Designing a MegaGame: 9 - Outside Review
In recent weeks, 3 megagame designers (myself included) decided to get together and share our designs. 2 of us are working on a new design and decided to pick the brain of Ed, an experienced MegaGame designer from the UK. We sort of considered it an extension of the mentorship program we started last year. We later found out that Ed is working on a new design so we had the opportunity to review his too.
It was a super helpful experience in two directions - firstly, reviewing other designers games and secondly, having other sets of eyes on mine. Honestly, I’d say there was a chunk of feedback that I received from Ed that I just didn’t “get”, that was until I read through his design so I could see where he was coming from and get more context.
Let me break down his feedback and tell you what I’m doing to make changes. Bear in mind, I’m 100% paraphrasing his feedback, and in some cases, may have completely missed his point entirely!
“Victory points are weird and meaningless”
Totally understand this argument. My argument FOR this is that it’s a faction vs faction game and there should be some way of comparing the success of both. I’m going to keep the idea of this but tweak it so that it’s Gold or something a bit more meaningful (although I don’t want to build too many mechanics around spending the gold - that’s a LOT more work).
“Write more objectives rather than pick-your-own objective”
This is an interesting argument that probably demands it’s own blog post/podcast subject/seminar but I can see both sides. The way it’s written now, each region is more or less the same and the goal of the entire faction is to beat the other faction. That’s good because 1) there is a general goal for people to contribute to and 2) specific players or regions can come up with their own ideas to make the game interesting. It’s bad because it might result in a lack of imagination/fun or could be completely unbalanced if players take an idea too far.
The other option is to write more region specific theme and objectives to give the players something to focus on whilst they’re achieving the main goal. I think I’m going to head this way a little more, that way I can come up with cool things to accomplish which aren’t game breaking. I think this will help with the last item on this list too.
“Include region loyalty”
I LOVE this idea. But I’ve got to be a little careful not to add too much extra complexity to the game. There’s already a lot going on for the mechanics and I don’t want to overwhelm folks. I think if I can keep this simple, it will add more flavor to many players games, especially the military and the political players.
“The Gods need a more interesting game to play“
This is totally fair. It may not be super interesting for the Gods to simply climb a ladder. If I can give them plenty of theme and build objectives around their pre-existing myths, it’ll really help bring their games alive.
I’ve been listening to podcasts about the pantheon and the shenanigans the Gods got up to. I’m already finding plenty of things to incorporate to make the game a little spicier for the Gods (although it’s definitely verging into LARP territory). Don’t really want to spoil specifics here so just go and read some myths and see the possibilities.
“The World needs to come alive a bit more”
Whilst the mechanics are fairly solid, if I do more theme “stuff” like solve the previous three items, I think the world will come alive a lot more. Honestly, it’s hard to know. A megagame design is really just a skeleton of a story and the players have to fill in the gaps in the shared experience. I think the first play will teach me a lot.