Worldbuilding can be a tricky process, made more complex the larger the scope. Some games get around this by focusing on narrow sections of a world or time, and while the end results can be compelling, sometimes its more satisfying to try to dig deeper. Palimpsest has found a way to make the process of long-term worldbuilding not just palatable, but actively fun in a short, one-shot tabletop-RPG.
Palimpsest is a Game Master-less worldbuilding game designed by Gordie Murphy and based on Caro Asercion‘s I’m Sorry Did You Say Street Magic. It takes the long view of lore creation, watching as multiple cultures rise and fall in one location and asking players to decide how a location’s history might impact its present. Players collaborate to build an initial culture based on a short list of adjectives, a simple statement of the tone of the civilization and an idea about how it ends. After fleshing out this initial civilization, players then build the next culture that will take its place. Over two or three hours, players will create a series of cultures that all occupy the same place, contributing to a long history.
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What makes Palimpsest so successful at cultivating a long term history is the idea of remnants. Cultures can leave behind concrete objects or ideas that subsequent civilizations can re-use and re-interpret. Players get the chance to specify what things might be remembered about a culture centuries later, but they have to think about how new cultures with different goals can build on the history of these remnants.
Cultures rise and fall quickly in Palimpsest with fairly short rounds of players establishing facts and remnants and moving the culture closer to its inevitable demise. The point of the game is to play through multiple cultures in one sitting, so this quick pace lends itself well to building out a rich history with lots of connecting threads.
The fast pace also means that the collaboratively built world is not as granular as some other worldbuilding games. For example, The Quiet Year invites players to fully describe one geographical area, uncovering one small piece of the world over just one year for an entire session. Most Dungeons & Dragons campaigns will have pages and pages of lore to describe important events. In contrast, Palimpsest creates a world that has depth, but leaves space for expansion, making it ideal for setting up a world that another TTRPG can be set in. Here, players can have agency in building out past events without feeling overwhelmed by constant knowledge dumps.
Whether played to create a shared world for a larger adventure or just to enjoy thinking about how objects and ideas are transmitted across time, Palimpsest is a well worth a play. The open nature of the short ruleset means that any turn is equally likely to introduce something meaningful and compelling or absolutely absurd, but Palimpsest — like the real world it’s based off — wants both types.
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