Co-op World Creation (Pre-DW Campaign) via MicroscopeRPG
I’ve been reading about #MicroscopeRPG and even listened to an Actual Play this morning. It has me thinking it could be really cool to use it to cooperatively craft the history of a world with my DW players, and then use that resulting product (the world/history) as the theme for a new campaign world in DW (played by those same players of course).
The idea here is that it would allow the players to help set the theme of the world initially which in turn would (theoretically) make it easier (faster) for them to take that active role in world development while in-game. With the blank white slate we have initially, some of them find it hard to answer things like… “who is the ruler here”, etc. Working up that initial world theme may not actually answer this question, but it could help a player come up with an answer they are happy with.
Any thoughts on this? Have you in fact tried this? Adam Koebel replied to me in Twitter about this saying “Microscope-into-DW is a classic” – still not sure if that means he had tried it yet, so that kind of prompted this post, to see if anyone here has. Thanks!
For those interested, here is the #MicroscopeRPG Actual Play (Video) I listened to… Microscope RPG: Sci-Fi style
We did it once without any kind of modification to either game. Play Microscope with a set of pre-defined “have to include” elements – elves, dwarves, arcane and divine magic, etc and then just play it out. Pick a card at the end and say “let’s do an adventure, here!” you can come back for later adventures and play the descendants of your characters, or the same character, for long-lived races!
Oh that’s a really cool idea, switching it up and playing different characters across the timeline – nice!
It makes elves being immortal actually mean something.
Adam Koebel Ironically the Microscope rules suggest you avoid immortal and time traveling characters unless they are the intended main focus of the game.
Yeah, but by the time you get to DW you aren’t playing microscope anymore.
How would you handle playing an Elf in DW during, say “Period 1” and then wanting to play that same Elf in “Period 3″… maybe 200 years later, etc. Specifically, would you increase the power of said Elf in Period 3 in some way? I would imagine you could give him/her wealth and/or other story currencies/power vs statistical power, but I’m curious what you think (or what you did in a similar situation).
You could, or you could make the reason your are zooming in to this point in time related to their lack of these things. For example, said elf has just lost his wealth. You could start your questions there.
Mike Weem remember, the strength of a character isn’t just in the moves they have but in their fictional positioning. Maybe a love letter move for them between sessions to represent the ages lost to time and the heartache they bore between.
I’m currently running a play-by-forum game where we’re making the world with Microscope, and then we’re going to hack DW to suit whatever we come up with. One of the restrictions we set was “no standard fantasy races,” so there’s going to be some work to do. But I’m psyched.
Been wanting to try something like this eventually. Love the idea but already so many roleplaying options on my plate.
Jason Lutes changing out the races for clans, cultures or just other races is super easy.
1) What types of endeavour do these cultures lean towards? Give those classes options for these cultures.
2) How do these cultures do those things differently than anyone else? Make the move about that.
Bam, you’re done.
You could take it one step further than Adam Koebel ‘s example, and make the moves just say something specific about the character. Halflings become “Small Person” or “Friendly Person” Elf racial moves simply become “Graceful” or “Innately Magical” etc.