The Rule of the Jungle and the self-invasive species

This just squeaks in as my contribution to this month's Blog Carnival, hosted this time round at Hereticwerks with the theme Invasive Species.

It's partly inspired by the recent release of sixth seventh edition 40K and rerelease of past fifth editions of D&D, and maybe the latest report from GW, or some of the reaction to it. It's for tabletop gaming in general, so no specific system, a form of propluristemic content. It's an off-the-wall rule or regulation for more fully marketizing the gaming group.

In the wording of the rule, a gamer providing support is a Financier, but this could vary by setting: maybe Lender or Rentier for pseudomediaeval or historical settings, anything from Bloodsucker through Shareholder to Saviour for modern, depending on tone, and for an overblown grimmer and darker setting maybe Splitgripper, Souldealer or God-Enabler.

                                                                                                                              

The Rule of the Jungle

Traveller, the epi-character and a very long game

First go read this. Epigenetics focuses on the idea of meaningful genetic change being passed down the generations by means other than DNA. Lamarckism is the supposedly discredited thinking that change to an organism in a single lifetime can also be inherited.

The article suggests that life has developed methods to transfer by reproduction not only genetic information, but even the experiences of the parents, a form of actual knowledge.

The significance of this is difficult to downplay, and the ramifications are going to keep people occupied for a long time. This is something traditionally fantastical, hard sci-fi at best. Before I come back to what this could really mean, a quick detour through gaming.

Symbiogenesis, you and me

Over the weekend I worked on a location for the next in the series, a fallen orbital lodged in bedrock which has produced a strange ecology, but maybe not such an alien one. Looking at symbiosis in evolution, I found this interview with Lynn Margulis, a critical thinker who died last year, but someone who's still changing minds on what life may be.

After Gaia she's most linked with endosymbiosis, the theory that cells fused to make new cells, which is one that made the long journey in from the fringe to the mainstream against the usual resistance. But that's only part of symbiogenesis, the idea symbiotic relationships drive evolution too, with gradual change only part of the truth. She says:

Evolution is no linear family tree, but change in the single multidimensional being that has grown to cover the entire surface of Earth.

That's not core yet, but we're moving that way, even if the vids suggest it will take time.

The first part covers education, and needing to see the sources, plus Carl Sagan, former husband and father of two of her children. In the second things warm up, and the third gets onto the nature of current science and suggests how much there is to understand.

For a sense of why this approach could be so important even beyond big steps forward, just look at the quotes in Science on "the sprawling religious persuasion of Anglo-Saxon Biology" and mainstreamers who "wallow in their zoological, capitalistic, competitive, cost-benefit interpretation of Darwin". More on that here. We may be inside the science.

And that's not all - here's one for gamers and game designers to adapt to our kingdom:

Genuine insight into morphogenesis, the emergence of form ... comes not from computer models but from intimacy with the microscopic and submicroscopic behaviours of living beings.

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Space marines in space

With 40K getting old, and a sixth edition probably on the way, I thought I'd ask a few questions and suggest some ideas, as a series, maybe with a title like 'flashes in a grim darkness'.

It's partly for the designers at GW, to lend a hand, even if we know they won't always want or be able to use the ideas. It's also for designers everywhere, who can add them to games direct. The point is to inspire and help keep things spicy.

The first is for space marines as a whole, who do after all look to be the buttresses holding the edifice up. Get them wrong at the edition change and it might end badly for shareholders.