Patrick, one of the players in my regular group, has posted an AP of sorts for the session we had on Tuesday. We decided to create a shared world with Microscope, in which we plan to share a rotating GMship and run different campaigns in different genres.
I think we all started off with good intentions to create a darkish, hard SF setting, but things got weird, silly and fucked up very quickly - it progressed from a reasonable beginning to a sprawling melange involving, amongst other things, war meetings between the President of Humanity and his Chief Warlock, "ontological warheads", and a not-Tyranid race called the HMBTs (Hideous Murdering Bug Things). It ended up with a genetically engineered Velociraptor called Spielberg tending a sculpture garden in which a murder was taking place, on a space station in the Oort Cloud with a pseudo-Byzantine culture featuring an AI who was basically a futuristic version of OK Cupid. (And this after I'd claimed hypocritically to prefer my settings to be not-so-gonzo literally the day before.)
You can read all about it here, if you're odd enough to be interested.
Of course it was those meddling other players who took you from Mass Effect to Spaceballs, right?
ReplyDeleteTo be fair, I think I was the one who skewed everything by having, in the first scene, an insane Space Marine called Bo Lucas who looked like Ving Rames using a mecha to destroy his own home space station.
DeleteI use to love taking a break from serious play, back in the day. Of course back then it was Paranoia or Toon. Sometimes we would even break out Orcs of Thar, playing a bunch of goofy orcs and goblins out to raid the human village.
ReplyDeleteThe Orcs of Thar is legendary to me. I've never been able to get my hands on a copy, and now it's not even available on PDF (if it ever was).
DeleteYet another stone removed the Edifice of Noisms. May we someday rebuild.
ReplyDeleteEmergent gonzo (which is superior to 'willed gonzo' in every way) happens.
ReplyDeleteontological warheads [...] HMBTs (Hideous Murdering Bug Things) [...] on a space station in the Oort Cloud with a pseudo-Byzantine culture [...] Hyper-Neanderthals [...] the Jovian hypermind
There's no part of this setting that is not relevant to my Moebius-loving interests.
Yes, that's a nice way of putting it.
DeleteI think it was a hoot! There might have been some sillyness in places (me playing one of the characters as Napoleon Dynamite might have contributed to that) but there was a genuine beautiful tapestry unfolding.
ReplyDeleteOne of the great things about Microscope is that the Periods and Events are big, they are epic - but when you get down to it, the Scenes are about people. Sometimes they are gardening dinosaurs, sometimes they are teenagers, sometimes they are mutating psychics. Not everyone is a hero or a paragon (or thinks they are a paragon). I find that quite freeing when it comes down to it.
Here are some of my thoughts on the session over on my blog.
So I was going to say "no wait, THIS is what I mean by gonzo mashup" but it seems you beat me to it.
ReplyDeleteRun to the hills? Or drive?