Experience points (Epic Quest Bio)

Experience points (XP) are the game points of Epic Quest Bio, the role-playing game through which Molecular Reality Corporation organizes its work and its volunteers. Members earn them by completing tasks called quests, which range from reporting a bug on the company's website, worth 10 XP, to sequencing DNA with a solid-state nanopore, worth 9,900,000.^[1] The points are counted in the company's members' software, EQBio-OS, which shows each member's total in a small box at the top of the screen.

Experience points come from tabletop role-playing games, where they measure a character's progress toward a higher level. The first rulebook of Dungeons & Dragons (1974) does not state a rate for awarding them, but its worked example gives 7,700 points for defeating a troll and recovering 7,000 gold pieces, which readers have taken to mean one point per gold piece plus 100 for each level of the monster.^[2] Computer role-playing games adopted the system.

Epic Quest Bio applies it to a company. The essay that introduces the game presents it as the management system of "the real-life biotech startup Molecular Reality Corporation", in the form of a role-playing game.^[3] The help pages of EQBio-OS describe the loop in one sentence: "Players choose 'Character Classes,' complete R&D 'Quests,' and earn Experience Points (XP)." The classes are described under Character classes of Epic Quest Bio.^[4]

The company's case for running research as a game predates the points. A scientific and technical overview it wrote in December 2022 says that solid-state nanopore research "is notoriously difficult" because "hands-on ss-nanopore research is extremely tedious and expensive" and "strategic coordination rarely happens above the level of individual labs and companies". Its remedy was "a nanopore hardware platform that's also a gaming console", which "replaces the frustration of failed experiments with the fun and challenge involved in game play".^[5] The game was then called Epic Quest Biotechnology, a name Kent Kemmish later found "kind of generic, first-idea sounding"; it became Epic Quest Bio in 2025.^[6]

The points moved into software when the company opened EQBio-OS in March 2026. Kemmish's first message there described it as "the operating system of a real-life biotech startup", which members could also "think about" and "interact with" like a game.^[7] Quests arrived in the inbox as messages from the company's characters, and awards of XP arrived the same way.

Most points come from the quest board, a list of tasks with a value in XP beside each. Others arrive in messages: when a message in the EQBio-OS inbox carries an award, the member claims it by pressing a button. The claim sets off a short display in which "+N XP" appears in the middle of a green vignette, the new total appears as "Balance: N XP", and twenty small symbols, drawn in turn from a set of six that includes a hexagon, drift across the screen. The display removes itself after 2.4 seconds.^[6]

Each member's running total sits in a small black box with green lettering at the top of the screen, and clicking it opens a log of the awards behind it.^[6] Some awards are fixed in the software. Adding a custom avatar earns "+1.2 XP once, the first time you add a custom avatar". Visitors who have not joined accumulate "shadow XP", which is kept if they sign up.^[6] Points can also be fractional by design: in The Disclosure Crawl, the company's quiz dungeon, each answer in one room's prophecy quiz is worth about 0.06 XP and each pair in its matching game about 0.05.^[8] The same game defines XP bonuses for each of its four starting classes and never applies them.

XP is one of two kinds of reward in the game. The other, badges, records when and how a member joined; one is given to members who "signed up to play Epic Quest Bio™ when it was still Epic Quest Biotechnology™".^[6]

The values on the board run from 10 XP to 9,900,000. In October 2026 it included these quests, with the company's wording:

The largest quest, worth more than four times all the others on the board combined, asks for a result no one has yet published: reading DNA base by base with a solid-state pore. The company's pun for the same goal is the Holey Grail.^[1] The two social quests price a viral post at one hundred times a banger.

The 500 XP quest for an encyclopedia article about the company was the first quest entered on the board. By October 2026 it had been switched off, though the board does not record when; Molecupedia was begun on October 25, 2026.^[1][6] The 200,000 XP quest for a peer-reviewed paper was also closed; none of the company's work on mechanical nanopores has appeared in a journal.

Among the quests still open in October 2026, most asked for company rather than science. An "Interview with Kemmishtree" was worth 500 XP, "For everyone from tenured professors to fresh undergrad researchers"; hosting a local meetup was worth 500; booking office hours to "talk about anything" was worth 100; and reposting the company's posts was worth 10. The World Particle Project, at 1,000 XP, was the open quest that involved samples. A quest to play the company's quiz show, JeoPOREdy!, was worth nothing at all.^[1]

Brownian Business Daily described the system in "A Biotech Run as a Role-Playing Game" (October 21, 2026), covering experience points as game points, the character classes, the 9,900,000 XP quest and the dormant quest for an encyclopedia page.^[9]

• Experigaming
• Player Scientist
• Molecular Streaming Corps