6) What do your people eat?

Depending on the specifics of the race I may need other info. The point of the page is to help me determine your population growth and death rate, and to flesh out family life more. This information can have a huge impact on the game so it gets its own page.

If you look at the Conservataur race example you will see that Simplicity has added quite a bit of data here which significantly fleshes out the race. He wanted "hard working republican farmers" and he certainly has done a good job of eliminating city life. The children run around outside as mindless herd animals and won't stand for being penned up inside, or held near their families or siblings. In a city cars or wagons would likely kill many of them, and others would die of disease, or not be able to find enough "grass" to graze on. So cities are out.

This herd childhood also ties the entire race together into one much larger "family", while at the same time the males tendency to get much of their dietary needs filled by drinking the females "milk" ties them even more securely into the cebtral family structure.

We also learn that the race are actually fast breeding marsupials with a relatively short lifespan. You can have two generations born and dead within a single turn, but at the same time 100 generations will have been born, one a year every year.

The race is complex, but with this added info I can now work out a growth formula. To keep it simple I will figure out roughly how many families are born each generation:

(Family number) = (((Current number of families) * 30)- ((Current number of families) *30) * .25))

Or in regular terms if I start out with one family I'll have 22 families and a few shaman next generation. Since there are two generations a turn I'll have to do the whole thing over again to learn that we have 495 families at the end of the turn plus about 100 shamans.

That's a lot of families, but we have a lot less worshippers. Each family only has 3 people in it. So to get how many worshippers simplicity has I have to divide 495 by 3. All those families and shaman are only 265 worshippers.

I also know that two generations have died this turn, so i can compute how many souls have joined simplicity in the ether. It's information you, as the player don't want to deal with, but which I'll have on hand if you ever need it. Luckilly Simplicity put his lifespan at exactly half a turn per person, so I can do this, if it had been much harder I'd have to have asked if I could fiddle with the numbers a bit to simplify things for myself. LOL

One thing the numbers tell me right away though is that this race is going to require room. They are medium sized omnivores freely roaming a great plain, and their numbers are going to grow like mad in the next few turns. Space and food look like they could be problems for Simplicity.

Winddbourne · Site Admin Joined: 31 May 2008 Posts: 217

Special Abilities:

You should list any abilities your people have that normal humans don't here. I need to know four things about an ability:

(1) What the ability and what limits does it have?

(2) Who has the power? Does everyone have it? Just females? Only old people?

(3) Is it a static ability that never changes, or is it a science that the people can improve? If it is a science give some examples of things you could learn how to do in time.

(4) Power level (PL): The relative power level of the ability on a scale from 1 to 100. This helps me when your race goes against another gods creations. How strong the ability is, and if it's a science how much research you've put into it helps me decide the outcome of a conflict. Can that psionic over there disrupt your telepathic bond or eavesdrop on it? This number helps me figure it out.

Here are some examples:

Fire starting: Everyone in the race has the static ability to light small fires within 10 feet of their own body by simple force of will. This helps them light camp fires, candles, and ovens. It will never get more powerful, more useful, or weaker than this. PL: 30

Fire Control Everyone in the race starts out with the ability to light small fires with 10 feet of their own body by simple force of will. This helps them light camp fires, candles, and ovens. It is a science which starts out weak, but with study and effort the race can learn how to extend the range, start larger fires, and put fires out at will. PL: 30

Both examples are the same ability, but the "science" is obviously a more worthwhile ability for the race to have. Lets look at simplicities "Special ability post here: http://godhead.forumsland.com/godhead-about40.html

As you can see Simplicity has made a fairly strong race even though he hasn't given them a lot of powers. Some things we talked about before are here such as the family bond, and the ability of shamans to join it, but the food sense shared by women and children is new! With this we don't have to worry about the dumb kids eating something nasty and poisoning themselves. The shaman's vision is listed here too, I was wondering how these guys were expected to see.

The shaman being able to see through the eyes of ALL the nearby females and being an expert mystic also helps me decide that this is likely to be an Uber Race. I imagine the shamans sitting in the midst of a herd and hurling down lighting and fire at any foe any female can see; while those same females shoot arrows or maybe even guns at the enemy from 6 different vantage points. OUCH.

Winddbourne · Site Admin Joined: 31 May 2008 Posts: 217

The Brain Diagram:

The various people and races of the world think in different ways. Even sexes, age groups, or castes can have vastly different ways of seeing the world. Some races excel at tool use and the development of machinery, others are great farmers and ecologists, yet a different race grasps the ebb and flow of mystical energy instinctively, or is hugely talented in psionics.

You can break your people up into as many "brain" categories as you want, but it costs more to have such different people, and individuals with vastly different brain diagrams are unlikely to like or understand each other. A VERY minor example of this would be the differences between men and women in the human race.

<<Edit>> Below this point I'm altering the diagram system to make it easier on players and more versatile, call it brain diagram 1.1 I'll be altering the messed up sample race soon too>>

The brain diagram tells us how your people think and is broken up into three specific types of thought. The first of which is instinctual. An instinctual thought or science is something that your people know how to do at birth.

Beavers know how to engineer and build dams across rivers, chimps know how to make termite hunting sticks, etc . . . instinct has the advantage that it doesn't have to be learned and even one point of instinct lets you know a LOT, but you can't think about things you only know on an instinctual level, you just do it. Not every instinct your people has must be put down, knowing how to walk, eat, or breath are a given. But specific "scientific" or "engineering" knowledge must be listed. For example the beavers ability to build a dam, or a bees knowledge of how to build a hive. If your not sure if you should list an ability under instinct talk to me. Things listed as static abilities on the last page never need to be listed here, they are covered automatically.

After instinctual behaviour comes general thought. General topics could include tool use, engineering, magic, philosophy, religious thought, art, etc . . . a point of general thought doesn't go far, but if it builds on your instincts it can let you learn how to do things BETTER during your lifetime. A people can not even imagine things that aren't covered by some broad topic of "General Thought".

Specific thought is more in depth than general thought and a few points of it lets you be pretty good at thinking about something. An example of specific thought could be Metal Working, sculpture, bible study, or stone construction. Specific thought can build on both instinct and general thought to make you very good at a particular branch of science. Alternatively you could only be skilled in a specific area of science. Your For example a race might be really good at forging and metal working, but have no other interest in tools at all.

Example:

Dam building (instinct): The race instinctively knows how to use wood and dirt to dam up a river much the way an earthly beaver does from the moment they are born. 2

Engineering (General): The race can learn to build other structures out of various materials or learn how to build better dams. 10

Engineering Wood, Leather, Bone, & Dirt (Specific): They are specifically good at engineering structures out of natural materials like wood, leather, bone, and dirt. 5.

Looking at the example they start out being able to build dams out of wood fairly well, but if they are trying to learn to build a better dam out of any material they are slightly better at it (12), if the materials are natural ones and they are building a dam they are really good at that (17). If they were building any other structure of wood leather and bone they are really good at that too (15), but they are only adaquate at building a structure of stone or metal (10). Stacking thought types like this gives you a very broad range of things your race can do.

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