This 4th of July, I went to Nick’s house. I had previously met Nick once before, we we got together about 8 months ago and played Fiasco. Both of us didn’t know if there would be 3 players or 4. I packed accordingly; I was prepared to run a Dungeon World conversion of Temple of Elemental Evil. I also brought Fiasco and Microscope.
As it turns out, we had 3 players (self included). And as I was thumbing through my binder, both Nick and David noted that I had Microscope. Having both purchased the Portable Document Format (PDF 📖), they were interested in playing. I figured why not? After all I had packed it.
We spent a bit of time reading the rules, but eventually I said “Lets just get started.” I think that was the best decision. Microscope’s rules are very simple, and are there primarily to provide a better collective experience – One does not power game Microscope.
We decided to simply focus on one of the three Quick Start History Seeds – we chose “A new force changes society, wiping away the old values.” Magical conduits had been discovered and changed the course of history. And with that we were off.
Our bookend Periods were:
- Mankind discovers ancient conduit to magic-inflused plane – Light.
- The mundanes are crushed in their struggle to overthrow the magocracy – Dark.
Our Palette was:
- Sacrifices
- Airships
- Plague
- House armies
- Magic-immune bloodline
- No dragons
- No 20th century technology
- No widespread literacy
- No gunpowder
- No non-human sentient races
Focuses
- The Granter
- Pax Magica
- King Roland Gunnar
The Flow of History
Mankind discovers ancient conduit to magic-infused plane – Light
Pax Magica – Light
- The council of kingdoms expands their shared knowledge of magic in order to cure the plague – Light
- What has to be lost in order for this resolution to be achieved? Characters: King Randall Gunnar, King Gerard V, Ian envoy of the Old Druidic Orders, Head Master of the Collegium. Answer: The voice of the old ways withrdaw, and the new ways proceed unchecked. – Dark
- Sid uses magic to create the first airship – Light
- Death of King Randall Gunnar at the hands of Roland Gunnar, his son. – Dark
- King Roland Gunnar breaks the peace by assaulting nation’s city with forbidden use of magic…an airship – Dark
- Roland’s airship goes down over the northern woods for no apparent reason. – Light
- Competing lore on the Granter rises through lack of literacy. These rival stories believed by different peoples give rise to the houses. – Dark
The Houses of Magic – Dark
- Ethatakos is orphaned as the result of the plague. He is adopted by House Hector. – Light
- Each house claims lineage to the Granter, and each claims the others’ claims are illegitimate. – Dark
- How are sacrifices used to claim lineage to the Granter? Characters: Matriarch Violet of house Achilles, Ethatakos nephew of matriarch of house Hector, Captain Triam of house Achilles. Answer: Matriarch Achilles, mortally wounded, offers herself as a sacrifice to the conduit for proof.
- House Thersites celebrates peace with house Hector by building monument/magical battery to King Roland Gunnar – __
Rise of the Airships – Dark
- The Roland Gunnar, an airship of house Hector, lays waste to House Achilles, having sabotagued the Achilles airship fields – Dark
- How were the agents of house Hector able to so easily infiltrate the airship fields of house Achilles? Characters: Private Cedric Langstrom of house Achilles and Sharon Aktos agent of house Hector. Answer: Sharon is a descendant of the druids, and has an immunity to magic. Her bloodline is preserved by house Hector. – Dark
Return of the Druids – Light
- The airship Mermas crashes in the woods, where druids assist the survivors, showing a successful society without magic. – Light
- The Basillica to his Emminence, Emperor Roland Gunnar, is sacked in an uprising of the disgruntled mundanes.
- Who has Roland Gunnar’s remains? Characters: Ked – ringer of bells, extinguisher of candles, and descendant of shattered house Achilles; Vinnie – one randome mundane; Rielle – leader of a militant circle of druids. Answer: Rielle accidentally kills Vinnie and claims the bones for the cause. – Dark
The mundanes are crushed in their struggle to overthrow the magocracy – Dark
- The Granter returns, reuniting the houses and utterly destroying the mundane rebellion. – Dark
- Who is the Granter? Characters: The Granter; VInnix – leader of the Sons of Vinnie; Ked – the ancient sage, He who Opened the Gates. Answer: The Granter is Roland Gunnar reincarnate.
Legacies
- Ethatakos – Nephew of Matriarch Hector
- King Roland Gunnar
- Druids
Observations
The pace of the game was deliberate, but engaging. We kept things at a relatively high level of abstraction…never dwelling to long on a Scene, and instead choosing to create more Events than Periods and Scenes.
I love the fact that Microscope creates tangible artifacts. Ferreted away in my backpack are the cataloged Period, Event, Scene, Flavor, and Legacy cards. I have a written, albeit abbreviated record, of the game session.
We ended up playing Microscope for about 3 hours…with a handful of phone call interruptions. Personally, I had a great time, and can see Mircoscope as a valuable tool for creating a collaborative campaign. Both to start the campaign at an end point, or to dive really deep into one of the events.
We used the Microscope game to lay the foundation for our one-shot Dungeon World adventure. There were airships and conniving members of both House Achilles and House Hector.