I hope I am being too mean to In This World

 One of my most important RPG experiences in the past ten years has been Microscope by Ben Robbins. Part of that is because almost all of my RPG gaming during that time has been long distance and Microscope was wonderful in a play-by-email format.

So, when I saw that Ben Robbins had another project, In This World, I backed that Kickstarter. While the final product hasn’t been produced, I have gone through the early-release base rules and I have to admit that I have been underwhelmed.

I won’t go over the actual rules since that would actually be giving away the game. But you go around the table, round robin, building worlds. The twist is that you take a basic concept and subvert some of its basic tenets. (In this world, dragons are plants BUT they still eat princesses)

And before I get critical, I had to say that is a terrific concept. Easy to understand and implement while still open to lots of possibilities.

So here’s where I felt In This Word fell short, albeit possibly only in the basic, early release rules. At the end of the game, you will have some worlds that are laid out as bullet points.

That’s where other games like Kingdom or Microscope or The Quiet Year begin.

I do love me a world building game but part of the experience is doing something with the world. Building up on the initial idea. Seriously fleshing things out. Roleplaying scenes in the world. In This World feels like setting up for a game of Microscope. In This World feels like something I’d find in an anthology, not as a standalone product. 

And, yes, I’m being incredibly unfair. The final product, with all its bells and whistles, could and hopefully will assuage all my fears.

I sincerely hope the finished product proves my fears entirely wrong.

Sometimes the point is to NOT nuke Atlantis

Well, I have to eat my words about Stoke-Birmingham 0-0. When I first read it, I couldn’t ever imagine playing it. The whole concept of game poems, which it coined the phrase, was one that I questioned.

Thanks to the power of forums, I have now played it. To be sure, playing via forum definitely takes away from immediacy that is clearly a key part of the game poem concept. On the other hand, gathering folks together to play a fifteen minute game is a tough sell and playing via forum definitely helps mitigate that.

And not only am I glad that I finally played Stoke-Birmingham, I would play it again.

https://boardgamegeek.com/article/29978833#29978833

Stoke-Birmingham 0-0 has you simulate being some Stoke supporters who are drinking after a really boring game. The game lasts fifteen minutes when you play it live and one of the most important rules is that you are not to say or do anything interesting. The point of the game is to embrace the banal.

At this point, I have played a variety of narrative games. There is a term that is actually in the rules of Microscope, one of my favorite narrative games, Nuking Atlantis. Microscope has a global scope so the term can be literal in a game. That’s doing something extreme, a story changer that permanently affects things.

And I love doing that or seeing it happen. Well, most of the time. I was in a Fiasco game set in the Wild West where a weaselly gambler at the very end decided that he was secretly a mystic kung fu guy, summoned up a giant golden dragon and flew through a magical portal to join in the battle of Helm’s Deep. (Yes, he had a ton of white dice)

There was something amazing in the audacity of that but that’s not what you play Fiasco for. We will never forget that game but that derailed the game so hard that the proverbial train not only left the tracks but flew straight into the sun. We all agreed we had witnessed some kind of spontaneous magic and we never wanted it to happen again in a game of Fiasco.

Nuking Atlantis can be an exhilarating choice but a key element of Stoke-Birmingham is that it is the non-Nuking Atlantis RPG. The rules explicitly state that you can’t do anything interesting. You are embodying dull people doing dull things. (I wonder what real life Stoke supporters would think of it)

And you know what? That’s a legitimate challenge and trying to no be interesting becomes interesting in its own way. It’s an unusual space to explore, bored sports fans drinking, but as you explore it, you find there is something to explore. Looking back at our game, I felt like we were embracing our inner Raymond Carver and inner Breece D’J Pancake.

Stokes-Birmingham 0-0 was the first game to use the term Game Poem, although I bet you can find earlier games that can retroactively fit the bill. For me, a game poem should ideally try to evoke one specific idea/emotion. It is such a short form that it can only be a snapshot, only has one bullet to fire.

Exploring the banal and the dull seems like an odd place for what became its own RPG form to start. However, by taking us there and showing us how it could be interesting and engaging, Stokes-Birmingham proves how much we can do with game poems.

https://boardgamegeek.com/rpgitem/82361/stoke-birmingham-0-0

Collaborative world building, it’s a thing

I was listening to Matt Colville, who I listen to very erratically, and he commented on how world building is a DM’s thing and how the players investment in how they have drama in that world.

However, I have been in campaigns where the DM assigned world building to the players. You, you’re playing an elf? Okay, you get decide what elves are like in our world. It shares the work and lets players get more invested in the world.

Oh, in the game did end up having an over arcing story. The DM just tailored it to the players’ interests after he learned what they were.

However, what really came to my mind was the games where the whole point is for everyone to work together to create the world. Games are where everyone gets to take part in the world building.

My first experience doing that was... man, 1997. If there were any world building games out at the time, we didn’t know it. We just each took a piece and developed it. We ended up with a world of islands floating in the volcano with renaissance duelers and steampunk monks who didn’t wear goggles. We never ended until doing anything with it but it was pretty.

However, there are now a number of options for collaborative world building. The first one I heard of was Universalis, which I still haven’t really looked at. Downfall is another one I want to look into. I have actually played the Quiet Year, which explores building a community but also has a definitely helping of collaborative world building.

The world building game that I have, by far, had the most experience with is Microscope. If someone asked me to recommend a world building game, which has never happened and probably never will, I’d recommend Microscope. In fact, that the first Microscope game I was ever in had the goal of creating a campaign world for D&D and the player who was the DM used it for more than one campaign.

World building hasn’t been on my mind lately. However, after my mind was poked, I not only remembered that I enjoy it, there are systems that really explore it.

Exploring the lost continent via forum

At the end of last year, I got in another game of Microscope, the quirky RPG of building a timeline. I've been meaning to do a write up about it for a while.

While this was the fifth Microscope game I've been in (two successful and two fizzled out), this was the first one I played that wasn't with my old Indie crew from back in Chicago and this was the first time I played via the Boardgame Geek Forum. Although I have corresponded with Avri, the organizer, so it's not like I was playing with complete strangers.

The theme for the game was the Lost Continent, beginning with it rising out of the ocean and ending with it being discovered.

The game also had one of the toughest restrictions I have ever had in the game of Microscope. No fantasy or science fiction elements, although dinosaurs and other extinct creatures were acceptable. The only tougher one I've played with was no colors.

In all of my previous games, we push those elements to the hilt. Heck, in one of the ones that fizzled, I was pushing to have to human/human-equivalent, instead having the dominant race basically be the Mi-Go from Lovecraft's Whisperer In the Dark.

However, unlike that crazy color restriction, no fantasy or science fiction elements was a challenge to step up to. During the course of the game, I spent a lot of time reading about paleontology and archeology in order to try to make it realistic. I even got to introduce a version of the Beaker Culture, who I always thought were neat.

There were a couple hiccups at the start, one of which was me missing that it was my turn at the start and we did have one player disappear (which is happened in other games I've played) However, once we got rolling, the game blazed along.

Seriously, I have never played in a game of Microscope that went so fast. It was awesome.

We were a little under the gun. One of the other players was expecting their first child. Which was one of the reasons (but far from the only!) another of the games I was in fizzled. But in Avri's game, the expecting father TOLD us. You know, as well as actively participating.

In my experience, if everyone gets a chance to be the lens, that is a full game of Microscope. By the time we were done, not only have we done that but we got halfway around the table again. That was awesome.

For my first experience playing an RPG by forum, exploring the history of the lost continent via Microscope was great. I would play another game organized by Avri at the drop of a hat.

https://boardgamegeek.com/thread/1669842/lost-continent-ic

Microscope - building a history

Microscope has been the GM-free RPG I have played the most over the past couple years. Quite frankly, it's the RPG that I've played the most period, since I've been able have ongoing games via email.

It may not be the first GM-free RPG I've tried (that'd Baron Munchaussen), or the one that won me over to the concept (that's Polaris) or the one I think has had the biggest global impact (Fiasco), but I have gotten some serious mileage out of Microscope.

Microscope definitely plays with some of intrinsic concepts of role playing games. You don't play specific characters, although you might still play someone in any given scene. Instead, you are basically omnipotent gods who ignore space and time in order to create history.

In essence, Microscope is about creating a timeline. At the start of the game, everyone agrees on a beginning point and an end point, along with some guidelines (like magic is real or no Nazis, for example, both of which have shown up in games I've played). Then, you take turns adding stuff to the timeline, ranging from periods to very focused scenes.

Here's what makes Microscope really neat. After you agree on a theme and some guidelines, there is no further conversation. This is not design by committee. When it's your turn, no consulting with anyone else. You are Johnny-on-the-Spot and its all up to you.

Which leads to a lot more surprises and creativity.

When you play face-to-face, you actually role play out scenes, the most discrete and focused element in the game. When we've played by email, the person whose turn it has just written out a scene, like a little short story.

Oh, and in Microscope, you are not limited to just going forward in time. You can jump back and forth along the time line like Doctor Who on six expressos. (If caffeine has any effect on Gallifreyans) I've seen games where you go from the space age to the Stone Age in two turns.

Microscope plays plays with time and collaborative story telling and world building in ways I haven't seen before. It's very accessible but it also works very well. I have had a lot of fun with it.

Seriously, Microscope lets you play with the vastness of time and space. It's good stuff.

http://www.lamemage.com/microscope/

Lexicon - an RPG about creating your own wiki

Lexicon is a game that was just recommended to me by Russ Williams, all around brilliant member of BGG. Between my interest in GM free systems and my interest in RPG's that can be played online, he made a good call in knowing that I'd be interested in it.

Lexicon falls into that category of role-playing games that are really about developing worlds and settings. My beloved Microscope is another, as is the Quiet Year. It is an unusual design space in the world of role-playing games but I still believe that it falls under the larger umbrella of role-playing.

In Lexicon, each player is a scholar who is helping write an encyclopedia. At the end of the game, the encyclopedia will be made up of 26 entries, one for every letter in the alphabet. 

Here is the twist, that makes the game of Lexicon one that is interconnected between all of the players. At the end of your entry, you have to cite to other entries. Indeed, at the beginning of the game they will be entries that haven't been written yet. And, you cannot write or have written an entry that you have cited.

The designer recommends that you set up a wiki to play the game, hyperlinking the citations. So, when the 26th entry has been written, the one that starts with a Z, you will have a tightly linked, self referencing document.

Honestly, this sounds so cool to me. I have really gotten a lot out of my email games of Microscope and Lexicon would take a lot of those ideas is an even more online friendly place.

And I like how, unlike in Microscope or the Quiet Year, a player can actually take on the role of a specific person. Namely a scholar or researcher who may have their own agenda and who may not think much of the other goobers who are trying to hone in on their area of specialty. You know, the other players.

BUT I have also found that keeping people involved and active in an email game can be a struggle. The commitment might be smaller, in some ways, than getting together for one four-to-six hour game but it will be a commitment that will span weeks or months.

AND Microscope has a fail safe valve in be form of periods and, in particular, events. Only a sentence or two long, they let folks make quick moves when they are strapped for time or thought. In Lexicon, every turn is a full entry and one that has to involve two other entries. That's a lot more to ask for.

For all that, I am still hoping that I manage to play a game of Lexicon in 2016. I'm certainly not going to try while I have a game of Microscope already going and some of those folks are the first ones that I would try and involve.

http://lexiconcubine.wikidot.com/lexicon-definition