Solo Microscope
Every now and then people ask me about playing Microscope solo. Which I know nothing about! My design focus is the unpredictable creativity that arises when a group of people play and contribute together. I don’t know the first thing about solo play, Microscope or otherwise.
But the good news is that Clare C. Marshall has done a whole series of videos about playing Microscope solo. So if you’re interested in using Microscope by yourself to build a fictional setting for a novel or a game world, check them out!
And if you know other good resources covering solo play of Microscope or similar games, drop a link in the comments. Share your hard-earned wisdom!
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Mythic GME actually works pretty well with all Ben’s games. Make it a three player game. One player is you, the other two ‘players’ are ‘mythic players.’ When it is the Mythic Players’ turn you roll on the Mythic Tables for what kind of scene or roll a prompt to interpret.
Over time the “Mythic players” seem to take on a personality… It’s just pattern recognition, but it works. I do this when I play with a friend of mine who lives in a different hemisphere, The chaos of adding in a third “Mythic Player” adds more than the included two player rules, as it can be hard to divorce yourself from the ideas each of us has for the story, but the third “player” making decisions based on random table rolls keeps the push and pull of triangular play going.
The only extra element needed for Microscope specifically is that we use a percentile doce roll to choose where on the time line the “Mythic Player” will add something.
There’s a one-page solo hack called “Lens” (brilliant name, btw) made by someone whose nickname on Reddit is “CodenameAwesome”.
Here’s the link:
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1isWrSPL417PN6eSCYQmxKnFxPXQUn9IjZW4W2xfToDc/edit#heading=h.jonl2rw7ixum
Thank you for mentioning me! :) I love Microscope, and using it with my other tools! I’m hoping to make a solo Kingdom and Union series too at some point.
Thank you for all the great videos! Definitely looking forward to see what you come up with, and when the new version of Microscope Chronicle is ready I think it might be particularly up your alley.