Every era, ranked by life expectancy
The first thing Life Like decides about you is when you were born, and it's the single most consequential roll in the game. Each of the eight eras carries its own baseline life expectancy and its own stat modifiers. A medieval life and a far-future life aren't the same game with different scenery — one gives you roughly 42 years to work with and actively damages your health and wealth, the other gives you 120 and hands you bonuses to both health and smarts.
| Era | Years | Life expectancy | What it does to you |
|---|---|---|---|
| Antiquity | 480 BC – 120 BC | 45 | Health, smarts and wealth all penalised |
| The Middle Ages | 900 – 1390 | 42 | Heaviest health penalty in the game |
| The Industrial Age | 1840 – 1905 | 52 | Health and wealth penalised |
| The mid-20th century | 1928 – 1968 | 70 | No modifiers — the neutral era |
| The cassette age | 1972 – 1992 | 76 | Happiness bonus |
| The present day | 1998 – 2012 | 81 | Smarts bonus, happiness penalty |
| The near future | 2070 – 2110 | 95 | Health and smarts bonuses, slight happiness penalty |
| The far future | 2300 – 2600 | 120 | Large health and smarts bonuses |
The pre-industrial eras are the hard mode
Antiquity, the Middle Ages, and the Industrial Age are the three eras that fight you. Between them they cover plague, soot, unregulated everything, and very sharp swords, and the numbers reflect it: life expectancies of 45, 42 and 52, with health penalties on all three and the Middle Ages taking the worst of it.
Playing these well means accepting that you're not going to out-earn the era. Wealth is penalised, smarts is penalised in two of the three, and the clock is short. Runs here tend to score on the strength of a few decisive events rather than long accumulation. If you're chasing a high grade, a medieval birth is the roll you least want; if you're chasing a memorable story, it's one of the best.
The mid-20th century is the control group
Uniquely, the mid-20th century applies no stat modifiers at all. Jazz, rationing, and rotary phones, and a clean 70-year baseline. Everything that happens in that life is down to your birthplace, your family, your gift, and your choices.
It's the most useful era for learning the game, because nothing is being quietly added or subtracted underneath you. If you want to understand what a particular choice actually does, a mid-century run shows you most clearly.
The modern eras trade happiness for capability
The cassette age and the present day sit close together in life expectancy — 76 and 81 — but pull in opposite emotional directions. The eighties give you a straight happiness bonus: neon, hairspray, and mixtapes. The present day gives you a smarts bonus and takes happiness away, which is either a sharp piece of design or an uncomfortably accurate one depending on your mood.
This is the clearest illustration of why the highest life expectancy isn't automatically the best draw. A longer life with a happiness drag can end up scoring below a shorter, warmer one.
The future eras are the strongest draws — with a catch
The near future gives you 95 years, bonuses to health and smarts, and only a small happiness penalty. The far future is the outlier of the whole game: 120 years of baseline life expectancy, plus the largest health and smarts bonuses available. Orbital colonies and uploaded grandparents.
The catch is that the far future is also the rarest era to be born into, and length alone doesn't win. A 120-year life still has to be filled with choices worth making, and a long life spent accumulating nothing scores like a long life spent accumulating nothing. Length gives you room; it doesn't give you a grade.
The far future is also the only era that can place you in an off-world colony, which brings its own trade: a large smarts bonus against a social penalty and a health one. Recycled air and a great view of nothing.
What to take from this
You don't pick your era, so none of this is a strategy in the usual sense. It's context for reading the life you were handed. A B-grade run out of the Middle Ages is a considerably better piece of play than a B out of the far future, and knowing the baseline you were working against is most of what makes a result interesting.
Next: your starting hand — place and family, or the six stats explained.