Say hello to my little friend…
For the past two and a half years, I’ve spent less time on ars ludi because I’ve been heads-down, nose-to-the-grindstone, designing and playtesting a game. A fairly ambitious game, you could argue.
Now, finally, I’m done: Microscope is finished, and I’ve unleashed it upon the unsuspecting world.
It’s not what you’d call a “normal” role-playing game. For most of my life, one of my favorite parts of gaming was the joy of building worlds. When I made Microscope, I took what used to be solo, pre-game prep and put it squarely on the table. As you play you make a world together — a fractal history you expand and explore — that you never would have conceived of alone. I am constantly surprised by what we create when we play.
Speaking as a career world-builder, it fucking rocks.
You may be thinking: but creativity-by-committee sucks! You just get watered-down gruel! And you might be quite right. But don’t worry, Microscope has that covered.
What else is unusual about Microscope? I’m describing it like it’s just a world-building game, but there’s also that small matter of completely defying chronological order: knowing the end and zooming in to explore the middle, jumping backward a thousand years to find out how the kingdom was founded — the description covers all that pretty well.
While it was in development, I kept the discussion over on the Lame Mage blog, but now that Microscope’s done I’ll be talking more here about some of the strange lessons making such an unusual game taught me about games in general.
But for now, it’s beer o’clock.
Leave a reply
@JMenefee: Sounds like this is a case where I should be thanking you. Keep up the fun!
I posted the game intro in a play-by-post recruitment thread and got the most enthusiastic and excited reaction I’ve ever had in a PbP game. Several people went and bought the game just because they read the intro! This thing is amazing, thank you so much for putting out such a useful and exciting game.
@ Confanity
“You may stop me, but you can’t stop my vision: to combine the glory of man… and the glory of fish!”
Love it.
Thanks for the article link too. Yeah, it’s hard to say how the techniques of Microscope translate to other settings, but I’m all for cross-pollination, so I’ll jump in.
@ mykel: Tricky. You are in danger of running afoul of the “no preconceptions” and “no one owns the history” maxims. Not impossible, but tricky. There may indeed be a whole ars ludi post coming on this topic…
Got Microscope. Read Microscope within 24 hours. Played with friends on the next weekend. Best line of the evening: “You may stop me, but you can’t stop my vision: to combine the glory of man… and the glory of fish!” It’s an excellent game; thank you for making it!
In the meantime, just ran across a column today and made a connection.
If you were into that kind of thing, this could be a hook for you to make a whole lot of money, given that the fundamental purpose of Microscope is to force a group to work together creatively without their groupness smothering creative thought. If the structure were divorced from the “create a fictional history” task….
http://www.theatlantic.com/life/archive/2011/04/the-creativity-killer-group-discussions/237531/
Maybe that’s not your bag, or I’m missing some obvious gap in practice. But nu?
Ben, I bought Microscope, and I was wondering . . . what sort of advice do you have for if I want to use it in a pre-established setting? (In this case Fallout: Arizona, shortly after the events of New Vegas.) The history surrounding Arizona is largely untouched, so there’s a span of 200ish years I can develop, but certain things have to happen between those two dates to maintain continuity. Do I insert things before play, then?
I think this might make a good ars ludi article . . . ? ;]
@ Chris: Yeah, I have to admit I can’t really be sad about getting booted when the reason is that we’ve got so many people wanting to jump in that we have to spawn a whole second game ;) Still, I did have some history-envy of the “secret societies steer the galactic empire” seed I had to leave. It was starting out pretty sweet. We did a swords & sorcery history instead.
Hey Ben, I’m so not sorry I was the one who got you kicked out of the Microscope game at GameStorm on Saturday!
Thanks Andy! And if the urge to hype Microscope across the entire internet becomes overwhelming, and you simply can’t resist anymore, I won’t hold it against you ;)
Heya, I don’t want to blast hype all over the net, but I’m reading my copy now and it’s really goddamned elegant.
Hopefully will be playing it, either tomorrow night, or else in Japan in a few weeks.
Thanks!
-Andy
Got mine today. Now I just need time to read, and play it.
Right now Indie Press Revolution is the place to get it online. If you’re having trouble getting an order through, I can put you in touch with the extremely helpful IPR support folks.
Sorry; also, is there a way to get the game in any form, even just the PDF, without needing to register at a new site? I’ve been waiting for Microscope to come out since I first followed a link to this site and read about the concept, but if you could let me know about the mechanical aspect of how to get my hands on it, I’d appreciate that a lot. Thanks!
@ Confanity: IPR just got the first batch, so they should be removing the “preorder” label shortly. I think they’re busy sending out all the books first.
But demand has been… well, a lot more than expected, so the first shipment sold out before it even arrived. Fear not, more are on the way. If you put your order in now I can guarantee you’ll get one of the next batch.
I went to buy it and it’s already telling me “Not in Stock.” For a preorder! I thought the purpose of a preorder was to tell the publisher how many to print; how can they run out?
Too late! Bought it already. Hope to try it this weekend and will use for worldbuilding with my next two campaigns. Great game.
There are a bunch on the lame mage blog. Here are a few links:
Rex Populi
We have always been at war with Eurasia
Expect the Unexpected: Microscope at GPNW 2010
Dinosaur Hruck
Plus a lot more external reports from older versions of the game.
I’m very interested in it. Could you point me to some APs of Microscope?