By Spell and Steel, and by Orb, and by Pegasi, and by my axe….

On the day of CLWG I was just too far behind on too many things to join in. A reason for me cancelling the game I was going to put on in the first place, but I decided to just keep a vague eye online, rather than playing, as the games seemed well attended.

But then I spied “By Spell and Steel”, an operational game in a fantasy setting. I’m especially interested in bringing serious real world concepts to fantastical settings, for many reasons, but mainly because I think it gives players a chance to be more forthcoming with their knowledge and experimental with their ideas. So I listened more closely to the online team’s deliberations about what to do. Evan, running the game, set them the challenge of choosing which of many many training, doctrinal, diplomatic, or magical options to choose with limited resources. The players were given a rough idea of what their country’s situation was from an accompanying hex map. This was a version of something Evan had written a few years ago, and was being used to replace another absent game apart from my own.

What is our Doctrine for Dragons?

Really the best way to approach this would be to assess your forces, your enemy’s forces, and then come up with both a grand strategy and what I think is called a “theory of operations”. How you imagine the conflict can be won, and then what will you do to get there. I guess that would take at least an entire weekend, even with a Bank Holiday tacked on. In the much shorter timescale of CLWG session, the players were distracted/enchanted by the many wondrous concepts that were included, from cavalry units of Pegasi, to numerous training schools, to actual Dragons.

After listening in for a while I ended up jumping in as Evan was prompting the players to choose from the selected options with a specific mindset, too intriguing to ignore. It was good to see those with more appropriate academic qualifications also say that this format brings out what people know and how they think. I found it interesting to see which participants were attracted to the tactical nukes or “Devastation Orbs”, who concentrated on communications – on using and protecting scrying abilities, and who concentrated on terror and misinformation.

Operational Fantasy Megagame?

I hope Evan has time to develop this concept, and he did start brainstorming how this might be a megagame. Now I’ve had a little while to reflect on the post-game discussion, let me bounce off some of the comments made, through a descending dugeon of bullet points:

• I think affecting messaging and scrying is really interesting in this world. And with either online or in-person play, you could enhance or restrict those in some way? How do you permit or restrict access to parts of the map? Do you or can you or should you restrict in-person communications to a whisper?
• Right at the end of the card deck there was relatively blank “Other Capabilities” card, openly encouraging players to think of new magical weapons and ideas. I can see a lot of interest in extending the existing magical concepts. Can you feed a false image to a scrying enemy? Can you teleport an opposing force against their will?
• As was discussed, I think a procurement phase before an operational phase is a useful idea. Using the “IKEA effect” players will be more engaged in the hard work of an operational game because they’ll be fighting with forces they’ve built. But there’s further options here:
  • The procurement phase happens asynchronously, before the game starts, to help engage players in learning the setting and rules. That might work.
  • The procurement phase keeps going through the operational phase, as happens in real world conflicts, and as would be appropriate to the setting:
    • With rapid but risky magical research you can quickly upgrade weapons and defences, procurement and development doesn’t stop when wars start.
    • Also using a fantasy setting to its full effect, with gates and teleportation available as part of the world-building – “procurement” could mean summoning forces or creatures from other parts of this world, or even other realms. There are many risk/reward decisions to be made.
    • I think megagames are at their best when different types of player get to play together, so for this:
      • The operational experts are maintaining a solid front against the southern enemy, mindful of how the western sea could be used to outflank their forts.
      • The tech track wizards ( literally? ) are thinking three turns ahead and supplying the operational experts with the talismans and charms they need, before those experts realise they need them.
      • And the innovative thinker is brainstorming with the negotiators, on how best to bargain with the mountain giants and those immense dragons, because they’ve got an idea for the mother of all parachute regiments…