Megagames: Giant board games for hundreds of people in the same room

The "MegaGame Society" is sort of the over-arching organizing group (they licensed Watch the Skies from the UK group, updated it significantly, and are recruiting more groups to run it locally).

They're definitely the folks to follow for information on games outside of the UK.

shkkmo3• 11 years ago

Any plans to run any more on the west coast this winter? I'd love to participate.

carbide• 11 years ago

I never believed a game as complex as Eschaton could exist in the real world. I'm glad to be wrong.

braythwayt• 11 years ago

I recall teams playing “War in Europe” a couple of decades ago in Toronto’s original wargaming club “The General Staff:”

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_in_Europe_(game)

It may not have been a megagame, but it certainly was a monster.

dragondave• 11 years ago

"And I know there are some big Larps in California, but those still only have about 100 people at any one time."

Well, we've got at least two LARPs in the UK which have been well over the thousand mark for a while now: Lorien Trust (https://www.lorientrust.com/) and Empire (which is run by Profound Decisions - http://www.profounddecisions.co.uk/empire). [I'm excluding Curious Pasttimes, since I have no data, but suspect it's also 1000+]. Typically Empire (which I play and have a better idea of numbers) has around 1500 people: around 1300 players and 200 crew.

Empire is interesting from a Megagame perspective because it places the players as the movers and shakers of the world and then gives them the levers of power -- there are senators dealing with the temporal politics of a ten-nation Empire, the synod wrestling for the protection of man's mortal soul, the mages who bargain for power from the alien beings from outside Creation or for those aliens to not deal with the Empire's enemies. And it's on a timescale of four weekends a year, for years, rather than a one-off game. (This isn't even the only large LARP they run -- I believe their mythological era Odyssey game is several hundreds of players)

And as the comments of the article say; Germany has some epic LARPs too -- and pretty sure other places do too.

That said, I'd love to play in one of these tightly plotted megagames...

[full disclosure: I play Empire, have played Odyssey, and played Lorien Trust a long time ago and wasn't a massive fan. If you book for either of the first two games with 570.2375 we'll both get money off.]

11235813215• 11 years ago

These are fun. I played in the June Chicago game and I'll be assisting with the October Chicago game. Like many people, I learned about the concept from Shut Up & Sit Down, the board game review site.

In these games, each player on a team has a role that grants them access to a part of the game unavailable to most of the rest of their team. Communication is essential. Teams use a mix of methods to deal with this ranging from tweeting to smartwatch texts to using members of their team as information couriers (in our game, we had a member of our team with wider on the lookout for hand signals from the more restricted members.)

shkkmo3• 11 years ago

Are there any details on the October Chicago game?

11235813215• 11 years ago

It's slated for October 10th and will be Watch the Skies. I don't think it's been announced yet, though.

monksy• 11 years ago

Do you have any information on this? Where could I sign up etc?

11235813215• 11 years ago

I just got a note in my inbox that tickets just became available: http://www.eventbrite.com/e/watch-the-skies-chicago-2-ticket...

falsedan• 11 years ago

This is just a LARP… a 300-person actual boardgame would be weird/interesting, but this is just "get a bunch of people in a room with assumed roles and restricted social interaction & see what happens" which is every roleplay cons' big event since the 90s

Megagames: Giant board games for hundreds of people in the same room

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