Noam Strassfeld and Shyamal Ruparel, New York City residents and avid gamers, immediately recognized how much interest a game like that could generate stateside and contacted Megagame Makers about organizing the first American instance of a megagame. Megagames caught the attention of American gamers earlier this year when the popular British board game site Shut Up & Sit Down played Watch the Skies in London and posted a video of the event. The events bear some resemblance to LARPing, but infused with board game mechanics and a rigid turn structure. Their subject matter ranges from fantasy pirates and space empires to feudal Japan and World War I.
Just as Dungeons & Dragons (and by extension all modern RPGs) did before them, megagames sprang directly from that classic ur-hobby of alpha nerds: wargaming. Watch the Skies was originally designed and played by the British group Megagame Makers, who have been organizing these massive simulations since the early 1980s. It was model UN meets XCOM, and one of the most exhilarating days of my adult life. Part board game, part roleplaying game, the daylong megagame attracted about 50 people to gather in Manhattan’s AlleyNYC co-working space in teams representing the countries of the world, the global media, and the mysterious alien invaders. Watch the Skies, a megagame of alien invasion.
