The Galaxy Will Burn AAR

The Galaxy Will Burn megagame was run at Kapcon on Saturday 20 January. This is my after action report. The player facing game files can be found here and the Control brief can be found here. We had a larger Control team than last year, but did not sell out all of the player positions, so a couple of the Control team got to play in the game. Overall we were up on numbers from 2017.

Red Rocket by Nigel Sade, used under license.

The game was to a large extent dominated by a slight majority of players both wanting to play aliens rather than humans, to belong to secret factions and being willing to betray their public factions. This set the scene for a late game rebellion by the Alien Liberation Front, which led to a climactic battle at the Imperial capital, with the rebellion being crushed (partly from an unlucky mix of low value cards, and an opponent drawing three Aces and holding an Ace Pilot privilege card to turn all three Aces into value 10 cards), but the overall position of the empire ended up with the humans giving away their dominant position. But it was a loyal alien admiral who saved the empire. From a design point of view, some things worked well, others did not. I will address that in the feedback sections below.

Group photo of the participants

My thanks go out to the Control team for their time, my partner Catherine for her patience in the weeks leading up to the event, and for the support that we had from Battle Kiwi, who made our laser cut tokens, Kapcon, for giving us a venue to use, and The Caffeinated Dragon, Cerebus Games and Counter Culture for advertising our event. My plan going forward is to form a collective in Wellington to work together on future design, development, production and execution of Megagames. The work load I took on was a bit too much. In particular I need to allow more than three months lead time for development and playtesting. I am hoping that our first collective Megagame will be Watch the Skies at Wellycon in June, followed by a new version of Colossus of Atlantis in the second half of 2018.

End of the game – Earth has upgraded orbital defences and most of the Imperial Megaships defending it against the alien menace.

Some headline numbers from the feedback forms:

• Enjoyment: a mean score of 4.6 out of 5 indicates that most people had a good time. The lowest score was a three from a Politician. Last year for Colossus of Atlantis, the comparable score was 4.7.
• Briefing: about 86% of the players read the rules before the game. A mean score of 3.75 out of 5 indicates that there is still scope for improvement here, but it is a small improvement on the 3.3 for Colossus last year.
• Difficulty: a mean score of 3.1 is almost unchanged from the Colossus score of 3. The range of scores, however, was wider, with both a 1 (too easy) and a 5 (too hard).
• Rate of Play: with a mean of 2.6, The Galaxy Will Burn had more time pressure on the players than Colossus, which had a mean score of 3. In particular, the politicians had a lower score here, with a third of the politicians rating it a 1 out of 5 for too much time pressure.
• Control: a mean score of 4.3 is close to the 4.6 score from 2017.
• Value for Money: a mean score of 4.7 matches the Colossus score for 2017. Despite this, the overall amount of money people indicated they were willing to pay was down on 2017 – $28 for a day game (down $5) and $22 for an evening game (down $1).

As is my usual practice, I asked for free text feedback written by the players for the three categories of Keep, Stop, Start.

Imperial Capital – everyone points dramatically at the Deep State.

Player Feedback – things to KEEP in the Megagame

Gaining actions. The brutal time pressures. Legislative governing system. Massive fleets. All of it. Interesting and varied crises. Original mini-games. Lack of reliable information between game rooms. The political system was very satisfying and even. Secret factions. Cards unexpectedly changing gameplay. Bribing the press. Pregame information. Distinct and interesting factions. Everything. Jenga towers not too influential (a good thing). Card deck as a randomizer. The separated play areas was good. Separation of map and political game. Faction legacy rewards.

Its worth remembering that different players can like and dislike the same features of the game.

Carefully making sure the Quadrant economy did not collapse.

Player Feedback – things to STOP in the Megagame

Strong Emperor. Privilege cards requiring alien starbases. Awkward distribution in set-up. Third choice roles. Remove nonsense role/faction/race combinations. For hidden roles, knowing who they are at the start. Vague and different rules from sector to sector, felt like a separate game. Media interference slowing game turns. Align player sheets to game rules. Too much voting. Randomness in legacy was too much. Jenga was time wasting. Wrong rules and changing rules. For secret faction members, being moved between quadrants sucked, plans ruined. Media interviewing players mid-action. Players hoarding megapower tokens. In-faction communication was poor. Left players playing their own game.

A few comments in response from me:

• A few players got third choice roles because almost no one ranked politician as a first choice. People usually got a preferred faction or friend in their faction.
• Rule inconsistency – even with a Control playtest a week before game day some bits of game play were not perfectly aligned across all the rooms.
• More playtesting would have led to better balance in the privilege cards and token economy.

Political values chart – this would have worked better if projected on a wall for easy reference by players and Control

Player Feedback – things to START in the Megagame

Reduce turn length and number of actions. Less randomness in combat, add a bluff mechanic. More solid rules for players and control. Knowing what to do/firm targets rather than vague paragraphs. Clarity for battleship set up. Politicians can sometimes look into sectors. Rules for amendments. make the political round shorter (although it was fixed). Increase secret faction influence on game play. Incentives to defect from faction. Having a chaos element. More inter-room interaction. Allow more actions (accumulated to many privilege cards).

A few comments in response from me:

• The combat mechanic did not scale well with the size the fleets eventually ended up at – most of the playtests only went through two game turns, not the half-dozen we finished on game day.
• It was a deliberate choice to keep objectives and “victory” more about narrative quality rather than a numerical output from game mechanics.

Final Blame Scores. The faction with highest blame could not be appointed as Strong Emperor.

Control Feedback

After the game was packed up most of the Control team went along to a local pub for a debrief. We had picked up on a lot of the same issues that the players identified:

• Time Management: More interaction was needed between the Imperial capital and the Quadrants. There was minimal impact until right at the end. This was partly due to the political mini-game taking a lot more time to get through than I had anticipated. This led to turns taking longer to get through and a reduction in time for diplomacy. It was also partly due to the Media talking to politicians when Control needed to be resolving game mechanics with the players. Its been more than a decade since I last experimented with media player roles, and we need to find a better way to utilise the role – part of which is to give media other things to do in-game, such as running a twitter feed or printing hard copies of media information.
• Control: could have had the Crisis Control role doing a bit more to help with the imperial capital political game, and I think we could have had an additional control player just to handle factions (secret factions, changing factions and faction legacies). We are not at the player numbers where we can afford to have a Control player for each faction.
• Mechanics that did not work: Centralisation and Decentralisation looked exciting on paper but in play had no effect.
• Crises: feeling from Control was the number and degree of impact on the game could have been increased. The A5 templates could be increased to A4 in size.
• Sound system: worked and was essential, volume could have been a little higher.
• Too many tokens: the number of Battleships could have been reduced by half, and the fountain of megapower tokens into the game could have been reduced by a third. The approach I used in TGWB and Colossus where players can buy large numbers of privilege cards is not working well – too many cards, and not enough cards actually getting used.
• Fleets and combat: it was too hard to actually destroy Starbases, making most combats indecisive.
• Information tracks: most map tables started writing glory scores on the white boards. It would have been useful to have additional tracking sheets for relative control of sectors/hyperlanes and faction initiative. Stands for map roles that could change hands were useful. If we had player shields to screen hidden information, bulldog clips could be used to put information like that on the side of the screen visible to other players.

A typical quadrant map in the middle of the game.

That is all for now, feel free to add comments if you played in the game. I would in particular appreciate on the following elements of the game:

• Megaships – were they awesome, or just annoying?
• Strong Emperors – did they add to the game or detract from it? If you were a Strong Emperor, was it fun?
• using the Jenga towers to represent the economy – was drawing the blocks exciting or frustrating?

Looking ahead to 2019, because of a clash with other hobbies, I will be looking at running a game in mid-February rather than late January. I would be interested in hearing if a shift away from Kapcon and Wellington anniversary weekend would make it easier or harder for players to attend.

TGWB Update

A second playtest was held last weekend. I will be doing some more playtesting over the Xmas break down in Christchurch, and will then try and squeeze in another session in Wellington in early January. The main improvement from the playtest is a much better handling of the NPC Pirate and Warlord forces, dropping technology cards, and speeding up play by making some of the player actions automatic each turn, reducing the number of choices you make. The revised player mat is below.

Game tokens have been ordered from Europe and the USA, and I am about to confirm an order for some laser cut tokens from battle Kiwi here in New Zealand. The five Jenga style block towers for use in the trading mini-game have all arrived from Auckland, and the star themed NASA playing cards are on their way from Book Depository. Apart from the laser cut tokens, I am expecting delivery of the rest of the game components before Christmas.

I have updated the main webpage for the game, with information on the factions in the game, and a copy of the draft rules. In a change from my past Megagames, The Galaxy Will Burn will not be balanced around factions with even numbers of players or player roles. If a faction is really popular during casting, then it will have more players. During play of the game, it is expected that player diplomacy will even out the effects of team size.

While we did not playtest the political game last weekend, we did walk through the mechanics and based on the feedback I cut down the number of government agencies to three branches of government and five offices of government. The Megapower economy was also simplified. The main use for Megapower tokens is in the political game, i.e. Quadrant map players decide how many they want to buy, give the Megapower tokens to their faction leader, and the faction leader then uses these tokens to acquire privilege cards for their team members.

The three branches of government are:

1. The Executive – which proposes methods to resolve crises, and elects strong emperors.
2. The Legislature – which votes on changes to how the imperial government works.
3. The Judiciary – which allows the controlling player to veto actions by other government agencies.

The offices of government the main source of one use Privilege cards for players. The five offices are:

1. The Treasury –  which is responsible for economic and financial matters
2. The Bureaucracy – which can shift influence and manipulate blame within the government
3. The Naval Office –  which is responsible for military matters, including command of the Megaships.
4. Quadrant Affairs – is responsible for appointing Viceroys in charge of Quadrants
5. Alien Affairs – is responsible for the peaceful assimilation of aliens into the Galactic Empire.

There is also an unofficial agency, the Deep State. This is all of the various secret services, palace guards, private militias, paramilitary police, and naval forces based around the imperial capital. While no one can ever “control” the Deep State, it is the source of privilege cards with a skulduggery focus (e.g. assassins, spies, coup attempts, selling weapons to pirates). The politician play mat is below.

 

TGWB First Playtest

Map at set up. Next time I will start the players with more starbases, and vary the number of loyalty markers. Each area started with three loyalty markers, which made the Govern action useless. Next time it will be 1-2 loyalty markers.

The playtest had a few main goals:

• was there enough to keep all of the map players engaged and busy?
• how did the budget corruption mechanic work?
• how much time did it take to complete a game turn?

The first cycle of turns took about an hour to walk through. Part of this was the usual time to learn a game, but another part was on identifying ambiguous wording and offering up some alternatives for refining the game. We then got through 2/3 of a second cycle in 20 minutes. So a general conclusion there is that the number of actions can be trimmed down by about one-third. With five map players per table, trying to process 45 actions in 20 minutes only gives 25-30 seconds of time per action for resolution. The players did raise a concern about the proposed trade mechanic of drawing Jenga blocks, and that people might be too slow. This is something I think Control can manage during the game.

The map itself needs a little more clarity and explanation at the start so that everyone knows how the hyperlanes work (think of them as a really skinny and very long map area) and how starbases connect (the starbases on hyperlanes and sector borders are adjacent to everything) to the map.

This is the A4 sheet the players were planning their turns on. I was asked why trade was not being tracked here, and I do not think there is enough space. The trade tracks will go on a different A4 that all the players share – and this make it obvious when the benefit cards need to change hands. With the budget there are two numbers the players need to track, their current power total, and their permanent budget level. In the playtest only one player had really suffered hits on the budget by the second cycle of turns, but the cards had been skewed towards Clubs/Spades. I will number label the order of actions, and put an arrow going from left to right.

The playtest identified that the first action can just be focused on buying/selling Megapower rather than buy, sell or use. The next two actions are then where the player has more choice, and can now have an action with megapower option, which will even make wording the card text easier, so that is a double win. The bonus action is something that just one player at the table will get.

A suggestion from the playtesters was to make the learning curve easier by reducing the number of action cards players have at the start of the game. During play the players can then expand their action cards, changing the menu of strategies open to them. This can also make the initial difference between Admirals and Governors stronger so that players have to cooperate with their different mix of govern/build and move/battle cards for effective defence of the empire.

The playtesters also asked for more to engage with on the map. I will be doing a pass through the faction game and adding some elements to the map that players can interact with. For example, I will add some alien symbols to indicate the presence of alien enclaves within the Galactic Empire, which will be of interest to the Alien Lives Matter faction. The Imperial Capital game will also create things like Monuments that players will need to defend against pirates. I did have some map bonuses for things like “longest controlled hyperlane” and “most starbases” (a bit of obvious inspiration from Settlers of Cattan) and they worked well.

We had some discussion around what happens if players or game tokens move between maps. My thought is that this needs to be following the play of a one use action card gained from the Imperial Capital, so that it is an exception to regular play and has some definite opportunity cost attached to it. As an end game option, a player who has reached “autonomous” government could lead a wagon train across the stars and migrate to another map table. Another option is to make it cost a lot of Megapower – say one per player already at the table.

One mechanic I borrowed from the COIN games was the distinction between Movement, Patrol and Battle. Battle could only be against units that were revealed, and for Pirates or Warlords in deep space away from the Hyperlanes this meant someone had to spend on action of Patrolling to reveal the enemy. This then allowed another player to initiate the battle action, gaining all the glory themselves. The COIN games tend to be optimised for four players, often working in teams of two. So this mechanic is a bit fiddly in this megagame and will probably be dropped. It also requires me making a mark on all of the game tokens so that the hidden/revealed status is clear at a glance from players.

Many Warlords have spawned in the bottom left hand side, while there have been battles with pirates in three places on the hyperlanes (top left, top right, and lower mid left).

Some last specific feedback on this map – the hyperlanes need some connecting “bridges” on this map, which will be easy enough to do at the points where they connect closely. I can also make the border the same colour pattern as the hyperlanes, to indicate that off-map travel can loop around. Its possible for a region to get crowded – I will have some overflow/breakout boxes, so you can pick the tokens up and put them down elsewhere.

Overall, it feels good for the first playtest. The next playtest will test out the Imperial capital game.

Bookings for Kapcon are now open!

This means bookings for The Galaxy Will Burn Megagame are also open! It is your opportunity to struggle against other factions within an Galactic Empire as things fall apart and independent pirates and warlords threaten the old order. Or perhaps you will belong to a revolutionary faction that wants to overthrow the Empire?

I will be doing a couple of things differently with TGWB. The different factions in the game will be of different sizes, and players may belong to more than one faction. In past megagames I have had to do severe contortions with last minute player registrations and faction membership to try and keep things balanced. For TGWB I cannot do this, as membership of some of the factions are secret. I think its going to work out like this:

• Players who turn up and register on Saturday 21 January for the megagame will be placed in the default faction, the Galactic Loyalists, and as their faction name suggests, their goal is to preserve the Galactic Empire as it is
• Players who register by Monday 15 January will get the full casting sheet, and will be able to join both a public faction and a secret faction (you must be in a public faction, belonging to a secret faction is optional)
• People who contact me between the 15th and 21st may be able to get a faction choice, but probably will not be in a secret faction
• The first 13 people to register will be allowed to join more than one secret faction.

I will be aiming to complete the initial casting as soon as possible after 15 January, so members of the same faction have some opportunity to plot together before the game starts on Saturday.

There are four main player roles at the start of the game:

• Governor – responsible for controlling sectors of space on one of the Quadrant maps. This is a good role if you like playing a game of slowly expanding your territory and resources.
• Admiral – responsible for patrolling the hyperlanes on one of the Quadrant maps. This is a good role if you like being aggressive in combat.
• Politician – leading a faction, politicians are based in the Imperial Capital, with a gameplay focus on trying to successfully resolve crises and make sure you become the next Emperor rather than the other politicians. This is probably the most difficult of the game roles.
• Media – responsible for conveying accurate, timely information between the different sections of the game, that the historical record exalts the achievements of their faction, and for making sure that blame is attached to people who mishandle crises. This is the role that has the most emphasis on roleplaying, and the least on boardgame style mechanics. As such it is a good role for a player who is new to Megagames.

Players will be able to change their factions and roles during the course of the game. You want for example become a leader of the initially non-player Pirate or Warlord factions, or become an Usurper trying to overthrow the current government of the Empire.

TGWB can cope with 40 players. I am looking for six to eight people to help Control the game.

KapCon 2018 is open for registration. If you’d like to attend, please
fill out the form here:

http://kapcon.org.nz/?q=regform

Early-round games can be viewed here: http://kapcon.org.nz/?q=games27

And the flagship larp signup form is here:
https://goo.gl/forms/8QMN2hEHAajdOg6x2

As usual, we’ll be doing this “shark week” style, with games allocated
on preferences after a week. So there’s no need to rush the form in a
giant gaming frenzy.

We’re still after games, so if you’d like to run something, please
fill out the form here: http://kapcon.org.nz/?q=gamereg

The structure of KapCon means that on average everyone needs to run a
game, so please do your bit.

If you’ve forgotten your username or are having trouble logging in,
please email kapcon@gmail.com.

Malcolm Harbrow
Official KapCon mail prole

The cost of coming to Kapcon for the weekend is $30 (or $20 if you are helping facilitate a game), for just the Saturday the fee is $20. There is a $5 discount for preregistering by 15 January.

I will be trying to update my website with more information about the game later this week, but at the moment I am getting some errors trying to load the site builder, and the default help suggestion of clearing the cookie cache is not working.

Mapping the Galaxy

The design problem I have been wrestling with this week, is just how much stuff to include in the map game, and how much detail will be required on the game map.

I am still thinking about whether the map game takes place at the same time as the other potential mini-games (imperial politics, trade, technology, and possibly intelligence), or whether the mini-games follow the map game, with the players having the freedom to choose which mini-game they want to engage in.

The latter option requires more time for a full round of player actions and decisions, but probably does not put as much stress on the players. This is because you can pause between the major game phase transitions and give the players time to distribute information. It also gives Control time to tidy up the game while the players are busy elsewhere.

The former option puts more stress on the players (who have to make time during the game to share information with their faction members, and to do diplomacy with other factions), but allows each player role to be more specialised (and in theory means each player has to master a shorter set of rules). This is I think closer to the way that most other Megagames have been run in the past.

In terms of map design, if only a subset of the players are playing full-time at the maps, then they can afford to be a little smaller in physical size, but could also be a bit more rich in information. I’ll come back to this idea towards the end of this post. There is a third option as well, which is to run the map game full-time, but to only occasionally run the mini-games, rather than having the mini-games occur every turn.

I am not sure if there is a right answer here.

Map Progress

First, I have spent some time getting to grips with Profantasy’s Cosmographer expansion for their Campaign Cartographer mapping software. One of the things I did was to grab their example of a galactic map, and strip off its political borders and labels.

While this looks nice, the physical nature of the map tables means that building a game map for 40 odd players off something like this is hard. A big circle is simply too difficult for players to reach across. Plus the most recent thoughts on what the Milky Way looks like are a bit more complicated. The presence of a big black hole in the centre of the galaxy (Sagittarius A) means that its a bit implausible as a location for an Imperial capital.

The Milky Way Galaxy Map website, as the name suggests, has been able to provide me with a lot of information about the observable portion of the Milky Way galaxy. On the whole it supports the four spiral arm take on the Galaxy, but also provides a bit more discussion in talking about the spurs off the main arms and some bridges that connect them. So this atomic hydrogen model map was very helpful in taking my ideas to the next level. The far side of the galaxy probably has a similar level of interesting detail, but we simply can’t observe it accurately through the plane of the galaxy.

So what I have done here is outline five sections of the map to focus on. Each of the red rectangles will be developed into its own map. So unlike The Colossus of Atlantis, each table will have a different geography and character. To simplify gameplay, the off-map parts of the galaxy will be sparsely populated backwaters that play no major part in the game.

The most common term for mapping large sections of the galaxy is quadrant (typically either centered on Earth, or the centre of the Galaxy). The English language is sufficiently flexible to allow more than four quadrants (the word has the same sense as a city quarter). For a smaller region of space, I think “sector” is the term most often used in fiction. So the levels of gameplay are:

1. Galaxy
2. Quadrant
3. Sectors and Hyperlanes
4. System

Map Complexity

First, lets repeat this image from a previous post, covering what the sector/hyperlane/system part of a quadrant map might look like. I think in future versions I will try using some of the sheet effects in Cosmographer to make the sectors more circular in shape.

So what a player could see on the game map is:

1. Name labels for the different areas on the map
2. Borders between different areas on the map
3. An indication of the value of the area (for gaining resources for use in trade and other mini-games)
4. Sector Bases
5. Fleet units controlled by one or more players
6. Imperial fleet units loyal to the Galactic Empire
7. Megaships (with a 50mm base, they take up a chunk of real estate)
8. An indication of who controls the region
9. How loyal an area is to the Galactic Empire (I am thinking of using heart shaped tokens for this)
10. How integrated the area is with the Galactic Empire (direct rule, local rule, or collapse).
11. Stress markers (for determining where crises occur)
12. Indications of important changes in the game state (tokens, cards, marker pen on laminated sheets, etc)

Which is getting to be a bit much I think. Especially if you have to scan 20 odd areas on the game map. Its a lot of rich, complex information, which makes the game fun to play if you have a fair degree of system mastery, but could be overwhelming in a one-off megagame. The COIN system that influenced my design thoughts is optimised for around four players, rather than forty players. I am just a bit worried that its one token too many, and my design goal is that I want players to be able to resolve three rounds of action at the map table every 20 minutes (a lot like Aquila Rift).

Here is what I think I can do to keep most of what I want in the game system, while making it easier for the players:

• Only allow one faction base per sector – so control determination becomes “Who controls the base in the area?”.
• Allow the non-player faction Pirate/Warlord Bases to be placed in sectors – thus keeping a feeling of “Space is really big”.
• Colour code the sector borders so that each Governor’s initial areas of control are clearly marked (and I can match the colour to the faction colour of the player). Things will change in play, but I think players can stay on top of that.
• Tying the condition of integration with the Galactic Empire to the player rather than the map (which also fits well with how I intend player resource budgets work).
• Making the value of a controlled sector or system be one, and the value of a controlled section of hyperlane be two. Because the values are fixed, I may not need them printed on the map, but I might need a “Burn” token if the area is destroyed in economic terms.
• I will see how loyalty markers work in playtesting (as some factions will be working to preserve the empire, or to secede from it, I want to keep this in).

So, if you have read this far, what would be the first thing you would cut to make the game simpler?

 

 

The Galaxy Will Burn

This weekend I have been working through my initial ideas for The Galaxy Will Burn. I have made some good progress, but I do have a question for readers about a key element of the gameplay.

The core theme for the game is that the galactic empire will probably collapse, in contrast to The Colossus of Atlantis, where the players can generally work together to avoid the deluge. So in TGWB, a key decision for each player and/or faction, is at what point do they stop working to support the imperial system, and instead start working to subvert the system and establish a successor state.

As an aside, I spent some time looking at a forthcoming release from GMT games, Pendragon, which reminds me a lot of the old Britannia game, but using Volko Ruhn’s COIN system and focusing mainly on the 5th century. While it had some great interplay between the four positions and a neat way of modelling the decline of Roman influence in Britain, I cannot just adapt it wholesale into a Megagame. Too much of the game relies on it only being a four player experience, and I want to provide a good experience for 40 players.

Player Roles

Everyone starts as a sector Governor for the Galactic Empire. Each player has a public faction, which everyone knows about, and a secret faction (which only other members of the faction know about). I might also have some players as Admirals, responsible for patrolling the hyperlanes, and perhaps some industrialists who are focused on controlling key worlds that make unique resources and advanced technologies.

I will be looking to have a media team in the game if we get enough players, or possible a media rep on each team. They will not have a map based role (which also makes them good for diplomacy and espionage). They will have the ability to trigger crises by reporting on stress and corruption in the game system, as well as having a lot of influence to shape the overall game narrative.

I want to give players some freedom to choose which of the optional minigames they will focus on. If you want to be a pirate, you will be able to spend a good part of the game as a pirate.

Player Objectives

In moment to moment game play, a player will be trying to gain resources from the map game that can be used in the other minigames (trade, technology, and imperial politics).

One way of doing well in the game is for all members of a faction to gain control of the key positions in the Imperial Government. This should be difficult to achieve, and is worth a round of applause and a good boost in the game itself.

There will be opportunities for players to become a Strong Emperor during the game. When this happens, you get 60 seconds of time in which to give orders to Control to carry out (e.g. “Remove House Balu influence pawns from the Imperial Treasury” or “Remove Pirate ships from Orion’s arm”). One of the perks of this job is influencing the end of game victory objectives, by choosing what will be scored at the end of the game.

As the end game approaches, players will have to choose between loyalty to the remnant Empire, or trying to create the most powerful successor state out of the power vacuum created by the collapse of the empire.

The Map Game

Depending on the number of players, I plan to have five map tables. One for each of the Spiral Arms, and one for the centre of the Galaxy. Each map consists of approximately five “areas” per player assigned to the map. An area can be one of the following three:

• a sector (thousands of star systems)
• a key world
• a hyperlane.

This style of map is common in the GMT COIN games. The fast movement/line of communication route (the Hyperlane) is also a sector boundary. Placing Bases on the Hyperlane, and keeping it clear of Pirates lets you collect its trade value and move quickly from one side of the map to the other. Just one sector is shown in full here. All sectors will have space for two bases, but the sector value will vary from one to three. The key world only has room for one base and an economic value of one, but each key world will have some kind of in-game bonus from controlling it (such as building an extra Ship token each turn). Normal movement off the hyperlanes is just from sector to adjacent sector.

The Turn Sequence

1. Budget Phase
2. Planning Phase
3. Resolve First Actions
4. Resolve Second Actions
5. Resolve Third Actions
6. Glory Phase

Budget Phase

As Imperial officials, players have a fixed budget of six atomic power tokens per game turn. A player can choose to appropriate more atomic power to boost the effectiveness of their actions, but this has risks. If you do this draw a playing card:

• if the card value is equal to your current budget, double your budget for this game turn
• if your draw a Joker, increase your budget permanently by +1 (to a maximum of six). If you are already at six, gain one Megapower token!
• if the card value is less than your current budget, gain that many atomic power tokens AND your normal budget allocation
• if the card value is greater than your current budget, gain that many atomic power tokens
• if the card is a royal card, treat it as having a value of 10.

It will pretty much always be worth pushing to increase your budget. If you don’t, you get immunity from some central government actions (no prosecutions for corruption), but you will fall behind the other players.

The suit on the card also has an effect:

• Rag Hearts: place a stress token in one area on the map.
• Royal Hearts: place one stress token in two areas on the map (stress markers are used by Control to help determine where crisis events will strike).
• Rag Diamonds: reduce your budget permanently by one.
• Royal Diamonds: reduce your budget permanently by two.
• Rag Clubs: Spawn Warlord tokens equal to card value in one area (Warlords stay where they are placed).
• Royal Clubs: Spawn ten Warlord tokens and a base in one area (the base means these Warlord tokens will get stronger over time)
• Rag Spades: Spawn Pirate tokens equal to card value over three areas (not more than half in one area). Unlike Warlords, Pirates will move towards plunder.
• Royal Spades: Spawn ten Pirate tokens over three areas (not more than half in one area) and place a Pirate Base in the area with the most pirate tokens.
• Joker: shift one set of stress tokens out of an area you control, and place them in another area of your choice.

If the area you govern transitions from central rule to local rule, your budget is reset to six atomic power. If Imperial government collapses entirely in your region, your budget is reset back to six again.

Atomic Power not used in a game turn is lost. The only way to save power from turn to turn is to purchase Megapower tokens (which costs four atomic power at the start of the game). You can trade atomic power tokens with other players at your map table, but only Megapower tokens can be taken between tables.

Planning Phase

Below is a first draft of what a player’s planning mat might look like. I will add other information displays later (like a budget track).

You always get two actions, and can choose to do a third power action – which is to either buy a Megapower token, or to spend a Megapower token to do a third action of your choice.

If you are doing a “secret” action you get to put the action card face down on the mat during planning. Obviously this makes it harder for other players to second guess what you are doing. Secret actions also allow you to do things like build units loyal to your faction, rather than loyal to the empire.

Part of your planning is to choose and place a card. Then you also choose (for the first two actions), how much atomic power you are allocating to it. For secret actions, put the tokens underneath the action card (confusion to your enemies). The token below can be found on the Gamecrafter website (alternately, I will get a lot of yellow tokens, some spray paint, and make a stencil), and its what I might be using in this Megagame. For Megapower tokens, I am looking into getting some clay poker chips made up (because they feel really nice).

Resolving Actions

I am still fleshing out the menu of actions. Every player will have access to a core set of standard actions, including:

• Build base
• Build ships
• Move ships
• Patrol (finds enemy ships)
• Initiate battle

The rationale in making movement, patrolling, and battle different actions, is that this rewards players who cooperate with each other. The more atomic power you commit to an action, the more you get to do with it.

Special actions will also exist. These require privilege cards from other minigames, and may require a Megapower token to play.

Resolution of builds, moves, and patrols is simultaneous and there will be a timer going. Battles are resolved after all other actions are completed.

I am still working on the combat system, but leaning towards the chance element being the draw of a card rather than rolling a bucket of dice. There are two kinds of combat units: ships, and Megaships. I will use the Pirate miniatures from Hydra Miniatures for Megaships. Actions with Megaships require both a privilege card and a Megapower token. Megaships automatically defeat and eliminate all opposing ships (the best they can do is to damage the Megaship).

Ordinary ships will possible look like this:

Most of the other game tokens are likely to be wooden cubes or discs, but I may get some MDF “movement trays” to help figure out who controls which tokens (remember, at the start of the game, every unit on the map is an imperial token), and to move them quickly in play.

Glory Phase

The Glory Phase will happen about once every 20 minutes (during which time a map table should get through the other phases about three times).

Players at a table compare relative “glory” scores for elimination of pirates and warlords, and control of areas. The highest scoring player(s) get privilege cards allowing them to play a round of the imperial capital, trade, and technology minigames. These minigames can generate crises, but can also reward players with privilege cards that let them do special actions in the main map game.

If I have governor and admiral player roles, admirals will focus on pirate hunting, while governors will want to eliminate warlords.

The imperial capital game will involve a maze of government agencies and is a game of trying to control as much of the government as possible, while shifting blame tokens to the government agencies controlled by other players/factions. Some possible outcomes from the imperial capital game include:

• granting command of a megaship to a player
• reassigning a player from one game map to another game map
• decentralising the power to grant privilege cards from the imperial capital to a player at a map table (or centralising such devolved powers back to the capital)
• recognising local rule for some sectors on a game map
• precedence – allowing you to move/fight with units controlled by another player.

There will always be a crisis somewhere in the game. Solving one just spawns a new one. Ignore a crisis for too long, and it will have a negative effect on the empire.

The trade minigame will involve trading cards (more like Civilisation than Settlers of Cattan), but the bubble market will be represented by a Jenga tower. Each time a trade is done, both the players must draw a tile from the Jenga tower. The higher the tower, the greater the bonus reward for trading. If the Jenga tower falls, there is a major financial crisis and trading stops, not to resume until after the imperial government intervenes.

The technology minigame will produce one use advantage cards, but the disruption of new technology can create crises. I still have a lot of design work to do here.

Question: what would be an appropriate in game penalty for anyone who deliberately knocks the Jenga tower over?

Players who do not get privileged access can either spend a round focusing on diplomacy, or they can go to any map table and play a round with the pirates or warlords there.

Here is my key question: does it actually sound like a fun thing to do, to go and play pirates/warlords for a bit, while most of the other players are engaged in a different minigame?

The Galaxy Will Burn

The Galaxy Will Burn is the working title of my new Megagame design for Kapcon 2018. A whole bunch of ideas fell in place for this today, but first, progress report on my other games.

Colossus of Atlantis

I am part way working through working out an example of the revised Council mechanics. I decided to start with the Council of War, as that involves a lot of changes to all the systems for interacting with the enemy empires. The options are still a bit too raw for public exposure, but I think the process for the meeting as outlined below should be an improvement.

The Council of War

The Council of War meets in the Diplomacy Phase, after House meetings have finished. The Council of War meets for a maximum of five minutes. All actions at the Council of War are resolved in the following order:

1. Quorum
2. President of the Council.
3. Council Actions.
4. Research
5. News
6. Control administration.

1. Quorum

The Quorum for a meeting of the Council of War is 2/3 (round up) of the Strategos players. If the meeting starts late, the time allowed for the meeting is reduced.

2. President of the Council

The Strategos present at the start of the meeting with the highest Arête score is appointed as President. In the event of a tie in Arête, the older player is appointed. Strategos who are late to the meeting cannot be appointed as President.

3. Council Actions

Starting with the President, each player chooses one Council Action to resolve. After each player has made their choice, the President chooses which player makes the next choice. Each Council Action can only be chosen once per meeting. Players who are not present when it is their turn to act, forfeit their choice of Council Action for that meeting.

If the DOOM Action is chosen, the player must choose a second Council Action. If that action is an Arête Action, it becomes Corrupted.

Control can penalise any player taking too long to make a choice by taking one or more of their Arête cards away from them. Control will give a player a five second warning before doing this.

See below for detail on the different Council Actions available for the Council of War.

4. Research

Each player draws a random research advance. Player(s) that chose a research Council Action draw a second advance. Each player can then purchase one Strategoi research card – these act to upgrade Hero units.

5. News

It is the responsibility of the President of the Council to inform Control of any changes to the game that have resulted from Council Actions.

6. Control Administration

Each Council Action not chosen by a player now has its rewards increased, as indicated on its card.

My goal is to finish the game revisions before the GENCON website opens for game bookings on May 28.

Aquila Rift

This is my space pirates themed Megagame for Wellycon X. I have started a Facebook event for this game, and as usual that will be my recruitment ground for playtests and first comments on changes to the rules.

The current goal for Aquila Riftis to have a playtest set of rules by the end of February. At the moment the two key mechanics I want to nail are the movement and search rules. For movement I intend to have “star systems” connected by “wormholes”. Wormholes will be colour coded: Green (safe), Yellow (chance of delays), Red (chance of damage). I might have some wormholes restricted to a subset of the players, e.g. a route connecting two patrol bases might be coloured blue (no pirates allowed). For movement: all merchants, then all space patrol, then all pirates. When space patrol moves, they can spend fuel to deploy search tokens. If a pirate moves through a search token there is a chance they trigger a fight with a patrol vessel. If a pirate enters a system with a merchant, they then dice to intercept (ship quality counts, spend fuel to boost odds). A pirate that intercepts a merchant, captures the merchant (KISS). Combat only occurs between patrol and pirate ships. If you run out of fuel, take damage and jump to a base.

This is deliberately intended to be a simpler game than The Colossus of Atlantis. The three main player roles will be Governors, Space Patrol, and Pirates. There will not be a complicated trade system – a major reason for people being pirates is that its easier than working for a living. Any trade mechanic which allows players to get wealthy through legitimate trade therefore undermines the rationale for having a game about piracy.

First playtest will be in March sometime.

The Galaxy Will Burn

This Megagame will be a return to my favourite theme, the decline and fall of complex political organisations due to their own internal processes.

The main player role in this game, is that of sector governor, responsible for the administration and defence of several star systems. Every player in the game belongs to a public faction and a secret faction. Memberships do not overlap between the two factions. Your faction wins if at any point all members of the faction have been declared Emperor at least once. Game play is resolved through five minute turns, with a one minute gap between each turn. I may test some of the submechanics for this game (such as movement and combat) at the Aquila Rift game.

After each five minute turn, you must change the game table you are playing at. If you spent the last turn being a Governor at your home map table, this means either:

1. Going to the Imperial Capital and trying to gain a seat at the cabinet table for the next committee meeting.
2. Going to another map table, and spending the next turn there as a Raider.
3. Taking a five minute break to do other things.

After a five minute turn at the Imperial Capital, you must change the game table you are playing at by either:

1. Taking a five minute break to do other things.
2. Going back to your home map and spending the turn as Governor.
3. Going to any other game map table, and spending the next turn there as a Raider.

After a five minute turn as a Raider, you must change your game map table by either:

1. Going back to your home map and spending the turn as Governor.
2. Going to any other map table and spending the next turn there as a Raider.
3. Taking a five minute break to do other things.

After a five minute break, you can return to play as a Raider or a Governor. It is deliberate that the only way you can move to the Imperial Capital is after a turn spent as a Governor. There is nothing to stop you from a life as a pirate (or having it forced on you lose control of your worlds as a result of imperial politics). While there will be some chaos, I am hoping this will lead to some interesting emergent play.

Rising Tensions

Each game turn, the number of recruits available to a player choosing to raid increases by one. If the political decision at the Imperial Capital supports a reign by a Strong Emperor, all the existing Raiders are removed, and the recruitment rate is reset to one plus the number of Strong Emperors in the game so far.

For example, during the first game turn Raiders recruit one ship. By the fifth game turn they will be recruiting five ships. If there is a Strong Emperor at the end of turn five, then in turn six the recruitment rate will be two ships, and in turn seven the recruitment rate will be three ships. If there is a second Strong Emperor at the end of turn seven, the recruitment rate in game turn eight will be three ships.

Each time a Strong Emperor is declared, the number of chairs around the Imperial Capital table is permanently reduced by one. This represents the trend in political systems to become closed to outsiders.

The Imperial Capital

At the start of the game there are 13 seats around the Imperial Cabinet table. These seats are given to the players willing to commit the most money. This is a one round auction – everyone writes and reveals their bid at the same time. The money spent is also your voting power while on the Committee (and you spend some on every vote you take part in). The chair of the committee is the player spending the most money on getting a seat at the table.

Each Cabinet session can address a range of topics, most of which channel perks and kickbacks to the players, but the crucial one is choosing a Strong Emperor. If this option passes, the Cabinet meeting immediately ends.

The Strong Emperor

The appointment of a Strong Emperor immediately ends the actions of all Raider players for the rest of the game turn, and removes all Raider ships from play.

The Emperor then has one minute to make any changes they deem necessary for the continued security of the Empire. Each change must be clearly enunciated and each change must be specific.

• “mumble taxes mumble rhubarb atomic power mumble” – nothing happens because no one knows what the heck the Emperor meant
• “The Dagobah system is now controlled by Governor Tarkin” – control of the named system changes to that of the named player
• “All systems in the Coriolis Cluster are now controlled by Governor Cook” – change is too broad, each of the systems needs to be individually named.
• “The Sixth Fleet moves to the Hoth system” – the move happens
• “The Moth ball Fleet moves to the second map table” – change is not specific enough, a system name is needed.

After their minute of glory, each Emperor secretly chooses one of the possible endgame victory conditions and places it in a ballot box. When there is 30 minutes of game time remaining, one of these ballots is picked at random and announced to all players. The Emperor can tell people what option they chose, but is not required to tell the truth!

Victory Conditions

The game could end in any of the following ways:

1. A civil war – players split into factions, and fight until only one candidate to the throne survives.
2. Successor states – the faction controlling the most territory at the end of the game wins.
3. Dark age – the faction with the most atomic power wins.
4. Hedonistic twilight – the faction with the most money wins.
5. Republic – the faction with the most status wins.

Combat

My plan is to keep combat simple.

• Raiders and Battleships roll 1d6 per ship
• Imperial Dreadnoughts roll 2+d12 per ship

For each matching die roll you have, you lose one ship. Yes, the more ships you have in a battle, the more ships you will lose. The rationale is that the battle is the result of the logistics cost of multiple small encounters.

Highest roll wins the battle.

Resources

Raiding gets you cash, and reduces the resource base of other players. Being Governor gets you a mixture of cash, atomic power, some status, and the chance to gain influence with the Imperial Fleet through successful combat operations against Raiders. Imperial politics can get you any of the above.