What is a wizard wheeze?
Confused about any of the terms or acronyms in this blog post? Don’t worry, we’ve got you covered. Simply visit our megagame glossary and you’ll find everything you need to know there.
We’re not sure what these fine gentlemen were up to at a recent run of Watch the Skies, but it can’t be anything dastardly, can it? (Photo by: Rob Grayston)
Megagames by their very nature are complex; when you have 40+ players in a venue all playing the same game, helped along by a small number of Control players and the Game Designer, it’s going to be hard to know what’s going on.
What you might not realise is that it’s even more complex than that.
Let us tell you about wizard wheezes. Wizard what now? We describe wizard wheezes in our glossary as “Any action a player tries to accomplish that is not an explicit part of the rules of the megagame they’re playing”. What do we mean by that? Well, the overall brief that the game designer has sent out prior to the megagame starting likely includes all the formal rules so all the players are on the same page. For example, how the economy works, how players acquire resources each turn and the prescribed rules for battle. What the game brief is unlikely to contain is information on how to conduct wizard wheezes.
Think of wizard wheezes as fitting in between the official game rules. A way to lift your megagame experience to the next level and potentially create memorable stories that could impact many other players. It’s something that you likely won’t see in many other games.
Examples of less-than-satisfactory wizard wheezes
What wizard wheezes shouldn’t do however is make it easier for players to obtain money or resources that are mechanically available in the game. That is, if there are mechanics to obtain fuel to power your armies or food to feed your country’s people, then you shouldn’t be able to obtain more of the appropriate resource simply by coming up with a wizard wheeze.
Assassinations are also considered by many megagamers to be unacceptable. Think of it this way; a player, perhaps a country leader is making your day very difficult by stopping many of your ingenious plans from coming to pass and spreading fake news about your glorious team in the press. What’s the best way to deal with this problem? Simple! Assassinate them and the problem goes away. Right?
Wrong.
No matter how much in-game money and resources you throw at the assassination attempt, the targeted player won’t be leaving the game and going home. They’ll either return as the “new leader” on the very same team they’ve been leading all day or be recycled into the game somewhere else. Either way, you’ve disrupted their day and very likely not moved your own agenda forward. Worse still, if the attempted assassination fails, they’re probably going to know it was you and your team who organised it and will want to get revenge.
OK smart guy, what do “good” wizard wheezes look like?
There are any number of exciting plans you can enact via a wizard wheeze in a megagame and one that we were personally involved with was at Den of Wolves in Reading, UK. Den of Wolves has players manning a fleet of survivors fleeing from an overwhelming force of Wolves, hell bent on their destruction, Battlestar Galactica style.
During this particular instance of DoW, we were told at the beginning of the game that we were to be one of three Wolf traitors. Cue lots of badly thought out and implemented traitor plans, whilst our two traitor buddies did a great job in their respective roles. We were caught by the survivor fleet around mid-way through the game and fully expected to be re-assigned into another role after being imprisoned for life or pushed out of the nearest airlock by the military.
Chris being ejected from an airlock at a different game of Den of Wolves. You might say he’s got a reputation. (Photo by: Alex Beck, Horizon Megagames)
However, something seemingly so small at the time went on to have a major impact on the rest of the game. Whilst sitting at the prison ship’s table and loudly protesting our innocence, we mentioned to the First Officer we should receive a “free and fair trial”. What was originally expected to be a throw-away comment quickly spiralled into actually receiving a fair trial, free of political interference and judged by the fleet’s civilian captains. Whilst the trial was going on (spoiler, we were found guilty even though we threw up a heroic defence as to why our fingerprint was found on a bomb fragment) things out in the fleet were heating up.
Due to the recently promoted Admiral being a Wolf traitor, he ordered the Aegis XO to board the prison ship with a squad of marines and take us into custody. The captain of the prison ship, in a crazed panic and fearing the Federal authorities were imposing too much control on individual ships in the fleet ordered his security detachments to fight back, whilst also releasing all the prisoners who immediately began rioting.
The situation escalated quickly from here with the other fleet captains fleeing for the safety of their own ships. Unfortunately, we weren’t in such a fortunate position and died in a fiery explosion which was the result of the prison ship captain ramming the single military vessel in the fleet. This likely tipped the balance, along with the work the other traitors did to doom the fleet shortly after the game ended.
Whilst the original comment wasn’t meant to ignite such a game-changing story, it goes to show what even unintentional wizard wheezes can do at megagames.
Rory as his giant alter-ego, Jeff, holding up the Deephaven mine. (Photo by: Trenton Greyoak, Minnesota Megagames.
Another wizard wheeze which we witnessed was during Deephaven at Gen Con earlier this year. Deephaven is a megagame about a growing underground city of dwarves with many different roles from the central council, through multiple clans and guilds, including miners. The wheeze involved Rory Thomas (pictured above) holding a Giant Jenga tower together. Clearly as part of the normal rules of a Jenga game, Rory was cheating. However, in the context of the megagame, Rory was actually a giant (called Jeff) he had employed to keep the mine he and his dwarven friends were relentlessly mining from collapsing.
This wheeze worked successfully for a short while. Well it did until a rival clan of Salt dwarves made their way to the mine and stabbed Jeff, causing the extremely unstable mine to collapse. Don’t worry though, Jeff survived and went on to become Deephaven’s barber of choice.
As you can see from the two examples above, wizard wheezes have the capacity to enhance a megagame in many ways, impacting multiple players/teams and potentially even backfiring on you. Regardless, many more stories will be created than by using the official rules alone.
I’ve got an idea, tell me how to implement it already!
Now we’ve set up what wizard wheezes are, how do you go about implementing your very own? The first step is surprisingly easy. Once you’ve thought out the plan for your wizard wheeze, simply approach the appropriate Control and explain what you’re looking to do. The appropriate control will vary depending on what your idea is, but for example if you want to accomplish something in a political setting you’d probably speak to a political Control player, whilst an idea involving armies would likely fall to a map Control.
They may ask you to flesh your idea out further before proceeding or let you know what you’re planning isn’t possible in this game universe. Most likely however, they’ll let you know what in-game resources you’ll need and how much time it’ll take to pull off your wizard wheeze.
With that information in hand you can proceed to pull off your wheeze, but do bear in mind, there could be unforeseen consequences, including the players/team you’re targeting finding out what you’re up to. Or even worse, a journalist exposes your plans in the media and tells the whole game what nefarious things you’re doing. Regardless, you’ll be adding to the stories of the day so don’t worry too much.
We’d recommend starting small for your first wheeze and building up from there. We’ve heard wizard wheezes described as an “Aha! moment” that suddenly makes megagames amazing and that certainly chimes with our experience. So, at your next (or first) megagame, have a think about what you could accomplish by working in between the rules.
We think you’ll be pleasantly surprised.
What’s the best wizard wheeze that you’ve pulled off at a megagame? Let us know in our Facebook group - we’d love to hear about it.
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