Happy Birthday, Microscope!
Yesterday was the one year anniversary of Microscope’s release. I’d forgotten it was the day, but we unwittingly celebrated by playing a slew of Microscope games at Story Games Seattle. So much better than cake.
I’ve been playing Microscope for three years now, but it still feels like only yesterday that we sat down and made our first stellar empire and zoomed in to find out what had gone horribly, horribly wrong at the mining colony: the releasing of the cosmic id, the “psychic balrog” that unlocked human potential and altered the course of history for the next thousand years.
We never actually saw the “psychic balrog” or explored what it was, only its consequences. But even though that was three years ago, because it’s Microscope we could sit down today and jump back five minutes before the miners “delved too deep” and see. Was it sentient or just a force? Did they hear the siren call from deep in the bowels of the asteroid? Did it speak to them? We don’t know, but we could find out whenever we wanted…
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I love this game. My current session with six players has Cthulu-like terrible alien Gods who live on the moon fighting out family battles by proxy with human pawns on the planet below, but at the end the humans learn enough Super Science (steampunk, yo!) to overthrow their dominion and kill them. Ouch! Oh yeah, wizards were super guerilla warriors and malcontents until one of the children of the gods killed the god of magic in a bid for more power, weakened as he was by giving mortals his mojo. I hate it when that happens.
Happy Birthday, Microscope!
Congrats indeed on a wonderfully powerful and creative product. I found it by accident three days ago and bought it on sight!
But, but … got no one to play it with. While I realize it is designed and best played in the flesh, has anyone attempted or got any ideas about playing it online? I realize this would need to be done without infringing copyright or IPR.
I did wonder about using collaborative online tools (Bootcamp? Sharepoint?) – anyone got any ideas ?
Woo hoo! So awesome that you didn’t realize you were celebrating :)
Happy birthday Microscope!
I’ve facilitated a game for your anniversary – and it was my 30th session of Microscope :-D
We did the story of the Jewish Solar Empire in the galactic war against the Outer Gods… a terrible war in which even the Lion of Judah couldn’t help the Chosen Nation to prevail. Cthulhu Fhtang!
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