I wonder how many readers rre familiar with the idea of a Megagame 7 Probably quite a lot of wargamers actually do understand the general concept, but maybe don't happen to call it by that name. For present purposes, however, let's stick to this particular terminolgy:
In the circles in which I move, a "Megagame" is defined as 'Any wargame in which 30 or more people are involved as participants - ic as players, as umpires, as catering staff, cloakroom attendants - a whatever else the occasion may require'.
In addition to this, there are a couple of subsidiary µteas floating around, which are rather less well defined or recognised, but probably no less important: -
- a) A Small Megagame is defined as a wargame with between 10 and 29 participants.
b) A "Hypergame" is defined as a megagame which has more than about 60-70 participants.
I believe that most experienced wargamem have at some time or another taken part ip "Small Megagames " - ie either large battles with model soldiers, or diplomatic games with multiple teams. Diplomacy itself, with ideally 7 players, is already more than half way towards qualifying for the title; while Peter Gilder's regular residential wargame weekends often feature a miniatures game for a dozen or riore players. Many British wargame clubs also regularly run such games, and there are certainly numerous postal campaigns which include more than nine participants (although - because these players never get to meet together in the flesh - there are perhaps some grounds for questioning whether they 'really count' in the 'Megagame' reckoning at all...).
In order to clarify this point, we should perhaps draw a distinction between a 'small megagame' on one hand - and a 'big small game' on the other. The difference is perhaps a matter of the way in which the chain of command is played. Where several genuinely different levels if command being filled by 'live' players, there is perhaps a stronger claim to megagame status than where there is simply a multiplication of players all of whom (whether formally or just 'in practice) are operating more or less at the same general level. Real wars, of course, are all about hierarchy, but 'small megagames' (regardless of their precise number of participants) rarely reflect this. One of the great strengths of True megagames, on the other hand, seems to be that as soon as you get more than around 30 people taking part, you tend to get a sense of hierarchy evolving almost automatically regardless of the rules or game structure.
If all the above helps us to understand what we mean by a 'Small' Megagame , then it scarcely takes much of an imaginative effort to see that a True' Megagame is simply an extension of the same idea, but on a bigger scale. However, there' are probably not many wargamers who have played in a wargame of this type, since they usually require an immense effort of planning and administration to lay on. There are plentiful pitfalls (and sources of what Clausewitz laughingly called 'friction') along the way. No sirreee! The 'True' Megagame is scarcely a genre which is widely represented within the hobby, or easy to track down.
One does, nevertheless, occasionally hear of examples. Only last week I heard of a US college wargame club that ran miniatures games for 40 players. There is also the splendid Greg Novak Wilderness (et seq) series of games in Illinois... and there are mega-postal events by the score. There are certainly hundreds of re-enactments which top the 'magic 30' (although I must confess that my own first view of re-enactment consisted of just seven men, directed by David Chandler, playing out the entire Siege of Gibraltar in merely 30 minutes - and on a totally flat playing field...).
As a summary, I would say that the Megagame idea is one which many wargamers (especially non - postal or non - re-enactment wargamers) may understand in general terms; but one that they often find difficult to grasp when it comes to specifics or practicalities.
In the present article, therefore, I would like to explain how we at Wargame Developments (and at Jim Wallman's London based Chestnut Lodge ) have set about tackling this problem in the past eight years.
In the first place, we recognised that the True Megagame was an unexplored area (albeit one among many!) in the whole range of potential wargame genres. It was nevertheless an area that deserved to be explored, for a number of reasons:
- a) Like Everest, "Because it's there". We knew that we could make some sort of showing in these games, and we kneww
that few other people had ever done it before - so we set out to see just what could be produced!
b) We had access to most of the necessary facilities:- ie we had more than 30 people (within reasonable travelling time and willing to participate for a day); a suite of rooms that could accommodate them; a strain of game designers who wanted to have a crack at it - and the technical capability to generate paperwork/order sheets/photocopies &c.
c) We also had a broad 'philosophy' of wargaming that embraced more aspects of military history than those contained in conventional miniatures games - eg things like a concept of 'staffwork' (or 'teamwork in drawing up orders'); a view of the importance of logistics and intelligence (which are not normally played in small games); an idea of the 'political' or 'face to face' nature of command decisions (If there's only one player on each side, he won't be able to have much of a debate with other real people about what he should do next!). This all added up to a feeling that with more (rather than fewer) people involved in game decision making, you could get more realism, and cover more command functions, than are possible in a normal game.
d) Megagames also seemed to be a splendid opportunity for 'a festive occasion'. If a normal wargame is socially equivalent to a dinner party, then a megagame can be socially equivalent to a carnival! We have found that even the worst-produced and most technically-execrable megagames can be enjoyable to many participants, simply because of this 'sense of occasion'.
By around 1980 we found that we had both the capability and the motivation that we needed to run megagames - so we just went out and did it! We started small, with games for around 30 people; but then gradually worked up through the various possibilities that we could see. Year by year we built up our experience and expertise, running a wide range of different subjects, and even nudging up into hypergames on about half a dozen occasions. Today, at the start of 1989, we have a list of over ten megagames / hypergames that look quite likely to be played during the next 24 months.
For the record, the megagames / hypergames we have played so far have included the following (only rather approximately dated, or in the true order of play, I'm afraid!):
(Played on many different dates, from around 1976 onwards) Crete 1941 (30-60 participants). My 'straight' two-sided operational map game, needing about eight separate playing rooms. The Brits set up their defences on the island, and then the I Fallschirmjteger drop in! We played this game, in various guises and sizes, more than 20 times; and overall with some excellent results - but unfortunately the least successful event happened to be the only one we played as a'WD' event; and it fell at the very start of the megagame series, in 1980! (Alas: that set us back a very long way. Bitterly regretted to this day...).
(1980) Kharkov 1943 (around 30 participants). Jim Wallman's map/operational game set at Army level with Corps resolution. Alas, I missed this game, and so can tell you no more about it.
(1980?) 'Memphis Mangler' 1967 (40-50 participants). My battalion - level Search & Destroy operation in Vietnam, played with (one-to-one scale) 15mm miniatures in one (big) room - with a tiny VC team in a side room, and a big US battalion staff on the radio from a third room. Great for the jargon, the cookery, the music, the atmosphere, the lighting effects - and the whole miniatures game worked brilliantly: although the staff game didn't.
(1980?) Franco-Prussian War 1870 (About 30 participants). Terry Spencer's game with the London Whitehall Warlords. Alas, I knew nothing of this game at the time, but am told it was a multi-room, multi-player team game based upon the opening stages of the war.
(1980) Bloody Tarawa 1943 (25-35 participants). Mike Horah's multi-layered planning and combat game of amphibious action in the Gilbert Islands. I missed this game, but heard it was a great success. It used a proper chain of command to develop the plan, and techniques like 'peepshow' views of the beaches, as seen from the ships.
(1981) 'Sans Culotte' 1794 (40-50 participants). My multi-team operational map game, in which each French army (in Belgium) had to fmd where it was located, draw its own maps, fmd its own shoes & potatoes - and generally make sure it was doing the right thing by the sinister political Representatives en Mission ! Full of huge possibilities - but, alas, not a great success... although at least some people seem to have been inspired by it! It was at this stage in the series that we started to realise just precisely how much care and attention had to be put into megagame planning and umpiring. We were getting to see the full depth of the problem, at the same time as we were increasingly being excited by the huge possibilities of the genre ! (1981) j)as Kalserschlacht 1918 (40-50 participants). An operational map game (by Steve Badsey and me) held in half a dozen rooms. It placed particular emphasis on the staffwork within British 5th Army HQ. The Ops side worked (just about, although 20 umpires jostling around the master map made a bit of a scrum) - but unfortunately the vital 'Staffwork/Int/Logistics' bits didn't work very much. Shame. This was the moment when all the most advanced lessons of Memphis Mangler were supposed to come to maturity - but it was too premature for that, and there had not been enough time to digest the lessons of Sans Culotte .
(1981) Barbarossa 1941 (about 40 participants). A slickly-run map/operational game at Army/Army Group level, portraying one of the many battles. It was umpired using a commercial boardgame, and I 'turned up', as a Russian general who was quickly arrested by the secret police.
(Spring 1982) Novi 1799 (50-60 participants). A monster toy soldier game by Jim Wallman and Chris Airey, in which each player controls one battalion of model troops, spread over an enormous floor. The players sit back, off the floor, watching the action evolve -- while umpires take their orders and actually move the soldiers around the floor accordingly.
Certainly a relief from the failed first series of 'staffwork' games - but somehow not quite as challenging!
(1983) 'Wellington in Euskadi' 1813 (25-35 participants). My straight two-sided operational map game held in half a dozen rooms: much smaller than the earlier attempts; much less complicated - and with the benefit of many of their essential lessons - but including many & varied new features (eg photos and sketches of the real battlefields). Intimate and quite successful, despite the apparently inevitable problem that there will always be at least one team, somewhere or other in an megagame , that gets left out or doesn't get the right sort of briefing.
(1984-5) Kirovograd 1944 (played twice: 50-70 participants). Andy Grainger's straight two-sided operational map game for almost a dozen playing cells. Much bigger than Euskadi , but still including exciting extras like logistics and intelligence. This was a very great technical success, because the game designer had - for the very first time in this whole series - left absolutely nothing to chance (Criticism nevertheless still came from that one inevitable team which felt it had too little to do, or who missed any feeling of 'immediacy with the realities of the Eastern Front in WW2').
Now maybe I am personally biaised, insofar as I was mightily preoccupied by playing the top German commander in Kirovograd #I (- ie practically my only experience of a major playing role in any of these games... I have to say that it drove me to distraction and absent-mindedness - and yet I still lost! My sympathies go out to all real generals everywhere). I must also confess that I was not present at all for Kirovograd II, being in foreign parts (I believe it was a considerably different variant of the original game, but one which showed the value of playing the same game twice). Nevertheless it does seem to me that these two games represented the very best mixture of 'realism plus fun' that we have ever managed to achieve in megagames .
(1984?) 'Albion' 1917 (25-35 participants). Mike Horah's amphibious warfare around Riga. I missed most of this game, but it was notable, among other things, for its use of a hierarchy of committee discussions to develop the plans.
(1984) 'Western Approaches' 1943 (70-80 participants). My own complex three-level, fifteen-room, operational map game of the battle of the Atlantic, overlaid with an attempt to create a flotilla of 'cardboard simulator' U-Boats. Far too ambitious for the 'state of the art' of megagames as it then stood, and in its way very similar to 'Sans Culotte' - ie bursting with fabulous new ideas, but not much use to players on the day... Maybe sometime we could run a better version of this extravaganza?
(1984) 'Hyde Park' 1809 (15-20 participants: not really a megagame at all, but included here because it was the first really big 'logistic' game). Arthur Harman's small but very unconventional map game, using half a dozen teams of British troops landing on a hostile shore in NW Spain. The game was interested particularly in logistics and reconnaissance, with all the infrastructure for the army having to be improvised from local resources. Highly successful and suggestive, taking the Sans Culotte ideas quite a long & rational step forward.
(Summer 1986) 'Send a Gunboat' (40-50 participants). Unfortunately I missed this game by Brian Cameron at the '" WD Conference of Wargamers. As I understand it, it was a 'Diplomacy'-type event, brought somewhat up to date. A great success, by all accounts.
(Late 1986) 'Guns of August' August 1914 (60-80 participants). My strictly operational map game, using about 20 playing/umpiring cells, based on a hex-grid map of Belgium, Luxembourg, Northern Fiance and German Alsace-Lorraine. In six hours we played about three weeks of the war, using a very rigid timescale:- but still couldn't get a final winner. Players said they had enjoyed a good game - but there were foul-ups in the way I set up the umpiring, so umpires were distinctly unhappy. One interesting development was Jim Roche's 'special effects' team, that was tasked to creating 'period atmosphere' and 'interesting diversions' for players who were otherwise concentrating on a rather dry and unasthetic operational game (or not doing anything at all).
(Summer 1987) 'The Arms Bazaar' 1987 (40-50 participants, also at the 'CoW'). Chris Kemp's trading game between third world governments who want arms (and who ultimately fight a war with them), and the unscrupulous dealers who supply them - at a price. There were about a dozen playing teams, but the great joy of this game was its utter simplicity: each government is free to invent its own list of requirements, and each arms dealer is merely told what he can offer and what it costs - then is left free to design his own pricing and trading strategy. When it comes to fighting the war, a very small team of umpires can crack on through it in short order using very simple numerical values for each weapon system. This game can be run in much less than four hours.
(Late 1987) 'Blood and Thunder on the Spanish Main' c 1690 (125 participants). Jim Wallman's astonishing follow-up to Novi, played on the same big floor but with model ships (about 50 Airfix 'Victorys') and figures. Players were first put into a mellow mood by a monster pirate feast with sucking pig and lashings of Bacardi rum. Then they split into 20 'shiploads', each of a captain, a gunner, a bosun and a mate (and an umpire). The four players directed the umpire on how to move their ship model on the floor - through sea battles and the looting of a Spanish town. A huge success, showing that megagames can be big wargaming parties as well as 'serious operational exercises' (but also a triumph in technical terms - because the combat system survived intact throughout the day, and not just during the first five minutes).
(Late 1988) Market Garden 1944 (100 participants). Jim Wallmari's operational map game of the Arnhem battle, using about 17 playing cells and a (now successfully tried & tested) rigid timescale system. All significant aspects were crammed into the day - aircraft lift planning; paratroop/glider landing techniques; surprise for the Germans (= a remarkable achievement for such an overworked historical event!); intelligence; logistics; resistance; higher command echelons (for some reason there were two Generals Model directing the Germans!)..) and staff problems connected with getting XXX Corps forward along a single road. A great success with all playing teams, except for that inevitable, irreducible one...
(Summer 1985?) 'Flaming Pie Simulator' c.150 be ( - and many other knockabout improvised 'cardboard simulators' mounted at weekend WD or Society of Ancients conferences, where there is a captive audience of 40 - 50 people who can be hi-jacked for 30-60 minutes at the dead of night and persuaded to row in triremes, charge with Pickett, fight from massed lines of chariots or explore Distressed Space Shuttles...). Actually the 'Flaming Pig' game included eight teams of 'elephants' - each of four legs plus one rider - and an umpire team of pyrotechnicians responsible for tearing through the elephants with a four-wheeled trolley disguised as a pig exploding with fireworks!
It is clear that Megagames are 'here to stay' in our particular neck of the woods - and I hope that readers will be inspired. to set up this type of event in their own areas. .
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© Copyright 1989 Hal Thinglum
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