Players: Terry, Ian, and Pat.

During setup, I suggested we try out a bit of a hack that I'd tried out with another group the night before: we establish a number of "souls" who would reincarnate over and over throughout our history. They'd inhabit different incarnations throughout the ages, their memories and personalities would be a product of their time, and they'd be fated to run into each other. We decided on two such souls: Raven and Sparrow. Our history spanned from "Sumerian Spring" (the dawn of civilization as we know it) and "Winter of Humanity" (a transhumanist ascension into pure thought.) We had some pretty character-driven focuses from Terry and myself: "Raven betrays Sparrow" and "Sparrow saves Raven", respectively. Ian veered us into more world building with "Expansion of Territories."

One thing I noticed was that there was very little inter-period connections made. Instead (and this may just have been from our focuses), we got lots of little human vignettes riffing on a theme and tailored to a each time period. We had Rom (Raven), childhood friend of Princess Xenobia (Sparrow), betraying her and their people to the One Empire's invasion. Then we'd have The Musician (Raven) seducing The Patriarch (Sparrow), and robbing the post-apocalyptic village of their precious seed bank.

There was very little of the usual activity of stringing together disparate bits of history, which is usually my favorite part of Microscope. Still, I think there's something to the reincarnation hack. It made for lots of nice little character dramas within periods.

Thanks for playing, Terry and Ian!