Our seed was "The lost continent is rediscovered."

The bookends were "The continent is lost" and "The continent is lost again."

The key inclusion from the palette was the idea of transcendence, that there was a second non-corporeal stage of life that one could attain with the correct personal sacrifices. Death was nonexistence, the opposite of both life and transcendence.

In play, we discovered that the first disappearance of the continent was due to the continent itself Transcending. The second disappearance was more traditional; the continent sank into the seas.

Scenes centered around two characters, who each appeared in multiple periods. Taz the plague doctor was responsible for massive Transcended emigration to the lost continent and led the rebellion against the living when they started crowding the continent.

Isodore the soul hunter was responsible for seeking and destroying the Transcended. In doing so, he may very well have caused the continent to be lost a second time. Parts of the continent were Transcending and Isodore was murdering them with his magic as they did. The entire continent sank below the waves some time after. Isodore led an interesting life, he was a lover of Taz at one point, and he also Transcended and returned to life after Transcending.

In the back half of the game we added a pre-emigration city named Primrose and a King of the Rats, and we had some fun exploring these. Rats get kings when there are a critical mass of them; thus the title of the game.

Microscope feels more like a toy to me than a game -- but I think this is a very good thing. With many story games, I feel a lot of pressure to keep things coherent and single-thrusted. With Microscope I feel a lot of liberty to wander and discover.

Thanks to Susan and Jered for a fun game!

In play, we discovered that the first disappearance of the continent was due to the continent itself Transcending.

Dude. Woah. Mind = blown. I had to stop reading right there, sit back, sip my coffee and take a minute to ponder the cosmos.

I didn't expect so much of the game to revolve around the transcendence theme, but I'm glad it did because it was interesting. It's cool to see what develops out of a story when you just run with whatever seems the most intriguing at the time. Along those lines, when Taz got introduced, I thought he would be a relatively minor character who might come up once or twice. Instead, he was elevated to a central role in events, and an entire story game could be played exploring his complicated and influential life alone.