Author Topic: Collaborative World-Building  (Read 3398 times)

Offline sirpercival

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Collaborative World-Building
« on: October 04, 2013, 10:47:38 AM »
So, for the first time in several years I'm going to be starting up a RL campaign. It'll either be Legend or FATE (haven't decided yet), but the first step is going to be building a campaign world collaboratively, with my players.

The idea I had was to combine Dawn of Worlds and Microscope into one hybrid RPG for the world-building process, since they both do this kind of thing but have different foci. I was wondering if anyone has tried this, and if anyone had any advice for how to pull off the merge.

I got the following advice already:

Quote
  • Start with the opening sequence for Microscope. Pick a Big Picture, but Bookend History in a special way: first, create a start period called "Dawn of the World" (this period represents the first age of DoW), then create a second middle period called "Dawn of Humanoids" or something similar (this period represents the second age of DoW), then finally create a final bookend as per the normal Microscope rules. Add a Palette.
    Now we're ready to begin with the combined rules.
  • First, we define a Round as being a round in DoW combined with a Focus in Microscope. The Lens is selected or passed, the Focus is declared, History is Made, and the Lens finishes the Focus and the Round ends. As with the DoW rules, each Round must focus on a particular Age until a vote is made to advance to the next Age. That means that during the first Age, History being made must be limited to Events and Scenes within the Dawn of the World period, and cannot be made in any other period, nor can new periods be made. Similarly, during the second Age, History must focus on the Dawn of Humanoids Period. During the third Age, new Periods after Dawn of Humanoids may be created, but Dawn of Humanoids and Dawn of the World are off limits.
  • When history is made, if that history specifically uses any power called out in the DoW rules, the player must pay the power cost to use that power. This is totally subjective, and thus subject to a group ruling. If people can't agree, majority vote wins.
    That's... that's it. Follow the rules of DoW, follow the rules of Microscope, follow the blending requirements, write it all down and you have a map and a history.
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Offline linklord231

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Re: Collaborative World-Building
« Reply #1 on: October 04, 2013, 11:28:20 AM »
I haven't played Microscope before (let alone combined with Dawn of Worlds), but I can say that you should expect this to be long.  My group went through DoW at the start of our last campaign.  It was really fun, and gave a lot of backstory and stuff for the world, but it took about as long as our typical D&D session (6ish hours) by itself.  To be fair, we did more than the suggested 10 turns per age, but I feel like cutting it down to 10 would have made the world kind of bland.  There just weren't enough points (especially in the First Age) to do everything that we wanted to do. 
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Offline sirpercival

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Re: Collaborative World-Building
« Reply #2 on: October 04, 2013, 11:37:19 AM »
I haven't played Microscope before (let alone combined with Dawn of Worlds), but I can say that you should expect this to be long.  My group went through DoW at the start of our last campaign.  It was really fun, and gave a lot of backstory and stuff for the world, but it took about as long as our typical D&D session (6ish hours) by itself.  To be fair, we did more than the suggested 10 turns per age, but I feel like cutting it down to 10 would have made the world kind of bland.  There just weren't enough points (especially in the First Age) to do everything that we wanted to do.
Oh, I'm expecting to spend at least 2 sessions on this.  I mean, one if its real quick, which I can guess it won't be (knowing the players involved).

I've played a little bit of Microscope, but not DoW.
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Offline CreativeMage

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Re: Collaborative World-Building
« Reply #3 on: March 01, 2015, 03:29:21 PM »
@sirpercival, did you have any luck combining Microscope and Dawn of Worlds? Trying to do the same thing on our end, and wondering what kind of success others have had...