Hi everyone!

I wrote up my thoughts from the game last Thursday. E, E, J, and L played Microscope Echo. What I chose to write about was less about the exact nature of the play of echo (funnily enough we had like ZERO interventions/echos) but more about playing a game as a facilitator when the game you have on your hands isn't everyone's cup of tea.

Link to Blog Post

That's rough, Eric. I've fallen in that trap myself. It's easy to think that as a facilitator, your job is to make people like games or (worse yet) make sure people are entertained, and to take it personally if they aren't.

That is absolutely not your job.

A facilitator's job is to help people understand how to play the particular game you're playing. Making the session fun is the responsibility of everyone at the table. We're in it together.

People liking some games and disliking others (even games that other people at the table love) is natural and normal. But more importantly, even when you realize you don't like a system you're playing (and that's happened to me time and again) everyone should do their best to have fun with the time they have, not just be grumpy and waste the evening. It sounds like your group did stick together and try to have fun, so that's the right way to do it. As we say during the welcome, even the worst game can be saved if you stop and discuss what you don't like and then try to fix things on the fly.


re Microscope, particularly, you and I talked about this at the meetup, but I don't recommend people play Microscope Echo unless they've already played Microscope. Just getting used to the power of making a huge history is big step, let alone also changing it constantly during play. That's my opinion, anyway, and I should have said something during the pitches to be on the safe side.

But saying Microscope is medium prep doesn't make sense to me either. Echo has a lot more starting overhead because you're setting up the time travelers, but in original Microscope you're playing from the first minute you come up with a big picture. We call it setup, but you're inventing history the same as you do for the rest of the game. The only step that isn't like that is the Palette.

Thanks Ben! It was certainly disheartening to hear my favorite game wasn't someone else's favorite. But my own pride aside, being a facilitator for new players means I'm, effectively, a Story Games Seattle ambassador. A bad impression could not only mean a bad game, but souring future story game experiences or choosing to not return! But you're right-- It's a trap that we find ourselves in sometimes because we care so much? Sometimes the "we're in this together" gets lost.

As far as talking about the game and fixing it, it seemed to be the that the initial worldbuilding was the not enjoyable portion and that went unaddressed until too late. I wish we identified that earlier on in the night to talk about it instead of after the first rotation of the focus. By the time we spoke about it, I'm afraid there might have been a "sunk cost" kind of thing at work. We spent so much time to get to the "fun" (scenes) part of the game that we were determined to mine some quantity of fun out of the game! After all, I think the whole group would agree that the scenes we did were a lot of fun.

Microscope in all its flavors (as well as Downfall) excel at making this prep/setup portion of play personally enjoyable. I'm right there with you that setup in Microscope really is play. In this circumstance, prep was more a placeholder word for a term for, "how quickly can we get into acting out scenes in this game?"

But my own pride aside, being a facilitator for new players means I'm, effectively, a Story Games Seattle ambassador. A bad impression could not only mean a bad game, but souring future story game experiences or choosing to not return!

Look at it the other way: every single person will not like story games. People will choose not to return. Again, that's all normal.

The key is to show new people what the experience is actually like so they can decide for themselves, not to disguise the flaws or try to twist things so they like it. That just sets them up for disappointment later. For example, if someone can't stand sitting and waiting while other people talk, they are not going to like story games (it's a straight law of percentages: you're 1/4 of the voices in a 4 player game). If you cater to them and let them talk more than other people you're solving the short-term problem but ruining it for everyone else.

On the other hand, if you were being rude or a story-tyrant, yeah, that would be bad and would potentially chase away people who might enjoy story games. So don't do that! ;)