The Treehouse {{ work.publishdate|date:"Y-m-d H:i" }}

Watch the Skies reloaded: the return of the megagame

Once upon a time (well, in September 2022, actually), to celebrate The Treehouse’s fifth birthday, we had our first go at running a Megagame. You can find out all about what happened during our first run of Watch the Skies, and get an overview of what on Earth (and off Earth) it actually is, in our previous blog post here.

We came away from the previous experience exhausted, exhilarated, and bubbling with ideas for what we wanted to do ‘next time’. Perhaps, in retrospect, we had TOO MANY ideas for tweaks and changes, because it then took us over a year to get our ducks into anything resembling a row and announce the next game. But finally, the day dawned… our second run of Watch the Skies took place on Friday 26th January, and once again, it was a TOTAL BLAST.

This time, a reasonable proportion of those in attendance had played the game before, but no problem! We had plenty of plot twists and new mechanics the keep things fresh, not to mention some nifty new game components, and even a brand new type of team in the mix. Read on for some of the headline changes in this year’s game, some actual news headlines from the in-game newspaper, and lots of pictures to give you a feel for what went down.

Ringing the changes

We gave a decent overview of how Watch the Skies works in our previous post, so rather than recapping all that, we’re going to jump straight in what what was different this time. Here goes…

Change #1: More goings on in space

One impression that we came away with from the last game was that the alien team spent a lot of the game off on their ‘moon base’ (in reality, one of our front rooms), a little separate from the main action of the game, and having to make their own fun. This time, we gave the aliens plenty to keep them occupied: an ‘anomaly’ to track down on the surface of Earth, some resource scarcity to deal with, and last but not least, multiple factions within their number with varying levels of compassion for humanity to add a little spice.

The players rose to this selection of challenges magnificently: meet the Aparians, sent to Earth to destroy a potential threat from another dimension… and possibly humanity at the same time.

Change #2: An evil(?) corporation

In the original version of Watch the Skies there are three types of team: human teams, each representing the government of a nation of Earth, the alien team, lately arrived from outer space, and the global press, who disseminate knowledge within the game, communicating with whoever will give them good copy. This time, we added a fourth type of team: a global corporation, trading in technology and knowledge, with their own shadowy aims, almost certainly involving making a vast amount of money. Introducing… MILK Incorporated, headed up by two of our own team, James and Sam (yes, they both work behind our bar making coffees and milkshakes, in case you were wondering about the name!).

Change #3: More cool spaceships and stuff

I’ll mainly let the pictures do the talking here, but suffice it to say that Andy has been busy for weeks gluing, painting and laser cutting to make some super-nifty bits and bobs to pimp our copy of Watch the Skies. He even hand-painted some custom dice. We hope you enjoyed his efforts! He was sad that you didn’t get to use his ‘nuclear winter’ tracker, just so you know.

Change #4: Cthulhu & friends!

Given that we had lots of returning players this time, we needed a major plot twist to mix things up. We had no shortage of ideas for this, but we eventually decided to go Lovecraftian. The ‘anomaly’ the alien team had been sent to Earth search for and destroy had a strongly Cthulhu-esque flavour, and was proceeded by slimy creatures emerging from the world’s oceans and attacking coastal areas. This concept also let us whop out some awesome miniatures onto the main map… pretty cool, we hope you agree!

There were a few more smaller tweaks (More science! Magnetic words! Multiple Twitter accounts!) but those are the headlines. If you have any ideas or suggestions for changes or features you’d like to see in a future game, please drop us a line.

In terms of what actually happened during the game, as we found last time, forty people playing a game all day generates a whole lot of stories! We’ll let the global media do the hard work for us - check out the eight issues of the in-game news paper, created by the press team live each round, in the gallery below.

Before we leave you with some more pictures of the day’s antics, we wanted to wrap up by saying a huge ‘thank you’ to all the players who took part in Friday’s game. It truly does fill us with delight that there are 40 people willing to skip work to play a game with us all day, and we’re so grateful to you for having enough faith in us to make this kind of commitment!

We also loved all the personal touches that players brought to the game, from the USA team’s exceptional outfits, to the French team’s incredible assortment of snacks, to the Russian team’s set of Russian dolls featuring Russian leaders through history. These details really do bring the whole thing to life and create the setting for a memorable experience for everyone. Thank you so much for joining us, and we hope we’ll see you again… next time.

Finally, if you’ve got the Megagame bug and you can’t wait for us to gather ourselves together for another run, we highly recommend checking out Megagame Assembly for details of other games going on around the country, and even ways to get started with running your very own megagame.

瀏覽來源