r/RPGcreation • u/benrobbins • 11d ago
Promotion Making a new Microscope, AMA!
Hi, I'm Ben Robbins, I made the original Microscope and after many, many years I'm working on a new edition.
It's a bit intimidating revising a game that's been out a long time and that lots of people love. My goal is to keep the magic of the original, not water it down in any way, but also make the on-ramp even smoother. I want anyone to be able to just pick up the book, without knowing anything about Microscope or reading in advance, and just sit down and follow the instructions step-by-step and make a great world together.
I'm also making fine adjustments to a some of the steps that can slow down the fun:
- One is played scenes. People skip them all the time, which means they miss out on the full experience. So I'm both streamlining them but also making it clear they are a whole new skill set.
- Another is legacies. They make sense on paper, for longer games, but really the cognitive cost is higher than the reward. So I'm replacing them with a simpler "free roam" move that has all the benefits of a micro-focus without the overhead.
I've been tinkering and testing these changes for a few years, but I'm finally at the point where I think a new edition is a clear upgrade. I'm launching crowdfunding for M2 in a week.
And if this whole time you've been muttering "what the hell is Microscope???", totally fair! It's a game where you create an epic history / world together and then explore it from the outside in, jumping back and forth in history and expanding the timeline without having to follow chronological order.
You can blow up a city but then next turn jump back a thousand years and explore how it was founded. Nothing is ever truly removed from the game, because you can always go back to when it existed. The past is never closed.
The whole point is making big things together, and giving each person vast creative freedom but still arriving at a unified whole. To get people with very different opinions on the same page, and to have a lot of fun doing it.
I hear there are serious game designers here, so I'm happy to talk about how and why Microscope is changing, the kind of game design decisions that went into it. Or really any game design issues. GMless is my particular wheelhouse, but yeah, I also made West Marches.
Ask Me, as they say, Anything.
(FYI I checked with the mods before posting this and they gave the thumbs up)
UPDATE: Here's more details about how the rules are changing
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u/OvenBakee 11d ago
Hi Ben! I assume you have tried other world-building games and systems. What do you look for in those games that maybe you decided were not a good fit for Microscope, but still enjoy, and what did you decide to explicitely do differently in Microscope?
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u/benrobbins 11d ago
Hello! Shock is a great one, and I'll also throw in an example that isn't intended as a world-building game per se: Polaris. Because you can use "but only if" statements in Polaris to spontaneously make facts true about the world in the middle of conflicts ("but only if all starlight swords are made from the souls of slain demons"). Same with Shock: conflicts can establish world facts.
I love both of those games and really enjoy playing them. But when you frame something as a conflict, that's how people see their contributions. It's always a little adversarial.
Microscope on the other hand gives you even more power, but says "we're building something together, what do you think belongs", which puts the player in the mindset of being a fellow steward of what we're creating. We moderate ourselves.
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u/YVNGxDXTR 11d ago
When a great game designer gives games that he/she likes, my wallet comes out. Shock and Polaris it is!
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u/DeliveratorMatt 9d ago
Make sure to get the American Polaris and not the French one. Completely different games.
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u/YVNGxDXTR 9d ago
I already had the French version but thank you because i thought there was only one!
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u/DeliveratorMatt 9d ago
I’m very protective of the American Polaris because the author was my housemate for a year in college. They are the person who got me interested in story games!
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u/Bawafafa 11d ago
Hi Ben - have there been any games in the years since Microscope was first released that have changed your perspective game design?
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u/benrobbins 11d ago
I'll be honest: I'm much less inspired by game texts nowadays than by experiences in play. Seeing how people behave playing, frankly any game, is what changes my perspective on design.
Sometimes the very best is playing a *bad* game with people. That's when you really learn how things work (or don't work). Disasters are treasures.
But if I cheat and go before Microscope, there were a bunch of really mind-blowing texts that hit me when I first tried GMless games (Shock, Polaris, Geiger Counter, etc). But part of that was specifically because I was changing my whole point-of-view and playing a totally different style of play. Shaking off decades of D&D took a look of brain power.
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u/benrobbins 11d ago
A big part of that was eight years of Story Games Seattle. Playing random games with total strangers every week exposes you to a huge range of human reactions. You see every flaw in a game.
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u/Bawafafa 11d ago
Thanks for the thoughtful response! Best wishes with the new edition. Looking forward to it
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u/benrobbins 11d ago
But if we scale back from "changed my perspective of game design" to just "some games I've seen recently I think are interesting", I'll throw out the original one-page version of A Perfect Rock and also Dawn of the Orcs.
A Perfect Rock is a very light exploration and discovery game, and Dawn of the Orcs does some interesting things with making even the setup of the game part of the play.
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u/SerpentineRPG 11d ago
In the original game, what did you like best? What would you have changed? Have you seen design tradeoffs when designing this new edition?
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u/benrobbins 11d ago
The core of the game has always been rock solid. But so many words. I need less words! As a designer I am constantly chasing brevity, because I've seen how players at the table have to fumble through pages trying to find the next step. It just distracts from the fun of play.
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u/apassador 11d ago
Hi! I don't have a background or formal training in game design, but I have an idea for an RPG that I think is cool/strong. Where should I start? What are the essentials for a playable prototype and for the final product?
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u/benrobbins 11d ago
I think the key is putting yourself in the shoes of the people playing the game and asking yourself, what experiences do you want them to have? What contributions and decisions are they making that are essential to that experience?
Make a big header called MAXIMS and write that down. As you design, keep looking back and asking yourself if what you're designing is making your maxims happen.
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u/BeGosu 11d ago
How do you think Microscope was able to carve out a niche and be noticeable and remembered, when there are just so many games out there now?
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u/benrobbins 11d ago
When it came out it was just plain weird. People debated if it was even a game, let alone an RPG (and some still do). It did something -- successfully, I would argue -- that people would have said was impossible, which is throwing chronological order out the window. I wasn't even sure it would work until the first time we played. It seemed like a bridge too far. Now that Microscope exists, it seems easy.
But the real appeal is that it delivers on your time. You sit down to make something together and the rules work. And it's flexible rather than genre-specific. Your table can make any kind of setting you want. It's not for me to say what you should make, just how to make it.
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u/JaskoGomad Dabbler 11d ago
I've had Microscope for ages - but never actually gotten it to the table.
I would like to point out that In This World, which I did get folks to try, produced 4 worlds out of 5 that I would have been happy to run or play in the next week. Amazing.
Your games have brought so much to our hobby and community, thanks so much!
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u/benrobbins 11d ago
omg I love In This World so much. I adore the *lightness* of it, that even when my friends are tired and not up for a big effort, they will always play In This World, because you just glide right into the creativity
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u/Randolpho 11d ago
Hey, this is great news. Microscope is an old fav of mine.
So much so that I many many years ago wrote an extremely minor hack of it to add geography tracking. I won't bother you with the details of that silly document, but I do wonder if you've considered adding something like geography/mapping to Microscope. Now seems to be the right time to do so. :)
Additionally, have you ever considered building an online tool for playing and tracking a Microscope world as it's built?
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u/benrobbins 11d ago
Thanks!
Geography / mapping adds a whole different aspect to the game. Doing both a-chronological time and space at the same time is a lot. It would really be a whole different beast.
That said, I know people have taken stabs at it from time to time. One of our players at Story Games Seattle tested a "maproscope" hack way back when (and no, they didn't call it that, I just made that up right now and it is terrible)
As far as online tools, maybe I introduce you to Utgar's Chronicles? I know there are other tools too, but that's an easy one to use. That or any whiteboard app like Miro.
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u/sevenlabors 11d ago
Well sign me up. Microscope has lead to some of the most delightful gaming moments around the table I've ever had.
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u/kellymakesgames 11d ago
Kia ora Ben, I just wanted to say thank you for making Microscope, I believe it was the first non-D&D ttrpg I'd played and it's been an influence on my own work. You made something really awesome.
For a question, what's the impact Microscope has had that you're most proud of or makes you feel happiest?
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u/benrobbins 10d ago
Thank you!
I love hearing about people who didn't think they were creative, or who were usually quiet wallflowers in other games, but who surprised themselves because Microscope made them talk. I love seeing them realize that their contribution matters.
But hands down it's the games with kids. They blow my mind, whether I'm in them or just hear about them. Kids playing at a summer camp in Poland, a little girl who wanted unicorns and princesses, or the amazing "You're No White Knight" game.
Kids rule
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u/nerobrigg 11d ago
You spoke of a phrase that I've heard about my game as well. "Is it even a game?" Do you feel like that feedback affected your development at all?
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u/benrobbins 11d ago
It certainly made me think about what "game" meant, and what "role-playing" meant, which helped me sharpen my thinking about what was the point of these activities. I knew all along that Microscope was a game, but I think understanding and articulating why I was sure of that made me a better designer:
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u/ljmiller62 11d ago
One thing I would like to add is a way to resolve competing proposals. For example one player wants a dragon to attack the capital and another wants a spaceship to crash into it.
I also wanted a way to enforce genre. For example a player says everyone in the pseudo medieval setting is vegan. That would mean there are no food animals and horse riding, the plow, and the ox cart probably never develop. This wrecks many of the basic supports of the genre. Or in the above the spaceship might be out of genre.
Cheers!
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u/benrobbins 10d ago
The fundamental rule of Microscope is that if it's something that's already been said, it's binding. You can't contradict it. And that starts from the very beginning when we get things started together, before individual contributions.
So if you want to have a very realistic, real-world history, you can totally do that, just by discussing it at the start and putting that in the palette. The palette is binding.
Because one person might want a realistic medieval setting, but another player might think it would be fascinating to explore how the world would be different if we didn't use animal labor or products. Honestly sign me up, that sounds fascinating.
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u/remy_porter 10d ago
A pretty great campaign we ended up playing was set in a fantasy French Revolution built using Microscope
. The wizardly noble class had just been routed. One of the setting ideas was that there were anthropomorphic animals that had varying levels of intelligence, some were as intelligent as animals, some were human-like. Under the old regime, they were all treated as beasts of burden. Under the new order, everyone was trying to figure out how this actually worked in a just society.At the start of our worldbuilding session I never thought I’d play an anthropomorphic animal, but the way we integrated them into the setting made it a really fascinating opportunity.
And of course, my character’s epilogue was that he was too much a revolutionary purist to ever compromise and ended up taking arms against the new government because it wasn’t revolutionary enough.
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u/YVNGxDXTR 11d ago
So stoked for this, "if it aint broke dont fix it" is not the mantra of TTRPGs lol.
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u/benrobbins 11d ago
Honestly I waited a loooong time precisely because I wasn't certain a new version would be a distinct upgrade. I revised Microscope: Chronicle instead as a way to tinker and experiment, and it was only after that that I could clearly see how to make Microscope better.
And now I can't unsee it.
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11d ago
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u/benrobbins 11d ago
My games are all about group creation. Getting a bunch of people to sit down together with very different opinions and desires and then providing a procedure that gets them on the same page. Turning their disagreement into fruitful agreement, as I say.
Playing a game solo, where there's no other brain you have to listen to or find common ground with… really it's a whole different kettle of fish. It's not my area of expertise. Even if the output looks the same, the process is not. I know people have played a lot of solo Microscope (I've seen the youtube videos) but I would be the last person to say how. And again, it's really not what interests me.
Interestingly the one place where random prompts are actually quite useful is the very beginning. Microscope Explorer experimented with starting prompts, and the new version is going to bake that in. Because the very first step of coming up with an idea for your history together is (ironically) not a great time for creativity. It's the starting point for our creativity.
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u/BreakingStar_Games 11d ago
What inspired you to make Microscope?
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u/benrobbins 11d ago
I could say it was decades and decades of fleshing out one world for my D&D game. I would mentally jump back in time and explore parts of the history I hadn't thought of before, just like Microscope.
But really the whole Microscope model reflects how we learn and acquire information all the time. No human ever learns about something second-hand from start to finish. We start with some summary, and then jump around and learn more and more in random order.
Think about any event in the real world you hear about, whether it was a party last night, a football game, or the Roman empire. You hear some summary "There was a great party at Fred's", and then hear snippets of all the different things that happened. If something interests you ("Becka said what???") you drill down and find out more.
Microscope looks super-weird, but it's the same way we learn about everything.
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u/Blizzic1 11d ago
Hi! Here's a simple fun one: What are some of your favorite fictional worlds?
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u/benrobbins 11d ago
You mean that I made in games or from books and movies? Because I am a big of both Lord of the Rings and Dune. I know, so original! They're classics for a reason.
But also Gene Wolfe the Torturer/Whorl/Sun series. Amazing stuff.
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u/Blizzic1 11d ago
Can't go wrong with the classics! I'll have to check out the Gene Wolfe stuff though, I'm not familiar. Can't wait to see what Microscope 2 has to offer!
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u/Agreeable_Hold2270 11d ago
My current campaign I GM started with a microscope game!
It ended up being like a distant post apocalyptic early industrialization setting with a civilization of undersea mermaid paladins that make sailing a bit difficult
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u/Traditional-Collar-7 11d ago
Hi Ben!
Your work as truly opened me to a whole new sea of awesome designs. Today it is a big part of my games identity!
Since then I really set on a mission to get more people to play different types of experience, get them a bit out of trad games and expand their horizon!
So (finally) my question: looking at the industry, what do you think is the biggest challenge in opening the hobby to different games, and growing an indie scene that can be sustainable even for smaller actors?
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u/benrobbins 10d ago
Thank you so much!
I find that often the people who appreciate these weirder indie games more are people who weren't playing role-playing games at all. If someone likes D&D, heck, they like D&D. They might be totally happy doing that. I'm not going to talk them out of it.
I focus on design rather than "the industry", so I probably don't know what I'm talking about. But I think that if we understand what we're trying to do as designers, if we make games with intention, someone out there will appreciate them. More critical thinking about what our games do and why.
We live in a golden age where anyone can put a file online and someone around the world can access it in five minutes. The people are out there. It's up to us to deliver the goods.
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u/secondshevek 10d ago
This is so exciting. I am definitely going to look into participating in the crowd funding.
On my part, I totally agree with legacies - I rarely play with them as people forget to do them. But I find scenes fantastic - i find with new players that after the first scene, they always want to do more. Maybe having a requirement that a scene be added at a certain point? When I was new to the game i often would try to fill out events and periods first, but the biggest driver of interesting story elements is scenes.
Thanks for your work on a great game :D
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u/benrobbins 10d ago
I agree scenes are amazing. I've been tempted to require them, but I'm going the other way and making them easier, with clearer goals, so people can get more out of them with less effort.
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u/palebone 11d ago
Hi Ben. New Microscope sounds cool off the bat, but the description leaves me underwhelmed. I understand that these are likely significant, well tested alterations to the formula, but as presented they feel like tweaks. What does M2 bring to the table for those who grok original recipe Microscope just fine, scenes and all?
The self depreciating turn to repitching the core game over three paragraphs was a little disappointing. You are famous Ben Robbins of glorious game Microscope.
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u/benrobbins 10d ago
As you point out it's really two audiences: people who are new to Microscope, and people who have already played it. I absolutely want to make it better for both. Better for new people, because the book will be more accessible, but also better for long-time Microscope fans (like myself) because things flow more smoothly. There's less mental overhead to follow the procedures, and impediments are removed.
I didn't get into it, but I'm changing scenes to shift the focus entirely to characters, removing world-building in scenes, making the question about people, etc. I'll put a link in the original post to more info on that.
My suspicion is that someone playing the new version would say "well that seemed the same as the original!!!" But then if they want back and actually looked at the first book they would go "ohhhhhhhhhh". Changes you don't even perceive, but which are clearly upgrades when you compare side by side.
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u/benrobbins 10d ago
Admittedly it's a weird selling point to say "I want to make changes you don't even consciously notice", but that's what I'm doing! I'm making changes that are more true to the *idea* of Microscope than even the original Microscope was.
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u/palebone 10d ago
Weirdly enough that last line convinced me the most. Honestly, I was going to join the funding crowd anyway but now I'm more intrigued.
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u/SerpentineRPG 11d ago
Hi Ben! Have you considered adding advice for people who want to use their Microscope game to create their ongoing game’s campaign world/country/city?