January 2024 Newsletter
The goings on of the Dukes of Highland.
The Present
Deephaven tickets are now available!
The game is on March 9 and is $35. Tickets available via this link:
Deephaven is a narrative megagame about overly-ambitious dwarves building a new city fortress. Players will delve deep into the mountain to discover unique resources, forge legendary weapons, develop thriving trade and culture, and fight back against the many dangers they uncover!
There’s lots more information on the event page here or the game page here so you can dive in. It’s a very freeform style of game, much less structured than something like Gods of the Ancient World or Watch the Skies. It requires more from the players than some other games we’ve ran - we don’t lead you by the hand to create stories, we’re here to make sure the stories you’re creating come to life. Some might say it’s more role-play focused.
Players are assigned 3 roles: A character, a clan (think family) and a guild (think job). Each of these roles have their own selection of objectives and nuances and it’s up to individual players to achieve these objectives as they see fit. Or not! These are really just example objectives - players can do whatever they want in the scope of the game.
If that sounds intimidating, that’s what the control team are for. By now, I’m very confident that my control team are excellent facilitators - they’re very focused on making sure everyone has something to do and is having fun. They’re all very approachable and have lots of creativity to help players make their ideas come to life. And even though you’re given a character rather than a role, you don’t have to play it in character (like a LARP), you can simply use that Character to give you ideas for story objectives. For example, your character sheet might say your “brother” is next in line for the throne but you would rather be King. That might encourage you to work with other players to force him down via diplomacy or go looking for some long lost treasure with super powers to force him down that way. Or not - ignore that story hook completely and do something completely different. In the last game I was part of, I had a player who set up health insurance for everyone but secretly making people sick and he was using it as a cover story so he could scam everyone.
Side note: Some in the Megagame world feel like the term “control” is a terrible descriptor - there’s no controlling a megagame!
The Past
A big warm welcome to new readers - those that were at River City Con. Den of Wolves at RCC is now in our rearview mirror and we had an amazing time. A little smaller than is normal for us (25 players) but it’s the first time this convention has been run and it’s a small convention overall. I’m hoping that we’ll be a bit more heavily featured by the convention if we run again next year. I’m not going to write up an entire AAR for this one - it was Den of Wolves so the usual shenanigans happened - including but not limited to - President stepping down (forced out of office), both innocent and guilty people in the brig, stim-packs made of addictive drugs (meth-packs), Aegis being stolen and locked down, etc.
Lots more photos can be found on our Instagram page.
So what are we videogames?
I am absolutely hooked on Satisfactory right now. This is the second time I’ve dived in and there’s something quite Zen about building factories and tweaking and making it more efficient.
If you don’t know what it is, it’s a factory simulator where you’re on an alien planet and you’re building materials. That’s about it! Sounds pretty terrible when it’s put like that but it’s a beautiful game and very satisfying to make an efficient system.
So what are we reading?
I’m working through Brandon Sandersons “4 secret novels”, the largest Kickstarter project of all time (I think). Sanderson is one of my favorite authors and these books are the ones he knocked out during lockdown. Now that I’m almost done with them, I think my favorite is Tress of the Emerald Sea - a lovely fantasy adventure that reminds me of a 90s family fantasy movie with beautiful visuals and swashbuckling heroes.
So what are we televisioning?
After enough people pester you about watching a show, eventually you should take the hint and give it a go. This time, it is The Wire. After slogging through the first few episodes it finally hooked me and I’m now on the 5th and final season.
But it’s a hard one to recommend. It feels closer to a documentary with no real story curve that has a satisfying conclusion. What it does do well is show a bunch of people in Baltimore all being part of the same story but approaching it from different angles. For example, in season 1, it’s all about the drug trade. In season 2, it’s all about the docks, etc.
Both the writing and acting is absolutely phenomenal and that’s where it really shines.
If you have made it this far, congratulations! I’m going to try something new this time. I’m going to set up a special thread Discord where you can provide feedback about this newsletter. It’s a strange thing writing these newsletters every month and not getting any feedback about it. Is anyone reading it? Hellooooo?
-Tony