So me and Ellen are taking a break from playing Microscope right now, and while there's a lot of sussing out that seems to happen, we're enjoying it a great deal. We started a new game and I pitched a premise based on the Palladium Nightbane game. Basically one day an eclipse happens (in our game a lunar eclipse) and all of a sudden a small subset of humanity is transformed into hideous monsters.

We haven't done a lot with it and we'll probably only get through one turn each of Making History, but this game has some nice features and my worries about scenes being awkward or pointless were for naught. We just did an interview with the first monstrous professional wrestler after he won the World Title.

Details to come!

Colin, I'm with you. I'm like that with a lot of Palladium settings too. I thought the ideas were great but when I tried running them the game fell down. I'd just watched the MGMT music video for "The Kids" and wanted to play a game about monsters and Ellen thought it sounded cool.

Our palette was:
No mythical or mythological monsters. Like, no vampires or werewolves. (Mine)
No scientific explanation for why this transformation occurred. (Ellen's)

I'll just lay out our timeline after one round.

Beginning: Lunar eclipse occurs transforming subset of human population into monsters.
Man transforms into tentacle-faced monster after people gather in park to watch Lunar eclipse.
- Here was a scene where we discovered what the transformation was like. A man named Herbert Vanderpool was in the park with his wife Lori watching the eclipse and underwent the transformation. It was fast, disgusting, and painful. As the postscript, he ran away into the trees nearby.

Period of violence and anarchy in wake of monsters arising.
Herbert Vanderpool aka Nemo organized underground monsters' rights movement.

Governments oppress and exterminate monsters.
Many of Nemo's underground movement killed in violent confrontation with police. Nemo imprisoned.

End: Monsters integrated into human society.
Monster-Human weddings.
Eclipse Day celebrated in many countries.
Nemo becomes recognized monster celebrity. Wins PWF World Title.
- Interview with Nemo where interviewer discusses his physiological advantages, his hardships during the crackdown, and what happened with his marriage with Lori (she left the country with their children).

As you can see there's still tons of gaps. Our foci were The Eclipse and then after a poor shlub got transformed into a tentacle-faced monster, I liked him so much and wanted to see what happened to him that I made him the focus and jumped right to the end of the timeline where a throwaway joke (he was a pro wrestling fan) became a prophecy. That right there made me really like this game - how smoothly you can decide your own chronology. That might well be all we see of Nemo though. I never intended him to become some great leader.

The only struggles we had were, "Is this a scene? Is this an event? Is this an appropriate summary of an event? Does this belong in this period? Should we make a new period?" Our big point of contention early on was is, "Man transforms into tentacle-faced monster after people gather in park to watch Lunar eclipse," an event or a scene. I said it was a scene, Ellen said it was an event. Then she quoted rules at me until I relented and she was totally right. It's an event around which scenes can cluster. The actual transformation itself, police pursuit or hospitalization, etc.

Oh and like I said my concerns above about scenes being awkward were unfounded. Once I had some individuals and some ideas to latch onto, I leapt into them. The interview with Nemo was my idea and I was really eager to play it out. I do see the potential for problems as people "cross the streams" narrating these scenes where its ambiguous who has control over certain elements but so far it hasn't happened since we've been easygoing about rolling with what the other person narrates.

Planning on playing again next week. Maybe sooner!