First off a quick admission that I have only watched the first one and a half series of Game of Thrones and read the first two books so far. I hope to rectify this with any luck. But I was familiar enough with the setting to sign myself up for Everybody Dies, a megagame put on in Reading in November. It uses as its setting Westeros, but at a time prior to the books, when Aerys Targaryen was on the Iron Throne.
This marked a return on my part to megagaming, having played in several of these in south London around 1999-2002. They have managed to recruit a much bigger player base now following the success of a now famous video on Watch The Skies by Shut Up And Sit Down - link below. This probably provides a much better perspective than I can.
I'll attempt a very short definition however. A megagame in this context usually takes place over the course of an entire day. It posits a scenario which is best achieved by a large number of players in a range of roles. These are often team-based and include a mix of role playing, LARPing and more traditional war gaming. Some players like to dress up, many don't. The fun is that you can take part in a much bigger game with loads of people which feels more like a big political simulation. This is harder to achieve with a smaller group.
For example, the first ever game I played in was a simulation of the Arab-Israeli War of 1973, staged in London in 2000 IIRC. I was playing the commander of the Egyptian air force with responsibility for all air assets and also air defence in Egypt along the Suez Canal. I was part of an Egyptian team that sat on its own in a room (call it Cairo), but which included a head of state, a diplomat, and ground commanders for forces fighting in the Sinai desert. Although we only had the Egyptian perspective, we did also have the benefit of regular briefings from the press team which kept players informed of what was happening elsewhere in the region and on the international stage.
In Everybody Dies I was promoted at short notice to leader of the Dornish team, Prince Doran Martell (above, played by the excellent Alexander Siddiq in the series), controlling lands in the south of Westeros. My biggest challenge early in the game were the missionaries of the Lord of Light (led by Jhalo the Red Priest), who were keen to build a church and proselytise. I did not want to crack down on them too hard, because at least one of the other Dornish nobles was sympathetic to them.
I also had to fend off an early revolt by disaffected nobles led by Ormund Yronwood, which I had not been expecting, and which could easily have unseated me. I later learned this actually happened to the top Lannister lord and led to a civil war which devastated the Lannister holdings.
I decided to delegate a lot of tasks to other members of my immediate family on the Dornish table. I felt that keeping them busy would stop any further thoughts of insurrection against my authority, which worked pretty well. For example, I sent my younger brother Oberyn Martell to take part in a grand tournament at King's Landing, in which he won the top honours and covered himself in glory. He also attracted a few female admirers, which created problems for us later in the day!
In the early stages of the game, the Martells and Dorne generally had little dealings with the King and his council, who were hidden in another room. We were happy with this. As ever, a mad king is often a recipe for disaster. We received increasingly irrational instructions via emissaries from King's Landing, which we largely ignored. Dorne itself is far away from where the main action is in Westeros, hard to access and hard to campaign in if your troops are not local.
The middle game descended into an effort to secure my sister Elia Martell and her children from Prince Rhaegar Tagaryen's household. It seemed as if the prince himself was wandering aimlessly around Westeros looking for support against his father, King Aerys. As central control from King's Landing became increasingly weak, most of the big lords began to withhold taxes, and it quickly became apparent that the king's writ was very limited. While I was attending the wedding of one of my bannermen to one of the Tyrells at Highgarden, Elia's children were kidnapped in a plot instigated by the Maesters and abetted by the damned Greyjoys. While nothing could be proved, investigating this was a distraction and also damaged my prestige in the eyes of the wider nobility and earned me the moniker Doran the Careless.
Added to that, Oberyn Martell had kidnapped a Stark princess whom he had fallen in love with at the tournament. She was betrothed to Robert Baratheon. This led to an unauthorised expedition into Baratheon lands to capture one of their keeps, led by Oberyn but abetted I suspect by that cur Yronwood. This is just one of the many sub-plots that were raging around me as I tried to keep Dorne on an even keel.
Luckily by this time Jon Arryn had declared himself the new king and had allied with the Baratheons to siege King's Landing. Robert Baratheon fortunately died in the siege - one less complication for Dorne. House Dorne was now in communication with the Tyrells and the Starks and were duly allied to the Starks via the wedding of the reckless Oberyn. We attended the coronation of Jon Arryn at King's Landing, but were not provided with any of the new seats on the council.
Into the last 45 minutes and it became obvious that the Arryns and Baratheons were going to be facing a civil war against a Dorne-Tyrell-Stark axis, which could have been very interesting indeed. However, we had to close it there as, among other things, England was going to be kicking off against New Zealand at Twickenham within an hour.
This was a really enjoyable return to megagaming for me after a long hiatus, and it was good to see so many younger (under 35) people getting involved in these. I'm hoping it will breathe new life into megagaming in the UK. Hats off also to the organisers, Reading Megagames, headed up by Becky and her team.
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