Neverwood Event 2 Now Live

 Hey all, after selling out tickets for the first run of Neverwood, we've decided to run it again in November!

Neverwood is a rules-light megagame of Social Deduction, Storytelling and Exploration. You will join 50 other players in an all-day game event, all on secret teams with their own agendas. You'll need to explore the forest, uncover mysteries, make alliances, and balance your public and secret goals to find what you seek - or become lost yourself. Click here for the event page with a bunch of information about what the event is and how it all works.

This will be our first time running the same game twice in a row. Just to set expectations: If we don't get at least 25 players for this one and it's a couple of weeks out, we'll cancel and refund all tickets. The first sold out super quick but this is our first time running a second event like this, so we'll see how we go.

Also, returning players are welcome! Just in case we do have any avid megagamers who want to play in both games. Like in a social deduction game, the secret roles will be shuffled around each time, so you don't need to worry about spoilers - each game will be a very different experience. 

Finally, for those who've signed up to event 1, we're putting the finishing touches on things and we'll be sending out briefings Soon(tm).

New Megagame - Neverwood

 

Hey folks, I'm running another megagame in Brisbane! 

Neverwood is a rules-light megagame of Social Deduction, Storytelling and Exploration. You will join 50 other players in an all-day game event, all on secret teams with their own agendas. You'll need to explore the forest, uncover mysteries, make alliances, and balance your public and secret goals to find what you seek - or become lost yourself.

Click here for the event page with a bunch of information about what the event is and how it all works. There are currently 3 tickets remaining. If you're keen and based near Brisbane, check it out :)   

I'm running a Megagame

You get 20 people into a town hall. They run around as all the world's leaders: USA, UK, Japan, Brazil, Scientists, Generals, Presidents and Diplomats, all trying to solve the greatest crisis in world history. Behind the curtain, a cabal of sinister alien players works to destroy them. 

It's X-Com times Diplomacy times 20. I'm organizing it in my home town of Brisbane, Australia. If you're interested, join this Facebook group, or this forum thread, or let me know somewhere else on the internet that you'd like to receive updates.

It's a massively exciting challenge for me. The logistics part is chugging along fine, but I figure y'all are more interested in the game design challenge. There are a lot of interesting questions to answer, like: 

How can I help the Aliens roleplay a genuinely inhuman intelligence?

The Alien Handbook for the first game above says:

"First of all then, the primary victory condition for all Reticulan players is to role play
good Reticulans. The successful resolution of the Earth Crisis is only of secondary
importance to that."

The most important thing for designer Jim Wallman was to make the Aliens feel like Aliens: a completely foreign culture. Core to the game, and the thing you can't achieve in any game medium but Human Beings, is modelling the collision of two completely different cultures and sets of assumptions. That's hard enough to achieve when you're writing a script for a CGI character, let alone when the aliens are humans making actual decisions in real-time.

I've listed the game design levers I can pull to help the Alien players roleplay below. I won't go into specifics, but I don't recommend you read it if you have a chance to play the game.