HISTORY OF
[INSERT WORLD NAME HERE]
A Microscope Game
Microscope is a game about worldbuilding. Not in the literal sense, as the players do not take the roles of gods or anything like that; rather, the players work to create a rich and detailed history of the world, building off of ideas and concepts introduced (and/or modified) by the other players. It is, essentially, an exercise in creative writing and roleplaying.
Microscope describes itself as a "fractal game." That is because the game works by adjusting the focus in and out as the players see fit. The game starts with the beginning and ending of the history already known; the bits in between are filled by establishing new facts about the world that do not contradict existing facts, and then exploring the implications and consequences of those facts. Essentially, the game is one long answer to the question of "What is this world?"
Everyone is equal as far as creative authority goes; there are very few rules about what you can and can't write, but everyone is an equal participant, and nobody has any precedence when it comes to any particular aspect of the game. Nobody owns anything. A character, a god, a city, a secret society; they are all tools to be used by every player, regardless of who introduced them to the game. Technically speaking, there isn't even a GM; I'll be something like First among Equals since I'm the one who owns a copy of the rules (and I'm the guy who'll perform general thread maintenance,) but when it comes to actually playing the game I have no more or less power than anyone else.
The game is called Microscope because a lot of the game involves zooming in to describe details, and zooming out to describe the bigger picture. The different levels of "zoom" are called Periods, Events, and Scenes. Events are always associated with a Period (much as the Battle of Gettysburg is associated with The American Civil War,) and Scenes are always associated with an Event (much as Pickett's Charge is associated with the Battle of Gettysburg.) You can create or destroy anything you want as part of your description just by mentioning it, even if they've never been mentioned in the game before then.
A Period is a very long (but undefined) length of time, on the scale of decades to centuries. A large war is about the smallest amount of time a Period could encompass, while something broader like a "golden thousand years of peace" would be towards the upper edge. To create a Period, you need to determine when it occurs (by placing it between two existing Periods,) and you need to describe the Period. The description of a Period shouldn't be too long; a brief paragraph summarizing what happens during this time, how it begins and ends, and how it's different from the Periods around it should suffice. Don't go into too much detail; that's what the rest of the game is for! There is always room for more time between two Periods, which is why we don't try to tie dates or times to anything.
An Event is something specific that happens during a Period, such as an important battle, a festival, a marriage, a technological discovery, so on and so forth. While Periods are broad, sweeping descriptions of everything that is going on, an Event is tied to a time and a place (though like a Period, exact times are not measured, and the literal length of an Event is not important.) To create an Event, you must place it within an existing Period, before or after any existing Events within that Period (for example, the Battle of Gettysburg Event occurs in the American Civil War Period after Abraham Lincoln is elected President, but before the Confederate surrender at Appomattox.) Then, like a Period, you must describe what specifically occurs during this Event, and how it ends. In our Civil War example, the Battle of Gettysburg Event might be described as "a pivotal battle near the Pennsylvania town of Gettysburg which turns the war in favor of the Union, ending General Lee's audacious invasion of the North." Like a Period, you shouldn't take much more than a paragraph to describe what happens; leave additional detail for Scenes. If you start writing an Event that seems to overlap an existing Event, you should probably create it as a Scene within that Event. Anything that builds up to or describes the aftermath from an Event is probably a Scene, and not a separate Event.
A Scene is the smallest unit of time, and details what happens in a specific place at a specific time with specific characters. While Periods and Events might read like chapter summaries from a book, a Scene is more like an excerpt. However, it is important to remember that Scenes should exist for a reason. As Microscope puts it, they should be "asking a question." While Periods and Events describe What happened and When, Scenes are uniquely suited to answer Who, Why, and How. The Question a Scene asks should be given as the title for that Scene; for example, the Pickett's Charge Scene within the Battle of Gettysburg might be titled "Why were the Confederates forced to retreat from Gettysburg?" with the Scene detailing the horrific casualties the Confederacy sustained as a result of the action. A given Scene should only give enough information to answer its Question; if the players want to explore Why Major Generall Pickett was ordered to Charge, then they'd have to write another Scene to answer that question. Once you know what Question you intend to answer, you place the Scene within its Event relative to any other Scenes associated with it.
When creating a Period, Event, or Scene, there are only a couple hard rules to follow:
Don't contradict established facts. As the game goes on this will get harder to manage as there will be more and more history to keep track of. If it happens that a player write something that breaks continuity, we should first try to explain it in-universe (is a character acting on inaccurate information? is there enough time between the original event and the contradiction for a plausible explanation to exist?) and only retcon a given post as a last resort.
Only write something relating to the current Focus. (More information on what exactly a Focus is can be found in the next spoiler.) You don't have to write something directly related to the Focus, but there should be some connection. To keep with the American Civil War example, if the Focus was the Battle of Gettysburg then you could write Scenes within that Event, or you could write Events that led to (or resulted from) the Battle of Gettysburg (and of course, Scenes within those Events,) or you could write a Scene about archaeologists exploring the battlefield hundreds of years later (even if the archaeologists spend more time drawing parallels to current events,) so on and so forth. Tenuous connections are fine, so long as they are clearly connections.
Don't use anything forbidden in the Palette. The Palette is basically the list of genre conventions our collective story is obeying; more on that later.
You have three days to post. If you don't post something in that time frame, we skip your turn and push you to the bottom of the list. If you miss that deadline, then you just don't get a turn this round. Please let us know if you drop out entirely so we don't waste time waiting on you.
In order to play a unified game (instead of having a dozen separate and largely unrelated stories,) all players must write something related to a specific theme which changes throughout the game. This theme is called the Focus, and it can be pretty much anything: a person, a place, an institution, a civilization, a concept like Love, Anger, or Justice, a specific Event or Period, even something you make up on the spot (though in that case you should use your turn to define what exactly you're talking about.) You can pick the same Focus again if you want to explore the same topic more thoroughly, or you can pick a related Focus to view things from a new angle. The Focus determines the direction of the game, and keeps everyone on the same page. If you're unsure what to Focus on, pick something specific and concrete like a person or a place; a narrower Focus leads to more detailed and personal history.
The Focus is declared by the current Lens. The Lens is just a fancy term for "Player One," really. Everyone takes turns being the Lens, which gives the game something of a round-based feel. Once the Focus is declared, players take turns creating Periods, Events, or Scenes related to that Focus. The Lens goes first, and has the opportunity to create two things on their turn, provided they are nested; a Period with an associated Event, or an Event with an associated Scene. This gives the Lens additional power to get the Focus going. After every player has had a turn, the Lens gets to go again, and can again create two nested items; this gives the Lens the opportunity to have the last word about their Focus.
After all players have addressed the Focus, there is a brief Legacy phase. One player (the previous Lens, aka the current bottom of the turn order) can pick an element from the history generated during the previous Focus to remember to explore later on. A Legacy is basically a thread that can tie weave throughout history from one Focus to another: a person, a place, an organization, an artifact, even a school of thought can be Legacies. There are only ever as many Legacies as there are players; if a player wants to choose a new Legacy, then they must drop their previous Legacy. This doesn't mean that the thing they chose stops existing, it just means that it's no longer "in the spotlight," so to speak.
Once the player has chosen the new or existing Legacy they want to focus on, they write an Event or Scene (but not a Period) based on that Legacy. They can write whatever they wish, since the Legacy phase has no special Focus other than the Legacy itself. Once that is written, the Legacy phase is over, and the Lens shifts to the next player. The cycle repeats.
It is in the nature of these games to not have a definite ending point; the game will last as long as there is sufficient interest in it to keep going. When you no longer wish to play, tell everyone before the start of the next Focus. That way, if it turns out this will be the last Focus of the game then everyone can use the last Focus to build to a satisfying conclusion.
So let's play a new game! Since I'm the one introducing the game, I'm gonna be a jerk and unilaterally decide the first two steps of starting a new game. The first step is to come up with a simple overview of the history we're going to create, a single sentence that encompasses all of creation. The Big Picture.
The gods create a new world protected from the ravages of Primordial Chaos
The second step is to create Bookends; the very first Period in the game, and the very last Period. The beginning and the ending of the story. All other Periods will occur somewhere between these two Periods. For organizational purposes, I'll be putting one dash before Periods, two dashes before Events, and three before Scenes. I'll also be
bolding the titles of new Periods and Events, to make them easy to pick out. As the timeline gets filled out, the Periods and Events that are well defined can be shortened to just their title.
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Creation The gods separate themselves from the rest of the universe, creating their own world.
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Twilight of the Gods The gods fade away, their energies diffused into their own Creation.
There! Now we have an idea of how everything starts, and how it will all end. The specifics, and everything in between, are yet to be created!
The next step is to create a Palette. A Palette is a collection of things that every player agrees to abide by in the course of the game. Essentially, it's a list of things exceptions; things we definitely want in the game that wouldn't necessarily be expected of the setting (if we really want Steampunk to be a thing in this world, for example,) or things we definitely
don't want in the game that you think other players might want (if you really don't want gunpowder technology, for example.) Note that if you want something in the game, and everyone is alright with it, it still doesn't exist in game until a Period, Event, or Scene occurs that describes it. If the Steampunk example passed, for example, there would still need to be an Event to mark the beginning of those shenanigans.
This game will hold no more than six players at a time. Or, in other words, I'm looking for up to five more players to join me. There will be a waitlist in case a player drops out before the other players are done with the game.
If you're interested in playing, just make a post saying so along with any Palette choices you'd like to make. Feel free to debate or negotiate with other players' Palettes; we can't start until everyone is happy with everything that will be going into the game.
For my own Palette choices...
Magic should be powerful, but rare. Magic should be a big deal, and I'd rather not have a world like Harry Potter, Xanth, or 3.5 Dungeons and Dragons where everyone and their uncle uses magic to clean their unmentionables and slay their orcs. More Sword, less Sorcery, such that in a big battle each side might field tens of thousands of soldiers, but only half a dozen magic users, if that. Of course, those half dozen mages will be doing crazy things like generating tornadoes or earthquakes or whatever; they're not irrelevant, just not numerous.
No alien races. By that, I mean I'd rather not stray too far from the "regular" cast of fantasy races. Cosmetic changes and unique spins on the elves or dwarves is fine (and quite welcome!) as is inclusion of some of the less common races like kitsunes or gnolls or whatever, but I don't want to have crazy unique Mary Sue races in the game. No psionic starfish people with invisibility abilities, or stuff like that. If they're hard to relate to, they're not appropriate for this game IMO. Cool monsters, yes, whole civilizations of them, no.
From here on, this thread will be used for OOC rules discussion. All content posts are to be placed
in the game thread.
