Thursday, July 20, 2017

Continuing a Solo Microscope


I'm getting into my work week now, and since I have the house alone to myself, it means I'll be fairly busy with work and housework for the next week. That means it'll be hard to really get into a game of Microscope until at least Sunday. Luckily, that should give me some time to sit down and figure out what I want from this.

So first, the "players".

I'm thinking about making four players, each one representing a different facet of making a history. They are the following"

Player 1 "The General": The general loves military history and battles. They are more likely to create scenes about war, whether it's the actual battles or the time leading up to or following a war.

Player 2 "The Politician": The politician loves social intrigue of leadership. Economics and trade, real politik, and Machiavellian machinations suit them well.

Player 3 "The Zeitgeist": The zeitgeist loves cultural movements, scientific innovation, and philosophical dialogue. Many of their scenes will be about advancements or regression in science, the arts, and reason.

Player 4 "The Explorer": The explorer loves the frontier and discovery. Scenes by the explorer include the discovery of new worlds and cultures, or lands of plenty.

These four players should be enough to do a good game of Microscope. What I plan to do is to use an oracle like GMA deck or Tangent Zero's Dice and interpret the icons in a way that would fit what each player would do. While it's still going to be biased towards my thinking, the random icons should inject a form of chaos to make the histories varied while keeping them coherent. I'll also have the standard Yes/No, And/But, Twist! dice for basic stuff.

The only thing I'm not sure how to model is the concept of Pushing a different idea. Obviously, it's kind of hard to push an idea or vote for one when I'm ultimately the only person doing it. I've thought about maybe having a d6 I roll for an idea Push if it hands on a 1, and adding +1 to it if it doesn't land on a one. But I'm curious how others would model someone pushing. 

A lot of this will really take putting myself into the minds of the four players above. I tend to be more of the Explorer myself, so that one will be the easiest. The Politician might be the hardest for me to grok. 

If anyone has more advice for running something like this and setting it up, I'd love to hear about it!

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