Taking a closer look at Microscope

You find yourself in front of a door made of heavy, dark wood, and inscribed with a calendar of moon phases and constellations. A scrap of paper sticks out from the bottom of it, yellowed with age. It begins: Microscope is a world building TTRPG published by Lame Mage Productions. Published quite a while ago, too, back in 2011 (15 years ago!) making this the oldest game I've talked about so far. It's a staple of the indie TTRPG scene, one of the games that you've probably heard about even if you haven't played it. In Microscope, you create a timeline of events at varying levels of scope and scale. You can zoom out to define whole periods of history, or zoom in to a specific moment. It's GM-less, with each player taking on the role of the "Lens" throughout play, dictating the "Focus" of that round - the thing (event, person, theme, institution) that every contribution will touch on. Players then take turns adding either a period (a swathe of time), an event (a specific thing that…