Megagame: Ur in October/November 2020
Yours in Light
Game Background: This was a play-by-email megagame taking place in the City of Ur. Players took on roles in Academic, Criminal, Divine, Envoy, Noble, or Political functions. The City of Ur itself had a storied history with complex metaphysics mixing magic, religion, and science. A long time ago, it had been plagued by Gods intervening to the point that the city rose up and killed or expelled them. Those who sacrificed the most to do so formed the Orders, an entrenched Oligarchy that controls most of the wealth of Ur outside of the Nobles making their home there.
My Role: I was Bringer of Light, a high ranking Master of the Society of Lights, the Order seeking enlightenment through creative destruction. I'd spent my life exploring the Maelstrom, a set of divine realms composed of sleeping leviathians, one of whom I worshipped. My goals were to help showcase the Maelstrom, organize another expedition to its depths, and serve the Society of Lights on the Council of Order. We had a few starting traits that we got to design, but my favorites were Affable Grin (people find it hard to dislike you, even when they should) and Ley Line Walker (adept at traveling the ley lines).
My Team: Unlike other megagames I've played, we didn't have explicit teams. However, one of my closest allies all game was set up that way as a fellow member of the Society of Lights, Academic Dean Cragwick of the University.
My Game Plan: Elders are survivors above all else, so I wanted to focus on the glory of the Maelstrom while being on everyone's good side. I honestly didn't know what to expect going into the game beyond that.
What Happened: Keep in mind that this is entirely based on my point of view. Unlike my usual megagame AARs that cover the entire game, I'm only focusing on what I did as the game was way too long and expansive to cover even the major plot lines without taking pages.
Craggy and Sunny Go Exploring: Early on, Dean Cragwick and I wanted to figure a way to bring our work to Ur and get Grand Master Luna Lacy out of the city for some nice Maelstronic air. We took a number of actions doing so, chief among them setting up field trips out to the Maelstrom for school children sponsored by the Society of Lights.
Cultists Run Amok: There were a number of crises during the game that could be aptly described as such. Though the Orders and Rooks (a "definitely not a cult" group of anti-religious superhumans) expelled or killed all of the Gods in Ur, many still seek to return. Over the course of the game, there were a few divine uprisings that had to be stopped, including a cult that wanted to bring the War God Marrius back to life and the shady trickster Gelt running about the city, leaving behind strange graffiti. The more dire of the threats will be covered later, but there were enough of these shady shenanigans that they're worth mentioning. They were what brought together my core group working to defend Ur against external threats (called the "Cancel the Apocalypses Committee" by the end of the game), mainly the academic Um-Beryllium, criminal revolutionary Kindly Jaq, my favorite Dean Craggy, master thief Lady Asha, music and wine connoisseur the Epigrammatic Epicurean, secret revolutionary Noble Cade Calvicanti, Noble with lineage problems Seth Basir-Lydia, eccentric Noble Temperance, possible ball of rats Rat King, notorious do-gooder Charity, and divine Fearless Apostle. If that seems like a lot of players to you, that would be correct. The email chains got pretty ridiculous sometimes.
Councils Doing What Councils Do Best: We argued a lot on massive chains of emails because we were all representing very different interests with political motivations. We had a number of Assets that we could divy up to help players (both council members and others) address the problems that arose, so we spent the first part of the week discussing the issues and the latter half arguing about the best way to tackle them. Sometimes we even did!
Apocalypse One- K for Jaquetta: As a member of the Orders, I would never say anything negative about them. I couldn't possibly think that they were full of people taking advantage of a broken system to live very comfortably and exert their influence to keep everyone else downtrodden. I definitely would never help notorious anarchist Kindly Jaq (author of underground newspaper Ur, Actually) after he broke into the jail facilities and exposed the human experimentation that my fellow Councilor was conducting. There's no way that I would engage with back channel negotiations after a violent rebellion began. And there's absolutely zero chance that I would misrepresent the forces of said rebellion to the Orders to get them to agree to terms including creating a new Order out of the Catacombs rebels. Preposterous!
Apocalypse Two- The Snappening: Craggy and I had been working with divine servant Letum from the beginning of the game to investigate a mysterious Heir to Shrouded Queen, the sleeping God underneath the city of Ur. Her giant squid-like creature Heir (who was definitely not Chuthlhu) was being manipulated into returning to Ur and the Queen, which would cause an apocalyptic Awakening of the Sleepers, not just the Shrouded Queen but the Maelstronic Sleepers as well. This would cause reality to be unmade and remade, and while I would have survived as an Elder of the Lumen, everyone I cared about and Ur itself would not have.
Apocalypse Three- Ragnanot: While all of this was happening, Councilor Zulias (the Yin to my Yang) was worried about the return of He Who Reigns, a deity that consumes others for their powers and commands an army of frost giants. As it turns out, he wanted to storm Ur at the same time as the Heir and consume it to become the most powerful being in the universe.
Everything Happening All At Once: In what likely surprises no one reading these, all three of these major plots came to a head at once the last week of the game. Actual footage of us during the last week:
The Endgame: Here's how all of the major arcs wrapped up:
- The Catacombs revolutionaries joined the Orders, creating a new eighth one with the Rat King serving as their Councilor.
- The "Cancel the Apocalypses Committee" teamed up convince the Heir to return to the Maelstrom and enjoy its time there instead of coming to Ur. Despite it sounding easy, it required a lot of work.
- The Fearless Apostle (whose death was a requirement by the Orders to settling the matters with the Catacombs) died killing He Who Reigns in an epic battle.
- I tracked my personal nemesis, Elder assassin Silent something (whose name I could not remember during the game and cannot find now), to the tomb of the Shrouded Queen underneath the city, discovering the nefarious source of the Rook's powers. Letum was killed and reborn there, and if it was a movie, this would be the main plot for the sequel in all likelihood.
- In the betrayal to end all betrayals, Dean Cragwick Quarrymum (who lost the use of his nickname and designation of Friend) joined with trickster god Gelt, abandoning his pledge to the Lumen.
- We experimented on Master Faison with negation crystals so that he could know what it felt like. (Not really. I think he died but can't actually remember.)
My Overall Feelings:
The Best: I was surprised by the depth and intensity of the friendships that were formed, both in character and out of character. This game really helped spin off a sub-segment of the community that's played together in Afterlife (to be covered soon) and started up OMEGA. I have several friends that I made because of this game, and it was a really phenomenal experience overall.
The Good: The worldbuilding, mechanical effort system, and roleplay by the Control team were top notch. It was a living, breathing system that adapted really well to the players as we played the game. They did an excellent job giving us a fun playground to blow up (mostly metaphorically but occasionally literally).
The Bad: The email megachains were very time consuming and fast-paced, which made them hard to stay on top of. Afterlife had the same problem, so it's a kink in the PBEM system that we need to work through still.
The Ugly: Through no fault of anyone involved in the game, the timing of the peak corrupt government political drama coincided with the US election in a way that was just too real sometimes.
Recommendation: I loved this game. It was a highly structure RPG experience within a megagame framework, and I highly recommend these to people that are willing to invest the 5-15 hours a week that they take. If you can't commit to 5 hours during the week, which would be totally understandable, I wouldn't play.
This Play: 4.5/5 stars
Ur: 4/5 stars
--Theme: 4.5/5 stars
--Interface: 4.5/5 stars
--Rules: 3.5/5 stars
--Player Autonomy: 3.5/5 stars
Past AARs:
Running Hot, Scorer from Gruffsters
I play board games, video games, and megagames. This is where I write about them.
