In Which I Am A Hypocrite

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.

Microscope Dungeon Creation

For people who mostly play "trad" games, the immediately obvious use for Microscope is to spend a session or three creating a setting and history, both GM and players together, and then using that setting as the backdrop for 'ordinary' games of D&D, RuneQuest, Call of Cthulu, or whatever. This sort of thing is apparently already going on, all over the place, and lends itself to 'troupe play' with rotating GM-ships and adventuring parties, a la Ars Magica.

Now I learn that it's being taken a step further and people are creating dungeon histories using Microscope. To which I can only say, "Cool, or what?" ("What" is the wrong answer. "Cool" is the correct one.) I wouldn't want to do it all the time, because let's face it, discovering the history of a dungeon (that the DM has come up with by himself, in a darkened room) is part of the joy of dungeoneering Old School Style. But certainly I think there's room for it in the kind of 'troupe play' I mentioned above. This would see the dungeon as being, basically, a shared world, which people could GM and run games in on a casual basis.

The USP, of course, is that you know the broad sweep of the dungeon's history, so you could have different adventuring parties exploring it at different points in the timeline. You could even have groups of adventurers discovering things the aftermath of previous forays by other adventuring groups from decades or centuries earlier. To which I also can only say, "Cool, or what?"

Microscope in Play

Last week I recommended Microscope on the basis of downloading and reading it. Today I can recommend it on the basis of playing it. A friend and I sat down for a couple of hours and gave it a run through, and enjoyed the experience.

A caveat: there were only two of us, and though the game works with two, you really need more than that for it to run properly. But in spite of that I felt that it came together surprisingly well: initial awkwardness about what to do during a "scene" - which is basically like free-form role-playing within a certain structure - quickly faded and we got into the swing of things very easily. The history we created charts the life time of a city, from founding to dissolution, and encapsulates a Mantis God, ab-humans, anti-daylight, Big Fuck-off Pterodactyls (BFPs), and street wars between merchant guilds. We filled out bits of it in detail, skirted over others, and left huge swathes unexplored.

I wouldn't call Microscope a role playing game. I'm not even really sure I would call it a game. (Not that it particularly matters.) It's more a set of tools for structured brainstorming: a means by which you focus your creativity like a lens on different subjects at a time and make them grow. And it is quite potent stuff. Properly guided, a group of people can come up all kinds of crazy and wonderful nonsense within a surprisingly short space of time.

This is why I think the potential criticism of Microscope - that you might as well just sit round as a group and create whatever your want; why bother buying the game? - misses the point: structure, to a certain degree, is important. It stops you meandering, drowning in a sea of too much choice and freedom. Microscope gives you just the right amount of discipline, providing a framework in which group creativity can flourish.

Some Recommendations

I don't generally do reviews (mainly because nobody sends me game to review...), but I have two games to recommend:

First, I've been reading me some Microscope the last few days. It's one of very few gaming purchases I've made in recent years, and well worth it - I wouldn't call it an RPG, by any means, more a "cooperative creative endeavour", or something, but it's undoubtedly one of the most interesting games I've laid my hands on. Go buy it. It's cheap. And if you need a further recommendation, the creator was a guy who wrote something you have probably heard of.

Second, I've also been reading me some Adventurer Conqueror King the last few days too. As a genuine attempt to expand OD&D's "end game" into something interesting in its own right, I think it would be hard to better; and furthermore, as an application of real-world economics, history and sociology in playable form I think it's beyond reproach. I'm not a huge fan of some of the modernising elements when it comes to character creation and game mechanics, but that's a matter of taste. It's certainly the best thing since Birthright at answering the question: "What do I do with all these gold pieces now?"

Try them. You might like them.