Games Wot Is Cool: Microscope

The simplest form of roleplaying is the kind of stuff we do as kids on the playground. We make up stories with our imaginations, forming a shared narrative out of group consensus. As we get more complex with our games, the consensus is supplanted with rules and dice and minis, but that doesn't mean the simple make-believe is no longer viable. There are hundreds, maybe thousands of groups out there doing freeform roleplaying on messageboards and in chat rooms all over the internet. Some RPGs follow that style too, like the original Amber game. Microscope, a neat little RPG I found, is also very freeform, although the span of the game is a bit... bigger.

Microscope, by Ben Robbins, is a game about making history, literally. You create and flesh out a timeline that stretches out anywhere from centuries to millennia. You can shift back and forth between various time periods in your timeline, and narrow the focus to certain events in that period, or even certain scenes during an event. There's no GM, and the only thing you really need to play is a bunch of index cards and something to write with.

I can't go into too much detail about the system because there's really not that much of it (The book clocks in at around 80 pages), and I don't want to give away the rules, but here's the gist of it. Your group decides on what they want their timeline to be about. Something broad like 'The long trek of the colony ship Hope' would work fine. Then everyone decides on starting and beginning periods for the game. For my above example, the intial launch of the Hope might be a good starting period, but so could the scientists create the schematics of the Hope. Once you do that, the group decides on a list of things they specifically want available or unavailable. No elves in a fantasy setting, or magic in space. After that, the game goes into rounds, with each player taking a turn to define periods, events in a period, or scenes in an event. Unless the group is playing out a scene, whatever someone says on their turn goes, unless it contradicts something already established in a future portion of the timeline.

It's a heavily narrativist game, and some people won't like that, but the idea of history by committee tickles my fancy. You could even use Microscope to fill in the 'big picture', and then switch to another system of choice for the scenes, to add more detail to the 'close ups'. As is, though, it works fine, and has the advantage of not needing a lot of dice and character sheets.

How Likely Am I To Play This: I'm throwing this rating in here because I know that I have a much larger capacity for rules and minutiae than most of my friends, and lots of games I like would make my friends think I'd lost it if I threw it on the table and said 'We're playing this next!'.
However, Microscope is not one of those games. In fact, I'm pretty sure a lot of my gaming friends would like this more than I do. The rules are easy to learn, and the concept has a lot of potential for interesting and fun sessions. The only downside I can see to this game is that it won't work well for someone who doesn't do well at making things up on the spot, or is having a bad case of creative drought. The game heavily relies on everyone at the table having their imagination firing on all cylinders. Other than that, it's a great game.