Ben Robbins took to the r/RPGcreation community on Reddit for an Ask Me Anything session to explain why he is revising Microscope, his landmark GMless roleplaying game of fractal, out-of-order history building. The AMA reveals that rather than expanding the rules, Robbins is pruning dead weight, throwing out the Legacies rule, and overhauling how players handle scenes.
The revision arrives alongside an active Kickstarter campaign for the second edition, dubbed M2. While the core engine of index cards mapping out Periods, Events, and Scenes remains unchanged, Robbins spent years playtesting mechanical cuts through his Chronicle variant to fix points where the original game stalled at the table.
Rules comparison: Microscope vs Microscope 2
| Rule | First Edition | Second Edition (M2) | Why It Changed |
| Scenes | Default rules mashed character roleplay and world facts together. | Dictated scenes are the default; roleplayed scenes move to an optional advanced section. | Most tables skipped played scenes entirely because roleplaying a specific person was jarring compared to broad worldbuilding. |
| Scene Questions | Open-ended questions allowed players to establish new world facts mid-scene. | Strict yes-or-no questions about character choices, thoughts, or actions. | Stops players from rewriting world facts during a scene; keeps the focus strictly on human behaviour. |
| Legacies | Dedicated turns to track and repeat specific historical elements across sessions. | Replaced by “Free Roam”. | Legacies caused needless bookkeeping for short games; Free Roam simply lets a player add a Period, Event, or Scene anywhere without obeying the active Focus. |
| Turn Structure | Odd exceptions, like Lens players taking double turns or Legacy-specific limits. | Uniform turn options: Period, Event, or Scene. | Every player always gets the exact same three choices on their turn, eliminating fiddly exceptions. |
| Campaign Prep | Informal advice in Microscope Explorer. | Dedicated core book chapter. | Gives explicit steps for groups using Microscope to build settings for other games like D&D. |
Fixing scenes and scrapping legacies
Robbins admitted during the r/RPGcreation AMA that roleplayed scenes had become an awkward hurdle for many groups. When players spend an hour establishing the rise and fall of empires, suddenly dropping into first-person character dialogue requires a completely different mindset. In M2, dictated scenes, where players simply describe what happens, are the standard on-ramp.
When a group does choose to roleplay a scene under the new advanced rules, the scope is far tighter. Players can no longer invent broad world facts mid-scene. If an event states a city was destroyed by a bomb, the scene cannot invent a magical forcefield to stop it; instead, the question becomes a binary test of human intent, such as whether a specific general chose to push the firing button.
Legacies have been cut entirely. While Robbins originally designed Legacies to encourage players to weave recurring themes across long campaigns, real table play proved the mechanic was unnecessary overhead for one-shot sessions. The replacement rule, Free Roam, keeps the necessary breather in the round, letting a player break away from the active Focus to plant an unrelated idea without any lingering administrative baggage.
Robbins has also rewritten the book from scratch, ditching lengthy explanations for concise table scripts tested during his eight years running Story Games Seattle. You can find further designer discussion and community Q&A directly in the Reddit AMA thread.
Campaign terms and deadlines
The crowdfunder is live on Kickstarter and closes on Thursday, 29 October 2026 at 4:00 PM PDT (11:00 PM GMT).
- Digital PDF: $15 (approximately £12), with estimated delivery in April 2027 and early access drafts delivered sooner.
- Book and PDF: $30 (approximately £23), with physical fulfilment targeted for June 2027.
- Five-Copy Educator Tier: $75 (approximately £57), offered at a discount specifically for schools and classrooms.
Family-run Gorham Printing prints physical copies in the US using responsibly sourced paper stock. UK and international backers should note that overseas shipping charges are paid upfront on Kickstarter and will roughly double the cost of physical pledges, with Robbins confirming that BackerKit is not being used for post-campaign fees.
