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A RICH WHITE MAN posted:How about : Perfect. I'm in for that.
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Nov 29, 2014 06:28
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Works for me!
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Nov 29, 2014 06:45
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I'm down for that, though I should say, if we manage to finish this Big Picture, we should definitely keep going with others.
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Nov 29, 2014 08:11
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All right! I think we're all happy with what we've got, at least enough to move on to bookending history. For those of you who may be spectating, that means we're going to be making two Periods that are the beginning and ending of the history we're going to create. (Not that nothing happened before or after these Periods; just that they aren't within the scope of our history.) Again, we all need to agree on this, but it's one of the last things we have to be all committee-y about. I'm gonna go ahead and throw out a suggestion for the beginning Period:
Go ahead and suggest an ending Period (remember, you need a brief description, but not as brief as the Big Picture, and a tone), or critique an idea someone's already come up with!
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Nov 29, 2014 08:51
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I should point out that, as the Palette is yet to be made, one should refrain from adding elements that may later be banned. Also, since the bookends are by committee, I propose that we each come up with a beginning and an end, and that they can be chosen independent of one another by the group (so that one player's beginning might be pair with another player's ending). My proposals: Beginning: Tired of life in an ancient, stagnant city, a group of disgruntled citizens leave to found their own small settlement.(Light) End: The city, having become ancient and stagnant, is abandoned as its citizens leave to found their own small settlements.(Dark)
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Nov 29, 2014 09:46
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EclecticTastes posted:I should point out that, as the Palette is yet to be made, one should refrain from adding elements that may later be banned. I figured that, if anyone had a problem with some part of my suggestion, they'd say so. And I didn't mean to suggest that you guys couldn't also suggest beginnings, just that I wasn't going to bother suggesting an ending just yet.
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Nov 29, 2014 18:07
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Throwing more ideas into the ring: Beginning: Merchants and artisans flock to a backwater outpost on the Southern Fringe, as patrols continually liberate treasure the haggard river pirates have looted from other kingdoms. (light) End: Survivors flee in search of healthy cities and to the countryside as the Choking Fever claims countless lives. (dark)
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Nov 30, 2014 01:22
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Beginning: A powerful warlord draws together disparate people through sheer force of will and arms; the City is founded, at a site of great significance. (light) End: The City's long, slow decline comes to an end when a powerful warlord sacks it, without much in the way of opposition. (dark)
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Nov 30, 2014 02:23
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I'm seeing a lot of support for a light-toned starting Period and a dark-toned ending Period. If I may, though, I'd like to campaign for having both Periods be light. Specifically, and looking at other folks' suggestions, I'd like to see something like this:
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Nov 30, 2014 08:28
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FredMSloniker posted:I'm seeing a lot of support for a light-toned starting Period and a dark-toned ending Period. If I may, though, I'd like to campaign for having both Periods be light. Well, there's also perspective to consider. An ending that's Dark from one perspective would be Light if you just shifted whose perspective you look through. Like, my suggestions, taken together, describe a completely symmetrical cycle, with the tone-defining difference being that the ending is from the perspective of the city being abandoned, rather than the hopeful people abandoning it.
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Nov 30, 2014 19:58
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EclecticTastes posted:Well, there's also perspective to consider. An ending that's Dark from one perspective would be Light if you just shifted whose perspective you look through. Well, yes, that's kind of my point. I would like the perspective of the ending to be hope, not despair. The exact words aren't the issue.
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Nov 30, 2014 20:14
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Well, it's relatively easy to see a Dark beginning, but it's hard to see how an ending can be happy for pretty much any social institution. I guess some sort of incorporation into a larger entity where it loses its individual identity, possibly. I started typing up a scenario where the end of a regime would be a positive period for some, but it would be a dark period for the regime itself, and those situations are so dire (the slave trade, the Nazis) that I feel gross for even thinking about them in game terms. To be honest, it seems like the larger your scale, the fewer Light endings are plausible. A life or a relationship can end on a high note, and a castle could be decommissioned into a museum or somesuch, but a city is pretty much either going to go on forever, or end in some kind of ruin. Similarly, a nation or civilization is going to keep going until it ends, and there's no pretty way for them to end either. I have some thoughts about the ideas people have put out, but I've gotta take the trip back home pretty soon, so for now I'll just say that I'd like to see the beginning being a resumption of normal activity after a period of stagnation and depopulation, especially with some sort of mlitary figure deciding to fortify a strategic location, and then the end being a return to global stagnation and flight from the cities. Probably better to work out broad themes than to nitpick about specific wording anyway.
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Nov 30, 2014 21:08
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Keep in mind that endings don't need to be hard endings. They can be meaningful turning points towards a brighter future, a period of instabilty reaching a state of relative calm, and so on. Much like a series of novels or TV show, the ending is just a send-off for the setting we've made, not necessarily and end to its existence.
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Dec 1, 2014 04:14
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A RICH WHITE MAN, you've been quiet. Care to weigh in on this?
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Dec 2, 2014 02:58
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I prefer Dark themes to Light ones, and would be perfectly happy with both bookends being Dark.
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Dec 2, 2014 03:21
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Well, all right. I'm not glued to the idea of the end being light. I do think the beginning should be, though. So how about this?
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Dec 2, 2014 04:02
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I like those a lot!FredMSloniker posted:Outcasts and refugees from a dozen civilizations found the City in a land no one else wants. Light tone. And we shall call it Jersey.
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Dec 2, 2014 19:41
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Eclectic, Abyssal, your thoughts?
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Dec 3, 2014 17:25
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I can't say I care for big cataclysmic endings, it's kind of overdone. I'd rather go for something a little more understated, but that's me.
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Dec 3, 2014 19:24
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I think it's a good point that the bookends don't have to be the beginning and the ending of the entity, but just of our story. A nice Light ending for a city would be "the city becomes the capital of a new nation" or something. On the other hand, I'm a little skeezed by "there's nobody here, let's make a city" origin stories, because the only place that happens is in American history textbooks. For as long as cities have been a thing, pretty much every habitable bit of land (excepting some remote islands) has been occupied by people, and founding a city usually means displacing the people who were there before. As long as that's acknowledged though, we're good.
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Dec 3, 2014 22:05
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Abyssal Squid posted:For as long as cities have been a thing, pretty much every habitable bit of land (excepting some remote islands) has been occupied by people
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Dec 3, 2014 23:17
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Looks good to me! Only thing is those sound more like Events than Periods, and minor tweaks to the wording should fix that. Protracted struggles over succession allow the Dragon and her minions establish a new order in the city. (Dark) Archaeologists explore the ruins of the city, and its lost secrets. (Light) Just changing things to continual verbs and periods, rather than unique events. The king death only takes an instant but the arguments over succession could last years; claiming the city takes only a single word whereas establishing a new order requires time to eliminate the old and to build up the institutions of the new. Uncovering could take place repeatedly, but I still feel like it's a singular action, for an on-the-spot analogy, setting the table is a continuous activity (you've got your plates and your glasses and your silverware and your napkins and the dishes of food themselves) while uncovering the dishes happens once for each dish, in a second or so. I figure that's something we should be aware of before we move on. It's fine for a Period to revolve around an Event, but the Period itself needs to be a framework that can fit multiple Events inside it. If the Big Picture is about Jesse's life, Moved by desperation, Jesse robs a bank would be an Event, while Moved by desperation, Jesse turns to a life of crime would be a Period. Plenty of time in that Period for Jesse to rob a bank and also take a forced vacation to the Cayman Islands.
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Dec 3, 2014 23:54
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I think we might be losing sight a little in regards to the big picture, in that it's not about how the city came to be, or how it ended, but how it changed over time. Like, try this: Once isolated, a new invention pushes the city into an era of greater contact with the world at large than ever before. (Light) Ultimately unable to cope with the changes brought on by contact with the outside world, the city retreats into isolation once more. (Dark) Note that I'm keeping the circumstances fairly vague, so we can define the nature of the isolation as we go along.
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Dec 4, 2014 00:41
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Beginnings and endings are changes. That said, if you feel strongly about it, there's still time to change the Big Picture to 'The life and death of the City' if you want! And I like Abyssal Squid's suggestion about modified bookends; if you two want to sign off on them, we can move to the next step.
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Dec 4, 2014 02:57
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Seconding that beginnings and endings are changes, and allowing an invader to take over because you can't get your house in order definitely seems like a failure to adapt to me! That is a good point though, we should keep the Big Picture in mind as we come up with Periods during the game. Some more ideas for the ending: The population dwindles as the countryside yields sustenance with ever-increasing reluctance. (Dark) Surrounded by foes on all sides, the city dwindles to insignificance. (Dark) United with its neighbors, the city flourishes as the capital of a new kingdom. (Light) All of these happen as a result of changes outside the city itself.
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Dec 4, 2014 03:35
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A powerful warlord draws together the Twelve Clans, and establishes the City at a site of great significance. (Light) Surrounded by foes on all sides, the City dwindles to insignificance. (Dark) I'm going to throw my formal support behind this pairing.
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Dec 4, 2014 04:15
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Abyssal Squid posted:Seconding that beginnings and endings are changes, and allowing an invader to take over because you can't get your house in order definitely seems like a failure to adapt to me! That is a good point though, we should keep the Big Picture in mind as we come up with Periods during the game. I like the first and third of those, those sort of exemplify the more subtle, understated tone I'm in the mood for. Maybe it's too many of them Hollywood blockbusters, but I'm hoping for something that's more down-to-earth and political, rather than a story about dragons and lost civilizations. That's one of the things I really like about Microscope. With other RPGs, you kinda need to have it be about something big and dramatic to get the players moving, but with Microscope, it's about exploring the chosen time period, so the stories can be more subdued. Hell, scenes don't even need to cover pivotal moments, they could just be a slice of life during an important period. A glimpse into how the people of that time coped with, or reacted to whatever big, important things are going on way above their heads. Like, Star Trek wasn't always about that week's anomaly or alien encounter, sometimes it was a story about getting some mid-level technician to come out of his shell a little instead of wasting his time on the holodeck, or an android learning the appropriate customs for a friend's wedding. I'm a fan of those little moments.
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Dec 4, 2014 05:31
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In defense of the second, the "surrounded by foes" one, I meant that more to be a drawn-out affair of cultural attrition rather than a dramatic showdown between armies. Even if the city has a powerful army, all of its neighbors imposing onerous tariffs and tolls would kill it just as surely as the farms failing to produce would. I'm equally open to dramatic and subdued stories, for what it's worth, as long as the tone is kept somewhat consistent.
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Dec 4, 2014 05:47
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Abyssal Squid posted:In defense of the second, the "surrounded by foes" one, I meant that more to be a drawn-out affair of cultural attrition rather than a dramatic showdown between armies. Even if the city has a powerful army, all of its neighbors imposing onerous tariffs and tolls would kill it just as surely as the farms failing to produce would. Yeah, interpreted like that, I like how it sounds. For a beginning, I'm also thinking something more gradual. Like, a prosperous town makes the transition to full-fledged city. Though, I like it when the ending and beginning work as sort of mirrors of each other. How about a village, surrounded by enemies, achieves peace by uniting all sides into a grand city?
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Dec 4, 2014 05:52
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Abyssal Squid posted:In defense of the second, the "surrounded by foes" one, I meant that more to be a drawn-out affair of cultural attrition rather than a dramatic showdown between armies. Even if the city has a powerful army, all of its neighbors imposing onerous tariffs and tolls would kill it just as surely as the farms failing to produce would. That is my idea of it, as well. For my interpretation, see: Rome.
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Dec 4, 2014 18:12
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I'm partial to this pairing myself:
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Dec 5, 2014 01:01
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FredMSloniker posted:I'm partial to this pairing myself: This works for me.
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Dec 5, 2014 01:05
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FredMSloniker posted:I'm partial to this pairing myself: Looks good, except again the beginning is worded like an Event rather than a Period. Change it to "sets about establishing" and I'm sold. EclecticTastes, you seem to have experience with the system, am I being pedantic here?
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Dec 5, 2014 03:50
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Abyssal Squid posted:Looks good, except again the beginning is worded like an Event rather than a Period. Change it to "sets about establishing" and I'm sold. Well, a Period and an Event only truly differ in the amount of time they span (relative to the Big Picture's time span, of course). If the warlord establishing the city is the defining moment of the entire Period, that's fine, but then of course you could dig down and find the Event where it actually happens, and then the specific Scene where he officially unifies the tribes. The Period would include the time both before and after the establishment of the city for a number of months/years/decades (based on the time scale we eventually decide is appropriate), as long as it all ties back into the city's founding. You could classify Periods as one of two types, either a sort of anthology where a series of Events (and Scenes within those events) depict the theme of the Period in a general sense, and a more centralized sort where one primary Event defines the period, and other Events and Scenes within the Period relate to it directly. To take a pair of similar examples, if the Period described a war, that would be more of an anthology, as the chronicle of the war is delved into, while a Period that describes a specific military victory as being pivotal to a war, that would center the Period on that particular Event, with other Events/Scenes being focused on what led to, or resulted from, that victory. Now, keep in mind that even when dealing with massive time scales, you can still do centralized periods, history has a funny way of showing you how everything ties together. Look at World War I. It was set off by a clusterfuck of centuries-old grudges and alliances, mixed with some of the worst luck in history (no, really, everyone was trying to prevent it from happening, but all their efforts went awry). And then, afterwards? The Treaty of Versailles is still being felt to this day. I could spend paragraphs talking about all the things that came about as a result of the Great War. Every war, and thus every major technological advance (which have their roots in technologies developed for wartime applications), of the twentieth century can trace its lineage back to that one grand political breakdown. Hell, modern Europe as we know it is a result of the crumbling of the old power structures following the end of WWI (and the turmoil that came from WWII, but WWII is a direct result of the Treaty of Versailles). That's really just the tip of the iceberg, just pick any trend, any event in the last hundred years, chances are you can work your way back to WWI as a common event between all of them. I mean, ultimately, everything is a result of something in the past, that's just causality, but the modern world is almost universally defined by the same thing, in that one point in time. All the threads came together for a while, before spreading back out, if you need a visual metaphor. So, anyway, that's how you do pivotal moments when working with really long spans of time. A single rude letter a thousand years ago led to the border skirmish that led to the lingering hostilities that led to the massive war currently going on. The massive war led to the rearranged borders that led to the resentful locals angry at having their nationality decided for them that led to the rebellion that overthrew the monarchies of old. And so on.
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Dec 5, 2014 05:06
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As far as semantics, I think that the City should always be capitalized, as it's clearly the only city of relevance in the world. A powerful warlord draws together the Twelve Clans, and establishes the City at a site of great significance. United with its neighbors, the City flourishes as the capital of a new kingdom. or w/e the final wording we decide on is.
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Dec 5, 2014 07:37
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Well, it looks like we've come to an agreement on the bookends of history! Now for the last collaborative thing: creating a Palette, a list of things we definitely do or do not want in the history. We each get to add one thing, either a Yes or a No, or to abstain. Everyone has to be comfortable with all the things added to the Palette; if someone isn't, you can attempt to convince them, change your suggestion, or abstain after all. If everyone contributes something to the Palette, we have another round of contributions, repeating until anyone decides that they're going to abstain. I've also created an 'IC thread' for us; the first post currently contains what we've decided so far about the history, and I'll keep it up to date. The rest of the thread will be where we do the in-character stuff for scenes. This thread will continue to be used for all the OOC stuff, like creating Periods and Events and working out the details of a Scene before and after RP. Take a look and make sure I haven't messed anything up. The 'seating order' in that thread isn't relevant yet, but it will be later. All you need to know for now is that, when the rules refer to 'the player on your left', it's the person whose name is to the left of yours on that list, and likewise for 'the player on your right'. I generated it randomly, with the caveat that I put myself and EclecticTastes 'across' from each other. Anyway, let me get the Palette rolling. I want to add No: Standard humanoid PC fantasy races. I'm specifically thinking of the sort of races you generally get to play as in Ye Olde Generic Fantasy RPG: elves, dwarves, gnomes, hobbits, orcs, and half-any-of-the-aboves. I'd like to add 'humans' to that, but I understand that's likely to be controversial, so I won't fight for it if any of you want bog-standard humans in there. Feel free to ask 'but what about race X' if you want it in and think I might object. Any objections? What are your suggestions?
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Dec 5, 2014 08:28
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Actually, the way the Palette works is everyone can keep adding, in order, until someone passes. Given that setting up an order would be impractical, here we can just have everyone add one, and then do it again, until someone doesn't feel like adding anything. For me: No supernatural/paranormal elements. That's no magic, no dragons, no aliens, no ghosts, no elves, none of that stuff. I'm sick to death of the lot of it, I'm ready for a story about humans. Possibly extraordinary humans, but still humans, as we understand them. Also, I'm pretty sure we're gonna name the city once we've started the game, no need to capitalize it.
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Dec 5, 2014 14:03
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EclecticTastes posted:Actually, the way the Palette works is everyone can keep adding, in order, until someone passes. According to my reading of page 13 of the rules, players can go in any order, and everyone gets a chance to suggest something; if everyone does, then everyone gets a chance to suggest something else. The process doesn't stop instantly if someone passes. In other words, the rules work the way you suggested they should work here. As for your Palette suggestion, I'm going to object. When we started off in this thread, you suggested a bunch of wild and crazy ideas, but I feel like you've been getting more and more restrained, to the point where I feel like your end game is you setting up a Scene about a middle-income suburban couple eating breakfast and wanting us to roleplay it for a couple RL months. I mean, half the suggestions you threw out when I was trying to decide on a group are ones your Palette addition would reject! That's probably unfair to you, but all the same I want things to be a bit wilder. And I definitely want to bring in kobolds and dragons and sentient slimes and giant shambling beetles and stuff. That's why I want to get rid of all the typical PC fantasy races: so the characters are races that aren't typical. Is there some way we can come to a compromise on this? Like, would you be okay with it if we said no to 'subhuman' races, i.e. the kobolds and the dragons and the sentient slimes and the giant shambling beetles are all of human intelligence and can have treaties and make wars and read the paper over breakfast? Or yes to a particular tone, like modern age or industrial age or Renaissance, something other than the Generic Fantasy Setting? Also, I kind of like the idea of calling it the City. Like, it can have a 'real' name, but the people who live there just call it the City, because they don't think any other city matters/counts.
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Dec 5, 2014 19:08
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FredMSloniker posted:As for your Palette suggestion, I'm going to object. When we started off in this thread, you suggested a bunch of wild and crazy ideas, but I feel like you've been getting more and more restrained, to the point where I feel like your end game is you setting up a Scene about a middle-income suburban couple eating breakfast and wanting us to roleplay it for a couple RL months. I get dragons and slimes and beetles from every other RPG, I'm looking for a story with politics, with humans dealing with other humans. When I saw the Big Picture, that's what I thought of, is stories about people, not monsters. I could meet you in the middle at a Low Fantasy/Hard Sci-fi setting (keep in mind that we haven't actually determined what sort of genre we're even doing, aside from it taking place in a city), but the idea is that the world is driven by regular ol' humans and their politics and cooperation. Bit of Conan, a bit of Game of Thrones, a bit of The West Wing. If there's monsters, they're rare and present a more interesting problem than just "kill it before it kills too many people". There will be people looking to gain politically from whatever mayhem the monster causes, maybe people looking to exploit the creature for some sort of unethical research or something. If a war breaks out, I want to examine how it affects the people fighting it, and the people back at home, with the actual fighting being a secondary concern. That's why I love Microscope, is you can have these sorts of stories about politics and feelings. If I want to see dudes just fight monsters, I have somewhere around fifty RPGs to do that. Also, I really can't get on board with capitalizing "the city", it looks silly and nobody outside a cult or House of Leaves would do that sort of thing. Not even the most jingoistic person calls America "The Country".
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Dec 5, 2014 20:49
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EclecticTastes posted:If I want to see dudes just fight monsters, I have somewhere around fifty RPGs to do that. I think you misunderstand. I don't want to see 'dudes just fight monsters'. I want to see kobolds and dragons and stuff as the dudes. Like, that time the mayor got emergency voted out of office for his mishandling of the flooding, the contenders to replace him were a giant centipede, a lich, and an intelligent, but ordinary-sized, rat. I am totally on board with low-level political 'people dealing with other people' stories. I just want to get rid of the boring humans. Or at least just make them one of many races.
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Dec 5, 2014 22:38
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