Game Background: Red Planet Rising is a team megagame built around the exploration and colonization of Mars. When nuclear war broke out on Earth, we were pretty much left on our own. Mars is now inhabited by a number of factions, remnants from the past like the paternalistic USSN Enterprise, nature-focused Biodyne Corporation, and sprawling University research complex.

My Past Megagames: This was my sixth ever megagame. I'd played in three different runs of Den of Wolves (recapped here and here), as well as two different fantasy sports leagues (quidditch-inspired OWL League and futuristic football Draft Night 3078). 

My Role: I filled the resource-focused role as the Chief Engineer on the USSN Enterprise. Simply put, I kept our faction running and ensured that we could build shiny new Marine-mechs.

My Team: I was randomly paired with Captain Barbara and Lieutenant Commander John. The Captain focused on the political side of the game, navigating the ever changing government landscape, while the Lt. Commander ran the map exploration, resolving combat whenever we encountered it. Though we ultimately worked together pretty well, this was probably the most isolated I'd felt from my team, partially because this was my first time not knowing my team members well, and partially because the nature of the game meant that we didn't actually need to interact much outside of team time.

My Game Plan: We had a bunch of victory conditions. I couldn't really impact most of them in my role, so I decided to solely focus one the very last one:

What Happened: Keep in mind that this is entirely based on my point of view and what I heard through the grapevine. I did not directly participate in a few of the things I'll be recapping.

Figuring Out How the Game Works: Unlike other megagames I've played where I didn't need to know the nitty gritty of the mechanics, I had to actually learn how the resources worked to be able to ensure our prominence. The Lt. Commander and I spent most of the first turn just working out the interface and starting to explore. We decided that we wanted to ensure our military dominance by continuing to crank out and upgrade units. By the time I'd really figured out how to do all of that, round 1 was over.

Political Neutrality: Two governments were in the process of forming at that point, the Government of Mars stacked with the usual power players in a megagame like this (current government Central, police MCPD, and other military ship Shanxi) and Green Mars built around bettering the planet for us all (scientific University, benevolent Nomads, and tech company BioDyne). We debated joining up with Green Mars but ultimately decided to stay neutral for now to help ensure balance. 

Scientific Curiosity: From there, I dove headfirst into trying to get our ship up and running. After my usual barrage of questions to the amazing Plot Control Ed, I started visiting other groups that might be able to help us, ultimately reaching across the aisle of both governments. Though I made a number of visits, the four factions that we started working with right away were Central (spaceport in their territory), the Shanxi (other non-flying military ship), Nomads (encountered documentation of space tech), and University (brainpower to put it all together). Though it seemed unlikely that we'd be able to get skybound at that point, we were at least working together! 

Shots Fired: Depending on who you asked, you'd get a different record of who shot first, but war broke out between the Government of Mars and the sports complex team Stadium. I believe that the initial dust up was between Shanxi and Stadium, but Central quickly stepped in as well. Regardless, our Captain tried to help intercede, and it ultimately took the combined efforts of a number of parties, including another group named Station, to settle things back down.

Scientific Progress: After investigators inventoried the parts that all groups had, we realized that we probably could get either the Shanxi or the USSN Enterprise sky bound. Due to our wariness about the bloodthirsty Central/Shanxi, we explored other avenues to avoid needing the help of the Government of Mars. That's when we discovered that BioDyne had old spaceship parts and Odin had an old spaceship technical manual. Unfortunately, we also learned that there flat out were not enough crucial ship parts (hereafter referred to Engine MacGuffin and Navigation MacGuffin) to get both the USSN Enterprise and Shanxi spacebound. They had the only Engine MacGuffin on the planet, and we had the only Navigation MacGuffin.

Hostile Earth?: Our mutual scientific advancement was accelerated by the discovery that a functional flying spaceship was approaching Mars, likely coming from Earth! After a lot of speculation and planning, Central took matters into their own hands and shot it down using the batteries in their (previously thought to be defunct) spaceport.

Space-Ex2.0: At that point, the USSN Enterprise banded together with Central, University, Shanxi, Odin, BioDyne, and the Nomads with the main goal of getting back into space in order to defend Mars in case Earth was, in fact, hostile. After rounds of negotiations, we came to the following terms (with everyone taking an equal share in any profits gained from space exploration):

---- Enterprise: Neutral 3rd party arbiter that wouldn't join a government and would commit to ensuring that everyone in Space Ex 2.0 had access to space without it becoming politicized (definitely no foreshadowing here). Our ship would be fixed up and sent into space.

---- Central: Their Spaceport would become fixed up, and they would share access to the communication arrays (logistics TBD).

---- University: Contribute technical interpretation of the manual and get first access to any mystery tech we found while exploring.

---- Shanxi: Gave up their Engine MacGuffin and would get first access to spaceship parts to get their ship in the air as well once we started exploring. The crew of the spacebound Enterprise would be a 50/50 split between Enterprise and Shanxi members until that happened.

---- Nomads: Contributed on the tech and parts side.

---- BioDyne: Contributed spaceship parts.

---- Odin: Contributed the spaceship technical manual.

Political Shakeup: Unbeknownst to us, Stadium had contacted Earth with the goal of going "home". They joined together with Station and later BioDyne to try to reunify with Earth (Reunification government). On the other side, Central, University, Shaxi, Nomads, and MCPD converged as the Government of New Mars to keep Mars autonomous from Earth. We opted to continue filling our Neutral 3rd party peacekeeper role.

LIFTOFF!!!: Despite containing members from different governments, Space-Ex 2.0 was able to get the USSN Enterprise back up and running at the beginning of the last round. Captain Barbara took the helm of the ship herself, along with the Shanxi Engineer, Nomad Engineer, and me. As soon as we cleared the atmosphere, Captain Barbara radioed our contacts back on Earth, and they told us to work with the Reunification Government to reestablish peace with Earth.

The Endgame: We definitely cut off at a cliffhanger but likely would have had to break our 3rd party neutrality, either by joining with Earth (most likely) or disobeying direct orders, thereby siding with Mars (less likely). Luckily, the Shanxi were about to join with Earth as well and the Nomad Engineer seemed less concerned with the political side, so we didn't have to worry about objections from our passengers. It was a very fulfilling story arc and conclusion for the USSN Enterprise. We'd achieved our political goals of being seen as a strong positive force determining the fate of Mars as the neutral peacekeeper. We also made it into space!

It sounded like most factions had positive arcs as well: Central was overseeing the pro-Mars governmental force, the Shanxi got a lot of their people back into space and towards going home to Earth, and University wrote the perfect Constitution for the New Mars government that included recognizing Pluto as a planet officially to name a few.

There had been two different sets of secret win conditions hidden in the player base that I was largely unaware of until the end of game debrief (much to my chagrin).  

--- Earth Spy: The Stadium Captain had been working for Earth the entire time and ultimately brought together several factions to try to reunify. He had a communicator and had requested the ship that Central shot down, which had turned out to be a benevolent supply drop.

--- Church of Red Mars: Because I largely ignored the map part of the game, I'd missed that there were groups that had been sabotaging the terraformers with the goal of keeping Mars red. Both the MCPD Chief and the Hephaestus Operations Chief were religious fanatics working towards this aim. I'm not sure how well they did because I really only paid attention to Space-Ex2.0 and the Earth vs Mars battle during the bulk of the game.

My Overall Feelings:

The Best: Out of all of the megagames I've played, this had the most cohesive story arc. I loved getting such a vague goal and working together with my team and several other factions to make it happen. It should be clear by now that the story is the thing that I care about the most in megagames, and this one was super fulfilling to work towards the entire game and accomplish at the end. Major props to Andrew and Ed for designing/facilitating it.

The Good: I'm notorious amongst my gaming groups for being really skeptical of "randos". Up until now, I've known most of my team members going into each megagame. This was my first time being on a totally random team, and it was an excellent experience! We worked together well, and both of my team members were super competent.

The Bad: There were a few technical issues with the resource interface that required a bit of reconning. It was something about the map that I didn't super pay attention to, but we got it resolved partway through. That was really the only negative thing about the game that I can remember!

Recommendation: I am a huge fan and highly recommend this for others. The two greatest strengths of Red Planet Rising to me are the narrative setup (due to having such different factions with well constructed goals) and a ton of autonomy for players to determine their actions and where to take their story. It was incredibly open ended if you wanted it to be but still had more heads down mechanical roles for people that really like that side of megagaming.

This Play: 4.5/5 stars

Red Planet Rising: 4/5 stars

--Theme: 4/5 stars

--Interface: 3/5 stars

--Rules: 4/5 stars

--Player Autonomy: 5/5 stars