Ben Robbins makes what I think of as meta RPGs, games that use characters and stories to investigate the concepts behind characters and stories. Microscope was his first RPG and it is an unusual one: It is a collaborative, GM-less, zero prep, non-linear game about exploring the history of a fictional society. Sounds simple right? But it is!

In a nutshell: the players decide what the game is about and set the start and end points, say, the rise and fall of a glorious king. The point at which he earns the throne might be our start and his death would be a natural end. Everything between is our play field.

Players take turns setting a focus for exploration. Everyone’s additions to the timeline that round touch on that theme. A player might focus on the betrayal of the king’s greatest champion and create a period called “Sir Spearsome’s Madness” and flesh it out with an event about Spearsome murdering some folks. The next player might decide to leap ahead on the timeline to create an event how Spearsome’s madness effects the kingdom, or slide back in the timeline to reveal the prophecy that foretold all this, or drill further down in the first player’s event to roleplay a scene that answers a specific question about betrayal (did love drive Spearsome mad?). Once everyone has added something to the timeline, the next player chooses a new focus on absolutely anything. The only rule is that facts established on the timeline can’t be contradicted.

Play can conceivably continue forever. Players narrate the events on the timeline, and record the details on index cards, allowing players to neatly stack and store them for future play.

Microscope is a game that takes on massively complicated concepts like time and history and provides elegant rules for navigating them in a way that is thought provoking and fun. My wonderment at this game is twofold: that the mechanics are as simple and versatile as they are, and that they can give way to stories that surprise everyone at that table. This one is a classic, gang.