Microscope

This game is just completely awesome. I hosted a game of this recently at a local games convention (BigBadCon, in Oakland, CA). We went from "what do you guys want to play?" to a detailed epic history of a world in just under 3 hours. We started with a nothing but a stack of blank index cards, and ended up telling the story of a civilization's rise, fall, and rebirth. It all began with a "war in heaven" which caused the fertility goddess and a cosmic dragon to die, creating water on the world. Then over ages and epochs, we described a war between humans and Kaiju. The rise of humanity's saviors and eventual tyrants, the demigods. Then humanity rebelled against the demigods, and finally stormed the gates of the heavens, and wrested the magic of "souls" from the remaining gods. We ran the game with six players, including myself. We had four hours to play, but ended up stopping after three and a half. That was the point where each player had had a chance to be the "Focus" (IE: "First Player" of each round, who gets some special narrative options that round). Three of the other players had read the book, but never played the game. One of the players ran to the dealer’s room during a break and bought a copy of the game, and the other two said they were going to their FLGS tomorrow to buy it. I'm really happy with this game. I'm already trying to figure out a time during the holiday madness to set up a few more sessions of it to show it off to my pals. Looking forward to playing it for many years. I can see tons of potential in this game for world builders and storytellers. Buy it.

This game should come with a warning label. The object of the game is to remove barriers to collaborative storytelling, allowing the players to become peers in the shaping of their joint narrative. It achieves this by removing the worst aspect of group world building, what the author calls "nuking Atlantis". This handy phrase describes those occasions when someone in the group has chosen to undo everything the group has created in such a fashion that it is definitively catastrophic to the setting. The mechanics get around this by removing the finality of any, and every, action. Indeed, why nuke Atlantis if you know that the rest of the group will just move to another time and space before or after that happened? In some sense this derails the value of the nuclear option by allowing the group to ignore it while keeping it canonical - as any bully knows their is no payoff in people ignoring you. This game is rife with smart and delicate mechanisms which undermine negative group dynamics but it comes at a cost in terms of traditional game play. Remember when DM's guides had to include in the preface that roleplaying games didn't have winning conditions because nobody knew what that meant? This is just as fundamental of a shift in what it means to play a game - and it should come with a warning label: No Winning Conditions No Competitive Gameplay Don't expect to win and don't play to compete.

This is a system created for role-playing and story telling games in a collaborative environment. But this can easily be applied in individual use for general creative writing as well. This is a container-based system where events and details can be recursively built up, and only ends when you decide to stop writing. You're not boxed into anything other than the rules you define for your own universe in the game. One can start from a specific scene and build out or start from a high level event and build down. It's ok to jump around and write any level of detail at any point in your universe without losing context. It's structured to easily track your details so you remember what happens in the scenes and which characters you have involved. From a collaborative perspective this system encourages participation from shy individuals, and sets up a structure where more outspoken individuals wait for their turn. The flexibility and robustness of this system make me think back to my creative writing classes in high school and college and I would highly recommend this for professors and/or students when trying to pull together and refine your ideas. It's also a good tool for background story development and world building for GM/DMs of other RPG systems.

Sit down with 2 or 3 friends with this and you’ll get some pretty crazy ideas right away. I especially like the menus for the “Yes” and “No” of the world, as you end up running into some funny roadblocks and interesting lore implications pretty quick. I was in a game where lying canonically didn’t exist, and it led to some pretty funny developments. Can’t recommend this enough to writers, improvisers, and ttrpg fans alike.

It is not entirely fair to consider this product a "role playing game". Since one does not play a singular role it is not fair to call it role playing. Also, it is not a game. This is because it has little if any objectives. However, it is a set of guidelines for a small group of people to tell a collaborative false history. At this one goal it wonderfully succeeds. After about 10 short pages of reading most anyone will be reasonably ready to participate in this endeavor. All that is needed in addition to the booklet is a pack of loose 3x5 index cards and a pen. After the first 15ish pages the rest of the booklet is simply tools and tips to help you along. The concepts of how this process works are simple and quite like a timeline. In one evening (3-5 hours) we had a really great setting to play that we were all very interested and invested in. This system is not unlike the Fate rpg setting builder module but has much more to it's structure. I can't understate how much fun our group had with it, especially for it's price.

Very lite on the role-playing. More about the building of history and lore of a shared universe. It requires imaginative players for best results.

The seller ships with an obnoxious sticker you can't remove less you damage the book.