game, interactive

Microscope GPT is a custom GPT configured to support play of Microscope, a collaborative world-building role-playing game. It encodes the rules, procedures, and constraints of the system, and uses them to facilitate structured play rather than generate narrative content freely.

The model is trained to respect Microscope’s core mechanics: periods, events, scenes; palette restrictions; player authority; and the rule that no one controls outcomes beyond their scope. Instead of improvising story beats, it acts as a procedural guide—prompting correctly, enforcing structure, and keeping play aligned with the system’s intent.

The goal wasn’t to make Microscope “automatic,” but to see whether a language model could reliably inhabit a ruleset that depends on restraint, turn-taking, and negative space. The result is a tool that can help onboard players, maintain momentum, and reduce cognitive overhead without replacing human authorship.

Microscope GPT treats the game as a formal system first and a narrative space second. When it works, it disappears.

The live instance is available here:
https://chat.openai.com/g/g-Qw9amvhYC-microscope-rpg-guide