Dungeons loom large in the mental landscape of role-playing games. They are inescapably linked to its very roots. No matter how much we embrace story and issues and explorations of the human condition, sometimes it seems like marching down hallways and listening at doors is in our blood. Just try shouting “who wants to play […]

“…and they flee to the colonies to escape oppression.” “This family is always fleeing things. That should be their family crest: Fugit Omnis!” I think because you have so much freedom to create in Microscope, there’s an initial urge to invent really far-out settings. Personally I think the real payoff comes when you zoom in […]

Question of the Day thread on RPGGeek, asking people “What one game or game system do you think every role-player should try at least once?” I’d say Microscope because we as a game group are almost unable to roleplay anything except the most basic hack ‘n slash until we tried Microscope last monday and it […]

Sometimes in Microscope someone Pushes to change one of your ideas, but instead of disagreeing you think “hey, I do like that more, let’s do it!” By the rules you have to go through the finger-vote and find out what everyone else thinks, but sometimes that’s unnecessary work. Here’s a faster option you can use. […]

So as I already posted, I had an epic year of gaming. Sixty percent more games than any year for the last decade. We’re talking raw college-levels of gaming. How did this magical thing happen? For one, 2011 was the year of the West Coast game tour, with convention and gaming events large and small, […]

Oh sure, you could use Microscope to make an epic history, defying chronological order and jumping back and forth to explore the moments in the history that interest you. Or you could hold up your glossy black book and yell “too easy!” and use it to do something else entirely… City Building with Microscope — […]

Late Saturday night at PAX, some folks drifted into the Indie Games On Demand room and were checking out all the books on the display table. Like a good host, I pitched a couple of games but they didn’t seem terribly interested. I asked what kind of games they were used to. Party adventure stuff? […]

Want to listen to me rant for forty minutes about D&D camp, playtesting M&M, GMing or not GMing, Microscope, and how actually playing games trumps just sitting around talking about them? Then this is your lucky day! Ben Robbins Interview (BAMF Podcast) Really fun interview. Thanks to Mike Lafferty for having me on. Yeah, I […]

The fine folks of RPG Geek invited me to talk about a game I knew a lot about. Are you thinking Microscope? I’m thinking Microscope. Share A Game: Microscope It’s turning into a truly epic Q&A thread. If you ever wanted to know something about Microscope, this is probably the place to look. And yeah, […]

The results from the Gaming Genius Awards are finally in, and I’m happy to report that Microscope has won Most Innovative New Product for 2011! Not bad, right? But hold the presses because the slate for the 2011 Golden Geek Awards is up and Microscope has been nominated for RPG: Game of the Year! Whew. […]

I got a couple of questions from Polish gamer Maciej Sabat and I thought the answers might interest you too, gentle reader. Maciej has been running a summer RPG camp, deep in the forests of Poland and he’s unleashed the kids on Microscope. Wait, did you say “pics or it didn’t happen?” Oh you internet: […]

Sitting around the campfire at CozyCon last night, talking with Ross about crazy ideas for strange game spaces, larger groups and weirder things. Case in point: Microscope LARP. For use at cons or other large group & large space settings. Each Event in the history is mapped to a physical space, like a room or […]

Go Play NW 2009 was the first big public unveiling of Microscope, so it was actually pretty nice to come full circle two years later and see Microscope running rampant at Go Play NW 2011. It was ninja-like. I’d be walking around, chatting with people, and then I’d look over my shoulder and -boom- table […]

Preview of a study coming out in Psychological Science in September: … a new study found that knowing the outcome doesn’t ruin a story – in fact, it enhances our enjoyment of it. Nicholas Christenfeld and Jonathan Leavitt, of University of California San Diego’s psychology department, say people who flip to the end of the […]

You probably thought I was kidding when I said there was a Microscope game with nothing but plant-on-plant action. I never bluff when it comes to Microscope. Or plants. Plants of Arbre — The long-awaited plant history (thanks, Dominic!). Yep, plants. Just plants. Star Wars Rebooted — Using Microscope to re-write canon the way it […]

Consider this a quote entirely out of context, but it’s too excellent to pass up. It’s from Ashok Desai’s review of Microscope in Knights of the Dinner Table: Aside from the literary benefits of the game, it’s also a great way for a group of players to sit down and create a universe that they […]

After six games, we’ve drawn our Quake-pocalypse Microscope history to an epic close. It wasn’t all easy. After game 4, it looked like we were going to have a hard time explaining how it all fit together. But in game 5, we jumped back and revealed that even before the first UFO was shot down, […]

Quake-pocalypse, game 4. The survivors of the shattered Earth escape to a new world, but it’s not what they expect. There’s a welcoming committee. From Earth! But not human. It gets a little complicated. In other news, the so-called scientists of the post-Quake golden age are accused being little more than “junkyard scavengers,” not inventors. […]

A flurry of game designers put Microscope to the test, sparked by the RPG Book Club. Will they enjoy themselves or burn Microscope at the stake like the witch it is? Let’s see… War of the Beast-Men! — Jason Morningstar’s posse sets the bar: “You can’t call me a Nazi just because I refuse to […]

Sometimes coming up with Questions in Microscope can be harder than you expect. But a lot of the time there are perfectly good Questions — critical Questions — staring you right in the face. Questions you never consciously considered, but once they hit you they’re blindingly central to understanding your history. Case in point: Quake-pocalypse, […]

Game two of our Quake-pocalypse Microscope history. Science is the big theme of this session, but as everybody knows, there’s good science and there’s bad science. Yay, Science! It brings us the wondrous Infinity Box, capable of preserving something indefinitely (one could even say infinitely). We play a scene with the Question: What does humanity […]

Here are some of the latest Microscope reviews and discussions that I think are particularly interesting: The Voice of the Revolution #53: April 2011 — excellent discussion of the core points of Microscope, starts at 7:51 RPG Book Club discussion thread — I mentioned the RPG Book Club earlier, but the pre-game discussion thread has […]

Some of the awesome folks from our weekly pickup games had never gotten the chance to play a multi-session Microscope history. Which is a crime, because multi-session games let you really dig into your history. So we assembled a crack squad (there’s still some debate whether it’s Team Boomstick, Team Thunderbunny, or Team Something Else […]

You know what’s awesome? Microscope is the new story-games.com RPG Book Club selection. RPG Book Club, May-June: Microscope The challenge: get together and play some Microscope before the end of June. Share your experiences with everyone else. If you’ve played before, play it some more (you know you want to). If you’ve never tried it, […]