Wow, Microscope works great for creating some epic, iconic superheroes.

Enter:

The first Doctor Miracle, subject of experiments of an enclave of ancient space visitors living underground, with telekinetic / teleportation powers she can't control - turned to superheroism by the memory of her dead father, when the Guardian epicfailed.

Guardian Girl, his ineffective just-for-PR sidekick - her costume stolen by Doctor Miracle in the moment she decided to turn to superheroism herself. (Using her teleportation powers, leaving GG naked ...)

The Shell, an open seas pirate who stole "The Nautical Shell" an ancient Atlantean artifact from rich divers - and became trapped as the soul-bound host body for the sentient ancient atlantean technology.

The Atlantean, a true Atlantean (also the descendents of a race of ancient space visitors) who inherits the nautical shell when the original host dies.

I love it when superhero stories have consistent origins, as if they're all from the same world - all of our superheroes had ties to these ancient astronauts.

So much I wanted to find out about this universe! Why did the first generation of superheroes disappear? Why did a later generation Doctor Miracle turn his/her back on the Future League? When the nations of the world started adopting technology reverse-engineered from metahuman powers, well, what happened? And what happened when the existence of the various enclaves of ancient visitors were revealed?

This was the best game of Microscope I've played - a couple things Ben made sure to do that has been neglected every time I've played was:

* make sure every addition relates to the focus (we've always created foci but then I don't think we were very diligent about keeping them in play)

* stopping to get some descriptive detail of each event that was created.

That said, I could tell Matt & Chris weren't as engaged as I was - maybe we should have tried harder to find a concept we could all rock.

Sticking to the Focus is uber-critical. Without it our individual contributions really are disconnected.

I liked that premise a lot. We definitely could have kept going for a long time, fleshing out the different Doctor Miracles, Atlanteans and Guardians down the centuries. I really wanted to get more into the "compare / contrast" stuff, where we see how the different incarnations of these heroes improve on their predecessors or completely sully the mantle. I mean, one of these heroes (unintentionally?) wiped out the Earth by the end of the history. I would love to see who did that and why.

We just needed more time. Hmm, I see the problem: playing Microscope should itself be a game of Microscope. If last night was a game of Microscope, we would be free now to go back and play more in the middle of the game, expanding on all the things we wanted to explore. Problem solved. Or I just divided by zero. Sorry world!