Everything is Dolphins is a bare bones role-playing game created by author and musical artist Ray Weiss and later released, with accompanying art, by Tim Hutchings. Everything is Dolphins in turn has its roots in a groundbreaking video game, Ecco the Dolphin. And Ecco the Dolphin was inspired by some bizarre real-life experiments with dolphins that influenced the creation of the video game.
[h=3]Everything is Dolphins[/h]Tim Hutchings, who runs the Play Generated Map and Document Archive (PlaGMaDA), came across the game as a part of other material donated by author and musical artist Ray Weiss to the archive. It's thanks to his efforts that a Kickstarter was launched to produce the role-playing game professionally. Hutchings describes Everything is Dolphins occupying a curious place in role-playing game history:
In Everything is Dolphins, Weiss created a gonzo universe in which dolphins live on after mankind's age has passed. These dolphins are every bit as bloodthirsty as your typical D&D character, right down to wielding swords (something the many artists delight in portraying) and -- for reasons known only to Weiss -- wear derbies and smoke pipes. The rules are pretty sparse but entirely sufficient for a game involving dolphins. Thanks to the Kickstarter, there's also ploenty gonzo full-color art:
If the premise of dolphin adventures sounds familiar, it's because this game was inspired by the video game Ecco the Dolphin for the Sega Genesis system.
[h=3]Ecco the Dolphin[/h]Ecco the Dolphin was innovative because it featured the player as a dolphin, with the ability to "sing" as a form of echolocation and later as a weapon, and a "breath bar" that needed to be replenished frequently by surfacing for air. What wasn't apparent from the game's box art was that Ecco the Dolphin featured a sci-fi theme filled with ecological disasters, time travel, and Lovecraftian foes:
The Ecco franchise would continue this theme. It turns out that developer Ed Annunziata was influenced by a real life event that affected him deeply enough to include callbacks to it throughout the Ecco game. Annunziata admitted to reading the works of John C. Lilly:
That clue leads us to the next chapter of dolphin gamings' origins, and it begins and ends with the sad tale of a dolphin named Peter.
[h=3]Peter the Dolphin[/h]Peter's story is intertwined with the experiments of a scientist named John C Lilly:
Lilly hired an assistant to work with Peter:
Lilly's project lost funding, but he still had the dolphins. He ended up using a series of progressively torturous experiments on the dolphins. Depressed, it is believed that Peter committed suicide by drowning himself.
And what of Lilly? After using ketamine to "cure" his migraines, Lilly began using sensory deprivation tanks, which caused vivid hallucinations. These experiments would form the foundation for Paddy Chayefsky's 1978 novel Altered States, later adapted into a movie by director Ken Russell. During his sessions, Lilly came to believe he was being contacted by an alien being named from the Earth Coincidence Control Office – ECCO:
In short, Ecco the Dolphin and his alien foes were a parallel for a much more sinister group: ketamine-fueled scientists who were losing their funding.
Mike "Talien" Tresca is a freelance game columnist, author, communicator, and a participant in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program, an affiliate advertising program designed to provide a means for sites to earn advertising fees by advertising and linking to http://amazon.com. You can follow him at Patreon.
[h=3]Everything is Dolphins[/h]Tim Hutchings, who runs the Play Generated Map and Document Archive (PlaGMaDA), came across the game as a part of other material donated by author and musical artist Ray Weiss to the archive. It's thanks to his efforts that a Kickstarter was launched to produce the role-playing game professionally. Hutchings describes Everything is Dolphins occupying a curious place in role-playing game history:
While it is clearly the work of someone new to the design of role-playing games, it also displays the some of the sophisticated sensibilities one would expect from an old hand. Rather than the excess of complexity that clutters most freshman efforts, Everything is Dolphins offers concision and simplicity. The author gives few examples to illustrate how to use the system and no sample adventure, leaving much to the player’s imagination (and effort). With its bare bones, lacunae, and undeniable beauty, Everything is Dolphins is the role-playing game analogue of outsider art.
In Everything is Dolphins, Weiss created a gonzo universe in which dolphins live on after mankind's age has passed. These dolphins are every bit as bloodthirsty as your typical D&D character, right down to wielding swords (something the many artists delight in portraying) and -- for reasons known only to Weiss -- wear derbies and smoke pipes. The rules are pretty sparse but entirely sufficient for a game involving dolphins. Thanks to the Kickstarter, there's also ploenty gonzo full-color art:
The visual artists whose images appear in this book range from gallery regulars who show in Chelsea to people who aren’t merely self-taught, but who are still teaching themselves as we watch. There are “high” and “low” artists, but no established illustrators, and all have been shanghaied into drawing dolphins.
If the premise of dolphin adventures sounds familiar, it's because this game was inspired by the video game Ecco the Dolphin for the Sega Genesis system.
[h=3]Ecco the Dolphin[/h]Ecco the Dolphin was innovative because it featured the player as a dolphin, with the ability to "sing" as a form of echolocation and later as a weapon, and a "breath bar" that needed to be replenished frequently by surfacing for air. What wasn't apparent from the game's box art was that Ecco the Dolphin featured a sci-fi theme filled with ecological disasters, time travel, and Lovecraftian foes:
The game begins with Ecco a Bottlenose Dolphin as he and his pod are swimming in their home bay. One podmate challenges him to see how high into the air he can jump. When he is in the air, a waterspout storm forms and sucks up all marine life in the bay except Ecco, leaving him alone in the bay. Upon leaving the bay to search for his pod, he contacts several Dolphins, Pilot Whales, False Killer Whale and Porpoises from other pods, who tell him the entire sea is in chaos, and that all marine creatures had felt the storm. An orca tells Ecco to travel to the Arctic to find a blue whale named the "Big Blue", who is revered among marine mammals for its age and wisdom. Ecco meets pods of Beluga Whale and Narwhals. While trying to find the Big Blue in the Arctic Ecco was almost attacked by a Polar Bear. A Narwhal saves Ecco from the Polar Bear. The Narwhal helps Ecco find the Big Blue. Once Ecco finds him, the Big Blue tells him such storms had been occurring every 500 years and directs him to the Asterite, the oldest creature on Earth. He leaves the Arctic and travels to a deep cavern where he finds the Asterite. Although it has the power to aid him, one of its globes is missing, and needs it returned. However, this can only be achieved by traveling back in time using a machine built by the ancient Atlanteans.
The Ecco franchise would continue this theme. It turns out that developer Ed Annunziata was influenced by a real life event that affected him deeply enough to include callbacks to it throughout the Ecco game. Annunziata admitted to reading the works of John C. Lilly:
No, I never took LSD, but I did read a lot from John C Lilly.
That clue leads us to the next chapter of dolphin gamings' origins, and it begins and ends with the sad tale of a dolphin named Peter.
[h=3]Peter the Dolphin[/h]Peter's story is intertwined with the experiments of a scientist named John C Lilly:
Lilly was once a renowned and respected American scientist, with a particular interest in marine biology and interspecies communication. In the early 1960s he was given funding by NASA to research whether it was possible to teach dolphins to speak. NASA's logic was that if we could learn to communicate with dolphins, we would have a better understanding of how to converse with extra-terrestrials if they were to ever pop down for a visit. Lilly flooded a house in the Caribbean so that dolphins could live as closely as possible with him and his team, amongst them.
Lilly hired an assistant to work with Peter:
Enter Margaret Howe Lovatt, a young woman who heard of Lilly’s experiment, and because of her love for dolphins, she offered to lend assistance. Lovatt would end up working closely with one of the male dolphins, Peter, and their relationship would become famous thanks to Hustler, then later the BBC.
Lilly's project lost funding, but he still had the dolphins. He ended up using a series of progressively torturous experiments on the dolphins. Depressed, it is believed that Peter committed suicide by drowning himself.
And what of Lilly? After using ketamine to "cure" his migraines, Lilly began using sensory deprivation tanks, which caused vivid hallucinations. These experiments would form the foundation for Paddy Chayefsky's 1978 novel Altered States, later adapted into a movie by director Ken Russell. During his sessions, Lilly came to believe he was being contacted by an alien being named from the Earth Coincidence Control Office – ECCO:
The similarities between Sega's Ecco the Dolphin and Lilly's ketamine fantasies are undeniable. It's almost like the game's story is an amalgamation of his interest in dolphins and the wacky philosophy he spouted when returning to reality from his phenomenal K-hole trips. Alongside ECCO, Lilly encountered another alien life force, which he called the Solid State Intelligence. Unlike the entities from ECCO, the SSI were spawned by a mechanical solar system, and their main aim was to ravage the earth and destroy mankind. It's not unlike the much-documented cinematic battles between us fleshy creatures and advanced AI turned malevolent, and it's no stretch to compare the SSI with Ecco's Vortex enemies, those evil, dolphin-kidnapping, interstellar villains.
In short, Ecco the Dolphin and his alien foes were a parallel for a much more sinister group: ketamine-fueled scientists who were losing their funding.
Mike "Talien" Tresca is a freelance game columnist, author, communicator, and a participant in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program, an affiliate advertising program designed to provide a means for sites to earn advertising fees by advertising and linking to http://amazon.com. You can follow him at Patreon.
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