As I foreshadowed in the last post, last Saturday we participated in another megagame – WTS3. I’m not going to go into details again on what megagames are and how they work, but see the two posts I wrote after the last time if you’re interested in more details.

Again on a team with Erin, Syd and Abby – and now joined by two newbies (Tom and Ed) – this time we were assigned to sail the currents of world affairs as the great country of the United Mexican States; otherwise known as Mexico.

Megagames, and particularly WTS as it’s rooted somewhat in the real world, are enhanced by acting out your role in a way that’s believable based on the historical behaviour of the country or situation in question. Our opening brief made it clear that Mexico wasn’t interested in military adventures, wanted to avoid being seen as a pawn of the US, and had a bit of a rivalry with Venezuela. From these points we derived our overall approach for the day:
– outwardly peaceful, showing no ambition for militaristic expansion or posturing
– accepting of aliens and preferring integration and mutually-beneficially arrangements to any kind of insularism
– eager to make our own decisions independent from what the US might want, attempting to differentiate ourselves at every opportunity
– stick the boot into Venezuela as often and in as  many underhanded ways as possible
– be seen as the foremost Spanish-speaking nation in the world (this one was added by us but it seemed to fit with the role).

I was the political leader (El Presidente!), Syd was the Commander of our armed forces, Erin was Deputy Commander, Abby was the Foreign Minister, Tom and Ed were our ambassadors. Syd and Abby have already posted some excellent thoughts on the day on Facebook: Syd, Abby.

Rather than attempting to stitch together a compelling narrative on how the day went I’m just going to cheat and post a series of bullet-points on the interesting bits I can remember. Here we go!

• At the start of the game we had a dozen action card things that could be played in various situations. I definitely pocketed a few of the more nefarious (i.e. backhander-related) ones straight away; it wasn’t even with the intention of using them myself, I just didn’t trust the rest of the shifty bunch with them!
• We had some early alien contact with a nice enough bunch that just wanted to do some mining. We were, in general, open to talking nicely to aliens and all just getting along, although I was a little worried about the potential of being strip-mined.
• We then had some alien contact with a different bunch of aliens that seemed to be environmentalists and were just interested in helping to clean up after the mess that humanity had made of the place. Now I had two worries:
  • ‘cleaning up’ is a bit of a vague term; I definitely had visions of humanity being part of the detritus that needed a bit of throwing out.
  • They didn’t yet know that we were also talking to the mining aliens; mining and environmentalism don’t often go together (except in the violent upheaval sense), were we going to find ourselves in the middle of two arguing alien factions?
• As chance would have it, both alien factions came to visit the next turn and I put the same questions to both of them around their attitudes to what the other was doing. I was surprised when the environmentalists said they were quite happy for the mining to continue. Rather than salve my concerns, though, this made me more worried – I wasn’t sure that their stories were consistent any more! This turned out to be a needless worry, but at the time I was genuinely concerned that they were combining to plot against us! Juicy humans, etc.
• While this had been going on – the first couple of hours of the game, I guess – Syd had been hard at work pissing off the Venezuelans at every opportunity. One of his stunning successes had been single-handedly causing a major drugs problem within Venezuela. They knew (or at least strongly suspected) it was us, but I somehow got away with continuously stressing that it was their internal problem and that Mexico didn’t have a drugs problem. I mean, come on guys; you’re the druggies here! That was a lot of fun.
• Favourite interaction with Venezuela all day: for once their President and advisor came to me not to complain about the drugs issue but instead to accuse us of collaborating with aliens. This was true, of course, but we weren’t trying to hide it at all and I told them that it had even been announced to the media. They said they hadn’t read anything about it; I, umm, may have strongly suggested that it wasn’t my fault if the druggies of Venezuela couldn’t read. They stormed off. I was highly amused!
• While Syd had most of the direct fun with Venezuela I pitched in some myself. The alien factions regularly asked my what other trustworthy countries they should talk to as well, and every time I made sure to mention that both the US and Venezuela were dangerous and shouldn’t be trusted. Get that boot in!
• There was a distinctly anti-alien treaty that was drawn up by some countries early in the game (although apparently never actually ratified). I took great pleasure in sending the list of participating countries to the alien equivalent of the UN so that they’d have a nice long ignore list. (At least, I think I did; communications with aliens is a tricksy business!)
• Late in the game we got access to some alien technology to clean the world’s oceans, but it cost ~10 times our per-turn surplus to build. I spent a couple of turns guilting the rest of the American countries into jointly funding it with us. I got enough money together (with a little extra to, ahem, shore up the Mexican budget) and built the magnificent facility. I was proud; the media gave it a tiny sidebar.
• The dolphins were similarly unimpressed. Communicating with them, using the Pope as an intermediary, they said that I shouldn’t expect any thanks, it was the very least that humanity owed the creatures of the seas after the mess we’d been making. The dolphins and the whales were heading off-planet instead. Fair enough really, can’t really blame them.

So much more went on, but if you’re really interested I highly recommend reading some of the other posts and blogs linked from the Megagame-Makers Facebook group here. While I didn’t feel quite as exhilarated or exhausted as last time when the hooter blew at the end of the game it was another awesome experience and I can’t wait to experience it again.

I forwarded some feedback to the organisers after the game, and I’ll just post that more-or-less verbatim here as well:

We’ve signed up already for the next episode of WTS in March next, but we’re already looking forward to a different type of Megagame that we’re playing in September – “City of Shadows”, described as “a megagame that explores life in a city familiar to readers of pulp fiction of the 1930s and 1940s” with gangs, crooked politicians, etc. Should be good fun, and not long away now at all!

If any of what I’ve posted above sounds interesting to you I strongly encourage you to have a look at the megagame homepage here and maybe even sign up to something!