AAR: Gods of the Ancient World, Louisville KY June 2023

After Action Report (AAR): Gods of the Ancient World, Louisville, KY on 6/24/2023

Gods of the Ancient World is my first full Megagame design. Last year I heavily modified Watch The Skies but this game started at zero so it was a completely new experience for me.

You can learn more about the game by clicking here.

It took hundreds of hours of design, advertising, playtests, organizing, training, refining, story writing and component creation. Was it worth it? Read on to find out.

The event

We had a new event space - at one of University of Louisville’s satellite campus so you’re never sure what it’s going to be like until the day. I had been on a tour but I really didn’t know. Essentially the space was like a very long conference room, with a bonus catering room attached. It was a little tight for 65 players and control but we made it work. The space was really nice and the room was already set up for us according to my specifications. We had the Gods go into the back room and the mortals in the main room, so as to keep them separated. We set up a laptop in the corridor with discord where the priests could pray to the Gods. The Gods got a laptop at the back of the room where they could listen. I used my phone on a tripod streaming the military map to the Gods room also. After some early hiccups with Wifi and sound quality, those both ended up working pretty darn well. We also had a projector going in the main room with the round tracker.

The Game

The first two rounds were crazy - at least from a beginning-of-a-megagame standard. I added a lot of time to both the rounds because there were a few areas struggling. I put this down to not enough control and folks not quite getting the rules. I definitely need to make changes to the rules to make them clearer. Also, it took us a while to get across to the players that most of the game should be self-sufficient. Most of the players were brand new (at least 70%) so they were looking to control to tell them when to do things. This did get much smoother as the game got going and the players got familiar with the rules.

The Roman senate (perhaps this was when Napoli was informed about the coup)

From a story perspective, there was just so much going on I couldn’t possibly capture it all. I’ll just give some of my highlights and some responses I’m getting from my post-game survey where I ask the “favorite moment” question:

• Undead army raised by Hades, immediately killed by Apollo

• Apollo threw a concert for the mortals where he showered them with Gold (literally throwing it at them and they grabbed it off the floor).

• There was an Olympic games thrown (not in the rules, one of the Greek senators threw it). All competitors had to pay to enter and I think the winner received a prize.

• One region decided to create trebuchets which launched dead bodies and started a plague.

• The Gods manifested a special temple in a neutral region. I think it granted boons to whoever held that region.

• The mortals were making some laws and it was very fun to see them backfire when they had unintended consequences.

• There was a Roman election at the end of the game and a new Emperor was chosen in the last turn.

• Also at the end of the game, there was an open offer by the Greek King for Roman defections, not a single region took them up on the offer.

• The Governor from Roma telling the Napoli Governor that he cannot be elected because the only military troops in Napoli were ones from Roma (some kind of coup?).

I had some big ideas for the Gods staying anonymous but it didn’t really pan out that way. I think there wasn’t enough incentive for it to happen. I’ll talk more about this later on but the opposite was true - those Gods who were more visible got the most prayers. If I were a player God, I think I would’ve played it a little different from the other Gods, but there has to be that incentive to do so.

The military map in action

My favorite story of the day

I’m biased here because it happened to a good friend of mine, one of the original Dukes actually and a guy I don’t get to see much these days. He’s not really a “gamer” so I put him on a team with some mutual friends where he had lots of support.

At one point of the game, one of the control team gave him a card saying he was a Demigod (half-mortal, half-God). The card didn’t say much past that, it was more a story element for the Gods to track down their children. In the final third of the game, we got talking and he asked me what the card did. I reversed the question and said “what do you want it to do?”. Not having played a megagame before, it was hard for him to see the possibilities but I told him that some other Demigods had asked for “super powers” which we granted for them. He told me he’d think on it.

A little later on, his Emperor was killed and sent to the underworld and he asked me if he could do anything about it. I said that perhaps as a Demigod, you know the entrance to Hades. He thought a rescue mission sounded like a great idea so I grabbed a maze that I had intended to use for folks trying to get out of the underworld. I gave him a marker and said he had to solve it in 1 minute or be lost in the underworld.

I play tested the timing of these mazes before so I knew how difficult they were (not very) but the pressure of 5 people watching him meant he failed. I told him “too bad” and decided this might make a good story element for the God Hades/Pluto. I went to Mt. Olympus and told Hades there was a Demigod walking around, lost in the Underworld and that he was fair game for abduction at any moment.

Next turn, I saw my mortal friend abducted from the mortal realm and talking to Hades in the underworld. Aparrently he had a handful of resources at the time and the rest of his team were waiting on an important delivery. A little while later, I saw him doing another maze - Hades was making him find his own way back out! I told Hades he didn’t need to do that, that he could escort mortals out of his own domain but I saw a wicked grin on his face and he said to me “let’s just see how he does first”. I don’t know the outcome of that but I definitely saw the same panic on my friends face as he was struggling with a second time-constrained maze!

My other favorite

Right near the beginning of the game, another friend of mine (who also hadn’t played a MG before) asked me if it was purely a faction vs faction game or if there was room for inter-faction fighting (ie. between regions). At that exact moment I looked to my right and saw her faction leader listening very intently to our conversation. With a large grin on my face I looked back at her and in a very sarcastic voice I said “This is strictly a faction vs faction game and there is no room for in-fighting, how dare you suggest as much”.

I approached her later and told her exactly how megagames worked and told her that there is absolutely room for that.

The Roman priests trying to work out what the signs from the Gods mean.

What I’d do differently

Well between my observations, those of control, the stories I heard in the after party and the surveys that are still coming in, I have 1000 things I need to tweak. I’m not going to list them all here but off the top of my head, the big things are:

• Increase the length of a round from 30 minutes. The players are split on this. Some feel like 30 mins was fine and some feel like it was no where near enough. I’m leaning towards 30 not being enough time so I think in the next run I’ll make it 35 and see how it goes.

• Empower the Gods who aren’t getting a lot of prayers - comments from the players have said that the less visible God were not getting the prayers of the mortals, and then couldn’t do as much, and that had an exponential effect. It means balancing the Gods powers better. Perhaps some combination of more cheaper powers, more exciting powers for Gods like Demeter, and some bonus to Gods who didn’t get a lot of prayers.

• Have at least one more control member. That was my original intention but it just didn’t work out.

• Dozens of rule clarifications (including control documentation).

• Documenting the wizard wheezes (out-the-box ideas). This means writing some into the game as actual rules and writing up some for control for when they happen and we can be prepared. This one is particularly important because some of the players experience was soured because different control had different ideas on implementation for a particular idea and it felt unfair. Additionally, some things that were “cool” were immediately undone by something that someone else did that was “cool” and that felt unfair too.

The Olympic games

For more pictures of the day, click this link.