Game Background: This is a "pre-cyberpunk" megagame that's somewhat setting up the foundation for a future dystopia. There are two main groups facing off against each other: Corporations and Runners. Corps are trying to earn as much money as possible, and Runners are trying to steal from them.

My Past Megagames: This was my seventh megagame. I'd played in three different runs of Den of Wolves (recapped here and here), two different fantasy sports leagues (quidditch-inspired OWL League and futuristic football Draft Night 3078), and Mars exploration game Red Planet Rising.

My Role: I was a Runner named Scorer on the Gruffsters. My goals were to help my pal Groucho find his friend that had been lost in Portugal and discredit the scary, evil Facers.

My Team: We were the Gruffsters, the smallest of the Runner groups with only four members. My buddy Groucho was played by DangerMahoney, who I'd interacted with in previous games. His goal was to find our missing friend, who we immediately dubbed Teddy. The other two members were Bitter (Barbara) and Pale (John) who I was randomly paired with again! Their goals were to gain information on some genetics tech thing and destabilize the government respectively.

My Game Plan: Unlike other megagames with a group goal, we each had individual ones that we were working towards. However, since it seemed like the first several runs could be conducted together to work towards them, the Gruffsters decided to largely stick together. I figured that I'd find a way to discredit the Facers as the game went on since I didn't have a great grasp on it yet.

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: Once again, we really took the first run to figure out how the game worked by making a run on one of the corps that had been mentioned in our briefs as a possible lead for Teddy/genetic tech. We invited G1T (one of the Hacker G33ks) on our run with us as their group goal required them to hit a bunch of different facilities. I was the leader as it gave us the best overall bonuses due to my balanced stats, and we successfully infiltrated the facility. For each person on the run, you could basically take one of money, tech, stock, and plot development, depending on the type of facility you infiltrated. At first, we took a mix of each as we weren't sure what would and wouldn't be useful. As the game progressed, we ended up focusing more on plot development (which shouldn't shock you if you've read any of my previous recaps).

Trying to Find Teddy: At that point, we started following bits of trails that we had picked up, looking for Teddy. I won't bore you on the specifics, but the Gruffsters made several runs as a team (with G1T, who was an honorary Gruffster by that point), with Pale and Bitters receiving benefits that were relevant to them, while Groucho and I searched companies' databases for tidbits about Teddy. Finally, we got a sign that he'd worked for Genetic Equity, one of the corporations, before he went missing.

Genetic Raid: It turns out that were were one of the only groups that had succeeded at all of our runs, and a few others joined our team of the Gruffsters plus G1T so we had picked up a few stragglers (but no Facers, of course. Terrifying tricky buggers.) One of them was Freelancer Reso, who was a weird hybrid player that could either help out a Corporation Security Team or go on a Run to break into one. We made it through the defenses of Genetic Equity's Oranges Warehouse only to find out that Freelancer Reso was the long lost Teddy! It was one of those perfect coincidence moments because he hadn't come on any runs with us before and found out during the run that we were interested in finding our friend that went missing in Portugal. He'd also been looking to recover his identity, so it was a fantastic moment when we reunited mid-run in the warehouse!

Press Tipoffs: During the game, I had been feeding the Runner Press member (nicknamed Anonymous) tidbits about our successes and what we heard the other gangs were doing. After a few turns of being completely truthful, I started planting rumors with both Anonymous and the other runners that we were working with that the Facers had corporate spies embedded in their gang. It was perfectly coincidental that the number of corporations in the game and the number of the Facers was the same. Combined with one or two of them sketching out one of the other runners, I had most of the runners convinced towards the end of the game that the Facers had corporate plants embedded in them, including a few of the Facers that I talked to (but never my specific rival, Vampire. He was the one that had threatened me and kicked my dog).

Some Light Revolution?: Given that Groucho, Wheat (the newly named Teddy), and I had reunited, we decided to help our buddy Pale foment revolution in the general populace. Unfortunately for us, the Corporations/Government had done a decent job putting together things like food banks, so it was a bit of a tall order. Ultimately, we raided one of the weapons companies for some bombs and then spent the last two turns stirring up discontent before bringing representatives from each gang together to make a public "run" on the greedy corporations, bombs included. Think the end scene above ground from V for Vendetta. I even got a few of the Facers to jump in!

The Endgame: I paid very little attention to how the corporations worked during the game, but I know that they made a lot of money for the most part! Outside of that, here were the major plot lines that got wrapped up:

- Groucho, Wheat, and I reunited, helping him recover his memory, join the Gruffsters, and rediscover who he was.

- Pale stirred up a fair amount of revolution, which a was a really high hurdle given how well the people had been treated.

- The G33ks uploaded their consciousness into enough corporations that they collaboratively became an AI. Unfortunately, they'd trusted the wrong corporation for the final step, so their personalities were wiped, but they still became fully digital, which was their goal.

- The Facers managed to recover DNA of Case Aniclog, the "brilliant" actor they worshipped. They were going to do *something* with it, but I'm not entirely sure what. As a side note- my second favorite moment of the game was when one of the Facers (Ghost to be specific) got on webcam so that he could look me in the eyes to convince me that he wasn't a corporate traitor, something I already knew because I was the one that had planted those rumors!

My Overall Feelings:

The Best: I really enjoyed the story arc that I participated in and the way that our goals teed it up. I only saw a handful of goals, but they all seemed somehow specific enough that you had something tangible to work towards but vague enough that you had room to explore them, which is difficult to achieve. My favorite moment of the game was reuniting with Teddy ON our run with him, which was totally unintentional. We had no clue that he was Teddy, so figuring it out then was just so perfect.

The Good: I had a great time working with my team on our various goals (though we did do less to help Bitter unfortunately with how some of the runs turned out). It was really nice to wrap ours up with a few rounds left to go so that we could help Pale stir things up politically.

Also Good: Similar to Draft Night 3078, Running Hot did a phenomenal job utilizing Discord to automatically process significant parts of the game. Our runs were scripted automatically, with the Run Leader inputting commands for our side and the Corp Security doing the same for defense. I was very impressed with how well it worked. 

The Bad: Really the only thing that I can remember is that a few of our runs took extra time to resolve and felt kinda mean because a bunch of groups attacked the same corporation, so their Security guy got hit from a bunch of angles. Runners stealing your stuff is definitely part of the game, but I wish that we'd been able to coordinate a bit better with some of the other gangs so that we didn't totally wreck the same Corp too much.

Recommendation: I really enjoyed this play and recommend Running Hot for others. It's definitely more structured than some of the other megagames that I've played in terms of what you can do and how you achieve your goals, but you were still able to shape your story with your actions. I'd probably recommend the Corporation roles for players that are more mechanics driven and Runners for players that are more RP/plot driven.

This Play: 4/5 stars

Running Hot: 4/5 stars

--Theme: 3/5 stars* 

--Interface: 5/5 stars

--Rules: 4/5 stars

--Player Autonomy: 5/5 stars

* This theme interests me less, even though it was well executed. I might change my ratings breakdowns at some point.