Making History

History is made by stupid people
Clever people wouldn't even try
If you want a place in the history books
Then do something dumb before you die

“History is Made by Stupid People”, The Arrogant Worms

Making fictional history, on the other hand, needs creativity (to make interesting) and good memory (to keep consistent) — both hallmarks of intelligence.

Or, if you’re like me and struggle with imagination, some tools and technique.

Existing Art

There are several sources that will help me here.

• Lame Mage Productions’ Microscope by Ben Robbins. Microscope is my primary inspiration and basis of my work here. I expand on it in a few ways, but the general form is very good for my purpose.
• 13th Age’s Book of Ages by Gareth Ryder-Hanrahan. Book of Ages (13th Age) is focused more on following the stories of various factions through history. There is less concern about structure and more consideration of content, and that helps complement what I get from Microscope.
• Modiphius’ Ancient Ruins and Cursed Cities by… so many people (no link because it’s no longer available for purchase — Modiphius no longer has the Conan license). In developing ‘ruins’ for Conan 2d20, one of the major steps is working out the origin of a ruin: when it was from, what it was originally use for, and so on. ‘When it was from’ is obviously relevant to my purpose here, and expanding on what the time and place was like may well be important. The nature of a time and place should certainly influence the nature of the events that happen then/there.
• Mongoose’ Ruins of Hyboria by Vincent N. Darlage (no link because it’s no longer available for purchase — Mongoose no longer has the Conan license). This book is very similar in content and intent as Ancient Ruins and Cursed Cities (I expect it was a major influence on the later 2d20 book) but not quite the same. I’ll keep both at hand.

I’ll add others as I use them.

High-Level Approach

I need to figure out what tools and other pieces I want in my toolbox, and how they interact. Once I’ve got those figured out and described, I can look at ways to make them easier to apply, possibly with software to help.

And by software I mean tools to help me capture the information, and in some cases procedurally (not generatively) create more content.

Structure

In case you haven’t realized by now, I really dig how Microscope works. However, for my purposes I’m adding another entity type that’s even bigger than Period: Age.

Periods are when things happen, Events are what happened, Scenes are how/why/other questions about the Event. Age defines the world in which the Periods occur. By that I mean the nature of state of the world: between Ages, the world changes.

In Microscope terms, the Palette can change between Ages. We can go from “dragons don’t exist” to “dragons do exist”.

Tools

Microscope works best with a small group (3-4) of players, and I like to use Microscope to help build engagement with my players — no need for exposition when they helped write the history!

However, GM prep and world building more often happens in isolation. If you’re like me — and I know I am — it’s frighteningly easy to fall in a rut. I need tools to help keep that from happening, so tools certainly will be in scope.

I don’t know all the tools that are going to come about, but I can think of a few I’d want.

• History ‘outliner’ (create, manage, and present the timeline).
  • Probably start as a series of scripts and JSON files while I prove to myself it can be done.
  • I’ll probably want a GUI or similar by the time I’m done.
• Random text generator (make names for periods and events… I suspect I’ll want to create entries I can be flexible with, and I think Ages are likely to be defined differently and separately

I’m sure there will be more.

Closing Comments

I can’t say I totally know where I’ll end up, but I think I’ve got a direction to move in. That’ll do for todary.