Jumped straight to the comments when I opened this, really excited to see how Microscope holds up solo. If this works out, any chance of other Lamemage products in PTFO?
Alright the Substack app continues to infuriate by not letting me edit a comment so a second one it is. Here's what I thought in list format:
1. Love the idea of doing Microscope solo, I can see you've had absolutely no issue with it which is brilliant. Lamemage do a lot of products in this space (Epitaph, Kingdom, and several others) which are beautiful worldbuilding tools.
2. So glad someone else is annoyed by the Church being both a state religion and a secret society. Further in the lore it's stated that there effectively IS a secret society within the church too, which is it's own faction, absolute nightmare to make sense of.
3. I'm sadly lax in my reading of Proper Villains but based on the context I've picked up here it sounds like you've built a really cool facet of the world here and I really liked seeing it brought to life.
4. Would love to see a Part Two. It's such a shame that Substack limits posts like this because I would love to read more, but Substack has a lot of limitations (not least of which is the mobile app closing every time you navigate away from it. They really didn't want me reading this post).
5. I really love how you've adapted your creations to the dark but mystical tone of Blades and Duskwall in particular. I've heard sessions of Blades being described tonally as like a fantasy Sopranos where everyone's a villain and you're along to watch the fireworks and I couldn't agree more.
Microscope solo is a really powerful framework for brainstorming, I've found it useful even in professional settings when you're trying to rough out the broad strokes of a place or time period. I'll definitely be looking into Lamemage's other work!
Re: The Church in BitD, I think in general religions get short shrift in TTRPGs. They're such a powerful force in the time periods our fantasy worlds are based on, but they seem to fade into the background in a lot of setting materials I've read.
I've always wanted to try microscope solo and I never tried, but this episode has brought back my curiosity. Reading the rulebook I always assumed that you'd have to start big, with periods spanning centuries, eras, and that always stopped me, but seeing you focus on such a small and personal timeline has me asking myself why I never tried starting small instead before!
I see you don't have much randomness in here, you're choosing everything by yourself essentially, how is that different than simply taking some post-its (or scrivener!) and doing it without microscope?
I realise that I've been reading everything one episode after the other and asking so many questions in the span of an hour, so feel free to just not answer! I'm just grateful for your writing in a stressful time and during a long commute.
Jumped straight to the comments when I opened this, really excited to see how Microscope holds up solo. If this works out, any chance of other Lamemage products in PTFO?
I’d enjoy a part two!
Alright the Substack app continues to infuriate by not letting me edit a comment so a second one it is. Here's what I thought in list format:
1. Love the idea of doing Microscope solo, I can see you've had absolutely no issue with it which is brilliant. Lamemage do a lot of products in this space (Epitaph, Kingdom, and several others) which are beautiful worldbuilding tools.
2. So glad someone else is annoyed by the Church being both a state religion and a secret society. Further in the lore it's stated that there effectively IS a secret society within the church too, which is it's own faction, absolute nightmare to make sense of.
3. I'm sadly lax in my reading of Proper Villains but based on the context I've picked up here it sounds like you've built a really cool facet of the world here and I really liked seeing it brought to life.
4. Would love to see a Part Two. It's such a shame that Substack limits posts like this because I would love to read more, but Substack has a lot of limitations (not least of which is the mobile app closing every time you navigate away from it. They really didn't want me reading this post).
5. I really love how you've adapted your creations to the dark but mystical tone of Blades and Duskwall in particular. I've heard sessions of Blades being described tonally as like a fantasy Sopranos where everyone's a villain and you're along to watch the fireworks and I couldn't agree more.
Microscope solo is a really powerful framework for brainstorming, I've found it useful even in professional settings when you're trying to rough out the broad strokes of a place or time period. I'll definitely be looking into Lamemage's other work!
Re: The Church in BitD, I think in general religions get short shrift in TTRPGs. They're such a powerful force in the time periods our fantasy worlds are based on, but they seem to fade into the background in a lot of setting materials I've read.
I've always wanted to try microscope solo and I never tried, but this episode has brought back my curiosity. Reading the rulebook I always assumed that you'd have to start big, with periods spanning centuries, eras, and that always stopped me, but seeing you focus on such a small and personal timeline has me asking myself why I never tried starting small instead before!
I see you don't have much randomness in here, you're choosing everything by yourself essentially, how is that different than simply taking some post-its (or scrivener!) and doing it without microscope?
I realise that I've been reading everything one episode after the other and asking so many questions in the span of an hour, so feel free to just not answer! I'm just grateful for your writing in a stressful time and during a long commute.