Megagame Designer Thoughts: Are You Now Or Have You Ever Been...
The map of the town in ‘Are You Now Or Have You Ever Been…’ Credit: Andrew Shiel Dods
In these articles Rob Grayston chats with designers after their games have run, to talk a bit about their experiences, thoughts, and any general pearls of wisdom they may wish to impart. Rob talked to Andrew Shiel Dods about Are You Now Or Have You Ever Been..., the megagame of McCarthyism in 1950s small town America, when small town America is also full of cultists and conspiracy!
Tell us a bit about yourself – how did you get into megagames?
This is something of a recurring themes across interviews – the Shut Up and Sit Down video! I thought “that looks fun, let’s get involved,” but unfortunately being in the North East of the UK, London (and most of the UK’s megagames) was far away. However, Leeds was much closer so I spent my early megagaming days with Pennine Megagames, and my first game was Cockroaches, Copper & Cows on the Mexican Revolution by Jonathan Pickles, which was a very strong first game to play and made me want to get more involved.
By day I’m a Teacher of Computer Science, and for me where video games might be fun, getting 40 people in a room to create chaos is even better.
How do you think your first run of Are You Now Or Have You Ever Been... (AYNOHYEB) went?
It went really, really well! I think it was unlike a lot of megagames, and unique as it’s much more wizard wheeze/freeform heavy in how it runs, with more emphasis on the narrative aspect rather than being mechanical. I think it was a bit PBEM in places, after years of experience with that scene, and I wanted to bring what worked from there as much as from megagames.
Everyone had their own story, but there were some which were large and central which everyone had a different connection to. For various megagame story threads, if you’re not around at the start it’s hard to get involved, but players were still getting onboard to plots, and leaving them, throughout the game. People got drawn in to the stories – like “why was the church on fire? Better go investigate!”.
Megagames need drive and enthusiasm from a designer – what excited you about creating AYNOHYEB, and what did you want it to do/show/reflect?
It was to show that the strength of megagames is the narrative; you don’t remember the mechanical minutiae, so it’s more about what the mechanics let you achieve rather than the mechanics themselves.
Beyond this, my favourite trope is traitor roles – big fan of them. Den of Wolves is up there with the good mechanics, but the let-down with them here isn’t that they exist, it’s that it’s been played so many times that players expect some people will be traitors. This immediately colours every interaction across the game.
I really enjoyed hearing about Event Horizon having traitors, with that shock of “wait they exist in this too!” and that effect it has on how people played the game.
Because of this, I wanted to see where “Mutually Assured Destruction” with secrets got you (as in, everyone was a potential “traitor”) – so 1950s McCarthyism was an ideal setting! This brought in questions of whether it was worth going after certain factions, as they could retaliate, but perhaps an uneasy peace could be maintained for a little while? The whole idea was around blacklisting, and subversive elements in society – but what if someone is worshipping Cthulhu? And which one would be more acceptable, a strange religious group or one of those damned Reds?
Are you building a giant statue of Cthulhu? Credit: Andrew Shiel Dods
What was influential in designing AYNOHYEB?
As mentioned, PBEM was influential – how you carry out a turn, can you bring that down to half an hour with actions for the turn, rather than a week? I used this as a guide, pushing things along step-by-step, making it more narrative e based.
Clue (the film) from a tone perspective, was also influential. There’s a scene where Tim Curry reveals his wife “had socialist friends”, and I wanted that same shocked reaction from the assembled crowd!
I also wanted to recognise that many megagames turn to farce at some point, so this was an absurd game from the get-go. Based on that, it would be hard not to mention other influences were things like Scooby Doo, the X Files, and North American supernatural pop culture elements.
Players have a habit of doing unexpected things – from your last run of the game, did anyone do something you hadn’t considered, and how did that go?
What caught me off guard was when one of the players was a diner owner, and they wanted to create a new dish from all sorts of weird ingredients – and they kept growing this giant “pumpkin” pie in the middle of town. I’m not sure what happened, apparently it ended up looking like Mount Rushmore at one point, but I didn’t know and I was game control!
Also, the briefings had written down references to the “Mad Scientist,” but everyone kept just referring to them as “the Scientist” which I quite enjoyed.
I believe there was also an environmental challenge with the game – what happened, how did the game take it, and what do you think might help when you’re suddenly down some players/control?
So… what happened was that a few people went for lunch break, and when we came back the lift broke down with six of us in there (2 control and 4 players, including myself as Game Control). We couldn’t stop the game, so it carried on with only 3 control to run everything. AYNOHYEB responded well though, and whilst we were trapped everything had been carrying on (although slightly slower), but no part of it needed to stop.
My advice here is don’t let two control go in a lift together! More seriously, look at the game and think if players can be trusted to perform certain parts of it themselves, so the workload can be spread around – build in some redundancies beforehand if you can. For some things, just trust the players to do stuff themselves. For this instance, the main difficulty was resolving investigations as they needed control to adjudicate secret information and player schemes.
What do you think is the best way to get player buy-in for engaging with a megagame?
I think the big way to get players to buy-in to a megagame, is if you buy-in. You need to care, show you care with nice materials, and that you’ve put effort in. Does the briefing read more than just the bare minimum, is it a bit dry – if you show you care, so will the players! The material needs to be funny, or somehow extra, so it gives players more incentive to get involved, and this material helps them with that.
At AYNOHYEB there were some players who I’d like to mention for really engaging. One was a cultist mystic who brought a robe and put that on, but took it off when some investigators arrived. Another role was Girl Scouts, and they brought their own uniforms, then there was also the Press player looked like he could be the Editor-In-Chief from the Spiderman films. I saw what they were all doing and just thought “YES!”.
Hanging out in a lift (Andrew pictured front-right). Would your game survive such an incident? Credit: Holly Wall
We all have lists of games we’d like to make, and some of these end up actually bearing sweet megagame-flavoured fruit – what are you working on for your next game design?
My next game is not going to be a megagame, but it will be a PBEM – a Call of Cthulhu style political intrigue game set in Manhattan, after some cultists have botched their rituals and the Elder Gods get stuck between worlds. There are Cthulhu Mythos creatures in the city, but rather than people losing their mind when they see a funny-looking squid… they break out the Tommy guns.
Another idea is 1920s Hogwarts, but make it more like Jeeves and Wooster! Rival school houses trying to beat each other at sports and such, it wouldn’t be too heavy in tone. (Note: Who knows, it might nudge the interviewer into running his magical university game again).
If resources and time were no object, what would be your dream megagame to design?
I’ve been thinking about this since I saw the questions in advance and it’s difficult to answer – every time I have an idea, I find a plausible way to make it work! I think games where everyone can talk to everyone else are nice, so 40-ish player games are what I aim for.
If you want an actual answer, I guess maybe I’d try to do a “long day” experience with it being played in the UK for the first half, and the US picking up for the second half, so instead of a game lasting 8 turns or so, it goes on or 16. A real game of two halves!
For anyone looking at designing a megagame, what is your one top tip for them?
When I was in university years ago, whilst I’ve forgotten lots of my uni experiences, this idea stuck with me, which is:
Must Have
Should Have
Could Have
Won’t Have
Remembered as “Moscow” (M.S.C.W), it’s a way to prioritise game elements. If you’re doing a military war game, what would be in there? Boots on the ground versus high strategy, or for a megagame on the American Civil War, combat seems like it should be a core mechanic, but also political guidelines for North and South, etc. When you sit back and look at a game, what is really key?
For AYNOHYEB, everything was driven by wizard wheezes and narrative, as an example for those core Moscow points – if something wasn’t adding to that, it was binned as it wasn’t part of the overall vision.
Are You Now Or Have You Ever Been... will be running online on 10th December with OMEGA, and if you’d like to get in touch with Andrew you can do so via True North. Thanks for the chat, and we look forward to the Mobsters vs Mythos game you have planned, Andrew!
Would you like to chat to Rob about your megagame that has just run? Let us know and we’ll get it arranged.