Tonight was my first time at Story Games Seattle, and I had a blast! I played Microscope (the first story game I have ever played) with Marty and Pat. Pat did a great job pitching and explaining the game. Here's what went down:

We tracked the evolution of the Neo-Chimp from it's early creation in a lab to it's eventual takeover of man. You may think this was just a simple retelling of Planet of the Apes, but it also had Ice Pharaohs. Yep, Ice Pharaohs.

Here's how it started...

The Age of Genetic Mutation was spurred by Dr. Reegoff. She discovered hyper-evolution, and her discoveries eventually led to her death following self-experimentation. After her death, her late husband unwittingly gave her corpse to Russian Scientists, and all of her personal journals were destroyed in a hurricane.

Generations after her death, an internet community that called themselves Goffs sprung up around Dr. Reegoff's research. A plague of the constantly-evolving hyperflu had wiped out a huge portion of the population, and the Goffs hypothesized that Dr. Reegoff's research held the key to wiping out the resilient illness. They collected many files on her, but never found out what happened to her body. After receiving a mysterious email containing declassified Russian documents, the Goffs revealed that document to the world via a virally-publicized chat room session. Soon after releasing the document (which revealed that Dr. Reegoff's body was dissected into 16,000 pieces) the Goffs suddenly disappeared at the hands of the Pharmco Drug Company. The plague was cured, along with all other illnesses on earth.

Soon after, neo chimp/human hybrids began popping up everywhere, and eventually the Granger-Kempler Act awarded citizenship to sentient beings. To become a citizen, applicants had to be evaluated at testing centers. Unfortunately, this was a bureaucratic and flawed process, and many obviously sentient beings were classified as non-citizens (and sent to non-citizen zones). This led to the genetic wars between citizens and non citizens. An epic battle during this war was the siege of New York.

The genetic wars were abruptly interrupted by the eruption of Yellowstone, which sent the world into an ice age. Generations later, the Ice Pharaohs, who were assembled by the Pharaoh of Pharaohs, Ola Kal'a, assembled all pure-blood homo sapiens into large civilizations. Little did the homo-sapiens know, the Ice Pharaohs were actually neo chimps who rounded up humanity to slaughter them. This spelled the end for most of the remaining homo sapiens on earth.

Centuries after the peace of the neo-chimps, a great ice sculpture of Ola Kal'a was excavated, and the neo-chimps began researching this ancient species known as the humans.

So that's pretty much it! It was super fun, and I'll be back next week!