Read, Play, Game

Exquisite Biome - Game Discussion

Hear from expert scientists as they reflect on the evolution process of the Renauroccs, Tunneling Harvest Mole, and Cacterrors.

Want to try out the game yourself? Check out https://seaexcursion.itch.io/ where you can buy Exquisite Biome as well as all the other great games designed by Caro Asercion!

And thanks to @aavoigt on YouTube for the recommendation! If you're looking for more indie RPGs, be sure to check out his channel and social media.

If you have a suggestion for an RPG we should try out, email us at readplaygamepod@gmail.com or leave a comment on our socials: https://linktr.ee/readplaygame

Theme song is "Do You Really Wanna Know?" by Captain Qubz

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Duration:: 33m
Broadcast on:: 02 Jul 2024
Audio Format:: mp3

(upbeat music) - Hello and welcome to this episode of replay game where we look at tabletop role-playing games from every side of the table. We are back with our game episode, our game discussion for exquisite biome, which we just got finished playing. So let's jump in. What are first thoughts people have and want to get out there? - So I guess I'll start because I feel of us five. I'm maybe the newest to most of the games that we play and even like the systems that we're running. So my closest frame of reference was the ground itself. Which was a world building game that we had all played together, which also included a playing card deck. However, if I'm not mistaken, we used every single card in that deck, no? Every time there was a 10 or something, we skipped something like that? - You're not usually supposed to use every card and the thing, but it ends on a certain card. So yes, yeah, we used a card. - I think it's like the fourth 10 or something, the third 10 I can't remember. - It's something to that effect versus in this game, yes, we used a playing card deck, but we only drew, I mean, what, seven cards at most? We didn't draw a ton of cards. So going into it, here I am thinking, oh man, we're about to go through this whole deck. Like we only have three preachers, like what else is about to happen? So in terms of the actual experience of the mechanics of the game, I came in with this bias of, okay, I'm using a whole deck. I better prepare myself for a full deck of circumstances. And so I was pleasantly surprised that the pretty much structure of the game is the ecosystem, three creatures and a final scene. As opposed to, you know, me expecting a whole deck, it's like, okay, we have three creatures and then a catastrophic event happens or et cetera, et cetera. I was like, how are we gonna get through a whole card? I also appreciated when we did the world building game, single unique power, that there was a clear delineation of who's taking the lead. Everyone's welcome to add what who gets to offer an idea first. Because for me personally, having that structure makes it a lot easier to defer and incorporate ideas as opposed to a laissez-faire, like everybody gets to say, it gets a little more stressful for me to delineate. Okay, where does the final say come from? Is a group decides versus in like single unique power? Whoever rolled the blank is whoever gets the final say. So I did appreciate that in some other models where there was a clear, okay, this person's taking the lead on this specific character. - On your first point about the card thing, what one detail is that when you do get to the end part of the game, after this, it's after you do the creature comfort scene, you decide whether you continue playing and then you can draw two new biome character cards to create new environment or do like the same environment with three new creatures. So hypothetically, you could go through a whole deck where you just fully flesh out an ecosystem of like all sorts of creatures in this. If you have like a ton of time and just really, really wanna create this world, but obviously we ended because we were recording a podcast for it. - And on that point, this game is pretty honest about its free form nature. There's a final page in its rule book about evolutions. It's the tab, it's called, it's the section it's called and it's ways to hack the game to make it more interesting. One of those things, which is something I'd like to try one day, is instead of dealing three creature cards to the table, you deal three creature cards to each player and each player separately comes up with their own creature and then presents to the group and then maybe collectively they narrate how they interact with each other. - Exactly. And there's also like a couple other of these. Micro climates, drawing two cards for the biome, like we talked about earlier, survival of the fittest. We all start making our own creatures and then each round one player presents a challenge, like show me the creature that would be the best at scaring predators off or da, da, da, da, da, and you just kind of pretty much do power scaling with the creatures you have, which is really fun. Yeah, tons of different extra rules, but yeah, I think this game is pretty, I think it freely admits to its freeform structure, in that sense. On top of that, I really liked thinking about animals for this long as an animal lover myself. It brought me to a very specific time period in my life where I would literally pour over animal and psychopedias for hours to the point where like I'd memorize what animals were on what pages, like, that's crazy. I love this stuff. - I think part of the forced collaboration, collaboration and group consensus on stuff, like when you compare this to a game like single unique power when there is a person who has final say on things, you know? Single unique power is so fantastical in a lot of ways that I think if we had done like, okay, we have these animals and we're adding one trait and then another person adds another trait and you keep going, that can very quickly get into a super unrealistic place. And I think having that like we have to talk about everything and we have to work on it together did help ground it in like these felt to me like they could exist. Like it's a different world. The most fantastical I think is like the interactions with the like atmosphere and the Renoir Ox but like most of the interactions between them like we kept them pretty grounded and I think that's harder to do if you're, if you're like they're working on it as a team. We had moments where we're like, oh wait, we need to like wipe everything. Like, oh, we need to get rid of everything. Whereas if you're adding on, you're like, keeping getting it like wild and zany or which works really well for single unique power where it is like creating these zany wacky powers. But here I think there is something to be said for like reaching that consensus and keeping it real. - And I think that's a really interesting conversation in game design mechanics because Tyler even said, not to say that single unique power is like exclusively competitive but Tyler said he was inspired by that one card game or something. I don't remember what it was called but like maybe like left right center or something like that or like you pass the cards onward like between each other and like someone might get a bunch of cards like what happened in our case. And so like sometimes it is like it is encouraged in that to take someone else's thing and completely switch the direction for the purpose of having a unique story versus this is so much more like it's literally, you have to come to the game ready to engage because it's so self-paced as a group. And it's just literally a group discussion that's like we said much more free form. So I guess you could do it a little more structured if you wanted it to. - I think another thing I really enjoyed about this and one of the things that I liked about the structure of it was with I don't know if you had said this earlier Emma or if you were getting to this with what you were saying is like with one of the things with the ground itself was that like each of the things were separate but like having everything all at once and discussing everything all at once, I really liked that. I'm not sure if that's what you were saying but like having the totality of like, oh okay we know it's a mammal, we know it's also a burrower, we know it's also this thing rather than starting with each individual beat and building up from the bottom. Like this I think we were able to get a much more complete image of a creature more quickly but also more cohesive I guess. And I liked the way that like all of the different features were split, I like the way the cards were used for the core things like mammal, reptile, et cetera and those kinds of stuff. I thought that was split apart pretty well. - I do, I think that it is very much to your point where you can get lost in the lack of structure. I think that this seems incredibly fun to play as a solo game and I had a lot of fun with this group but I do think it depends on the group as it does with any game, what vibe you're going into. Like if you've got more of a, I'm trying not to like pull up specific people that then listeners won't know but I can think of a couple maybe friends that we have who are more competitive in nature who are like really want there to be delineations for things. - Me, I was just gonna say Nick. (laughing) - But you too, gag me like Nick's free. You're like, oh, actually we check the rules, it's five men. - Again, Nick will not have fun with this one. I don't. - Craig. - But yeah, that like for me, my dream gameplay version of this would be hanging out with like a couple other artists and like sketching as we go. - Oh my God, to make an actual bee theory as you go along? - Yes. - You need to play this with artists? - I know we had talked about the ground itself being good for like world creation and helping with, you know, you coming up with the world and like you coming up with something that you're writing or developing. I think this even more so in some ways because of in some ways that lack of structure, I think is super helpful for like, if I was creating like a game or some kind of world and I needed a nice way to kind of plot out and conceptualize the biosphere, the creatures that inhabit it. I think this is a great way to do that for a solo player. - It's a very nice supplemental material. It's so hard to think of a new animal with that type of pront. You know, like that's like when you look at any fantastical world, it's just gonna be like, oh, you just push two animals together. And that's a fun thing to do. Like in Avatar, it's all just like, and we put two animals together and we combine them. And I think breaking it up into like what affects different creatures, what are the components of creatures allows you to do that, but in a more like purposeful way, which is really, really fun with this game. - I also think there's something to be said about the communal nature and everybody having to come to an agreement about the animals. In nature, that sort of is what happens. Like a confluence of factors force animals to be a certain way. And I think with our group in particular, we kind of kept it pretty grounded. Like we had biological knowledge and background. We had anthropological information that factored into that. So like we thought about the logic pretty soundly and it led to some animals that I could genuinely imagine in a setting like this, they're very based in logic and they didn't stray too far. Like you said, Emma. But having it be a communal decision, as opposed to like everybody coming up with their own ideas does create two different games. I am kind of going along what I said before with the exquisite sprint version or the survival of the fittest versions. When we all come up with our own creatures, we're gonna go to bat for our creatures. So it creates a different type of gameplay which is like actually you're gonna argue for your creature and why they'd be the best at one fucking thing over the other. And I think we only saw one version of this game today. Whereas it's so moldable in free form that if you wanted to, you could hack it to be a different gameplay experience. Which is always interesting. - Which begs the question to me, what was everybody's favorite animal that we made? - Ooh, I have an answer. - I have an answer too. I had the same question mine, except mine was, which one would you want to role play? Are those different answers for you? - Very different answers. I have very different answers. - Okay, I would be curious to hear both. - Me? - I want to always role play the cactors. They're fucking wild, they're crazy, territorial, little shits, but I love them Renoroks. They're so majestic, they're beautiful. They remind me of the circle of life. They feed this ecosystem, they're just, they're beautiful. - I love the Renoroks because they became sort of a centerpiece of the ecosystem. Like they became like the central, one of the central driving forces, which was so fitting with all the themes that we sort of tried to wrap in with, you know, renewal, rebirth, the bountiful harvest, whatever. - Would you want to role play as? - I mean, the cactors, they're like-- - I unfortunately also want the cactors as well. - I'm a mole, baby, I'm a mole. - I like the mole. - And I loved your mole, I loved your mole, Emma. It truly was like, and we need, it takes all sorts. - Listen, I'll tell you any, my, I've been working on a, like list of core tenets of the characters I play. And that's like small, helpful. I can't do anything else. Often dumb, I'm either really dumb or really smart in games, but I'm almost always small. - Smart in ways that other creatures or people cannot appreciate. - I guess. I like, I like either playing a very smart character where I can be like, I'm just gonna try and figure shit out or a very dumb character where I'm like, I'm ignoring everything. - I can't do the middle ground. - I had that, I think probably same experience with Anish where it was like, I don't know, I picture like the forest spirit from Ananoke where it's like the Renorax just seems so damn cool and I've like literally never thought of a creature that's like, you know, having to struggle up this mountainside with all these burr and seeds, like covering its eyes, you literally can't see until the second that it's like come to its like life's fruition and then it's able to reveal and see with its eyes and also be spreading life and flowers and trees, et cetera. But I would have so much more fun role playing as the character. (laughing) - Did you say brutal? - It just makes sense. It's like, who doesn't wanna be the winged? Yeah, yeah, yeah, like fighting for survival. - I'd love to have to roll, you know, tooth v claw. (laughing) - Mike, you said your favorite was, or you would wanna roll, your favorite was the mole? - I mean, I think Cacta is a fun choice, but I like the idea of kind of burrowing and running around and hiding from these monstrous creatures and having to find ways to survive, you know? It seems like a fun little goblin life, you know? Flashback to our goblin game. So I don't know, I think that adds a fun layer to, you know, role playing as for me. - True, that was all five of us, right? That was just us, our goblin campaign. - No microphones, no cameras. - Well, we did do cameras. - Just living in the moment. - No phones. - With a camera filming us. - That's true. - I mean, what other thoughts do we have? I don't know, I took notes on the, I thought it would be interesting to talk with the formatting, but I like that it's a concise game. I like that it's 11 pages. I like that it's, it's very digestible, easily digestible, easily to understand. - If I were to make anything in terms of the comment, I can't imagine building these creatures one trade at a time, genuinely. - No, yeah, like we mentioned it previously, but like there's so many factors that go in to like making them, that like seeing the overall projection of the traits, I think, would be a more streamlined way to do it. - Like not going one card at a time and instead doing all three at once? - Yes, always, just always doing that. I don't know why you wouldn't. - Yeah, I mean, I can see, I feel like it's much, it's more challenging if you do one at a time, 'cause then you have to be like, why the hell did I give my desert creature who's in heat all the time a thick furry coat? - Yeah. - But then you have to be like, okay, I guess it's gonna be hollow fur that's insulation from the heat and keeps a layer of cool. Like you'd have to, so that's why I think it would get a lot more wacky. - Like it wouldn't be as grounded, but you could do it. It just would be like, whoa. - When you're saying card by card starting from the top, first card mentioned to the bottom? - Like the way that the game is written, where it's like, here's what the first card tells you about the creature, figure out the details of that, then move on to the second card, figure out the details there, then move on to the third one, as opposed to reading through all of the things and knowing all the information and then just discussing the creature based on all that info. - 'Cause we read, you may also wish to look at the prompts for all three cards at once and said, yes, we do wish. - Yeah, we do wish. - I don't think anybody wishes. - I will say even with that, like I agree 100%, but I do think that the different things are laid out in a way that's like starting with the kind of environment and then the day, and then going to like mammal, like birdfish, like taxonomy, then the niche, I think is a fun way to proceed down it. I like how that's laid out. - Yeah, yeah, like developing in an interest, like in a logical progression that kind of-- - From the macro to the micro. - Yeah, yeah, zooming in. - Something that we didn't do that I'm kind of glad we didn't do or I don't know if anyone else did, I was not looking at the other options. You know, I was hearing like, okay, we are a decomposer or recycler, let's focus on that. I feel like if I had looked at the other options and had seen like burrower or builder as a different option, it would have steered me away from making the mole a burrower and I'm kind of glad that I didn't worry about that because I think-- - I almost did look at it. - I think you did look at it. - I almost said something because I was looking ahead and seeing, oh, the next one's also gonna be a burrower but then I didn't say anything. - 'Cause that was like, I think that it was almost more like the sparks and stuff of like, just take the word and run with it than like trying to leave a bunch more options open. - Which for our listeners, there were so many options I feel if we had pulled different cards in terms of the different, like, I mean, we happen to pull what all mammals, but there were at least like three other types of creatures and then in terms of like the features that made them notable, there were so many options and no, we didn't sit and like read all of them but if this was remotely interesting to you, there was a whole, there's literally a whole exquisite world out there for you to explore. - Much like sport. - I'm curious how this game was like designed initially because I'm thinking about it, I can't think of a single animal in existence that wouldn't apply to any of these parts, you know? - Me, 'cause I'm built different. Nah, 'cause you have captivating eyes. But yes, I agree. The fact that these categories that they're able to come up with encompass not only one, but like several different creatures we're able to come up with, for example, captivating eyes, there are creatures with captivating eyes, there are creatures with features that resemble captivating eyes that range from, you know, creatures that take flight like moth versus creatures that swim like fish. Don't ask me to name which fish, but I know there are fish that have big spots in the back because the predators might assume that that's the eye and bite that as opposed to the front of its face. - That's a killer whale too, didn't fake eyes. - Who's attacking a killer whale? - I don't know, big sharks or something. - Nothing. They are kind of queens as those, I feel. - No way, seals attacking a killer whale, chat. - No, no, no, like for-- - Chat, be prepared to clip this. - Not prepared. - Also, I was just, I multiplied out all of the options, like in terms of permutations for things, there's like two million, because you have 13 different environment details for different times of day, and then like just continuing, continuing, multiplying everything together, there's like millions of ways it could go. - I like too that a lot of them are like pretty wild, you know, like, oh gosh, let me find them now. I don't know, like prehensile digits is pretty rare in the animal kingdom, having like opposable thumbs and shit. And then there's some that are pretty mundane, like vivid coloration, like a lot of animals have that. So you can make both very normal animals and very weird animals. And I, although I ended up resenting it, the fact that I had said we can't speak as these animals did end up forcing me to use my imagination more in terms of, well, yes, this creature might be experiencing this thing that I wanna say with words, but it can't. So not only did we have like what you were saying, Mikey, like millions of options, the way that these creatures would express them are maybe different from how us humans would express them also to your point, Emma, about that we could be interpreting this animal behavior, but we cannot interpret it with anything other than a human lens because that's what we come with. - Like the mom drinking the wine. - Literally, do not talk to me until I've had my coffee. - I would love to talk about just really quickly a thing that Tori, you brought up during a, like when we were kind of off mic where you were asking if any of us had played solo RPGs because I think it brings up an interesting point because we talked with Tyler in the interview and he really recommended playing solo RPGs as something to do on the podcast, which I think we should definitely look at exploring whatever, whether that's like a bonus episode or just like a, you know, one person does it on their spare time. Who knows? But I would be really interesting to talk about like, I have not personally played a like game designed to be a solo RPG. This game very much could be that or a group one, but I feel like I have in a lot of ways because of like what I've come to realize is that a lot of these games that are about world building and stuff are a lot of just like prompts for generation for like world generation, which I've done alone as a GM a lot. Like when I'm playing, like, I feel like playing a solo RPG can be as simple as going online and finding a name generator for a character you're looking for. Like I have literally just generated characters for a campaign and just taken that character name that it gave me and created a whole like arc off of it or like used those word combinations to generate these things. And so like that's really cool. - Oh, and teaching, boom. - What did you say? - That's not what that is. - That's not what that is. - Not AI generation, just random shit. - Like random name generator. - Yeah. - What does it run on though? - It's somebody builds a name and puts a bunch of names in and then they-- - It's literally, it's a simple-- - They have like gnome generation so they have parts of the gnome name so it'll be like leaf, head hole, so they put a bunch of words and then then they mash them up together. - It's as simple as like you get any like official D&D DM screen and they've got like list-- - Who is that-- - Random names on there, yeah. - Oh my God. - That's an axolotl. - That's a beta. - Anisha's showing us a creature in the-- - That's an axolotl. - When I was in the first grade, I thought that I was gay. - That or it's, what's his face? This is, that's what the point of the mask is that are it's green. - It does look like dream. - Oh, is it just a blob? - Oh. - I thought it was an axolotl. - It's a mess. - It's just a dream. - It's got a butt. - See you. - That's it for our episode of Read Play Game. - Let's hear what it is. - Let's hear what it is. - Let's each of us come up with one last sentence or some shit to summarize our experience. And then, and I'm sorry editors, you will really have to do some fancy footwork with us tangenting around. - Before we do a final thought, I did wanna, I think if there's any part of the game that is really, I think, a bit harder to figure out, especially if you are not, I don't know, we've played together so much at this point and in so many different forms that I think we can fall into stuff pretty easily, it is that scene setting. Like I think if you're playing this in a big group, have your own plan for what that will be. Like, will everyone want to have a turn as the narrator? Will everyone want to have a turn as this and this and this or do you wanna, you know, like set your own, like going to lines and veils, set your own little rules for that in a group? I think would be a good idea to avoid like conflict in that scene situation since that's the most role play heavy and it's the part with the least rules. - Yeah, 'cause we usually, for these world building games, we read as we play and we kind of discover the rules as we go along. If you're playing with a bigger group or a new group, you should definitely have one person be the rules lawyer and kind of explain what will happen at each point of the game. So everybody's on the same page. - Yes, a rules lawyer and a moderator in terms of that, we had so many, we had no shortage of creativity and ideas and sometimes we would get so excited about, oh, well, this animal is an example of this. Okay, well, this other animal is also, where it was like, hang on, what are we talking about? And it was like, we would just get so excited in the what ifs and examples that we knew of that sometimes I would forget what the prompt even was, like what were we looking for, which was cool. And again, it's just a game, it's just for fun. It's not like we have a deadline on it, but yes, I can see how if you weren't a group of five people who had frequently talked and role played with each other, it could either go off the rails or become confusing in terms of where are we going with this? And how do we know when we found it? - Any other thoughts? - All I know is I'm so hungry, I could eat a raw rock. Fuck. (laughing) - I was with you. - It's a Renoir rock. - It's a Renoir rock. - You didn't even say the thing. - That's crazy. - That's crazy. - I'm so hungry, I could eat an Octorock. - That's the Octorock. - I'm referencing it's link from, yeah. - I'm so hungry, I could eat a Renoir rock. - Yay. - I'll cut to that, I'll cut to just that and it'll look like you said that. - Can we give us some laughs? - Okay, okay, do it again, do it again clean because I feel like we were talking when you finally got to it, okay. So yes, it could be difficult to figure out how do you know when you've finished. - Let's have some, let's have some closing thoughts. - Yeah, all I know is, I'm so hungry, I could eat a Renoirock. (laughing) - I thought it was just gonna be looking silent. - Oh, Mikey, or... - Classic, classic. - Would have a lot of meat on them, would definitely have a lot of meat on them. - I feel like the bullet counter just went down, actually. So... - We need a new victim, we need a new victim. Oh God, Mikey, you get to pick now. - But no, I wouldn't wanna subject anybody to that. - Back to you then, back to you then. (laughing) - Thank you. - But no, I think, you know, as always, I'm very happy to be able to spend the time with my friends and there's something... Versus other TTRPGs where it's more role-play focused, I think, you know, this... I think there's something really interesting about creating something, whereas with Ground itself, we were creating a world and some, you know, human characters with powers. I think this, in some ways, creating animals, creatures, I think, was... Might have been some... In some aspects, the most interesting to me, just because it felt like we were considering very holistically all of the aspects of these creatures. - Yeah. - All at once, which I liked. - Yeah, I didn't get into this a ton and I don't really want to, so it's great that this is a closing thought, but this seems like a really, really fun learning tool that kids should be doing in, like, AP Bio. Like, this should be a biology class, like, talking about evolution, talking about ecological niches. Like, it feels like a really fun way to dive into those concepts through play and with an imaginative spin. - Well, you heard it here. Tabletop role-playing games can be applied everywhere. They are useful in the classroom, useful with a group of friends. - Features, like, subscribe, ring that bell. - And with that, I think that we will... Oh, wait, we have to roll for the next game. - Yay! - Great, thank you so much for listening. Now we're going to roll to see what our next game is. We're gonna change it up a little bit from what we previously done. Instead of just rolling from a really long list, we wanna have a little bit more control over what we're gonna actually play, but we still want it to be random because that's fun and the appeal of RPGs. So, what we're gonna do is each of us is going to champion one game from our list, and then we're gonna roll a D5, or in our case, a D10 with, you know, an even spread of numbers. And then, whoever gets selected, we'll say whatever game may pick, and that's what we'll play next. - Okay, so who would like to roll the die? - You do it. - I'll do it, okay. What, I've been saying all this, and I don't even have a die in front of me. Roll one D10. Okay, let's see what happens. That is an eight, which is Tori. - Tori. - Which means next time that you readers, players, gamers tune in. We will be playing Kids on Bikes. - Let's go. - Woo! - Thank you so much for tuning in. We will see you at a different table on some bikes, and as kids, I don't know. All right, bye. - Okay, bye. - Bye. (upbeat music) (upbeat music) (upbeat music) (upbeat music) (upbeat music) (upbeat music)