Wednesday, June 29, 2022

Microscope (24-05-21)

 

Like Universalis this is as much a communal world building tool as it is a GM-less game.
I was led to it by watching my first Matt Colville video where he suggested using it to create the setting for, then running a West Marches style campaign D&D (which the Microscope designer Ben Robbins coined or at least has written extensive guidelines on).

The big difference with Universalis is that the players decide what the game will be about and how it begins and ends, then they take it in turns to fill in everything between, with each person in their turn adding a new period, an event within a period or a scene within an event (an actual scene in which everybody roleplays). 

There are less gamey features and rules than Universalis, there are no tokens for example and no dice in sight (not that there are in Universalis either). The rules take up  just over half of the small 80 page book, it is all very succinct. I would very much like to try it,  I especially like Matt Colville’s idea of using it to generate a setting, then playing another RPG within that setting, this sounds like it would be a great match for the whole FKR thing which I stumbled on recently...

 Microscope can be ordered from the developer's website.


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