Hey chat. Been a while - Been meaning to get back into blogging but have been busy getting into Yu-Gi-Oh and suffering from what is probably the worst mental health spiral I've had in my adult life. Oh and making a mega-game. I did mention the mega-game right?
You may remember back in August I ripped into Watch The Skies, a game with deeply interesting premise and mechanics, and deeply deeply jank design and presentation. I closed by saying I was working on and planning to run our own version of this type of Mega-Game, and hot damn. Tonight was the night. And it was amazing. I feel like I just got to do XCOM and Braunstein at the same time, for a deeply unique gaming experience that only table-top can provide.
(pictured above, the remnants of the war table, cause I was a dummy and barely took pictures.
Alright so first, what the heck is a Mega-Game? As we define them "Mega Games are large, immersive games that combine elements of board games, role-playing, and war-games into a genre all their own. These games can involve anywhere from a dozen to several hundred players." Internally we referred to this test as a "micro-Mega Game" as it was built for a smaller player pool. To roughly quote my co-conspirator "3 teams of 3 is the minimum number of players for enough interesting interaction to happen" (which I absolutely agree with in this context). We'd initially wanted to run Watch The Skies, but yeah that wasn't happening, so we built something similar from the ground up with new ideas and new flair. Currently we refer to this game as EXCOMM (Short for Executive Committee which is a real shortening of a real thing so we can technically name it that eventually) - It serves as a basis for this kind of "Model U.N. with some ball"[*1] where shit gets weird and teams are negotiating internally and externally among a myriad of mini-games to hopefully keep the world from falling apart. Everyone always needs something from someone, the question is can everyone work together well enough to get it. Into this system we slotted in our small-scale scenario "The Worm Turns" ~
Everyone is (generally) trying to keep Global Panic under 100 and put out various fires that crop up across the globe, and turns happen in real-time with 40 minutes packed with various deadlines.
THE ROLES
Each nation is divided into 3 roles:
- The Researcher who collects resources in a draft mini-game and can deploy Relievers to slow global panic, heal units, or provide direct aid.
- The Diplomat who gets UN crisis briefings, signs treaties and deploys spies.
- The Commander who sends strike teams to unusual Hot Spots and orders their nation's military units. They're also the only ones who get to look at the war table where the action happens (and where I was stationed all night cause SO much happens from there)
On top of this we had 2 rival media agencies trying to balance reporting with not panicking the public, and a mysterious "Collector" who would trade rare materials for units (eg human lives). And of course there was me and my collaborator who I won't dox (for the sake of this article let's call him "Jessie") who tried to keep the whole thing running and did a pretty good job.
Each Role has a designated area only they can go, press gets relatively free movement around the room, and there's a common area for teams to discuss. This means even in a 14 person game, you're largely only interacting with the same pool of your fellow 2 roles and your fellow 2 nation teammates. This worked incredibly well in my opinion at forging interesting dynamics while keeping the game from getting overwhelming for any one player. Researchers were quick to get on the same page, as were commanders. One for the greater good, the other not so much. We'll get to that. But first let's start with the Roles I was the most in charge of:
THE COMMANDERS
My commanders were nothing short of a blessing. Some of my favorite players to run for in my home games were all assembled to try to keep hot spots in check at the war table with me. There was something beautiful about how they all immediately started cooperating and trusting each other once shit hit the fan, and even when their other teammates and their home nations were starting disputes or falling to chaos, the commanders kept it cool (head in hands at the mayhem behind them - the arrangement of this room couldn't have been better.)
The biggest thing commanders would do (besides report happenings on the map) was deploy Strikers to Hot Spots, which went fairly smoothly. Strikers are somewhere between tradeable Pokémon cards and a Delta Green task force, each having unique stats that can be sent in squads of 4 to (hopefully) add-up to enough to tackle the Hot Spots, each being able to get unique status effects (like a whole team getting sick and needing to be quarantined).
Unfortunately Hot Spot resolution would take forever, partially because the swath of components were rough to keep organized, partially because there was simply a lot to get through. The resolution itself went great and was interesting but I'm not sure how well it would scale, and I'd definitely change the order of thing. Especially with how other units (like Spies and Relievers) deploy into the war room.
There was also a tiny bit of military conflict, but not much due to the nature of the scenario (we later decided that "insurrections" caused by global panic would be a fun way to add more military enemies on the field as opposed to more hot spots).
THE DIPLOMATS
Ahhh the Diplomats. Easily the Role that needs the most tweaking. Things in the U.N. started great but broke down pretty fast when 1) treaties couldn't get validated because we weren't able to have someone in the U.N. the whole time (poor Jessie ran around 7 miles in that room to juggle the U.N. and Scientists) and 2) because a player decided to filibuster because in his mind it'd make things more interesting and it's what the character would do. See the U.N. require unanimous votes on everything (because with 3 players it would become too easy for teams to gang up 2v1), however this didn't really fix the power dynamics and if anything made them almost as bad.
Spies were also a mess. Besides most people rolling 1s on their Spycraft rolls, the cards were also confusing to use and limited in their ability (drastically overshadowed by the one-time use "Black Ops" cards that each player got one of). I think in a rework they'd be more reliable (if not totally reliable like Strike Teams) and more useful.
There were still cool moments, like the Chinese Diplomat pledging her allegiance to "The Worm" only to get Desert Eageled by the American Diplomat on CSPAN, but largely Diplomats were locked up in their own game and not able to do much wheeling or dealing. (I realized after that every role but the Diplomat had two mini-games, expansion methinks would do a lot).
Oh the researchers. Both me and Jessie agreed "no notes", their game went perfectly. Researchers each have a binder with their nation's tech trees as well as the costs for them to produce units. They're also in charge of participating in a Grant Draft, where they take turns picking from available resource pools or an intel packet (and Journalists get to grab what's left). What do they get from going later in the draft?
SCIENCE POINTS (or Science Credits as they're technically called).
The Researcher manual in no uncertain terms lets them know that Science Credits will be tallied at the end, and it is absolutely a race to be the best at doing The Science. We'd imagined the Researcher as both the easiest / most relaxed role to play, and one that was encouraged to absolutely squander resources on vanity projects. And they did exactly that!
An absolutely wild amount of resources were burned to purely get Science Credits, at a time when Diplomats and Commanders were strapped for cash. It was hilarious, interesting and the Researchers had a mutual comradery of being "Sluts for Science" before al else.
THE WORM
The following is massive spoilers for the scenario.
Over the course of the game, the players began piecing together that Earth actually had a giant mega-organism living below the crust, and that eldritch behemoth was at the root of all the mysterious happenings. These ranged from a widespread pandemic to a tendril popping out and destroying the Himalayas.
At half-time each team was given 3 "Black Projects", pseudo-win conditions with a tremendous cost.
Survive added a tech tree to get off the planet and settle new worlds. Sleep gave each nation a unique opportunity to attempt to calm the beast (usually at great financial cost, or potentially doing something catastrophic like nuking specific 3 locations at once). Serve turned the player who read the project into a servant of the master below (or as they called themselves "servants of the worm") whose aim was to increase global panic. We initially intended only one Serve to be able to be opened, but due to a snafu, both China and America opened theirs (and it was amazing).
Oh also let's talk about that name "The Worm" real quick. So the module is called "The Worm Turns" (which we didn't tell anyone until after) and this is alluded to once in an easter egg on the final U.N. Briefing on Turn 6. Nowhere else is it called or mentioned as a worm. Nowhere in writing, and neither me nor Jessie uttered the phrase until players did. Yet way before that everyone (especially the traitors) called this thing the worm. A player even later misquoted a card I gave to them as "The Worm's Favor" (the card said "Master's Favor"), and people kept accidentally saying "Worm Room" instead of "War Room". It was fucked up in a good way and deeply creepy. Perfect for Halloween season ~
In the end all 3 conditions were met in the same phase for an incredible resolution. Russia managed to send their own Life Ark to settle life on a new planet, China fell completely to the worm and (in collaboration with an American Researcher) got Global Panic to 100, partially because they did the nuke plan and put the creature to sleep (cause in a apocalypse in the nuclear fallout).
TAKE AWAYS
First off, this was an absolute triumph. Despite my printer crapping out on me (bless Jessie for doing the lion's share of report writing AND all the printing) and 4 different 11th hour changes and a LOT of rulings, it went great and was a spectacular experience to watch and run. It was also easily the most rulings heavy game I've ever run, which was great fun and made balance feel less like a science and more of an art. Everyone had a great time, and honestly it's the kind of W I've been needing for a while.
Secondly, turns need to be a bit longer, and far more effects need to be immediate. I think waiting for resolutions held up the game more than it set up for interesting interactions, and caused a lot of "hurry up and wait" both for players and Control. Additionally our 15 minute half-time was absolutely sublime and makes me understand why Watch the Skies has "team time" - however I'd restructure this to just having more "open time" between things. I also expected more people to use their phones with their team to communicate, but unanimously everyone seemed to prefer the speed of talking.
Thirdly, I think we need to rethink how we give nations identity. When you're dealing with time crunch, negotiations and mechanics there's not a lot of time for playing a "character," which in my opinion was still interesting (good even). You're playing your Role first and foremost, rather than a specific caricature, instead taking that Role's responsibility into your own hands and asking "what do I think is best for the world?" In my opinion this is absolutely something we should double-down on, and make nations feel unique more from a mechanical options stand-point rather than a "we encourage you to play in these ways" stand-point. It's about playing the role rather than roleplaying (or some similarly dull semantics).
Lastly, it's obvious to me that Mega-Games confirm something I've thought for a while: Tabletop Games are absolutely spectacular and are like no other medium on the planet. The Mega-Game (and the one we made) feels like an excellent example of how when you release yourselves from the constraints of any one genre (be it an "RPG", "LARP", "War Game" etc) you can create truly unique experiences that only tabletop can capture.
[*1: Funnily enough this is actually a mis-quote, and the original line is "model U.N. with some aliens" but this mantra stuck instead]
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