or, being the right kind of mean “So, you’re trying to expose government corruption. Well, a car drives up, and a bunch of guys jump out. With guns! And… they shoot you! Uh, dead! Conflict!”“Allll-right…” We play a lot of story games where there’s no GM, and each character has an arc or agenda […] If you play just one role playing game this century, make Microscope that game. Microscope is a game that takes many standard assumptions of a role-playing game and stands them on their head. Players share the creation of an over-arching storyline, like the rise and fall of an empire, the mythic beginnings of human culture, or a bloodthirsty war between interstellar species. It's a unique storytelling engine that sweeps away blinders of limits we enforce on the medium, which, I hope, will help us better realize the full potential of this form. There is so much more we could be doing. Microscope is a great start."

Microscope is a model of minimalist complexity: with easy-to-learn tools you gain the power to create a believable history that will surprise you even as you're authoring it. Microscope excels as either a stand-alone game or a collaborative way to build a setting with your gaming group for another game entirely." We play these games together to be surprised and satisfied by ideas we wouldn’t have created on our own. How all our contributions combine is something no one of us can predict. For that to happen, we have to let go what we individually *expect* or *want* and just see what *does* happen. We had […] What I like about this that Microscope did really well is that the randomness isn't down to dice, it's down to how people find ways to complicate things. There's a great deal of control every player has over their character and the world around them in Kingdom, but at the same time all of the factors that are out of the player's control make it seem, just from the way it's written, like the sort of game that could be very tense and very fun. This is an excerpt from Kingdom, but it’s a good recipe for making scenes in just about any story game.) The secret to making a good scene isn’t coming up with an amazing or surprising idea. The secret is painting a clear picture so players know exactly what is going on. Being able to visualize […] Forgotten the title or the author of a book? Our BookSleuth is specially designed for you. Visit BookSleuthWhen I’m playing a role-playing game, I’m much more interested in hearing what someone’s character feels about a situation than what they do. If we understand the character’s feelings, even taking no action is informative. And if we don’t know their feelings, any action remains a mystery. Why did they do that? We don’t know. […]

Say yes” is a fundamental principle of just about every shared creative process. “Yes and”, “yes but”— either way, say yes. And it is absolutely good advice for role-playing games. Accept what other people contribute. Embrace what’s been said as established truth and build on it. Don’t contradict it. But there’s a big caveat […] Any role-playing game is a careful balance between agreement and disagreement. We need agreement because the game world only exists in our minds. If we can’t agree about what’s true, we’re going to contradict each other. If you think there are walls around the city and I don’t, our game will crash. Since agreement is […] Kingdom is a game of navigating a community through a series of crises. The community could be the crew of a single ship or a galaxy-spanning empire. It's got a number of very clever mechanics, and a lot more emphasis on role-playing characters and scenes than its predecessor. In the past few years I’ve had a lot more regular weekly games than one-shots. Mostly games with no GM, so no one is writing a story for us to follow. We are all just playing in the moment and seeing what happens. I love it. Except for one thing, which I’m doing to myself. […] This new edition is a complete rewrite of the original Kingdom rules to make the game easier to learn and play.It also adds LEGACY mode, which turns your Kingdom into a whole interconnected campaign. Explore the past and future of your community to see how it changes across time. How long? We've played over 70 sessions of a single Kingdom setting, with no signs of stopping.The innovative thing about this game is that is that the story isn't about those people, it's about the kingdom they live in — by which Robbins means country, city, organization, or other group of people. It's got a scope that goes beyond most interactive indie games. So while these roles are fairly mechanical as it pertains to Actions Players take in the game, I also find that thinking of your Mover & Shaker NPCs in your D&D game - political games especially - in this way can help shape NPC function to the central tensions of your game. You essentially have the Oracle, the Voice of the People and the Establishment. And these are almost always in disagreement/conflict which is a great way to grease your central tension on an interpersonal level (and thus make it easier for your PCs to connect with what's happening). What this also does is give more options in the core book. I could have easily seen it being split up like Microscope and Microscope Explorer, but honestly I think that was more just an issue of not having the info (much of which was taken from other people playing the game and figuring out their own neat ideas) rather than any desire to split up information. Kingdom, however, includes the kind of stuff you might have expected in a sourcebook in it's main book, which is excellent, tons of extra options and ideas to change up the mechanics of the game right away, and for about the same price as one of the other books. There are even some notes on inserting Kingdom games into Microscope and vice versa. It also adds LEGACY mode, which turns your Kingdom into a whole interconnected campaign. Explore the past and future of your community to see how it changes across time. How long? We've played over 70 sessions of a single Kingdom setting, with no signs of stopping…

People can work together to do great things. But what do we care about and what do we fight for? Who do we listen to and who pays the price? Why, yes, you can! I always try to make games that you use to tell a lot of different stories and play over and over again. Kingdom is always about a community, but you have huge latitude about the group you make and the kind of decisions it faces.The Kingdom is in your hands. The question is: will you change the Kingdom or will the Kingdom change you? What will our Kingdom do? What will it become? The Kingdom's fate is in your hands. The question is: will you change the Kingdom or will the Kingdom change you? Your Kingdom can be any group or organization that interests you. You could play a Wild West frontier town, a colony ship crawling to a distant star, or a sprawling Empire holding conquered peoples beneath its thumb. The second game from the creator of Microscope (which is one of the best games of recent years, and I will happily play it at pretty much any time. (Microscope lends itself unusually well to online play, too. Hint hint.) I'm Perspective so what I predict is true. A Touchstone character showed us what the people wanted. But the Captain has Power. He decides what we do. And I just told him that if he does what the people want his precious authority is going to be a thing of the past.

Beyond that, there's also an intriguing set of roles, where each player has slightly different mechanistic powers. I’ve spent most of my life playing roleplaying games at the table, in person. I’ve only started playing online much in the last few years, so I’m no expert, but here are some things I’ve learned so far. I follow the “simpler is better” approach with technology. I want no bells and whistles, unless those […] These are all examples of Microscope games. Want to explore an epic history of your own creation, hundreds or thousands of years long, all in an afternoon? That's Microscope. A lot of the game is down to just playing out your character and how they react to the other players, or even deciding to take a certain power away from another character (which is something you can do). Every role has their own sort of power, a very fine control over what direction the kingdom they're part of is going to ultimately take. Characters may change over time as they change roles or affect the kingdom, but the kingdom itself will change as well: characters will have to make decisions and deal with the consequences of them, popular opinion and the various stresses of rulership no matter what form it may take. I’m the god of fire. I have fire powers”“Fire powers? What are you, a superhero?” We’re in the middle of a game and you need to make up a god. Because you know, we’re gamers, we have to create whole worlds, gods, civilizations on the fly. What do you do? The number one approach […]You have vast power to create... and to destroy. Build beautiful, tranquil jewels of civilization and then consume them with nuclear fire. Zoom out to watch the majestic tide of history wash across empires, then zoom in and explore the lives of the people who endured it. Microscope is a model of minimalist complexity: with easy-to-learn tools you gain the power to create a believable history that will surprise you even as you're authoring it." I think my big concern about Kingdom is that... I may not be great at sharing to this degree where worldbuilding is concerned. I feel a bit anxious about people including or creating things that I don't enjoy when I'm in a shared creative space. Relinquishing that amount of control could be, for me personally, difficult. I think I would probably have to set more groundwork than the base game calls for just to keep things where I'd want to tell the story and then have the right group to pull it off. This is a flaw of my own character and not necessarily the system itself, but I think when it comes to worldbuilding it can be hard for people to play in each other's sandboxes. I'm Perspective so what I predict is true. A Touchstone character showed us what the people wanted. But the Captain has Power. He decides what we do. And I just told him that if he does what the people want his precious authority is going to be a thing of the past . Ben Robbins' Microscope may be the clearest-written game text I've ever read - which is helpful, because it is also one of the most innovative games I've come across in a long time."