It's really excellent to see the Yogscast taking up one of the best GM-less games available, Microscope. I'm comfortable saying that, taken collectively, it may be one of the games which has provided the most consistent pleasure and enjoyment in the years since it's been released (seven years now, Jesus) of all the games I own – and I am literally sitting by an entire wall covered in shelves full of role-playing games.
The production values are quite tight and while the play is a little bit silly at times, overall things are kept pretty in focus. This can be a real problem for people who are new to GM-less games in general because humor and comedy are one of the first to go-to defenses for people who are a little out of their comfort zone and pushed to be creative. I've had more than a few convention sessions which got off to a rocky start because people were just not comfortable enough and ready to trust the other people at the table enough to really dive in and be serious off the bat.
It passes.
The Yogscast crew gets through basic set up of a Microscope session in this 22 minute video, and I find myself really looking forward to seeing what they do next.
I haven't watched this particular video yet, but I'm positively surprised by them playing Microscope.
I've been watching the Yogscast for about 4 years now, and since they started playing RPGs their taste was usually pretty bad in my opinion (I mean, they brought me to DnD, which in turn brought me to other, better, RPGs, but still) – only RPG they played I liked was Everyone is John (but that's only short fun – being silly only gets you this far) and maybe their Space-Sci-Fi-Homebrew-Thing.
Call of Cthulu, DnD3.5, DnD5 and Edge of the Empire are very mechanic-heavy, and every GM of the Yogscast (Tom or Mark) seems to prefer mechanic-heavy games, quickly turning boring to watch.
This probably is the reason I haven't watched the video yet – Another Yogsquest with another mechanics-heavy game that'll bore me after 2 videos … Yay …
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And yet, this is at the opposite end of the spectrum. Maybe they've discovered that all of the mechanic heavy games end up having something of the same architecture and feel after a while. It's something that I don't think that a lot of people have noticed.
Or, to put it as the Forgites use to:
System matters.
At a certain point, the rhythm of interaction and the way that narrative flows around the table becomes screamingly obvious and you can't look away from it. It draws the eye. That's part of why "traditional RPG design" is so immediately distinctive and probably why so many people are generally reluctant to move out of the architecture they learned at the beginning, to the point of very seldomly going outside of the RPG that they learned at the beginning of their gaming lives in a lot of cases.
Hopefully, the Yogscast will bring some of the production values that they've built up over the years to showing us how Microscope looks in actual play. I expect things will be offhanded and silly until the first time that someone realizes they can make a Scene whose central Question is, "why does my father hate me?" And then there will be a pregnant pause.
I always love that moment.
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Awesome, thanks for sharing this, I'm getting into this game too 😋
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I think you'll enjoy it and if you do – there are several games by the same author that I think you will enjoy just as much.
It's always good when you know there's more stuff to look forward to.
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