Rules as Written

[Basil_Bottletop]

GETTING STARTED

 

Step 1: Big Picture

First, brainstorm a simple overview of the history you want to play. If you were looking in a history book, this would be the one line that summarizes what happens, but leaves out all the details. It should be no more than a single sentence.

Pick something big. You want a lot of time and space to work with. Don’t worry if your idea seems too simple or uninteresting. That’s normal at this stage. Fleshing out the interesting details is what the rest of the game is all about.

Step 2: Bookend History

Your history will be divided into Periods. Each Period is a very large chunk of time, probably decades or centuries. Describe how your history begins and ends. These are your starting and ending Periods, the bookends of your history. You’ll add more Periods later on, but everything will be between these points.

1) Agree on a short description for each Period, just a few sentences or a paragraph at most, painting a clear picture of what happens during that time.

2) Decide whether each description is Light or Dark, whether what happens during that Period is generally happy or tragic. This is the Tone of each Period. The Tone of the starting and ending Period do not have to match.

Write each Period on a card, with an empty or flled circle for Light or Dark respectively. Orient the card tall, not wide. You don’t have to write the whole description, just a short note to defne the Period. Write start and end at the bottom of the cards to show that these are the boundaries of your history. Put your starting Period on the left and the ending Period on the right.

Step 3: Palette–Add or Ban Ingredients

Next you take a step back and create your history’s Palette. The Palette is a list of things the players agree to reserve the right to include or, conversely, outright ban. It gets everyone on the same page about what belongs in the history and what doesn’t.

Make two columns, one for Yes and one for No:

1) Each player can add one thing, either a Yes or No. Add something to the Yes column if you think the other players would not expect it to be in the history, but you want to be able to include it. Add something to the No column if you think the other players would expect it to be in the history, but you don’t want it included. Players can go in any order. You don’t have to add anything to the Palette if you don’t want to.

2) If every player did add something (either a Yes or No), repeat step 1: each player has the option to go again.

If someone opted not to add something, stop: your Palette is done. In the end, no player will have added two things more than anyone else. Feel free to discuss and negotiate. No one should be unhappy about what winds up added or banned on the Palette.

If something is in the Yes column, then during the rest of the game it’s okay to introduce it into the history even if it doesn’t seem like it fts. You’ve all agreed it belongs.

If something is in the No column, it’s never okay to bring into the game, no matter what. You’ve all agreed it’s not part of the history. Even if something is in the Yes column, it doesn’t exist in the history until someone introduces it in play. Something might be in the Yes column, but never get used at all.

 

Step 4: First Pass

Group decisions are now over. For the rest of the game, each player makes decisions individually and has vast power to shape history. Each player now gets to add more detail to the history, creating either a new Period or Event. Players can go in any order they want.

To add a Period, place it between any two adjacent Periods, then give a short description of what happens during that time. Say if the Tone is Light or Dark.

An Event is a specifc thing that happens inside a Period, like a prince seizing the throne or a colony ship arriving on a new world. To add a new Event, decide what Period the Event is in. If there are already other Events in that Period, place it before or after one of them. An Event must be inside an existing Period. Tell the other players what happens during the Event. Say if the Tone is Light or Dark.

[Basil_Bottletop]

Playing the Game

 

Overview of Play You should have already followed the steps in “Starting a New Game” to build the foundation of your history. Decide which player will start: that player becomes the frst Lens. If someone is teaching the game, they should be the frst Lens. You can give the Lens a large and visible object to remind everyone at the table who it is.

1) Declare the Focus: The Lens declares the current Focus of the game, the part of history you’re going to explore right now.

2) Make History: Each player takes a turn creating either a Period, Event or Scene. The Lens goes frst, then go around the table to the left. What you create must relate to the current Focus. The Lens can choose to create two things on her turn, so long as they are nested inside each other: either a new Event plus a Scene inside that Event, or a new Period plus an Event inside that Period. This gives the Lens more power to get the Focus going.

3) Lens Finishes the Focus: After each player has taken a turn, the Lens gets to go again and add another Period, Event or Scene (or two nested things). This lets the Lens have the last word about the Focus.

 

After all players have addressed the Focus, we take a step back and examine Legacies, elements of the history we want to remember to explore later on:

4) Choose a New Legacy: The player to the right of the Lens picks something from play during this last Focus and makes it a Legacy.

5) Explore a Legacy: The same player creates an Event or dictated Scene that relates to one of the Legacies, either the one just created or one already in play.

6) New Lens: The player to the left of the Lens then becomes the new Lens and picks a new Focus. Repeat.

Before the new Lens starts, you may want to take a quick intermission and talk about how the game is going. Talk about what you’ve liked or what intrigues you, but don’t plan what’s going to happen next. That’s the whole game in a nutshell. Each step is described in more detail in the rest of the book.

[Basil_Bottletop]

Picking the Focus

Play can jump backwards and forwards in time, all across the history. To keep everyone playing the same game, the Lens picks a Focus, a unifying theme that ties the story together, at least until the next Lens picks a new one.

The Focus can be anything: a person, a place, a thing, an institution, an Event, a Period, a concept–anything you want. The Lens can use something that already came up in play or make up something new on the spot. If you’re making something new, you’ll usually declare the Focus, then make a Period, Event or Scene to show what you’re talking about.

“The new Focus is going to be the ‘sinking of the Gabriel Dora.’ It’s a luxury liner that goes down mysteriously, so first I’m making a new Event where the ship sinks in the North Atlantic, with no known survivors…”

Write down each Focus and who chose it on a card so that, as the history unfolds, you can look back and see how you explored it. If a new Lens is interested in a previous Focus, they could pick the same Focus again or pick a related Focus that looks at things from a different angle.

The old Focus was President Galveston, patriarch of the Lone Star Republic. During play we found out he died in office, eaten away by illness. The new Lens wants to explore that, so she makes the new Focus “the last days of Galveston’s presidency.”

Picking the Focus is powerful. It lets you set the direction of the game. Don’t hesitate to make up a Focus even if you don’t have a clear idea why it’s interesting. Those details will emerge as you play.

[Basil_Bottletop]

Making History

On your turn, you can create either a Period, an Event, or a Scene (or two nested things if you’re the Lens). These are the building blocks that outline your history: Periods show us the big picture, the broad sweep of history, Events zoom in closer and explore specific incidents within a Period, and Scenes zoom all the way in and reveal what happens moment-by-moment within an Event.

When you make a Period or an Event, you have vast power to shape history. You can add anything you want as part of your description, spontaneously creating–or destroying–people, places, or things.

A player adds a new Event “the King’s army destroys the secret stronghold of the Moon Cultists, who are trying to unite the seven pieces of the sacred sword, Invictus.” Neither the king, the cult or the sword had been mentioned before. The current player just made them all up.

If you choose to play a Scene instead, you give up absolute control and invite the other players to role-play and decide what happens together. No one owns anything in the history. It doesn’t matter who created something: when it’s your turn you can do anything you want with it. The only limits to your creativity are:

Don’t contradict what’s already been said.

Make sure what you add relates to the current Focus.

Don’t use anything from the No column of the Palette.

Only the current player gets to contribute. Other players should not give suggestions or ideas, and the current player cannot ask for input either. Other players can and should ask for clarifcation if they can’t visualize what the current player is describing.

 

You must show how what you are creating relates to the Focus. If it isn’t clear, the other players should ask how it relates.

The Lens declared the Focus to be “the fall of the capitol city” during an ongoing war and made an Event for it. A player could add a Scene in that Event (a battle to hold the gate), create a separate Event (an army seeking vengeance against the invaders), or even make a distant Scene in a totally different Period (archaeologists sifting through the ruins of the city a thousand years later).

Paint a clear picture. Particularly with Events, the other players should be able to visualize what physically happens. Other players don’t get input, but they should ask questions if there’s something they need to know to understand what you’re creating.

“Tarsus colony is destroyed” is a good starting point for an Event, but it’s too vague. If we were watching from a birds-eye view, we would probably see how the colony was destroyed. Did it blow up? Was it invaded? “A reactor accident destroys the Tarsus biodome” or “killer machines demolish the colony” paint a more complete picture.

How much detail should you include? A good rule of thumb is to describe what would be visible from a birds-eye view at the level of history you’re creating. If you’re making a Period, your description should include the broad sweeps of history, but not specifc details that would emerge during an Event or Scene. If you’re making an Event, zoom in closer and describe what happens, but not the moment-by-moment detail of a Scene. Remember to declare the outcome. There’s a natural tendency to describe a starting situation, but not the conclusion. But in Microscope we already know how it ends. You always see the big picture before you zoom in and explore the details. Even if we never examine this part of history further, we should have a clear (but perhaps simplistic) sense of what happened.

“The President runs for re-election” is a bad Event, because it doesn’t tell us the outcome. Does he win? Does he lose? The result is something we could easily see, so it should be part of the description. Without that information, the description is a cliffhanger, not a summary.

There’s always room between two items in the history. If you have two Periods, you can always add another Period in the middle, provided you describe it in a way that doesn’t contradict what’s already known

Edited March 12 by Basil_Bottletop (see edit history)

[Basil_Bottletop]

Making History: Periods

A Period is the largest subdivision of the history. It is a very large chunk of time, usually decades or centuries depending on your history, like an era of feudal wars or stellar colonization. To make a new Period:

1) Decide when it is: Place the new Period between any two adjacent Periods–the Period to the left is earlier, the one to the right is later.

2) Describe the Period: Give the other players a grand summary of what happens during this time or what things are like. Describe how it is different from other Periods around it, as appropriate.

3) Say whether it is Light or Dark: Explain how that Tone fits your description. You’re never wrong about Tone, but you do have to justify your choice to the other players.

 

Making History: Events

An Event is something specific that happens during a Period, like a great battle or a festival. While a Period encompasses everything that happens across a large span of time, an Event describes what happens at a particular time and place. Just like Periods, the literal length of an Event is not important. Some Events may seem long, others very short. To make a new Event:

1) Decide when it is: Place the Event in an existing Period. You cannot have an Event outside a Period. If there are already other Events in that Period, place it before or after one of them chronologically.

2) Describe the Event: Tell the other players what happens. Your description should be specific enough that the other players have a clear picture of what physically takes place. Make sure to include the outcome, not just the start.

3) Say whether it is Light or Dark: Explain how that Tone fits your description. You’re never wrong about Tone, but you do have to justify your choice to the other players.

 

Making History: Scenes

Scenes are the smallest units of history. They show us exactly what happens at a specific place, at a specific time, with specific people. Scenes are also different because, instead of creating them unilaterally, all the players join in and role-play to determine what happens. You give up absolute control, but in return you get to decide what everyone is going to role-play about, turning everyone’s attention to a part of the history that interests you.

To create a Scene, you first pose a Question, something you want to find out about the history. The goal of the Scene is to decide the answer to that Question. We start of the Scene without an answer and discover it through play. The Question can tell us something crucial to history (“why did the king betray his country?”), it can give us a window into what life was like in that time and place (“are the asteroid miners happy with their rugged frontier lives?”), or just examine something that isn’t important in the grand scheme of things, but is interesting to the players (“did the soldier get to marry his hometown sweetheart?”).

If you want to make a Scene, but you want to answer the Question yourself instead of letting the other players participate, you can choose to dictate the Scene instead. When you dictate a Scene, you describe what happens and narrate the answer to your own Question, just like making a Period or Event. Making dictated Scenes is covered later. To make a played Scene, don’t say anything about what you have in mind, just follow these steps:

1) State the Question

2) Set the Stage

3) Choose Characters

4) Reveal Thoughts

Edited March 12 by Basil_Bottletop (see edit history)