Evolution - what is it?

[acclue lockheart]

Evolution is a game made to simulate a fantasy world being created directly from the most base sentient beings right up to any given point in history. People come and go, years pass, races evolve, Gods become more powerful, and a world is made.

Everyone either plays a God or a race and goes about their own way to accomplish whatever ends they desire.

to learn how to play, see this website: ishtareh.awardspace.com/general.html

EDIT: turns out that site got closed, so I had to go look for the rules posted elsewhere

So what's Evo? To put it simply, its a game where you either play a Race (a collection of

creatures who are all the same general species) or a God (A single God entity that lives off

and gains power from the worship of the races). It's basically freeform, though for

game-mechanical reasons we have to quantify certain things, mostly when we have to compare

things. We'll get to the rules later.
The general format of the game is demi-turn based, in that for any single posting period we

deal with a period of time involving 1 game years which is equivalent to 5 earth years. Posting

periods will be 7 days per turn, though this is subject to change if I find the pace of play

especially fast or slow. What do you do during a turn, do you ask?
During any single turn every player that is a Race gets a certain amount of EP (Evolution

Points) to spend toward new abilities or to improve existing ones. No, we're not quite to the

point where we dive into that sticky quagmire of math with words like “diminishing returns”

waiting in ambush, venom of uncomprehending head-scratching dripping from their

algebra-based fangs. Don't worry, we have a nifty calculator to do it for you. But I digress.
Additionally, every turn each Race undergoes population growth, based on two major

statistics: Resilience and Adaptibility. Again, not into the math yet.
Every player who plays a God will get a certain amount of MP based on their worship,

temples, sacrifices, and other deific wankery. While actually in the play of the turn, Races

and Gods can interact with eachother in whatever manner they deem necessary, according to

how they want to roleplay their entity(ies).
While things like conflict, cooperation and Extremely Awkward Misunderstandings are bound to

happen, what will most likely happen first is that Gods will descend on Races like

four-year-olds on a disgruntled fat 33 year old in a plastic cartoon character costume in

search of their worship. This is good, since initially races will not be very populous and

race/race interaction will be low to nonexistant. That's good, because hey, it would suck to

get eradicated in the first 2 turns, right?
The Goal: Have fun. This is not a game you play to “win”. If you decide to make a race of

geno/xenocidal reaper-machines with a taste for nothing but the blood of innocent virgin

puppies, the world tends to gang up on you (the other players, not the DM. I don't

particularly care what you do.) If you do something like that, keep in mind that the other

players get more EP in total than you do, and even if you pump your EP into countering

categories in a spectacular display of metagaming, you will probably not win. Once again, I

find myself on 201 E. Tangent street. Its a semi-freeform RPG that people get into for the

long haul. I'm not saying you should avoid conflict, I'm saying the point of the game isn't

conflict. Conflict's just one aspect of it.

RACES


EP


What is EP?: EP is short of Evolution Points, which are how you designate how weak or strong

an ability is. In general, this only matters when taking into account adaptibility and resilience,

or when two races or a race and a god end up in a conflict. In general, when two aspects of

different creatures conflict, the higher EP wins. The simple example would be the race of

Ugga-Uggas arm wrestling a race of Bugga-Buggas, in which the UU's have 5 strength and

the BB's have 70. BB's win, every time.


How do I get EP?: You get EP in a set amount per turn based on the age of the world. In

the first age, it will be fixed at 10 EP per turn,and will increase to 20 in the 2nd age, 30 in

the 3rd age, etc. You start with 100 EP to place as you see fit, though there are certain

categories that you should have in your race regardless of your concept. They are:


Intelligence/Thinking Thing: What your race thinks with and how they think. All races must

be sentient (a brain rating of at least 1). Intelligence also caps how high technology skills can

go before stacking.


Toughness: How much physical punishment a race can take. Leave it at zero if you want

passing butterflies to be a serious hazard.


Agility: How your race moves around. You could make a race incapable of moving, but that

would be mighty boring, wouldn't it?


Strength: You won't go far if you can't pick anything up.


Language: Most sentients have some way to communicate. It doesn't have to be verbal

communication, your race could use sign-language, telepathy, smell communication, or

interpretive dance. Be as creative or vanilla as you like.


Grasping Appendage: Not technically necessary, as if you have a decent excuse or don't plan

on using technology at all you don't really need one. Still a good idea, though.


What to do with everything else? Whatever you like. There are some established rules on

certain things, like magic and technology, but I'll get to that later.


What does my race start with?
In a word, nothing. You can live in your selected environment (land or water), and by that I

mean you can breathe there. Everything else is what you spend your initial EP on. In general,

if you want to have a race that can breathe in both atmosphere and water, you'll need to

put in an SP investment of at least 10.


How does EP turn into SP (stat points)?
First, the difference between the two; EP is a set figure you get every turn and represents

the amount of change you can place in a single category per turn. SP is the value we actually

use to compare things. EP turns into SP on a dynamic ratio following diminishing returns (See,

I told you. Now take the fangs out of your neck and pay attention), based on the number of

SP already in a specific category.
In general, 1 SP costs (Current SP+10) / 10 rounded down. If you don't like formulas, here's

the ratio in a neater format.
0SP-10SP: 1 EP per SP
11SP to 20 SP: 2 EP per SP
21 to 30: 3EP per SP
31 to 40: 4 EP per SP
you get the idea.


What does this mean?
This means that as your race gets better at something, it gets harder to make it better at

that thing. This is in place to stop someone from simply dumping most of their EP into a single

category and becoming unstoppable. There are, however, ways around it, most specifically in

technology.


Physical Abilities:
Biology is a miraculous thing, and there a number of extremely useful abilities a race could

have that are just the way their body works. Stuff like excreting fossil fuels, manufacturing

biological diamond, flying, breathing underwater, burrowing quickly, big crazy claws, having

fifteen heads, shooting napalm from their foreheads, biological jetpacks, little tiny poisonous

snakes for hair, hydra-esque regeneration, or Golden Fleece are all within the realm of

possibility for physical abilties. Anything and everything about the looks, thoughts, society,

personality, and habits of your race are under your control. Go nuts. Keep in mind, though,

that even if you say your race can shoot black holes from its pinky finger, if you have 1 SP

in “Shoot black holes”, it will still only function as a 1 SP offensive ability for battle purposes

(really, really tiny black holes). Use common sense.


Special Physical Rules:

Mineral Eating: Rather than feeding as carnivores or herbivores, a race may choose to gain sustenance from minerals. This allows the race to use inverted fertility. This means that if the land has a fertility of 0, they will use it as 10, and vice-versa

Size (Bigger): All races start small. To get larger, you must invest EP into size(bigger). For

every 20 effective SP in this category, you go up one (DnD) size category (small medium

large huge gargantuan colossal colossal+) Strength and toughness both have 100% stacking

for this category. For every size you go up, you get one more resilience and lose one

adaptability.


Size(Smaller): All races start small. To get smaller, you must invest EP into size(smaller). For

every 20 effective SP in this category, you go down one (DnD) size category (Small Tiny

diminutive fine fine- fine--) For every size you go down, you gain one adaptability and lose

one resilience.


Herbivore: You can choose to have your race eat nothing but plants. This makes them one

size category larger, and penalizes them one adaptability (in addition to the adaptability

penalty from going up a size). It also should have a significant effect on how you roleplay

them, though this is of course up to you.


Technology:


Stacking:

Stacking is something you get to increase your effective SP in a category without investing

more EP into it. There are several ways to get stacking for a category, but a general rule is

that if another category that you have SP in can help that category, you'll get some kind of

stacking. How exactly do you get stacking?


One category that is a logical successor to another one gets FULL stacking with the thing it

replaced. A simple example, Stone tools get full stacking from bone tools. If you have 5 SP in

bone tools and put 5 SP in stone tools, you'd have 10 effective SP in stone tools (5 SP and 5

from stacking).


A General Technology stacks for 50% with a specific one: For example, Chemistry (a very

general category) would stack for 50% with gunpowder, for instance, because better

understanding of chemistry would lead to more refined gunpowder, better ways to make it,

etc.


Tools and Material technologies stack for 30% with things made with them. For example, if

you have 10 in metallurgy and 10 in Ironworking, you could get 6 points of stacking in Land

Vehicles, provided the land vehicles in question are made of iron.


Specialized Tools stack for 100% with what they're made for (and nothing else): If you have

15 in agricultural tools and 20 in agriculture, you have 35 effective SP in agriculture.


Specific stacking rules:


There are some rules that we've come across that need to be put down simply hard and fast.

Here they are:


NO technology can get more total stacking than it has invested SP. That means that even if

you could possibly get 300million stacking points in a category, it can never have an effective

SP more than double its invested SP. An ability with 20 SP can never go higher than 40, for

example.
NO technology can exceed a race's brain statistic. (before stacking)
Language counts as a technology for that purpose
A language has a written form if it has 15 or more SP.
Stacking DOES NOT apply to anything other than technology. Just because you used to spin

on your head to get around and walking is headspinning's logical successor doesn't mean you

walk any better.
Exception to the above rule: If you have a magic system that works like technology (for

example, very specific rune magic), it may get stacking. Run it by the DM first.


Prospecting:
Since the game is a freeform exercise, you can dig for just about anything and will probably

find it. However, in higher fertility squares (a concept we'll go into later) minerals are rare.

This is not Earth. You can dig for just about anything and will probably find it, and I must

emphasize this part WITHIN REASON. No, you can't dig for atomic weapons, gunpowder,

the fountain of youth, room-temperature superconductors, or ectoplasm. When your race

looks for a mineral, tell the DM, and the DM will tell you what you find. You will probably find

what you're looking for unless its in a high-fertility square or just plain dumb.


Plausibility:
Your race does not have to follow a technological progression mirroring that of humanity. If

you have a good explanation or biological reason, it is possible to understand nuclear physics

before you discover fire (if you see in the X-ray spectrum, for example). Exactly what

counts as plausible? What I say counts as plausible. If you aren't sure, the answer is

probably no, but ask anyway.
Note: there are two general types of technology categories; those that dictate how much you

understand a concept, like for example, chemistry, and categories that dictate how much you

can actually use a concept, for example, gunpowder. Gunpowder is an application of chemistry,

and a race with a mid-level understanding of chemistry will understand why gunpowder works,

and you can plausibly say that your chemists just discover it without any more explanation.

However, your race does not have to understand how all their technology works, provided you

can explain how they stumble on it. The more you have your race blitz past their

understanding of the world, the harder it is to keep explaining fortuitous accidents, and the

more likely that any single development will garner you NRP (Negative Roleplaying Points),

which I will go into later. Keep in mind, I'm hard to BS. I know a lot of science and I can

look up way more.


Tech Levels:
from 0-20 SP is considered a stone age understanding of a concept
from 21-40 is considered medieval
from 41-60 is a renaissance understanding
from 61-80 counts as a modern level ability
81-and up are considered high-tech.


Huh? If that's how it works, what's a “Stone age” understanding of computers?
Before you ask that question, you must take into account 2 things.

1. It is very easy to get stacking for high-level technologies, unless your race is full of

lucky bumblers, in which case you've probably gone far ahead of the age of the world.

Assuming you've got enough stacking to get 30 stacking in computers (for example, a

modern-age understanding of electronics, with 60 effective SP) than the 50% stacking from

that should give you modern computers with a modest SP investment of 30.
2. Those guildelines are for general technologies, such as physics, nuclear physics,

chemistry, medicine, etc. They don't really apply to specifics, such as computers. 20 SP in

computers may be a very useful device, depending on what kind of tech you have backing it

up.

Teaching:
A race that has at least 5 SP in a technology can teach a race that doesn't have or has a

worse version of that technology. This confers a bonus of 1 SP provided the taught race gets

at least 3 SP the turn they're taught.


Magic:


There are no DM imposed restrictions on the kinds of magic a race can use, nor on the

powers those magics can exert. However, the intensity of any magic category is limited by

the amount of SP it has. There are also some stipulations as to the effect of magic (or

psionics, or vodoo, or whatever).


Every magic category must be tied to a stat. For example, magic that is roleplayed as

sorcery would be tied to the toughness stat, memorized and codified spells would be tied to

intelligence, nature magic would be tied to some kind of nature lore skill, etc. A magical

ability can never exceed the stat it is tied to. When you make a magic category, note in your

race post what stat it is tied to.


Magic categories all have a single drawback, such as being tiring, being time consuming, taking

a large amount of concentration, setting yourself on fire in the process, etc. Generally, the

closer the magic category is to the stat it is tied to, the more this drawback plays a part in

the full use of an ability.


Be Specific. Putting 10 SP into “Fire magic” is veeeeery nebulous, and very open to DM

interpretation. Tell me exactly what your 10 SP in fire magic does. If you have a single

category that does a massive number of things, it will be very bad at doing those things.


Supernatural Abilities:
Want your race to breathe fire? Manipulate crap with the power of its mind? Put a pink spot

on a wall through force of will? Want to do stuff like that without dealing with the drawbacks

of magical abilities? Make it a supernatural ability.


Supernatural abilities require a power source ability, that does not do anything other than

power a supernatural ability. Possible power sources involve soul energy, absorbing the sun's

rays, eating uranium, internal hydrogen fusion, subsisting on the beliefs of small children, a

very powerful psyche, the alignment of the planets, etc. Put SP into them, and they work.

The only problem is that a supernatural ability can never be higher than its power source.

Resistances:
In order for a supernatural ability, physical attack, or magical phenomenon to work correctly

on another race, it must first overcome that race's resistance to it. Base resistances work a

number of ways:

A non-dodgeable supernatural ability (such as a cold wave, disease cloud, or poison (once its in

the bloodstream/whatever) must overcome 1/3rd of the race's Toughness rating, plus

whatever specific resistance that race has to it. (Temperature tolerance, Robust Immune

System, or Poison resistance, for the above examples)

A dodgeable supernatural ability or physical attack (Such as fireballs, lightning strikes,

thrown weapons, or melee weapons) must have more than 1/3rd of the target's agility to hit.

For the example of weapons, this would be a combination of strength and grasping appendage.

How well they work is determined by the formula below.

Dodgeable Attacks that land (Sword strikes, arrows, bullets, rocks, fireballs, lighning

strikes, etc.) must have more invested EP than the targets' total armor, for physical

attacks (natural or otherwise) + 1/3rd of their toughness rating. So a human in Kevlar body

armor (10 toughness + 45ish armor) would need an attacker with a weapon with greater than

48 1/3rd SP invested to be damaged. How well they work is dependent upon the attackers SP

after resistances are subtracted compared with the subject's toughness rating. While

magical attacks are rarely affected by armor, they may be, and specific resistances can still

work.

Mind-Affecting Supernatural or Physical abilities (Hallucinogenic spores, mind control,

mind-affecting psionics) must overcome 1/3rd of the target's intelligence rating, plus

whatever specific resistances the target has (Resistant to drugs and Iron will, for example)

to work. How well they work is dependent upon the attackers SP after resistances are

subtracted compared with the subject's intelligence rating.

Adaptability and Resilience:
A and R are figures that represent how well your race can cope with different environments

and feed itself (adaptability) and how much punishment it can take, how long they live, and

their position on the food chain (resilience). At the beginning of every turn, I'll post if your

race has changed adaptability or resilience. They start at 0/0. In general, you increase

adaptability by putting EP into categories that increase the number of individuals that can fit

into a single square, like farming, hunting, scavenging, etc. Anything that makes a race live

longer through moving up on the food chain or an increase in general health counts for

resilience. Is there a system for determining either? Yes, but it makes for metagaming if I

tell you what it is.


Growth:
Populations grow every turn based on several factors: how many of them there are in a single

place, how fertile the area is, their adaptability, and their resilience. To find an area's

population growth for a single turn, simply enter the relevant numbers into the calculator.


Advice for Races:


You can't have it all instantly. Sometimes you need to have patience to get where you want

when you want. You don't start a dnd campaign and then complain that you can't cast wish,

do you?


Don't metagame: Yeah, you as a player can see that the race you haven't met has fire

breath, but if you put EP into fire resistance for no good reason, everyone secretly hates

you.


Make Characters: Pick out a few individuals of your race for other players to interact with.

Name them. Give them personalities. It makes your race feel more “real”, gets you RP, and

can drive a plotline.


Don't think of your race as a single entity: Sometimes intra-race conflict is the most vicious

kind, and you shouldn't decide that your race is made up of ultra-cooperative altruists that

never conflict with each other. Make lots of political entities and roleplay their interactions.


Do not play to “win”: The point of the game is not to win. The point of the game is to have

fun. If you eradicate everyone, are you really having fun?

[acclue lockheart]

As for Gods, I couldn't find someone else to explain it, so the way it works is, you start off as a nearly powerless being in the pantheon, a sanction for all the Gods. You start off with 10 miracle points (MP) to impress some of the races into becoming your followers. If a deity fails to earn at least one follower in a period of three years time (or if they manage to lose EVERY single follower they have, they get another three years) they will simply vanish into nonexistence from lack of power. If they have no followers and run out of MP, they suffer the same fate.

Once they acquire followers, they are safe to do whatever they wish, but more followers means more power, and the deity will earn MP yearly at an exponential rate to their followers.

MP can be used to do various miracles (duh) based on any domain that the deity is part of. The amount of MP used shows how powerful it is.

1-10 MP: move an object, shatter a large boulder with your hand, heal a flesh wound, cause a flower to bloom, change water to wine
11-50 MP: cause rain for an hour, make a field flourish, transport a single being to another area
51-250 MP (Requires a temple or non-sentient sacrifices): block out sun for a minute, influence a sentient mind, drain a lake
251-500 MP (Requires a temple from at least two races, and non-sentient sacrifices): engulf a forest in flames, split a sea, unleash a plague
501-1000 MP (Requires a temple from at least four races and sentient sacrifices) : change the fertility of an area by 1 point, cause a minor ecological disaster
1001-5000 MP (Requires the worship of the majority of the entire planet's population): change the entire geography of an area, cause an extreme natural disaster, shift tectonic plates
5001+ (requires the worship of every single sentient being in the realm): you could destroy the realm with a blink of the eye.

Deities are automatically created governing over one major, general domain of the planet's forces and one minor, specific force. Certain domains cannot be taken due to their... well, cheapness... The banned domains are: life, death, time and nature. Life and death are kind of obvious, and nature could be misconstrued as so many things that it's just left out to avoid confusion. Time is right out because that would be confusing as HELL in any situation. No two deities can govern over the same domain.

Deities can create magical artifacts to bring down to the material plane to fulfill their own needs. A minor artifact has a single magical property related to any of the deity's domains. These require at least some work to be done on it over the course of the year. Major artifacts are extremely powerful objects that can be imbued with two different magical effects at once. These require some work to be done every year for three years. These years need not be consecutive. Only one artifact may be worked on in any given year.

Deities may also build constructs in the same manner. The construct will have similar physical abilities to the deity that made it (though they don't have to appear the same) and will simply follow orders given by the deity or a mortal the deity entrusts it to. Major constructs are capable of channeling magical abilities, and can possibly have sentience. A major construct requires 1 RP. These construct can be any size that the deity can enter the mortal realm in.

Deities live in an outer plane commonly referred to as The Pantheon. The Gods never actually leave this place, and instead of going to the mortal realm, they actually project an avatar of themselves there, leaving their immortal bodies in a sleep-like stasis wherever they decide to stay when they go. They may return instantly whenever they wish from the mortal realm, but the deity must remain in The Pantheon for a week's time after returning before they may project again. Originally, deities may only project as a medium or small creature, but for every new level of miracles they can use, their size may increase or decrease by one size category. This size is constant while the deity is projecting.

Deities have such power that any may simply will the death of a single non-hero mortal for 1 MP. Regardless of whether they use this method, or actually attack them, it still costs 1 MP. In this way, a mortal may overexert themselves and run out of MP, the same applies if a mortal actually manages to kill a deity's avatar. Overexerted deities must remain in The Pantheon for the remainder of the year, in a weakened state. They cannot create the power needed to create an artifact, construct, or any other year-long project, and any work already done on it is forfeit.

Gods have the potential to perform certain supernatural abilities related to their domains. These can pretty much do any magical effect that the God has a domain related to.

----------------------------

The Pantheon

The Pantheon consists of a large circular room that varies in size by the number of Gods in the realm, an individual room for each deity, a library, and a soul room. It is a place where the Gods have limitless power to alter their environments, the only restriction being the other Gods' power

The Center

This is the room that ties together the whole pantheon. It is a circular room with pure white walls, an elaborate hanging crystal chandelier providing as much or as little light as the inhabitants desire. The ceiling arches up into a large white dome, and the walls are covered with great, decorative columns of, you guessed it, white.

In the center of this area is a large circular table with a spot on it for each deity, specifically designed for them, and a chair made for each deity. In the very center inner circle of the table, a thin liquid sits in a shallow pool. Upon looking into the pool, a deity may look at any place it's seen before on the mortal plane. They may not interact in any way without projecting themselves.

The walls of the center have each deity's door, and a stained glass window in an arch over each door. All of these lead to each of the deitys' personal sanctuaries.

In one of the spots between columns lies a noticeably larger arch, that leads down a hall and leads to a spiral staircase up and down.

At the bottom of the staircase lies a library, and at the top, the room of souls.

Library

The Library looks nothing like one would think of a library to be. It is the only area of the pantheon that the Gods have no control over, or really an explanation for.

At the bottom of the staircase lies an elaborate closed door. It opens to what seems to be an environment that resembles the mortal realm. It may resemble a forest, or a frozen tundra, or even the inside of a volcano. Every time the room is entered, the environment has changed. Sometimes it is impossible to access certain parts of the library, and the only solution is to return later when the environment has changed.

Inside the library, one can find all sorts of documentations hidden among the environment. Books, scrolls, papers, all lie about the area and display information on the mortal world. What air is, how fire burns, the currents of water, the level of gravity. All open knowledge for the Gods to use.

The information on these documents cannot be drastically altered. One may change the gravity to be slightly lighter, or change the color fire burns as, or maybe even alter which direction rivers will flow. One cannot, say, have air be completely composed of water. Such drastic changes will simply be ignored and will be displayed as normal the next time one enters the library. Also, such subtle changes can only be changed if the deity governs the appropriate domain.

The Room of Souls

The room of souls is a small circular room directly above the circle. It has several elaborate paintings hanging on the wall, displaying recent events in mortals' memories. If it is a time of conflict, scenes of battle may appear. If there is an abundance of food for a race, they may appear as great fields of their crops.

At the end of the hall lies a small set of steps that lead to a deep pool of a thick, sticky, transparent-blue liquid. Inside the liquid can be seen the very souls of mortals that are recently deceased. They silently await to be slowly returned to the stream of souls that all mortals originate from. When they die, the soul will simply appear, as they were when they died, in the pool. They will simply wander the pool lifelessly until they eventually start to blend in with the liquid, and disappear completely. While there, a deity may confront these souls, find any specific mortal's soul, ask them questions that they may or may not answer as their leisure. Occasionally, the heroes of a particular race may end up here. A deity may easily recognize these powerful mortals and decide to reincarnate them anew rather than let them rest. Generally, this is fine by the hero since it will not remember it's time in past lives anyway. They may be brought back as any race, and would be considered a year-long project. If there is conflict between Gods over which race it will be, it will simply return by whichever is more powerful.

-----------------------------

RP and NRP

RP, or roleplaying points, are given out in rare oppourtunities when the DM deems that a race or deity has written an exceptional piece that really demonstrates good roleplaying. RP can be used to purchase certain valuable resources:

Races

A hero is born: 1 RP

A stroke of luck in the environment allows a year-long project to be completed instantly: 1 RP

The race has a particularly prosperous year and raise the area's fertility by 3 for the year alone: 1 RP

The race makes a small evolutionary breakthrough by pure accident: 2 RP

Gods

perform a single miracle of the next level up (If MP is drained below 0, they are overexerted, and their MP returns to 0) (cannot be used for absolute power, meaning no 5000+): 1 RP

create a major construct: 1 RP

complete a minor artifact: 1 RP

Earn a new supernatural ability: 1 RP

govern a new minor domain: 2 RP

govern a new major domain: 3 RP

NRP is like bad karma. If someone does a gloriously bad job at roleplaying, such as meta-gaming, god-modding, using a game-breaking amount of outside knowledge or anything like that, they get NRP. NRP is pretty much a guarantee that something bad is going to happen in the near future. NRP can be bought off with RP, or you can wait for the consequences to take effect and let it go away on its own.

The Environment

The environment on the surface can be seperated into a hex pattern, where each hex is roughly 900 square miles (30 mi. x 30 mi. if it were square). These areas range in fertility from 0 to 10, ten being a paradise, and 0 being virtually unlivable. the "eden rule" says that no race may start in a territory of fertility 7 or higher.

The fertility listed in a water space applies only to aquatic races that live there. Unless your race has some way to adapt to living permanently in the water, the fertility is 0.

Starting Stats

Now that you know the gist of playing the game, let's discuss what you start with.

Races

Races start with the typical 100 EP to begin with, and start out with 4 adjescant hexes on the map. You start with 1000 organisms to spread as evenly or unevenly as possible in your territory. Be aware that the fewer organisms that are in a single area, the slower they will grow. You could choose to place 250 in each area, or you could pick one spot and focus all 1000 there. Focusing in one spot can also have a drastic effect in territorial conflicts later in the game...

You can choose to trade off a little to get an edge up on evolution. If you think that you'd rather like a few more EP, you may trade off population for EP at a rate of 1 EP/20 population. Be aware that your population will suffer drastically, not just at the beginning, but later in the game also.

Gods

Gods start simply with a major domain, a minor domain, a single supernatural power, and 10 MP. They get their own table, chair, door, room, and window for the pantheon, and that's it. They won't even have the knowledge of what is happening when they are created. They simply appear in The Pantheon and must discover their surroundings as they go.

As with the races, Gods have a starting trade-off. Rather than starting with the usual supernatural power, they may choose to begin with two related minor artifacts instead.

Calculators

itbcalc.awardspace.com/calculators.phtml

These calculators are necessary to find out how much MP you get and how much your population improves. Bookmark it and use them in game

[acclue lockheart]

If you need any further information on the game, I've been informed of a thread that did an in-depth study on the game.

www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?t=73957