AAR2: The Story
Watch The Skies: New Materials
March 26, 2022. Louisville KY
After-Action Report (AAR) from the perspective of Control Lead.
Role: I was in charge of making the game run smoothly, the overarching story, the media players and I occasionally stepped in to help the Head of State control deal with the operative actions.
WARNING! Major Story Spoilers Ahead.
From my perspective, at the beginning of the game, all was mostly quiet from all players. Our most experienced player for the game played as the Media representative for Daily Earth News (think National Enquirer) and he naturally had the most zany ideas. In some ways, it was perfect that I was both lead control and his “handler” for the day. He decided to go by the name “Alec Jones” for the day so I’ll refer to him as Alec. Off the bat, he wanted to set up his own crypto-currency which he dubbed AC (Alec Currency). I told him he needed $1M to set it up and then had to get the nations to buy super computers to mine for it. He set off on his task and I caught up with him again sometime in turn 2.
Towards the end of turn 2 he had $15M to give me as investments from the Nations! He noted down how much each team had donated and I decided that in a turn or two, I’d give him and the contributing Nations a couple of million in dividends.
Meanwhile, the other games were progressing nicely. The UN was easily handling everything we threw at them - many times overspending to make sure things went smoothly. They had elected the Brazilian Ambassador as Chair and she was doing a stellar job - I think she remained as Chair for the entire game.
Turn 3 is where things got a little more interesting. About this time, we started ramping up the UN events, some of which we decided that the best way to “solve” the crisis was by not taking any action. Of course, a room full of smart people sitting around the UN table, attempting to solve all the world's problems, made it very likely that they would always take action.
Look at me still talking when there’s science to do.
Meanwhile, in the science game, we introduced the first black-market live alien. Before this point, players didn’t even know that this was a possibility so the reveal was really cool. We even had a separate bid track for it where the numbers went up much higher to further emphasize that this was super valuable. With some wheeling and dealing, India were the ones to get their hands on it and we privately revealed the new technology options to the team.
All the new technology options were really cool but we had previously decided that unless they specifically went for “Xeno habitat” first, then we would have their alien die a turn later. Naturally we didn't tell them this beforehand. Maybe you can see where this is going but this led to my favorite part of the day. The Indian scientist researched “Xeno translator” so at the end of turn 4, control took his black token away and replaced it with a special red token with a picture of a dead alien on it.
After the Indian scientist went back to his table to debrief his team, he approached me looking a little sheepish. He explained what had happened and I just shrugged my shoulders and gave him an “oh dear”. He then went on to explain that he had arranged to sell the live alien to the French team for $10M and asked me what I should do. Naturally I said, “whatever you want to” and told him very frankly that it was his fault the alien was dead! After a little conversation, I could see the wheels turning and he went back to his table.
I wasn’t privy to the next series of events but it went something like this; The French team handed over the money and the Indian team snuck the “live” alien to the French Scientist. He popped it into his jacket without paying it much mind and it wasn’t until later that he looked at it and realized what had happened. Meanwhile, the Indian scientist got a press conference and told everyone that during the sale of the live alien, the French team had killed it, with the possible intention of eating it (the scientist was wearing a chefs outfit so there was an ongoing insinuation that his scientific goal was to create dishes out of the aliens which reinforced the the Indian narrative). Also meanwhile, the Alien team was listening in. Up until this point, they had no ships shot down so they were confused as to where the live alien had come from. As control, we did not expect by turn 3 there would not be a single UFO shot down. So their minds immediately went to “that must be our Queen!” I think they calmed down after talking it through with Alien control, reassuring them that it was not their queen and some hand-waving explanation that it could’ve been another species.
Also around this time, I had been in conversations with the Russian team. They had bought a Xeno-language school/research facility and I had said that it was progressing nicely and that they could understand “some” of the Alien language. They asked to send a message and I asked them how they were planning on getting the message to the Aliens. They told me “radio” which I laughed at but said OK and I delivered a partial message to the Aliens (and anyone else that wanted to hear it).
About turn 4, the American President had approached me to ask about assassinating Alec Jones. We talked through how tricky player elimination might be in a MegaGame so all agreed to come back to it later after we’d had a chance to think it through.
At the beginning of the game, I was asked if Generals could take photos of the war room. At the time I said no because I wanted them to communicate (however badly) the state of the game map to their team, which in my opinion is one of the beautiful parts of MegaGames - the miscommunication. At about turn 5, I told them that Satellite imagery was good enough that they could now do it.
Also about this time, Alec wanted to send a message to the aliens and he asked me how the Russians had done it. I told them the technology they used was “radio” and he asked me what it would take for him to achieve the same thing. I told him he’d have to set up a transmitter (for which he had plenty of money to do so) and he wrote out his message. I didn’t tell him that he didn’t know the Alien language so when I got to the Alien room I communicated “blah blah blah Alec Jones blah blah blah blah Alec Jones”.
The terror track had been slowly moving up the entire game. Somewhere around turn 5 or 6, the UN passed a resolution to have 3 peacekeeping forces in Iran. I’m not entirely sure how it happened but they were forcibly ejected which bumped the terror track up and triggered the first milestone. That meant that the UN had to deal with 2 issues next turn. In addition, I told everyone that the world market had collapsed and everyone's income track was to go down by 2.
At approximately turn 7, the US team asked me to put up a photo of Alec on the projector.
They had doctored it to make it look like he was talking to an Alien and it was fabulous! In addition, they had their Agent abduct him and have him taken to a “Guantanamo-style” prison in Central America, denying all involvement. That was their compromise to assassination which I thought was very fair. I made him skip his media report that turn and told him he could make a couple of phone calls to try to get himself out next turn. I believe he worked out that it was the US that was the cause of his imprisonment and so negotiated something for his release.
By the time turn 8 started, things were really heating up. By this time, the Aliens had had several communications with different Nations; some were 2 word sentences (as they were still learning the language), some were radio messages (as previously mentioned) and some were face-to-face meetings when the Aliens had fully grasped the Human languages. Mostly the aliens were sowing dissent and just messing with the Humans but one particular conversation, the Aliens revealed to the Japanese that they had a secret base in Japan and asked if it was OK if they could stay! Very cordially, the Japanese agreed.
Due to the (in)balance of the game, most teams had more money than they knew what to do with, including the Media teams who had been bribing and blackmailing all game. In turn 8, Alec decided to buy a Nuke on the black market and conceal it inside a statue of a bear to hide it in plain sight. He proudly displayed it in his corporate office foyer which was based in Moscow.
On the final turn, the scientists attempted to solve a problem that had been facing the world for most of the game - the Aliens had implanted dreams into Nation leaders to make them believe they were sleeper agents. I’m not entirely sure how they achieved it but during the media announcements, the Scientist from India told the world they were successful in blocking these dreams and took full credit for everything.
Also during the last turn, the Aliens decided to mind control every Head of State. They told everyone to hand over all their Nukes and that they were going to instate Alec Jones as supreme world Emperor. I’m not sure why they decided this as they’d had almost zero interactions with him all game but as you may be able to guess, he was thrilled.
Once the other world leaders realized that all the Heads of State were mind controlled, there was talk of a military coup by the Generals and I think it only didn’t happen because they didn’t have the MegaGame experience/confidence to pull it off. After the game I heard that this was several players only regret from the game.
Also during the last turn, the UN held a climate summit where we asked them to solve the climate crisis. Earlier in the game, I had another of the media team get promises from all the Nations and now was the time to pay up. 5 minutes in to the summit, we drop our final scripted bombshell of the game on them - a ransom note from some anti-Alien terrorist group saying that if they didn’t cease all communications with the Aliens and didn’t pay $20M to an undisclosed bank account, they would all be killed by a bomb in the UN. They were also under instructions that they couldn’t open the doors or the bomb would detonate.
<- Mind controlled Heads of State
These poor guys all look a little lost and kept asking me what do we do now? That’s when I told them “maybe check your messages…”
Several of the UN sent text messages to their Heads of State who were walking around like zombies (not knowing what to do after being mind controlled), informing them of their predicament. In a multi-national, last-minute collaboration, Agents successfully found and disarmed the bomb. The Heads of State and the new Emperor stormed into the UN declaring their victory!
In a final press conference, the last member to speak was our Emperor. In a terrible oversight, the Aliens had not mind controlled him and in an equally momentous revelation, they had received a statue of a bear as a sign of friendship. Alec triumphantly set off the Trojan-horse Nuke and dropped the mic. Knowing this was his plan beforehand, I specifically asked the Alien control where this statue was located. On the microphone, I then proceeded to tell the world that sadly, after the Nations had come together to solve the climate crisis, the Nuke was still on Earth in the Alien Antarctica base, far from the Alien Queen (who was on Mars by this point). Who knows what the ramifications of a massive Nuclear explosion on the melting Antarctic Ice will be?
If you’re interested in how the day went from an organizational standpoint and my thoughts on running it, check out this blog post.