Designing a MegaGame: 1 - The Theme

Maybe I’m a sucker for punishment but I’ve decided to design a MegaGame from scratch!

Before you get too excited, this is one of those side projects that I’ll work on here and there over the course of at least a year. Whilst my last post-game survey showed there’s appetite for us to run 2-4 MegaGames a year here in Louisville, I’m not sure I have it in me to do more than a couple a year – it’s a huge commitment for me and anyone else I ask to help. We ran WTS back in March and I’m going to run it again at Gencon 2022 in August and that’ll be it for this year. Next year we’ll hopefully run something in the Spring again (perhaps Den of Wolves) so that’d be the earliest this new design will see the light of day. Probably more likely it’ll be Gencon 2023.

Still it’s something that I enjoy documenting for no other reason than my own amusement.

So where to start

With a theme!

And how does one pick a theme?

Well there’s a variety of factors that go into selecting a theme.

First off, it must be something I can get excited about. As mentioned, it’s a multi-year process and it has to be interesting enough to maintain my drive for that extended period.

Secondly, a good theme will be accessible to all – well known, at most PG-13 rating, lots of story telling ability, tropey, embedded into popular culture.

Thirdly, I must have a way to split the game up into groups of players. Sometimes these groups will be competing against each other, sometimes they’ll be cooperating, sometimes it’s purely so I can put friends on a team (people are more likely to sign up if they can play with friends).

Fourthly, enough different roles within the game where everyone can find something that’s appealing and so that there is lots of interplay between the different roles (and the different abilities that each of the roles will have).

Watch the Skies does all 4 of these things really well: It’s a super cool theme, everyone understands the aliens arriving to earth trope, it splits up nicely into groups (nations and aliens) and each nation has lots of unique roles which all play off each other.

Den of Wolves is a little more niche. The space opera theme is well known but the particular story of DoW is a little less so (but one that still makes sense to people). Different ships provide the different groups so that’s covered. Arguably, there aren’t as many roles in DoW but the game gels together so well and there’s always so much going on that you can get around that.

So what ideas did I have?

I once saw a MegaGame being developed live by a group of designers and they picked a Wild West theme. They did a really good job of going through their thought process but for me I’m not super excited about Cowboys.

Zombies are a good choice - they’re well entrenched in pop culture, you could do warring factions for groups, there are tones of tropes available to play with. I’m not sure about the roles though. Most stories about zombies are about groups of regular people and the differences between the people isn’t that much. Some stories might make some characters stronger than others or some who are a little more resourceful than others but the roles aren’t super strong. That makes creating interesting unique roles hard. Also, what are the different goals of the teams? Definitely survival but beyond that there’s not a lot to work with - perhaps building something or travelling somewhere?

Pirates are very tropey too but they suffer from some of the same things that zombies do. There’s not a lot to distinguish the roles and the game might be very aggressive between teams. There’s definitely potential in these two but I’ll come back to these another day.

One theme that I’m really excited about is the epic fantasy. I’m a big fan of The Wheel of Time and there’s loads of content to work with in that. I’m imagining Aes Sedai and Whitecloaks, Senchan and Aiel, Trollocks and Borderlanders, different factions all warring against each other and then there are the Ta’veren walking around causing trouble. To anyone not familiar with WoT, I might’ve just been speaking a different language but my fellow WoTers out there are 100% with me! Of course, that’s the rub - it’s very niche. I think once we’ve got another couple of years under our belts running MegaGames, we could fill up a game with a theme that’s new to most people as they’d trust us to deliver a good time no matter the theme.

And the winner is…

The ancient Romans, Greeks and their Gods.

I’ve been thinking about this theme for several months now and it fits all my criteria really nicely.

It’s a theme that’s super interesting and one that 99.9% of people will have some exposure to - whether it’s the Trojan horse, the movie “300”, Hades and the Underworld, the Roman senate, the Minotaur and labyrinth, Monty Python, heck, even Marvel has the Greek Gods in them.

The Gods will play the part that the Aliens did in WTS - the unknown element that throw wrenches in the gameplay of the majority of other players. The mortals will play as either Romans or Greeks and they’ll be competing for land whilst dealing with internal strife. There are loads of roles to play - from the Emperor, to Generals, all the way to lowly farmers, so there will be something for everyone.

Anyway, I’ll be documenting my design decisions here as always to be sure to check back on occasion to see what I’ve been up to.