The Fleet Departs: A Microscope RPG Campaign Set-Up

Overview
We're switching up one of the on-going campaigns, our Wushu one, as an experiment of a sort. We plan to finish out the Wushu game as we can, but the opportunity arose to play something out. We decided to do a fantasy campaign, one in which I'd set a basic premise and the players would then use Microscope to build the background and history for the setting. I'd then run the actual campaign in another system from whatever they built in Microscope. This Saturday we had the world-building session. I'd suggest checking out my review if you want to see how the game operates.

The History
I had a pretty basic idea in mind, I wanted to run a kind of fantasy riff on the original Battlestar Galactica. The PCs would be on a fleet fleeing from one part of the world to another. Beyond that premise, I left everything open for them to build. Here's what I established- the terms in bold & caps they would determine through playing out the Microscope session.

Premise: A magical, divided world suffers a crisis leading to an exodus.

Starting Period: The World Divided

Ending Period: The Fleet Departs

Basic Assumptions:
1. The world has been divided into SECTIONS
2. There's an OBSTACLE which creates those divisions
3. Each section has PIECES which must be traversed.
4. The peoples of each section use VESSELS to travel
5. A CRISIS has forced the surviving peoples of your section to flee to a new section.

You will be playing important scout/explorer/leader characters in the escaping fleet. There's a lead ship, plus one ship for each player's culture, plus a small number of others. Even if players choose the same race, they will come from different cultures. Each player will additionally have the means to move between the vessels easily (a riding beast, magical device, etc- depending on how you build the world). Imagine the fleet like a floating city.

We had five players, two of whom had played Microscope before. I made sure they were the first and last Lenses. I made a couple of modifications to the rules to accommodate the newness and time required for building the world. All scenes would be dictated, and a player could set up the question and answer it themselves or ask someone else to answer it. As GM I intended to just throw one or two things in, but I ended up taking a turn as the Lens. For Legacies, the player could choose a Legacy and have the Gm write it up or vice versa. We had a final free placement round at the end. Since we had the premise, starting and end points for the history built, we began with the Palette.

Palette
Banned:
* No technology without a personal investment and magical empowerment: any tech (guns, flying machines, etc) must be magically powered.
* No free mana: all magical power comes from a phsycial power source, the most common being magistone.
* No multiple worlds- a single world broken and divided.
* No universal magic: all magic comes from specific traditions which focus on particular effects. Persons cannot learn deeply into more than one tradition.
* No personal flight spells- magic items allowed.
* No constant powers or effects on magic weapons: powers must be activated.
* Different races cannot interbreed.

Added:
* Skyships (didn't necessarily need to be here, but player wanted to define the setting through this which seemed reasonable)
* Reincarnation
* Non-human majority; humans less than 50% of population
* Active, Intervening Gods balanced by a complex bureaucracy
* God Foundlings create new souls (this came from the question of reincarnation above as we tried to get some clarification about what that meant. Essentially the only new souls come into this world when a god (male or female) procreates with a mortal. The resulting child is not divine, but is a new soul and not a reincarnated one)
* Elementals are native to this world.
* Each race/culture has a unique economic/crafting/commerce specialty which they're the best at.

I've noticed we tend to use the palette to define some of the universal features as well- I suspect we'll get more used to doing that through placed items as we use Microscope more.

The Lens
A quick summary of each round-
Round One: Scott; Focus: Division; Legacy: Kraken Pirate Fleet
Round Two: Ward; Focus: Reunifiers; Legacy: Magistone
Round Three: Jeanne; Focus: The Crisis!; Legacy: The Straadi
Round Four: Kenny; Focus: Races; Legacy: Lord SunForge
Round Five: Sherri; Focus: Twins; Legacy: The Sympathy of Souls Prophecy
Round Six: Lowell; Focus: Magic

The Play History
L= Light Item; D= Dark Item

The World Divided: Period One
The world is split into separate areas through a great calamity (D)

Magistone Rush: The various races battle for and rush to exploit the newly arrived magistone which rains from the sky. (D)
World Shattered: The wizard Calmoot in an attempt to bring order to the battles for the Magistone causes a massive calamity and shatters the world into pieces. These pieces float in the ether like islands, with oceans becoming floating bodies of water. (D)
The Twins: In the aftermath, all births are twins with each sharing a single soul, split across the two bodies. (L)
Scene: Why did twins become the norm? The explosion of magistone damaged the Wheel of Reincarnation. (D)

Age of Exploration: Period Two
Some of the races discover the secrets of sky ships- they spread out to other peoples and lands, passing those secrets along, building trade contacts and inventing the means to map their sky ocean. (L)

The Stormwall Mapped: The Grand Fleet "Leviathan" composed of the last of the Dwarves bind their ships with protective magics. They head out and map most of the Stormwall which separates this sky ocean from others. The fleet is lost when a freak storm splits off from the wall and engulfs them. (D)
Birth of Golems: Mad Wizards attempt to reunite the souls of twins to create a single, non-split soul. This process is too rigorous for mortal flesh to survive and instead the wizards create Golems to serve as vessels for the reunited souls.. (D)
Magicstone Sickness: The Twin Magi of the Seeking Stone Path, Tyrakhet and Tyrokoth discover the source of grave illnesses sweeping across the populace. The explosion changed the character of Magistone--now exposure to too great a quantity can make a person sick and eventually kill them. (D)

Age of the Tengu: Period Three
The Tengu race discovers Warpsteeds, wingless flying beasts. This allows them to travel more quickly and faster. They spread out their trade empire, the Rainbowed Horde, across a third of the islands, bringing trade and a common language to the peoples. (L)

Consortium of Nocturne: Several groups from the "Dark Races" (Goblins, Ogres, etc) forge an ideological and economic compact. It is occasionally disregarded, but over time becomes almost an ethical "right" and standard for civility among these groups- separating them from other Dark Race nations. (L)
Change Storm: A massive storm from the Stormwall sweeps across the land, causing great damage and creating magical beasts. (D)
Meshing Mind and Machine: The Goblins discover how to mesh machine and mind. They create the first firearms and siege machines to dissuade the Tengu from taxing the peoples of the Consortium. Machines of War become easier to create. (D)
Sky-Squids: The Goblins of Drek-Sable perfect the Sky-Squid, originally a parachute and then later adapted into a flying device.

The Warring of the Races: Period Four
With expansion, the many races come into more and more contact. This leads to an extensive period of conflict with the various gods heavily involved. Races stakes major claims to the portions of the shattered world. (D)

Reformation of the Celestial Bearing: After the destruction wrought by the gods' favoritism in the wars between races, the gods are reorganized into a complex bureaucracy, with no god able to take unilateral action without approval by backers. (L)
The Gods Divided: With the changing of the gods order, they reveal their new roles to the peoples: the gods will be divided among the various races rather than answering all petitions. (L)
Avatar Leadership: Representatives of the gods of each of the peoples establish peace between them. They bring diverse peoples together (L)
Scaleborn: The Scaleborn race is created when various peoples hunt down and slay nearly all of the dragons. In the final battle, the dragons release their essence and change their attackers, creating a new race from the Dragon's souls. This new race lacks any gods to speak for them. (L)
Twin Slayers: Syra and Talvein were the first "twin" souls to be born apart. When they meet later, it was on opposite sides of a war. Syra killed her "brother" and his soul linked to her, unable to be reborn without her. This combined with dark magics gave Syra great power. She creates a rogue group of warlocks who kill their twin as a means to gain strength. (D)

The Winged Riders of Gul Desett: Period Five
The Riders travel out across the lands, attempt to rally like-minded people. They forge one of the first unified multiracial and balanced Empires. (L)

The Riders' Mounts: The Wyvern clutch of Nightscreech are found and tamed by the warriors of Gul Desett. They form the first of the Winged Riders (L)
Straad Created: House Gul Desett establishes the island city of Straad, welcoming all newcomers. (L)
Artificial Magistone: Xolosh Reykin, a Grey Path Dancer, masters the art of summoning extra-planar elementals, with new forms and powers beyond the native elementals. He also discovers the means to convert these non-native elementals into artificial Magistone, a process which kills them. (D)
The Release: Shilasch Reykin, Xolosh's twin sister attempts to stop her brother. She frees a summoned elemental and sends it back to its kind to hopefully close the gates. (D)
Scene: Why Does Shilasch do this? She assumes the elementals have twins as well and cannot stand the thought of a being separated in this way. The death of a single creature means a twin is left behind, too too tragic. (L)
New Laws: The City of Straad Justicars determine that twins are responsible for each others actions. (D)
The Scaleborn Hunted: The Twin Dragons Velsha-Velshe set upon the task of killing the Scaleborn in an effort to reclaim the Dragon "energy." (D)

The Kraken Pirate Fleet Conquers the Unity Empire: Period Six
The Unity Empire held sway for generations across the lands. Finally human sky-pirates assemble a massive fleet and destroys the heart of the Empire. They conquer and ravage the decaying Empire. (D)

Freespar Founded: The White Elves, Dana Tet, liberate themselves from the rising power of the Kraken Pirates and establish a home island, Freespar. (L)
Magistone Redistributed: The vaults of the Kraken Pirate fleet's wealth, rich with loot, explode, raining Magistone everywhere across the lands. The first nail in the Pirate Fleet's coffin has been hammered. (L)
Humans Rescue Elves: The Elvish peoples of Forest Allonian are rescued and pledge allegiance to House Van Deu. (L)
Cutting Off the Kraken's Head: A Wolfen Alpha Pack, lead by Kule Rintscythe, assassinate the five lieutenants of the Kraken Fleet. (L)
Namir Allies: The Namir, a cat-like people, ally themselves to the growing coalition in the war against the pirates. (L)
Van Deu Expands: The Nokor, Blackskinned orcs and former members of the Consortium of Nocturne, present gifts and are welcomed by House Van Deu. (L)

The Soulkiller Wars: Period Seven
The Elvish Nations, seeing the damage wrought by humans through the actions of the Pirate Fleet decide to take action. Banded together, they slaughter humans across the lands- reducing their numbers and making them a minority. They use newly created Souldeath magics to back their crusade. (D)

Souldeath Weapons: One of the Namir discovers the the secret of imbuing weapons with the Souldeath magics. The Namir rise to notoriety as these weapons become highly sought after. (D)
The Dana Tet Flee: The White Elves repudiate the Elvish Alliance and steal the secrets of the Fatespinner magics to escape their wrath. (L)
New Magics: The Orcish order, Forgiveness of Stone, inadvertently create powerful food growing and preservation spells in their pursuit of the mysteries of healing. They never do get healing right. (L)
Saving Humanity: The White Elves, having been hunted and enslaved themselves give some humans aid and protection against their pursuers. (L)
Desperate Measures: The Order of Calmoot discovers the arts of necromancy, utilizing the life force/souls of other beings. (D)
Elemental Allies: Pooh Kha'Rhan, a Namir shaman discovers strong allies among the native water elementals during a summoning exercise. (L)

Landfall: Period Eight
A great storm begins which sweeps across the land. In the aftermath the floating lands one by one begin to sink and tumble from the sky falling into the abyss. Panic spreads. (D)

The Storm's Source?: Unbalanced amounts of natural magistone summon mana storms throughout the sphere. (D)
Dark Secrets: Straadi Mages discover the ability to keep their own island afloat. (L)
Scene: How did the Straadi keep their island afloat? By using Xolosh Reykin's method for man-made magistone. (D)
The Arks: The first arks are built. People move to ships that hover above the land, never knowing when the islands may begin to sink. (L)
Guidance: The Scalebound discover that they can sense when the magics of an island are beginning to weaken. They take on the role of leading the arks. (L)
Discovery: Scholars ascertain that the storm has destabilized only the islands in this zone. When one crosses the Zintai Stormwall border, stable masses can be found. (L)
The Enemy Revealed: Lord Sunforge, Warlord of the Beyonder Elementals, reveals the role of the extra-planar elements in the destruction and present crisis. His army swallows the Straadi Empire. (D)
Healing Magic Discovered: The Lunar Elves of T'kain learn how to imbue the life energy of certain herbs to work with magicstone to create a healing magic. (L)

The Fleet Departs: Period Nine
As Lord Sunforge lays waste across the land, and the last of the islands fall, a small fleet of ships gathers to make a desperate attempt to breach the Stormwall and find new lands. (D)

The Scourging: Lord Sunforge and his Army of Elemental Scourging declares war on the survivors of the Landfall. He hunts down the arks and smashes the island of Sealadusk as an example. (D)
The Sympathy of Souls Prophecy: A few have been born without a twin- prophecy reveals that such birth means that a twin has been born in a portion of the world beyond the Stormwall. These persons can follow those ties to elsewhere and lead the fleet to a new home. (L)
Scene: Who Spoke the Prophecy? The Chorus of Grief and the Three Bereft Sisters spoke to their gods, twins themselves, in visions, even as Sunforge smote Sealadusk. (D)
Twinning the Fleet: To navigate the empty between lands amid storms, the arks are tethered to one another by splitting twins across ships. (L)
New Allies: The enslaved race of Aeolatoi, a winged humaniod folk escape from their otherworldly elemental masters and join with the White Elves, providing vital information as they flee from this section of the world. (L)

So the players established all of the major facts for the campaign, built some history and created a lot of races and ideas to build characters from. As a GM I have plenty of things to now build from.

Microscope: RPGs I Like

What Is It?
The history building role-playing game.

Overview
One of the traps a GM can fall into, and I certainly have, is world & history building without really thinking about the application of that history at the table. A rich background can create an excellent sense of space for the players, but only if delivered appropriately. Too often that delivery comes in the form of long text pieces written before or during the game. Players may skim that material or even print it out, but rarely will they connect with it. It feels too much like homework to many. It can create rifts if you do end up with a party split between players who have and who haven’t read. Some may get defensive or even frustrated that group discussions require stopping to go over things the other players should have known. The other problematic approach to this is the lecture or NPC info-dump at the table. This should be used to set the immediate scene or goals, but shouldn’t spin out into a documentary on history and place. Players will only retain what impacts their goals. So to my mind, what the GM needs to do is create a background with some interesting details, a degree of verisimilitude, and enough room to riff on things quickly.

But world building is fun. Constructing timelines and history can be a blast. Microscope presents a system which tries to catch that lightning in a bottle- the joy and fun of creating a history without large masses of the work being inapplicable to play. That’s because the process of creation itself becomes the game. Microscope is a GM-less, collaborative, history building game. It is a role-playing game in the same way that something like Fiasco or other indie games operate- where the players can take on roles, but the focus of the game is collaborative story building. Though I haven’t played them, I suspect the closest example would be Aria or Baron Munchausen.

You can see a AP write up in yesterday's post: Cycles of Apocalypse: A Microscope RPG Play-Through. I'd also recommend the Lame Mage website for more interesting links and the Risus Monkey blog for some really cool approaches.

Setting Up
For Microscope, the only tools you’ll need are some blank cards and writing instruments. Index cards will work, however because of the space involved, something like flash cards or blank business cards will work better. To begin as a group you establish the Big Picture which should be a sentence long. The book provides a number of examples: A Race of Machines Unearth their Organic Origins; Atlantis Sinks and Her Secrets Are Lost; The Last Magic Passes from the World. For our play we went with "Cycles of Apocalypse and Rebirth in a Fantasy World" which is a little general, but establishes the genre and key element. Players come up with the premise together in discussion.

Next players bookend the history. In the game, parts of the history have a physical representation in the form of cards placed on the table in chronological order. The highest level is called a Period. Periods have no set amount of time, they just represent a chunk of time linked by a thematic. At the beginning of the game, the players come up with a Starting Period and an Ending Period. The rest of the history built during play will fall under or between those two points. So, for a Starting Period in our game, we wrote out "The Waters Retreat: Birth of the Deserts" on a card and talked a little about how that began the change in the world. We then placed that card in the center upright. Next to it we placed the End Period card "The Skyfall Summoned". So we had a row of Periods running left to right in order. New periods would be placed between those and the cards would be moved.

The Palette
After that the players have the chance, again collaboratively, to add or subtract things from the setting. This is called the Palette for the game. Players only specify banning an ingredient if it would normally be seen in the genre. So, for example, if you’re putting together a fantasy game, you could ban Wizards or Elves. However you wouldn’t need to ban Spaceships or Machine Guns as they aren’t normally organic to the genre. The reverse holds true as well, players only add an ingredient to the palette if you wouldn’t normally expect it to occur (such as spaceships in a fantasy game). Modifications to the palette are chosen by individual players by going around, but they can be discussed- so players can’t by fiat completely change the direction. This stage represents the last chance for players to directly interact and collaborate on the design of the game. That’s an important detail.

With that settled, play actually begins with the players adding elements. There’s a preliminary round where everyone adds one thing, and then the rounds start. Each round has one player as The Lens. The Lens player begins by establishing the Focus for the round. Anything added on that round must deal with the Focus in some way. The rules suggest that a narrower and more concrete Focus creates more specific and detailed history. Foci can be places, ideas, institutions, specific people- basically anything which can appear in the history.

The Round
The Lens starts the round and has the option of adding one element or two elements, provided those elements are nested within each other. The three possible elements are:
Periods: Which I mentioned above. These represent a span of time or era, usually noted by a particular theme.
Events: Events occur within a particular Period. Sideways cards represent each Event and these are placed beneath the Period they occur in. They run chronologically from top to bottom. Different Events may take different amounts of time, but they should be described as completed (for example "The city of Malthus is destroyed by starvation" instead of "Starvation threatens the city of Malthus").
Scenes: These elements look at the history at the ground level. Players use Scenes to set up and explore questions. To use the example above, a player might set up a scene by asking "What kept the Baron of Malthus from importing the needed grain?" or "How did the city of Malthus come to be cursed?". The player then sets the stage, describing the location of the scene. They may also require certain characters to appear in the scene (such as the Baron of Malthus). Then players go around and make up characters, with an eye to answering the question.

Playing out the scenes begins with players describing their character’s thoughts. Then play goes around with each player being able to describe events and interactions from that viewpoint. There’s no resolution system here- it is done as a freeform, improv moment. I’ve described it rather simply here, but the rules have a number of other important details and nuances- in fact scene resolution while still simple, has the most rules of any part of Microscope. It is also the part most difficult to grasp at the start. Play ends on a scene as soon as the question has been answered in some form. It is also possible for players to dictate a scene without playing things out- instead they set up a question and present the answer. Once finished a scene is placed upright beneath the Event it refers to.

Finishing a Round
After the Lens places their element(s) each player in turn places another element. Cards are moved and rearranged as necessary. The Lens finishes out the round play placing another one (or two nested) element(s). Finally the player to the right of the Lens picks a Legacy, something mentioned in this round of play but perhaps not fully explored. They then add an Event or Dictated scene about that or any other Legacy on the table. Finally the role of the Lens passes to the next player. The game can go as many rounds as the players like.

Additional Notes on Play
Each element represented by a card is considered Light or Dark, reflecting the general tone of the event. Players mark this with either an open or filled circle. While the tone doesn’t have any major effect on play, it does provide a visual guide for the ebb and flow of the history. When placing a card, the narration the player gives is more important than the text on the card. Players should take advantage of the moment to describe the events and add in additional details, even tie things in to other elements on the table. Anything placed becomes fair game for anyone else to play with or modify- there’s no ownership of elements. If someone establishes a great city, someone else can sink it beneath the waves later.

One of the most important factors for play is that when players come up and place elements, they may not consult with others nor may the other players provide input. That’s really tough at the table, but it definitely feels like the right approach. It forces players to come up with their own ideas and to respond on their turn to new things that have appeared. I think it creates a less directed game- Microscope avoids the collaborative game problem of a single player driving. Players may ask for a clarification or point out a contradiction, however.

Microscope suggests 3-4 players, with the number of rounds depending on the time allotted. Play can be done over several sessions or a single evening. The endpoint on one history could serve as the starting point for another. More players could obviously be added, but the book mentions that you start to run into some participation problems with that.

Thoughts
Microscope appears simple and the basic structure of play actually is. But it hides a surprising amount of depth. We played a game based on a couple of reads on my part, with me teaching the very basics of it to the players. We ended up falling into a couple of simplified approaches which weren’t as fruitful (sticking with generics, a slight misreading of the legacies idea). Going back to the book, I found advice which at first glance had seemed a little excessive. In fact, the advice and suggestions presented really do make sense after you’ve played once. The game’s obviously been extensively play-tested and it shows in the explanations of best and most fruitful practices.

That’s given in a longish section at the end which talks about the whys and wherefores of the game. It explains what each part does to the whole and why certain design choices were made. Most importantly there’s a nice run down of how one goes about teaching the game to new players. That provides some solid advice. I will say even given that, we played a kind of half-assed first game. It was fun and productive, but going back and reading the rules again, I see how it could have been even stronger. And I think that’s the important thing about the rules: where they do restrict certain things, they do that in the name of better, more fruitful and more interesting play. All of the pieces and parts of the game have a purpose and a role.

The place we had the most trouble, and I suspect others will also, was in handling the Scene level. I love the concept of The Question. But how that actually gets played out can be a little confusing. Here’s where having someone who’d done it before would have been really useful. I think that level’s the hardest to wrap one’s head around- and it is the one with the greatest number of particular rules. On the other hand, all of the rules for the game fit on a single help guide. I guess my advice for players would be to read through that section a couple of times and be prepared to stumble on it for the first couple of plays. Even handled inexpertly, the play ended up interesting and fun. I suspect when I teach the game next, especially if I have a large group, I’ll spend more time on this and the option to simply dictate scenes.

Overall
Microscope seems simple at first, but there’s great depth here. Players will pick up on the structure quickly. I think after a play or two you can easily introduce the additional complexity of the full rules. It is tremendously fun, full of possibility and at this point will become my go to game for sessions where we’re short-handed or I need to do something pick up. As a stand-alone RPG, Microscope works.

Of course, that isn’t actually what I bought Microscope for. When I first read the premise, I thought it might be useful as a tool for creating settings in other games. I have to say it definitively works for that. I can imagine using it both to create new campaigns and to fill in the blanks for existing campaigns. That’s my plan for an upcoming fantasy campaign I want to run- I’m simply going to set a premise and then have the players build the history. Then I’ll run from what they’ve created. I believe this will solve the problem of giving the players what they want. Often when that question is put directly to a player they hesitate. This avoids that interrogation freeze. Instead you get significant buy in on the part of the players. As well they know the background because they created it. If the campaign supports players later adding details into the world on the fly, I believe they’ll feel more free to do that since they built it in the first place. We’ll see. Certainly Microscope allows the GM to avoid the pitfalls of detailed but closed settings like Forgotten Realms.

I highly recommend Microscope as a gaming tool to any GM or group. This rpg takes a simple concept, provides a workable structure and then moves beyond those basics to provide detail and insight into play.

Portability
Microscope could be used with just about any campaign. Obviously it could be used to build the backstory for a game (as I plan to do). But I can also imagine it as a tool to play out the history after a campaign has wrapped up- perhaps providing some closure.

Cycles of Apocalypse: A Microscope RPG Play-Through

On Thursday we had a player out from our regular Changeling the Lost campaign. We’d had to miss a session for my surgery, so I didn’t want to do a session with a reduced number of players. Instead I decided to try out a new GM-less game I’d purchased, Microscope. This session report is intended as a companion to my review of that game, which I plan to post in the next day or two.

Basics
I’d read through Microscope a couple of times, and had printed out the reference sheets. I’d ordered flash cards a while back which we used this evening to handle the items for the table display. We did two full rounds, allowing each player to serve as the Lens twice- the Lens role gets to establish the focus for the round (all things must deal with the focus in some way) and gets extra chances to add material to the timeline. For reference, here are the foci for the rounds and the Legacies players chose:

Lowell
Foci: Round One: The Sword of Summoning; Round Four: Non-Humans
Legacies: The Great Beast, Avatars

Scott
Foci: Round Two: Dragons; Round Five: Gods
Legacies: Dragon Plague

Sherri
Foci: Round Three: Riddles; Round Six: Transportation
Legacies: The Map of the Infinite Tunnels, The True Sword of Summoning

Except for the first round, we stayed general with the focus. I’d be curious to see how much that choice affects the play at the table.

The Big Picture
After some discussion we decided to do work with the following premise: "Cycles of Apocalypse and Rebirth in a Fantasy World." The idea would be that our history would be just one of those cycles. For the starting period we came up with "The Waters Retreat: Birth of the Deserts." For the Ending Period, we came up with "The Skyfall Summoned." There was some discussion as to how those cataclysms might be elementally tied as well.

Palette
For the Palette, you get to choose items to add or to ban. In our case, I split them into three add items, and three ban items. In retrospect, they’re actually six ban items, with some discussion at the time about how they would be replaced. The one’s we originally considered adds I mention first, but I’m rewording them in their clearer negative statement form:

No Free Magic: All magic cast has an equivalent cost or trade off in some form. There’s no mana or open energy to be tapped.
No Magical Talent: The ability to cast magic is entirely trained and learned. No one has a "natural" talent for it. Training is difficult and time-consuming, even for the most basic abilities.
No Conventional "Undead": Instead, Ghosts and other like undead creatures arise when a mage dies while miscasting. So all miscasting has serious risks and all undead used to be mages.
No fantastical gadgets or technology: No Steam devices or even magical devices which ape engines, guns or the like.
No Healing Magic: Magic cannot be used to heal, restore or revive.
No Creation Magic: Magic cannot create new things. It can summon them from elsewhere or transform them, but cannot create.
During this period, based on the last couple of points we decided that each time the world suffers a magical apocalypse like these, some magic vanishes from the world, hence the absence of Healing and Creation magic. We’d later tie that into some other details.

The Actual Play
I’m writing this out as it looked at the end, not in the order of things being added. A (D) after an item means the tone is Dark; an (L) after an item means the tone is Light.

Period One: The Waters Retreat: Birth of the Deserts (D)
In this period, the magical apocalypse which gives birth to this history occurs. The old world is lost, along with some of the magics.
Event 1: All of the Gods Die: There’s the equivalent of Ragnarok, but we pictured it as a kind of inevitable die off rather than a battle against anything. (D)

Period Two: The Avatars are Chosen (L)
In this period, the survivors of the downfall find some succor through prayers to the gods.
Event 1: Avatar-Led Exodus: Each of the gods chooses an avatar from among the survivors. These avatars lead the people to the safe places. (L)
Event 2: The Avatars Ascend and Become the Gods: The death of the gods is revealed, and the Avatars become the gods who had apparently chosen them previously-their ascent to Divinity powered by the prayers of the people. (L)

Period Three: The Generation of Scouring (D)
In this period, the Dragons, awakened by the events of the apocalypse, strike out at the survivors. Some dragons attack and then head off to sleep again, while others continue until they are exhausted or killed.
Event 1: The Dragon Plague: To fight against the attacking Dragons, the peoples discover a way of killing them, through the creation of a magical plague. However this plague is made from ghosts. So some must heroically sacrifice themselves to become ghosts while others are tricked into miscasting and then processed. (L)

Period Four: Establishment of the Magical Sanctuary City of Vendrau (L)
The great city of Vendrau is created- it will serve as the largest safe harbor for the people and the repository of the most magical knowledge. Wizards will be trained here in the generations which follow.
Event 1: Sisters of the Joyous Disaster erect the Welcoming Wings (the ward around Vendrau): These mages travel out and around the countryside to risk their lives- and the energy from that risk creates a zone of safety around the city. (L)
Event 2: Lord Kaldron Murdered and the Sword of Summoning Stolen. Lord Kaldron had gained leadership of the city of Vendrau before his death. (D)

Scene: Why Was Lord Kaldron Really Murdered? Kaldron attempted to place limits on the Sisters of the Joyous Disaster, wishing to regulate mages more tightly and fill his coffers from payments for training. The Sisters "convinced" a petitioner from Kaldron’s home city of Clod to talk with the Lord. A series of misunderstandings occurred, resulting in the accidental death of Kaldron and the petitioner being convinced to make off with the sword to provide a less humiliating explanation for the Lord’s death. (L)

Event 3: The Annual Riddle Exam Established: Any who wish to be trained in magic must pass a set of riddle examinations. (L)

Scene (Dictated): What of those who fail the exam? They must pledge themselves to the service of the city of Vendrau for a year. They may then take the exam again.

Event 4: The Grand Fleet of Vendrau Christened: Sand Ships depart from the ports. (L)

Scene (Dictated): What is the Fleet For? On the surface trade, but in reality gathering elements to help counter-balance the growing wealth of the city. They seek to prevent magical blowback.

Period Five: Golem Legions Conquest: the Age of the Golem (D)
With serious constraints on food and water still a problem, the mages create golems to serve as a labor force. Over time those number grew and mages made increasingly sophisticated creations. Eventually they gained a measure of sentience and independence, and in a sweeping war, took over across the land.
Event 1: Brass 17 discovers the secret of Diamond Steel: In a result which gave the Golems an edge in warfare, they discover how to make a metal stronger than any other steel and able to cut the hardest armor. (L)
Event 2: The Tower Built: The Elves Steal the secret of Diamond Steel from the Golems and use it to build a great spire into the clouds. (L)
Event 3: Sky Elves War: An Elvish cult known as the Sky Elves seize control of the Cloud Tower of the Elves. They ascend it, hoping to find a path to exit from the cycle of apocalypse. They fail in what becomes known as the Year of Raining Flesh. (D)
Event 4: The Goblins forge the Contract of Caretaking: The Golems realize that they require others for their magical upkeep over time. The underground dwelling Goblins make them an offer which they accept. They and the Golems commence the building of the Infinite Tunnels: The Golems abandon the surface world and their empire, returning the places to the hands of the various survivor races. (L)

Period Six: Founding of the Ice-Cutters (L)
The Ice Cutters learn the art of traveling to the poles on great ships and cutting away segments of ice, shipping them back to the various cities. There they can be used magically to draw waters hidden away below the earth. This allows the expansion of civilization and the creation of cities to rival Vendrau’s influence.
Event 1: The Beast Awakens: The Ice Cutters unearth The Great Beast, summoned in a previous age by the Sword of Summoning. The Great Beast escapes to wreak havoc. (D)
Event 2: The New Steeds: Following another conflict with The Great Beast, the Ice Cutters discover that pieces sliced from the beast grow into smaller versions which can be domesticated (mostly). (L)
Event 3: Dragons Reborn: The Northcliff Detachment discovers the first clutch of Basalt Dragon Eggs, dragons which are immune to the Dragon Plague.

Period Seven: Age of the Ghost Archons (D)
A wizard accidentally uncovers the method to allow the undead both greater consciousness and the ability to affect the physical world more strongly. These Ghost Mages seize control and institute a rule of arcane legalism and judgment.
Event 1: Archons Awakened: Tian-Killar solves the Riddle of Eternal Life by making contact and modifying the magics lost in from the previous cycle. This creates the Ghost Archons. (D)
Event 2: Flying Cities: The Triple Djinn Cities lift off and travel the land, offering rivals to Vendrau’s influence and a sanctuary to those fleeing the rule of the Archons. (L)
Event 3: The Sword Reborn: Arvenexus, the Wraith Archon, reforges the Sword of Summoning (D)

Scene (Dictated): Who killed Arenexus? The Sisters of Joyous Disaster using the true Sword of Summoning which they found discarded at the bottom of a well in the town of Clod. (D)

Event 4: Dragons Return: Dragons re-emerge from hiding after the threat of Arvenexus vanishes. The Dragon Riders are born. (L)

Period Eight: Narya’s Refutation of the Doomsayers: War Against Prophecy (D)
Believing that oracles, visionaries and soothsayers actually create and cause the dooms they predict, Narya begins a grand theocratic crusade to rid land of any and all who possess such skills. All works of prophecy are burnt, eventually leading to the burning of any forward-thinking material. Narya’s Crusade sweeps through all the peoples.
Event 1: New Exams: With magic itself now suspect, a few wizards manage to keep learning alive through the creation of the Clandestine Riddle Exams. (L)
Event 2: Mages' Retreat: The remaining mages of Vendrau retreat en masse to the Infinite Tunnels. (D)
Event 3: End of Narya: Narya’s Divine Protection fails and she is overcome. (L)

Scene (Dictated): Why Does Narya’s Protection Fail? Narya discovers that just as with the magics, when the cycle of apocalypse occurs, some of the Gods do not pass on to the next age. She learns that her own deity, Taldare, will not survive the next transition. (D)

Period Nine: The Skyfall Summoned (D)
The doom of the world is summoned, as the last age suffered from the Doom of Water, this one comes from a Doom of Earth with a great stone falling from the heavens.
Event 1: The Great Beast Destroys Vendrau- the cycle is returned as the city which grew based on waters and the ice of the Cutters now is destroyed by something released by that process. (D)
Event 2: Naimless discovers the Unanswered Riddle. He puts it to the Great Beast, stymieing it and putting it into slumber. (L)
Event 3: A Gathering: The Mages call out across the land and gather together all magic items of power in an effort to use them to forstall the Skyfall. (L)
Event 4: The Dragon Martyrs: Dragon Riders wielding the artifacts gathered fly up to stop the Skyfall but are destroyed. (D)

Scene (Dictated): Why did the Dragon Riders fail? They were betrayed by one of their own who grew to love the item which had been entrusted to him. (D)

Event 5: Flight from History: The remaining Sand Ships of Vendrau are refitted with Djinn. These ferry the last held magic into the rift in an effort to preserve some of the peoples from the destruction of the Skyfall. Few in number, they manage to survive. (D)

Scene (Dictated): What balanced the successful escape of these peoples? A hero secretly brought along his steed- carrying a piece of the Great Beast forward into the next age.