Doom of the Gods

We just played the second session of our “Doom of the Gods” Microscope game. It’s an age of myth stretching from the creation of the World of Men to the very death of the Gods. Very Ragnarok, very Norse.

We probably would have played it again sooner, but we couldn’t get the right four players together at the same time, and if there’s one thing that Microscope hates it’s changing the player roster. Because everyone has such a high creative involvement, you really have to be there from the start, so adding people is rough. Leaving someone out of a history they started is even worse. Players hate that, and rightly so. It’s not like having your character sit out for a session, it’s like being the GM and being told you’re going to miss your own game for a session.

Two vignettes from the first session, both during the very ominous sounding “Well of Fate” focus:

Crafty Dwarves, Craftier Gods

An outcast Dwarven prince and his followers have come to the Well of Fate, seeking to learn how the Gods can be slain.

But that’s not the Question of the scene. The Question is: what price was the Dwarven king paid long ago for selling his people into slavery to the Gods? The dwarves have labored for the Gods for ages, ever since that dark day, and the rebel prince wants to free his people.

The answer? In exchange for making his people the slaves of the Gods, the Gods gave the king the gift of artifice, making him a craftsmen beyond compare. He thought to trick the Gods by teaching this skill to his people, but this only served the Gods’ purposes: the price they paid they got back redoubled, because their new slaves could now forge them fabulous weapons and tools. Tricky, tricky gods…

Talk to the Squirrel

The Gods are locked in battle against the Colossi, and the mysterious Father of the Gods has gathered his brethren to reveal his new creation turn the tide of war: Man. But the All-father is renowned for his secretiveness, and rarely does he reveal the true depths of his plans.

That’s the Event, but then another player creates a scene in it with the Question: why did the All-father imbue men with the mist from the Well of Fate? So now we know what the All-father did, but not why.

The suspicious gods learn from a humble squirrel that the All-father exhaled a strange breath into Man when he made them, which the Gods recognize as the mist from the Well of Fate which the All-father inhaled and hid in his mouth.

The answer? Being born from the mist of the Well of Fate means that unlike the Gods, Men carry their Fate within them. The Gods present don’t realize it, but in a Postscript the trickster god Crow recognizes this means the All-father has made Man capable of destroying the Gods themselves, since they are not bound by Fate…