Players: Pat, Marc, Alan, Tim

In honor of Halloween, we decided to make our Microscope game the horror story of a small New England town (Sweet Hollow, Maine), beginning with the settlement of the township, and ending with the entire town burning to the ground some centuries in the future.

As things began to play out and fill in, two major plotlines developed. First, the town's early history was filled with mistreatment and racial subjugation of the native people, and racism became a recurring theme throughout its later history as well, with one specific racially motivated murder being described, and a tribal museum (packed full of pretty lies) being built in the town's tourism boom in the mid-20th century.

The other major plotline--it might be argued the major plotline, as 4 of the 5 scenes we played out or dictated revolved around it--was around a serial killer (the town archivist, Emily Ebbins), in the 1980's through the modern day, who dispatched of 19 victims in the 80's and one final murder in the modern day of a government official. We spent a great deal of time with Emily (and her victims both living and non-corporeal, a family member of a victim, and a friend of a victim who later became a police investigator). The murders tied back into the town's earlier history (being historical re-creations, over-enthusiastic reenactments if you will), and had something to do with the rather unusual family tree of the town's original founder, Joseph Samson (who had a baby with a chieftain's daughter, then murdered her in cold blood, later adopting the child and raising her to brainwash her mother's people as the schoolmistress of the local "Indian-integration" school...lovely chap), although we never fully fleshed out what precisely the connection was.

It was an interesting game, and my first game of Microscope, but unlikely to be my last. I would like to say thanks to the other players. I enjoyed making a story with you.