Mars, Aliens and Beyond: A Board Game Story in Space

around 20 years ago i bought a piece of the moon or at least i bought a certificate and a little map that said this piece of the moon was now my land for half the cost of a ticket to the millennium dome i could look out the window and feel secure in the knowledge that if we ever terraformed the moon i would already have somewhere to call home what a crocodile i always loved space and the chance to be part of it was just too much to resist even if that deed is more useful as a piece of toilet paper actually the ownership of the moon is still a disputed topic and one that is argued about by space lawyers yes that is a real title but you know what i still own this certificate because more than just watching a sci-fi film or tele show it made me feel part of the future part of something bigger than just being a short kid from a small town in england we as a human race have always been fascinated by the skies ancient civilizations track the movements of visible celestial bodies to explain changing weathers or for navigation the hindu vaders mention cosmological concepts more than 3 000 years ago the placement of egyptian pyramids is aligned with certain stars many languages still use planets to mark days of the week and the administrative calendar that's used around the world is based on one first proposed by greek astronomer in 4bce space is a subject that transcends cultures and ephemerality we all feel we share space it joins us as humanity as the space scientist maggie aderin pocock once said when you look at the earth from space there are no countries there are no boundaries we're just one people so what does this all have to do with board games like me with my certificate when we play a game about space we get a sense of participation in the worlds beyond earth we're not just reading or watching we're doing this is an exploration of some of these board games looking at the inspirations behind them and how they fall between science fiction and science fact let me take you on an adventure of what board games can teach us about the stars about the future of the human race and what the broadcaster trevor mcdonald has in common with the planet uranus [Music] no other planet in our solar system has intrigued us more than mars today there are a multitude of board games about the red planet most of them look at how we might travel to or survive on earth's smaller brother some of them even look at what we might find there cosmic plurality is the idea that the universe has multiple worlds containing different life forms and throughout history there have been various philosophical and theological arguments about it but scientific questioning didn't arrive until after copernicus formulated that the earth was not the center of the solar system whilst islamic and european scholars had for a long time thought this it was never widely accepted but copernicus's work meant that we were no more special than any other planet and if there was life on earth what might we find on other worlds it's easy to see why ancient cultures looking at a red circle in the sky would name it after gods of war anger or fire the romans called it mars the babylonians nurgle the greeks aries and an ancient hindu text mangala this led to the eventual thinking that the martians might be angry people the possibility of life on mars was further propelled by its similarities to earth relating to seasons and weather scientists christian hergens and william herschel also made discoveries relating to martian polar ice caps but then herchens also believed that jupiter must contain hemp there was logic behind this if all the worlds like earth contain land and seas jupiter being really big must have a lot of sea it also has a lot of moons which are good for navigating and therefore sailing but why hemp well because rope is made of hemp and boats need rope herschel on the other hand saw the sun as a large bright planet that rained the ingredients for light and saw no reason why there wouldn't be civilizations there i mean he did live most of his life in slough where there is no sun so we can forgive him for getting it a bit wrong in the late 19th century an optical illusion made it seem like there were man-made canals on mars this caused rumors to explode an imagination to flourish in 1901 a song was written about what a signal from mars might sound like sent somehow via an enormous lamp and the 1910 edison film a trip to mars showed us how martians would trap us in their icy breath and turn us into snowballs in fact the people queueing to buy the first beatles album wouldn't have been able to give you a definitive answer whether there were people up there the real surface of mars was only discovered after mariner 4 spacecraft sent back images in 1964. at the beginning of the board game renaissance in the 1970s and 80s games featuring mars really weren't about mars at all they tended to be war games or dungeon crawlers that loosely used mars as a setting by the end of the 20th century we had yet more war games but this time featuring real m ms as board game components or quiz games with spaceships that clearly ripped off thunderbirds we still had a long way to go we first see games that use mars in any true sense in mission red planet in 2005 and mars in 2009 these games look at the logistics of travel the martian landscape and the atmospheric problems that we might encounter even more recently games such as terraforming mars surviving mars on mars first martians and martians all center around expeditions to mars and building civilizations and this is where we are today our obsession began with wondering what those people on mars might look like and we've reached a point where we think we know because it's us these games create stories of the first people on mars their successes their struggles their frustrations and ultimately their loss or victory set in the 2400s terraforming mars depicts a sparsely settled cold planet while earth is still livable she is also overpopulated you are a corporation trying to do a good earthing by making mars warmer wetter and filling it with more bears and moss than your rivals you know i've planted basil in my garden terraforming is hard fortunately you don't have to do this on your own there's other corporations helping you and also trying to steal your title as premier earthinator sci-fi often presents the future as utopian or dystopian neither we've managed to become an altruistic and harmonious society or we've ravaged earth so much we have to eat our own snot terraforming miles however is very human the cards create a sense of what earth corporations on mars might really be like you're bringing life to the planet via plants and animals you're creating helpful tech like breathing filters and cloud seeding and you're achieving that by stripping mars of all its resources for profit terraforming mars begins with traditional science fiction it talks of governmental bodies for peace prosperity and unity and although for us human settlement on mars is a vision for future generations we begin to see by the mechanisms of the game how this might be created each round of the game is a generation evoking just how long it would take to terraform a hostile but non-threatening world as the saying goes blessed is he who plants trees under whose shade he will never sit this altruistic vision is something we've come to accept yet i can't ignore the dichotomy of people and corporations gaining for themselves under the pretense of the betterment of humanity some spend billions of dollars evangelizing their pseudo-scientific visions while others keep their eyes focused downwards looking at how we can improve conditions here on earth going to mars is exciting but terraforming miles reminds us that there is a thin line between reaching for the stars and having your head in the clouds first martians reads a bit like a backstory to terraforming mars the year is 2029 a year that nasa would see as overly optimistic but not impossible for human travel to mars the machines to keep you alive have already been built your job is to maintain and improve them to create foundations for further exploration first martians was never a good game and potentially seems to have been abandoned by its publisher but it does explore interesting themes of how human psyche and cooperation function on a world without hobnobs rather than focusing on what would be on mars through various missions first martians looks at how we would be on mars it centers on the story of needing human comforts like pot noodle how we can work to make sure those things are not taken away and how we react if they are the problem with whoever built this base is that they have the competency of a drunk chimpanzee because everything breaks all the time you're just trying to do your job dusting off bits of rock or whatever but oh no the garbage disposal has exploded and now you're covered in your own filth sweet first martians is entropy the board game it's also an exercise in managing morale under the most trying conditions unlike games set on earth you can't find food explore or even breathe without engineering it the gameplay evokes literal feelings of stress you fix one thing as something else goes belly up you're constantly juggling but you're juggling eggs and eggs are your only food and you've dropped them all impu you also have the reassuringly indifferent attitude of the app acting as a record log and annoying music generator anyone who's ever been to a theme park knows how irritating it is to have hedges singing at you all the time i can only imagine the app is replicating this depicting how the morale of humans is slowly scratched away by the incessant repetition of thematic tunes like a tory government first martians takes away your fun your food your security and causes fights whilst forcing you to maintain a level of joviality because if you don't you will literally die i can't think of another game that represents the hubris of our hopeful but oblivious species any more than this on mars takes place between these timelines in 2037. it like terraforming mars places you as part of a private corporation being the first to try and settle mars however it also depicts the struggle of having to be dependent on earth for resources if you're living on mars you can't just nip out for a croissant on your coffee break your nearest patisserie valerie is almost 217 million kilometers away and no boss is going to appreciate a 10 minute break that lasts 14 months on mars has you bouncing back between the red planet and the space station above it where other astronauts have bunged a load of earth's resources like with magic crystals much like someone who's just passed their school exams your goal is independence from mother you'll research explore and construct buildings deemed critical for human habitation to generate oxygen you need plants to grow plants you must have water to gather water you must have power to generate power you need to mine minerals to mine minerals you must have people and to have people you need oxygen even if it is possible creating this arborist on mars will take hundreds of years of input from earth's people and resources it's an intricate and laborious project and arguably is only necessary if we in the developed world continue to live as we do on mars highlights something that in 1798 thomas malthus called the earth's carrying capacity what do we do when our planet is full and can't sustain her population we've become so preoccupied with finding new places to live like the old woman who lived in a vinegar bottle we've forgotten what makes our home special casting it off like a tatty old sweater that we've picked full of holes and then when it gets cold we were told forget about the old sweater just get a new one it's more exciting we revere those who make promises and invest time and money into mars all the while treating what we have as disposable but one day we might find out that not only is there no new sweater there's not even any wool to make it [Music] in the same sense that all pop-tarts are sandwiches but not all sandwiches are pop-tarts there are games about space that are nothing to do with mars but that doesn't mean they don't tell equally compelling stories whilst we know that we're not likely to encounter a species we can talk to or keep as a pet there is still hope for life in our solar system multiple planets and moons have been speculated about and last year a study led by cardiff university sparked headlines such as aliens could be living on venus maybe but so far we don't have the ability to prove one way or the other planets are endlessly fascinating mercury is shrinking uranus is sideways and neptune reigns diamonds but it's the idea of extraterrestrial humanoid life that captures our interest our brains are programmed to recognize things that look like us even if they aren't quite us it's the reason that we find clowns and robots unsettling and why we see jesus in a piece of toast bacteria on venus just doesn't fire our imagination in the same way futuristic life forms we encounter through science fiction tend to have qualities we associate with humans reasoning language or the ability to make terrible mistakes like bitcoin but it also imagines how they might differ from us and through board games we get to be alien gaia project with its cover art reminiscent of zeroing puts us directly in trad sci-fi it looks spacey like a novel from the eighties it creates a setting using a comfortable mattress of real world terminology such as minds or federations then pops in words that are in our world but the contexts are created for the game such as brainstorms and transdim planets and if transdim sounds familiar it's because trans-dimensional engineering is what makes the tardis bigger on the inside gaia is a game that asks you to be the best at making other planets habitable in the heavens above terra mystica by turning them into worlds like your own you can go it alone or you can try to terraform near others working together to achieve common goals one thing is clear from the rule book though however you go about it your colonization will be peaceful in 1977 the voyager mission was launched on board was the golden record designed to be a representation of what earth is and sounds like it contains chuck berry mozart wind dogs barking greetings in various languages and images of our planet what it didn't contain was negative images or sounds of earth no wars no statues of slave owners nothing that would make us seem anything less than welcoming to anyone who found it this interstellar cv was launched with hope hoped that it would eventually be found in the vast nothingness of space beyond our solar system we as humans don't have a great track record when we encounter people who are different just ask any neanderthal but gaia project like the voyager record focuses on positivity trading researching and coexisting the game uses the setting of space and aliens very loosely the different species are just there to create a symmetry we don't really know who they are there's no backstory no definition all we really know is what their abilities are perhaps the designers kept it purposefully vague allowing us to be creative or perhaps it's a social commentary on the fact that as humans we only care about what others can do for us let's drop the pretense this game doesn't even try it's called gaia project and the rule book repeatedly talks about terraforming gaia and terror being the greek and latin words for earth why would an alien species want to make their planet like earth it's like a game about an englishman trying to turn all bread into baguettes but that's not the game's fault we don't have succinct terminology for turning a non-earth planet into another non-earth planet words like venus forming or mercury forming feel like a slice of cumbersome pie in your mouth just there to fill a hole nor does it imagine unique terrain every race comes from a planet that is made of a constituent part of earth such as volcanoes or deserts or ice but inadvertently it touches on a very real problem that we have imagining what aliens might be like arguably it's an impossibility like freud said that we can't imagine ourselves dead we can't imagine people beyond earth as humans no matter how different we are our single shared cultural experience is being of this planet we are the only remaining species of hominid but we know that modern humans lived hunted and even mated with other species perhaps one of the fascinations with finding life out there is that we're lonely two games that put extraterrestrial races at the heart of play are twilight imperium and sidereal confluence both of which ask how people from other worlds might communicate and negotiate these games are incredibly nuanced and complex so anything i say here will be an oversimplification but one thing they do very well is amplify the feeling of slipping into someone else's skin humans in fantasy are often shown as the jacks of all trades neither excelling nor terrible at any one thing that's especially appropriate in sidereal confluence because you the human player can trade anything from cubes to tech to ships to promises the idea behind sidereal is that you have a lot of stuff but it's nothing you need and everyone else is in the same galactic boat so rather than going to war and looting your enemies you passively aggressively weedle it out of them instead twilight imperium has more of a fine i'll trade if i have to feel like you don't really want to but you realize it's sometimes necessary to achieve galactic domination each race in ti or sidereal have different abilities but they also have different ideas on how to advance their species their backstories are rich and create forward momentum they're nomads or plants or diseases doing what plants or nomads or diseases do the pull is not just that you're playing an alien but that you get to do it through the lens of someone who experiences space and measures success in very different ways from us scientists don't know if life exists beyond our planet the fermi paradox looks at the billions of inhabitable worlds and asks if there are aliens why haven't we met any of them stephen hawking thought aliens are likely but thought we probably wouldn't want to meet them comparing them to columbus's treatment of the people he first found in america and some people of course believe that aliens are already here alien encounters tend to fall into broad categories either they're benevolent bringing amazing technology that makes us feel like cat weasel or they're fighty and want to destroy us or sometimes both what ti and sidereal do is bring us a different narrative they're still easy to define with human categories there are more logical species or a more war driven species but they also let us bring ourselves in the arboric or the zeth become almost like avatars but played by different people my l1 z1x mine net will be very different from your l1 mind net even though in both cases it's still the l1z1x mind net we are the result of 4 billion years of evolution on earth and so is your pet dog and so is a garden slug humans are one of the most widespread species on the planet even though we're not the best adapted to anywhere in particular unlike the ant that can live in the 50 degree sahara desert or the wood frog that can stay frozen for months at a time we need our technologies to survive whether any more extreme than grimsby so it's reasonable that alien technologies would be created to help them survive too but their physiology and mentality would be the result of the evolution on whichever planet they came from our survival is based on our physical needs whoever we are and wherever we are we still need to eat sleep and feel safe but alien-based needs could differ from our own if like plants they could capture energy from light they wouldn't need to hunt or identify poisonous berries this could change their culture too lunch boxes and celebrity bake off would be a mere thing of mystery it's an unlikely example but one that illustrates how even when our base needs are met they still affect us sidereal and ti bring these considerations into cardboard the joel gnar didn't evolve to their environment and so created technologies to mitigate this the unity faction literally uses garbage that no one else wants board games allow us to see people from other worlds not as weird and singular but as extensions of ourselves they help us to reconsider the limited linguistic or cultural ingenuity sometimes seen in sci-fi vulcan speak vulcans frankie speak ferengi just like you and i may speak a different language so will any species we play [Music] in my day pluto was a planet there were nine planets and that was that we didn't question it as school children no more than dick turpin asked about the triceratops we didn't question it because science sort of didn't know better other small dwarf planets had been found like ceres just beyond mars but they didn't have a classification yet just like a dinosaur bone could have been known to dick turpin but at the time was thought to be from an enormous man after neptune was discovered people wondered if there was anything yet beyond it the term planet x was popularized by percival dowell the same guy who talked about canals on mars and denotes such a planet it was thought to exist because of the funny things it was doing to neptune's orbit and then along comes pluto hurrah but then pluto was found to be too small to affect anything at all so the search for a tenth planet began this search in earnest didn't last long but speculation of another planet beyond those we know of continues today planet x might remain beyond our ken but that doesn't stop us trying to reach it in cardboard i mean by playing board games not in a cardboard rocket that would be silly based on a real 2015 mathematical model the search for planet x looks a planet in our solar system that is so far away it could take 20 000 years to orbit the sun and turns it into a neat logic puzzle your job is to scan space listen to lectures and present papers on your theories of where it might be you're competing to be the first scientist to discover the location of this peculiarly probable body and announce it to the world using the app you'll find various pieces of the puzzle and fill in the rest yourself deducing not only the location of the planet but what lies in the space surrounding it you'll gaze down at the sky looking for asteroids dust clouds comets and various other space fauna and see how they interact with each other leaving only one section of space that planet x can be in and then you'll finish sciencing and score some points i have no idea what it's like to discover a planet but the puzzle in the search for planet x emulates the rush of trying to be first to see what others haven't been able to and to take risks without knowing whether you're a genius or whether you're a hack in the days before deliveroo early humans were nomadic we would move from place to place searching for the best plants or shelter to keep our woolly knickers dry when it rained although modern times has planted a tesco express on every corner we are the product of our ancestors and we still feel that drive it's like going to a hotel room and looking in every jaw and cupboard you don't need to and even if you did find food in there you probably wouldn't want to eat it but we still look because we're curious and because we can space is thought of as the final frontier which is kind of odd because we still know almost nothing about 95 of the seabed but we feel we basically know what's in the sea marine life and trash there are no krakens or loch ness monsters or underwater civilizations but space retains that mysterious potential early european map makers sometimes depicted mythical creatures such as dragons or lions on areas that were uncharted and potentially hazardous in fact it was widely believed that creatures on land had equivalents in the sea sea sheep sea dogs sea lions but if they thought other parts of the earth were so dangerous why did they go there our brains have evolved with a sense of discovery it's something that's helped to survive and almost certainly got us eaten a few times we have adapted over thousands of years either physically or through technology to all manner of environments always pulled by the need to look in those drawers and we have european classical thinking said that the antipodes were simply too hot to have life thankfully this isn't true and as such we had one of the greatest romances tv has ever seen similarly we're told that space is uninhabitable to which we say watch us watch us build and discover and create watch us find life where there is thought to be none watch us learn the search for planet x is a continuation of this the game makes you consider how to spend time efficiently whether you go through one sector of space with a nick comb or broadly sweep the skies with a garden broom all the while looking at what others are doing helping you make conclusions for yourself by submitting theories you may be helping other players find out what's where but you might also find out things you didn't know from their papers only one of you can be the finest scienceman but in the words of nasa's jim greene if planet x is out there we'll find it together there are far more games about space and planetary discovery than i can mention here some are truly excellent and some are roller move games that feature woody woodpecker i hope that what you've seen here is an example of how space games can spark imagination the science behind them how they reflect our humanity and the joy of creating unique narratives like our ancestors before us we look up at the sky and want to find out more space games can make us think about our own planet question what we want from the future and ultimately they keep us curious and if you're wondering what trevor macdonald had in common with uranus they were both named after king george space board games the universe all these things are powered by our patrons and this month at no pun included we're running the patreon pledge drive and we are committed to bringing you the most exciting videos about board games that we can imagine if you'd like to be part of this stellar cast of people who make no pun included possible you can join them at patreon.com forward slash no pun included your contribution will not only give you access to newsletter videos and our nifty discord community but you'll receive bonus extras like our audio log and efka's running series on his top 97 games here's the best part no matter how much you decide to contribute you'll get exactly the same rewards as everyone else isn't that nice of course it's nice because our patreon is nice and it's never too late to join see you there [Music] a [Music] um [Music] so [Music] cinderella [Music] uh right [Music] so [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] so [Music] so [Music] you

Channel: No Pun Included

Views: 29,697

Rating: 4.9036393 out of 5

Keywords: no pun included, board game, review, npi, boardgames, boardgamegeeks, brettspiel, brettspiele, jeuxdesociete, tabletop, games, juego de mesa, gamenight, space, exploration, science, travel, aliens, mars

Id: DtXcmidc8J0

Length: 34min 38sec (2078 seconds)

Published: Thu Apr 08 2021

Reddit Comments

[u/douglasstoll]

inexplicably, youtube took it down. very disappointing, was looking forward to watching it

[u/cottage-in-the-city]

Damn I just missed out. Any clue what youtube took offense to this time?

[u/Boardgaminglurker]

This is an excellent video by Elaine. NPI has been producing such great content recently.

It also makes me wish I could go to a convention so I can play Sidereal Confluence. This video and Efka's previous review made me realize (a) I would love the game and (b) I'd never be able to get the game to the table.

[u/Carighan]

Slightly unrelated, anyone know whether The Search For Planet X is confirmed to get a second print run?