It’s Emerald City Comic Con, late Friday night at the indie RPG tables, and I sit down with some awesome new folks (Hi, Daniel! Hi, Gabi!) to play some Microscope. “What kind of history should we make?” “Let’s do a zombie apocalypse!” “Cool, zombies! Well wait, do we want to do modern times or something […]

Remember how I said we played a mess of birthday Microscope at Story Games Seattle, all without realizing it was Microscope’s birthday? Here they are, plus a few more stragglers from the weeks before and after. Beware: several of these are experimental “short form” Microscope, where the whole history is actually a very short period […]

“…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 […]

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, […]

A picture is worth a thousand words, right? That’s how many times I gamed each year for the past decade. I know it’s quality not quantity that matters, but 2011 was a fiery ball of gaming win. So next time you’re wondering why I haven’t posted on Ars Ludi in a while, there’s your answer: […]

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? […]

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 […]

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, […]

We’ve done a whole slew of Polaris setting hacks recently. Aztecs, Fall of the Roman Republic, 1920s Empire City cops and Battlestar Galactica (twice). The key ingredients of a satisfying Polaris analog are pretty simple: 1) a grand society on the verge of collapse because of some doom it has brought upon itself (a Mistake-analog), […]

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 […]

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 […]

Why is it never a good thing when superheroes take over the world? Don’t ask why, ask Weillach (yes, the Supers take over) The Fleet Departs: A Microscope RPG Campaign Set-Up In other news, Microscope has landed on the beaches of Europe. Books are sitting on the shelves of Leisure Games in the UK, right […]

New challengers enter! I’ve never tried playing Microscope online, but during the playtest there were some fairly massive Wave games. Now that Microscope is out, some brave souls are trying out different tools to play online and graphically represent their histories: Magical Apocalypse — overview of the game, plus a post-it style history graphic using […]

I’ve been so busy since Microscope came out that I’ve fallen behind on cheering about the lovely actual play reports. Let’s fix that, shall we? Age of the Dragon Kings Rodent Monarchy Fission Biolords & Planet Cancer Slaves, Privateers & Hashish AIs: Stop Aggregating Yourself I also have unofficial reports of an entire Microscope game […]

The big question: now that Man’s lust for war has consumed Earth in a nuclear holocaust, do the handful of survivors in their nations moon bases beat their swords into ploughshares, or do they finish what their missiles started and continue their tiny, bitter Cold War on the Moon? Answer: bang! bang! bang! We have […]

For Halloween, we tried doing some Microscope games with a horror theme. Microscope is kind of an odd fit for suspense or horror, because you usually know how things are going to turn out before you drill down and roleplay the details: you know the explorers are going to vanish mysteriously, before you play the […]

Most of the Microscope playtest reports were emailed to me directly, so only my greedy eyes get to see them, but here’s one from our elite playtesters north of the border. Ye older stellar empire with a rather large twist: Juggalos in Space Got your own Microscope actual play posted somewhere? Let me know and […]

“I am your king!” “Well I didn’t vote for you…” “You don’t vote for kings!” — oh my god, it’s a Monty Python quote The thing I always really enjoy about Microscope is the unforeseen creation. Someone introduces a simple idea, then someone else explores it a little more, then someone else takes it even […]

In the build up to Go Play NW, I braced myself to facilitate pickup games every waking moment. As organizers we embraced the idea that there were going to be a lot more pickup games than scheduled games, but that’s also risky: you never know until the slot begins just how many people will be […]

“I start a campaign… a totally _fascist_ campaign.” –brand new gamer, solving the problems of Mars I love Mars Colony. It’s hands-down the best game I picked up at GenCon 2009. That’s not even considering that it’s technically only an ash can release, not the final version, which is coming out at GenCon this year. […]

With San Holo in mind, I’ve decided to offer The Chargen Circle in the last gaming slot of Go Play NW 2010. The plan is to grab a bunch of random chargen systems, random being the salient part, and roll up characters. I’m thinking of systems like Classic Traveller, V&V, Reign, FASA Star Trek. I suspect people will make […]