A new designer's perspective
Hi, I’m Taliesin, I’m a 21-year-old student at the University of Bath, and my pronouns change daily, so most people just refer to me as Tal. You may not know me yet, but I’m hoping over the coming years I’ll be a very familiar face at the heart of the megagame community. I’m here to tell you a bit about my experience as a young person who is indescribably enthused about megagames.
I think it goes without saying that I found out about megagames because of The Video. You know the one I mean. The concept of a megagame was really intriguing to me, and I was especially enthralled by the mystery of the alien team behind the curtain. What stuck out to me was, how did they do that? How did a team of people create something so complex involving so many people? Having never run more than a handful of very silly one-shots (involving a naval destroyer being catapulted into space by a jealous Queen Elizabeth or a terror bird who could only speak in rhyme), it seemed unimaginable.
So I moved on with my life. At the time, that meant a lot of reading, environmental activism, and playing games with my dad’s gaming group, who met every Friday to play the same game for thirty years and allowed just enough change to include me in their activities. I enjoyed it, but outside of the games, I didn’t really know how to interact with them, even though we were all nerds, and watched the same media, there’s something about being raised in different generations that makes it difficult to bridge a connection.
Then I got to university. The opportunity to role-play serious stories in long form campaigns, and regularly play board games with people my own age. I lost an election to become the RPG officer to a good friend, and then I had an idea. I remembered the old video of Watch the Skies and wondered, could I do that? I had a lot more GMing experience than before and suggested it to my friend. She thought it was a great idea, so we set out to organise our Tabletop society’s first ever megagame. I wanted to create one from scratch. I was told that was a bad idea (in retrospect, it was a bad idea). So we contacted someone online and weaselled a student discount out of them (our limited society funds appreciate you John), so I had the pleasure of running Den of Wolves. Let me tell you, I have never felt so energised.
Despite only having sixteen players and having to cut out the Aegis of all things to make ends meet, our game was raucous, always full of things happening, and everyone wanting to ask me questions. For the fleet, everything went terribly wrong. Our wolf agent aboard the Shephard snuck aboard the council-run Aegis and crashed it into the Icebreaker. Suffering from immense damage, the Icebreaker crew discovered the coordinates of the Wolf home world and FTL jumped through the planet. The Quellon and the Endeavour abandoned the fleet, with the Endeavour surviving by liquidating refugees from the rest of the fleet. This left two functioning ships, with the remaining crew of the Shephard being held for questioning. If you ever want a group of people to mess things up as much as possible while having a wonderful time, invite a group of students to your next game.
Now, with a game under my belt, I set about designing my own game. Greater than Heroes was my first, a fantasy epic for twenty-five players, with my personal favourite being the solo-team vampire who had to be invited to sit at a table at the end of each round. I made some mistakes as could be expected, but it ended with an epic battle that had everyone cheering, and enough feedback for me to learn from them.
Map for Greater than Heroes, made by Will Smedley
While I was proud of the game, it did feel very similar to Den of Wolves, just in a fantasy setting. The roleplaying was excellent, the combat system was awful, and it left me with a nagging feeling that I could do better. That meant I had to find some people who knew how to do it right.
My first time as a player in a megagame was in 2022’s Aftermath game at the UK Games Expo in Birmingham. Me, and two of my friends, in a room full of what I would call “proper adults” as opposed to “people with the right to vote who can just about look after themselves but shouldn’t be given responsibility over anyone else.” I can sum up how that game went in a single sentence.
We had a tank.
Rolling around the British countryside, while conniving as much as possible offset the anxiety of being surrounded by people who I rather wanted to impress. The best and worst part was a military tribunal where I tried to convince everyone that the military was corrupt (which I thought was true) while persuading them we didn’t have a tank (which was not). I did have a little panic and had to ask for a breather, and everyone was friendly and understanding and broke character for a little moment which restored my sense of “this is just a game” most wonderfully.
Naturally we gravitated towards the other group of young people in the game, but I actually found myself feeling a lot more comfortable around everyone else than I expected. I had one rule which I followed: when in doubt, make the interesting choice. I would recommend this rule to any new player in a megagame.
The Synergy-DoE merger at Aftermath 2022. Young people will always gravitate towards each other, and the results will be felt by everyone. Photo by: Taliesin Oldridge
That, and the subsequent game of Aftermath I played just a few weeks ago convinced me I wanted to really be a part of the megagame community. I recognised Ed Silverstone and many others who I couldn’t name from countless videos. To me, you’re all minor celebrities, and sometimes I gasp in recognition to myself. I dearly wanted to talk to them all, learn their wisdom, and feel a part of everything going on. I wanted to shout, “I make megagames too!” but better sense prevailed. I worry in all my games that we make too much of a splash, that our chaos is disrupting some natural equilibrium that has existed for a decade in Megagames. But that sense is going away as I slowly learn that we’re all just “people with the right to vote” who are capable equally of striving to keep their little meeples from dying of thirst and jumping in delight at the sight of an inflatable crown.
With this in mind, I have decided that its time for a new generation of designers to take to the stage. It is my plan to run my second megagame, Let’s Crash Together, tried and tested by students, and soon ready for the larger stage. A light-hearted survival game equally suited for fans of Lost or Lord of the Flies. With the help of the wonderfully supportive community of designers, I plan to run my first proper megagame in September, and I hope if you make it to the end of this story, that I might just see you there.
Taliesin is a full-time student with the current goal of becoming a teacher. You can check out their website and learn more about Let’s Crash Together here.
If you’d like to see your words about megagames on our site, drop us a line!