Find people to play with
Available players are lurking at the General Forum. Try to find players that have the same amount of free time as you. You don't want players that want to play fast to be bogged down by a player that can only take a turn once a week, and conversely, a player with lots of time constraints may become lost in a game that moves too fast for her.
Microscope is best with 3 or 4 players. Don't worry if more people want to play - just pick three or so and let the rest start their own game.
Create the main page for your game
Example main page: Touhou
Decide on a category name for your game. Any old word will do, as long as it hasn't been used as the category name for any previous game — it does not have to be related to the actual content of your game. You will create all the pages that are needed to run your game under that category name, and that way pages from different games will not get mixed together and step on each other's toes. For example, the category name for the example game is touhou.
Once you have decided on a category name, create a page named main under that category. For example, the main page for the example game is touhou:main.
If your game needs a forum, contact guyb and you'll get a dedicated forum.
Parts of the main page
See the example main page for inspiration on how do organize yours. It's divided like this:
- Overview
- This is where you put general background for your game, along with all details that are decided on before you start taking turns, like the history seed you start with and the Palette. When you write this part, you may want to have a conference call with all the players since this is the part when everyone needs to be involved. After that you can settle into the usual pattern of asynchronous communication.
- Players
- A list of the players taking part in this game.
- Turn Order
- A list of the game's past turns as well as upcoming turns. Use this too keep track of who did what and who's turn is it right now.
- Timeline
- A record of the world's history, in chronological order. Analogous to the stack of index card from the tabletop version of Microscope.
Taking a turn
When it's time for you to take your turn, follow these steps:
- Go over the “Turn Order” section to catch up with what the other players did since your last turn. Read all the new stuff carefully.
- Create pages for your new period/event/scene (or two nested things, if you are the current lens and you are so inclined). Write stuff in them. Make sure they're detailed enough so that the other players can understand them without having to interrogate you.
- Edit the “Timeline” section to add links to your new pages in the appropriate places.
- Mark your turn as over in the “Turn Order” section and move the “Current Turn” marker down to the next player. Add a short line summarizing what you've done this turn (a link to your new page is usually enough).
- Notify the next player that her turn has started via phone call or SMS.
