Megagame Designer Thoughts: Trapped in New Arkham
In these articles we have a chat 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. We’ve talked to Kristian Mitchell-Dolby about Trapped in New Arkham, the post-apocalyptic game of eldritch menace and small-town politics.
Tell us a bit about yourself – how did you get into megagames?
I’ve been vaguely aware they’ve existed for years, but only stumbled upon the Shut Up and Sit Down video earlier this year. I was immediately excited about running one, and began researching online - I found a lot of inspiration on the Dice, Decisions and Diplomacy and Megacon YouTube channels.
I’ve been working on a YouTube channel over the past year: it’s mostly focused on TTRPG’s, but I wanted to run a live event for the channel, and megagames seemed like a good fit for my skill set and for the channel as a whole. I’ve created homebrew TTRPG systems and settings before, so I hoped I could put those skills to work in megagame design.
You’ve just had your first run of Trapped in New Arkham - how do you think it went?
I think it went really well! I tried to focus on the story elements, and have all the players doing a unique thing circled around a central concept. Really it was just throwing out a toolkit and hoping that it would angle players towards the things I wanted them to explore. We seeded most of the plot elements into the exploration game, and players were able to focus on what interested them.
The politics were very active, as well - you could watch the different alliances floating around the room as teams hoped they’d picked the right group to align with. Never having run (or even played!) a megagame before, my biggest concern was what to do if the players were really bored and just waited for the game to happen to them - I had some backup plans but none of them were needed!
Megagames need enthusiasm and interest from a designer – what excited you, and what influenced you, when it came to Trapped in New Arkham?
Originally I researched a bunch of megagames - I liked the look of both Urban Nightmare and Aftermath, but wanted to design something halfway between the two - bringing out the mesh between city management on the one hand and chaos and disintegration on the other.
The Lovecraftian elements were actually a late addition - most of the design work was done before the pivot to Cthulhu. I originally wanted the focus to be on rebuilding, with teams fighting for power and resources in the new world. Ultimately, though, I wasn’t sure the game was balanced to the point where a player team couldn’t just be eliminated, so I scaled back the intensity of the conflict factions could engage in.
Having removed warfare from the game, I needed a background villain. Eldritch horrors made sense, as their nature is to do stuff that doesn’t entirely make sense, so I could justify tweaks to the game’s pacing. I enjoy the Lovecraft canon, and know the Arkham setting well, so it made sense to make that the theme. It also made it easier to build in strong narratives once the game wasn’t focused so much on military strategy.
The theme certainly inspired the University team, who created these amazing custom business cards! Photo by: Caley Powell
In terms of mechanics, the team structure was definitely borrowed from Watch the Skies: one leader, one player going to the map, one to the council, etc. The consistency helped structure the game, but I also made sure to give each team a unique mechanism which was special to them. There was a lot of curiosity and mystique around those unique actions, which definitely had some players eager to return for another run! The game as a whole was tied together with a worker placement mechanic, which let me create some natural competition for key actions and present players with difficult decisions.
Players have a habit of doing unexpected things – did anyone do something you hadn’t considered, and how did that go?
The university went full eldritch straight off the bat! Their first request in Turn 1 was to build a portal to another dimension. I had expected them to start a little smaller, but in hindsight, maybe I should have expected this. We had stacked the exploration deck to mostly bring out mundane events towards the start of the game, but we had to start throwing in some weirdness early on, and the players all wanted to engage with it.
Everyone turned against the Independence Square (anti-government) faction really hard early on. I was worried for a while that they’d be cut out of the game, but as the turns went on, the police became more authoritarian, and sympathies began to swing back in the opposite direction. About halfway through the game, a bunch of bodies went missing from the hospital morgue, and they asked the police to send in a detective to investigate. Next thing they knew, squads of armed SWAT teams had shown up to lock down the hospital, which led to a tense conversation between the hospital director and the chief of police.
Eventually, the SWAT teams left. Unfortunately, they didn’t make any progress on investigating the mystery - for example, the cultist meeples in the same hex never got questioned. The result was that a group of zombie criminals started to menace the north of the city, but by that time the police had given up fighting crime in favour of preparing for all-out war with Independence Square.
Is there anything you might change if you ran the game again?
There’s for sure some bloat here and there, lots of rules that could be tidied up. We overestimated how much investigation people would do, so I would feed in some more weirdness early on. I was worried that factions would have too much to do but players seemed to enjoy it! Some mechanics just weren’t understood, but I have plans to visually clarify them, which should help.
The City Hall faction seemed very chaotic. They seemed to have great fun but didn’t use most of their powers very often. I definitely want them to stay in, but I’m going to revisit the team structure. I’d like to up the player count, as well. I have two factions up my sleeve which will add some more chaos to the game: the Sheldon Gang, criminals looking to carve out their own turf, and the Silver Twilight Lodge, who will have a heavy focus on eldritch research and investigations.
The Mayor hijacks the press briefing to maniacally explain his latest theory about the portal; the press secretary is unimpressed. Shortly afterwards, there will be a vote of no confidence. Photo by: Caley Powell
You have a lot of experience writing and running TTRPG’s - how well did that translate into writing and running a megagame?
I would describe a megagame as an RPG where the players are playing the NPC’s. The world is full of problems that a group of adventurers would love to solve, except the adventurers are missing, and the NPC’s just have to get on and solve their own problems. So the narrative setup was very similar to a TTRPG. It helps that I approach TTRPG design in a very sandbox-y way: put out a bunch of breadcrumbs, and see what the players choose to follow. That way, they have agency, but you’ve steered them towards the stuff you know is going to be interesting. I encourage improv in TTRPG’s, which means that megagame chaos plays into my wheelhouse. I try not to say no to players, but I have no problem making the things they want to achieve difficult, or giving them negative consequences.
Once the game had started, it was much harder to guide the players. What we could, and did, do was make sure information flowed freely between the different parts of the game, to give players’ actions meaning. But at any given time there were two or three arcs going on that none of Control were aware of. The players seemed to spontaneously invent a disease where people’s eyes started spontaneously glowing. Some of them even caught it, and others were spending actions to research a cure, which was the first time Control came across that one. It’s very curious but also exciting how the game runs itself.
Another example: right at the end the university had become obsessed with the witch house. This was an entrance to an extradimensional space, but other than that was just a hook to hang plot off. They finally got into it at the same time as a big battle was happening to close the main portal the eldritch horrors were using to influence reality. I knew they were broadly on the side of the eldritch horrors, so I gave them the option to treat the witch house as a portal to the main battle, which they immediately went for. Their eldritch weaponry nearly swung the course of the battle, and it meant they got to be in at the climax of the game.
Have you started thinking about a designing a second megagame?
I do kind of want to do something a little bit more fantasy. Maybe the royal family has been killed, and the factions are all people who believe they have a claim to the throne? I like the idea of a very tall hierarchy, all the way from the highest aristocrats down to merchants and commoners, and people mostly interacting with people just above and below them on the chain. The idea of a fluid game where people’s first loyalty is to themselves is interesting, although I’d have to think carefully about how to move away from the more team-based structure megagames usually have.
If resources and time were no object, what would be your dream megagame to design?
Have you heard of D&D in a castle? I’d love to run a megagame in a setting like that. You could have players staying on-site, potentially even a multi-day game. I’d want to use the layout of the castle to delineate the world of the game, so that travelling across the world could mean travelling right across the venue. Really use the location to give the game a sense of place.
For anyone looking at designing a megagame, what is your one top tip for them?
Assuming you have as little experience as me, really do your research! There are some great YouTube channels and blogs out there - I read most of Becky’s blog, and a lot of the Megagame Assembly blog as well - and reach out to people via Facebook and Discord to bounce ideas off. I spied on the run of Den of Wolves at UKGE, which was a really valuable experience, just seeing how the dynamics of the room are and how the chaos plays out. Read and watch as much as you can, see megagames from as many perspectives as possible.
I was coming at game design from a particular angle - I’m a writer and film-maker, so I was coming in from a narrative standpoint, writing each faction as a different character and then finding the mechanics that fit the “personality” of each faction. I think narrative should trump mechanics: be willing to chuck out mechanics if they don’t serve the narrative you’re building.
It sounds like you’d like to run Trapped in New Arkham again - where could people hear about it?
The best place for now would be my YouTube channel, Kristian’s Brain, and I’m sure I’ll advertise it on Facebook and Discord as well.
Kristian just before the game started - just about coping with the nerves! Photo by: Caley Powell