Sickle: A Fan-Made Scythe Megagame After-Action Report (Con of the North 2018)

Recently, we approached some of the folks at Stonemaier Games about the creation of a Megagame in the Scythe Universe (also known as the 1920+ Art Universe created by Jakub Rozalski). We were thrilled with their informal encouragement and quickly became worried that the output wouldn’t live up to expectations. Well, I’m happy to report that Sickle received a grand premier at Con of the North last weekend in Minneapolis!  IT WAS AMAZING!! Robots and Land Reform! Coups and Conspiracies! All with one of the best News AV-interfaces I’ve ever witnessed (pics below). 

Player Feedback Statements	Average Player Rating (out of 5)
I had fun!	4.74
The rules were easy enough to understand	3.68
I would recommend this to a friend	4.47
Based on this experience, I am more likely to attend a similar event in the future	4.47

Here’s what happened and what we’re going to do better next time.  Additionally, for those interested, I’ve prepared a downloadable preview that has the player handbook and some other game materials as a preview at the end of the post.

CORRECTION:  The appropriate spelling of the Scythe Universe nation for which the Republic of Poland is loosely based off of is “Polania”, not “Polonia”.  The designers regret this error and all the bears it may have offended.

I was lead control (head moderator) and ended up aiding the Rusviet Union Control as the Rusviet Union was a disaster throughout the game.  The Rusviet Union of the 1920+ Universe is an odd beast with no historical counterpart, as the world-building implies that there’s a communist Russian Government headed by the (still-alive) Tsar.  I ended up modelling the Rusviet Union after the Dual Powers period in Russia, and divided players roughly into conservative Tsarists, liberal Democrats, and socialist/communist Radicals.

 

During their intro briefing, I attempted to stress that none of the Rusviet factions (currently) had the ability to seize power due to the aftermath of the Great War.  Unfortunately, that’s a hard idea to stress in such a freeform game with a bunch of first-time players.  At the first possible opportunity, the Radicals staged a failed coup and were promptly suppressed.  I think part of the reason the coup failed was that some players were first-time mega-gamers or LARPers who didn’t realize how much they were acting against their player brief and long-term self-interest by not supporting the coup.  Instead of sticking around and be suppressed, I gave the brutalized Radicals new player roles as the Kaiser and Imperial Chancellor of the Saxony Empire (Germany). 

The celebrating Tsarist and democratic forces declared the re-founding of the Byzantine Empire and briefly reinstated serfdom.  Then, immediately dissolved serfdom.  This would be a reoccurring phenomenon due to the Prime Minister’s sign-first-and-fix-whatever-disaster-he-just-signed-off-on-later attitude. Later on, the temporary use of gulags almost caused multiple players to independently revolt. 

Separately, the ironically named ‘Leninator’, a 100-ft. tall mech which struck a resemblance to the mech in our flyer, had been commissioned.  Designed by the player role-playing as the great engineer, Konstantin Chelpan, the mech appeared to have one arm that was a giant scythe and one arm that looked like a machine gun, although many claimed that the machine gun was for shooting corn into tall silos. The Leninator’s intended purpose was never clearly defined but led to much arguing over how to use it. I remember hearing “It’s just a piece of farm equipment!” shouted multiple times to the both fellow Rusviets and paranoid Saxon and Polonians.

 

Self-imploding through the implementation of draconian Tsarist policies and failing to meet their resource goals, several players discussed revolt.  Chelpan was half-kidnapped, half-defected to the Saxony Empire, taking his schematics for gun-blades, rocket drills, and the wood be-gone with him, all of which were supported with enthusiasm by Saxony government and produced on mass.  Chelpan’s crowning achievement was the ‘Stalingreator’, a rival mech to the Leninator whose purpose was anything but agricultural.  This set the stage for what was to be the ultimate climax of the megagame.

The Saxony Empire was a smaller team made up largely of the players who had failed to topple the Rusviet Union government early in the game.  Because of their small team size and similar player motivations, there was little internal disagreement, leading to a laser-like focusing on spiting the Rusviet Union. In addition to poaching Chelpan (whom later they built a multitude of statues for in celebration of his contributions to the military), the Saxony Empire started on a crusade to modernize the military. At one point, a player rotated the schematics for ‘Rocket Drills’, originally built for mining purposes, 180 degrees and proclaimed, “I THINK I GOT SOMETHING!”.

During the Saxony military buildup, the Rusviet Union was playing into the surprisingly devious hands of the neighboring Republic of Polonia.  Unlike the R.U., Polonia had been led by a calm player with moderate in-game political philosophies.  Relatively civil discussions had decided functional policies and a sense of comradery against the big, nasty Rusviet Union Byzantine Empire had developed.  Many of the Polonian players wished to bring the Rusviets to their knees, but the Rusviets were already sawing their own legs off.  Capitalizing on the desire for the Rusviets to détente with the Polonians, they extracted a number of concessions – the big one being that if the Rusviet Union and Saxony Empire were to go to war, it would not be on Polonian soil (scout’s honor).  Later, the Polonians received the same promise to not wage war on Polonian soil from the Saxons as well.

While unfortunately, I did not see a lot of the Polonian side of the game, they clearly had a lot of fun.  Some highlights include the arguments over land redistribution and the schematics of Marie Curie, which included a small radioactive bomb resembling a fidget-spinner and poke ball stuck together, and a nuclear power plant, which ended up being a Mountain Dew label taped to the schematic.  Tangentially, I was worried that the craziness of giant mechs and other zany technologies would detract from the serious discussions around land reform, taxes, government, etc., but was elated with the deftness by which players would switch from talking about taxes to talking about giant robot duels.

The game, only three hours in, had now enjoyed multiple story arcs and appeared to be climaxing with the Saxony Empire and the Rusviet Union Byzantine Empire gearing up for war.  The game ended with the Saxony military firing a barrage of drill-rocket rockets at the Rusviet forces holed up in the dilapidated Factory (South of Polonia).  This was two be coupled with a naval invasion of Northern Russia via the Baltic Sea – a war plan eerily similar to the Rusviet Union’s. 

 

Given that the Rusviet Union was in constant disarray and the huge investment of Saxony into its military resources, we generally agreed that the Saxons would have won the immediate military conflict at the least.  This was exemplified by the deployment of the Stalinagreator to the war front, supposedly to take-down the Leninator.  Unfortunately, wires had been crossed and the Leninator had been mistakenly deployed to help with the harvest.  Or maybe the Leninator had been a piece of farm equipment all along.  Overall, the true winner of the scenario was Polonia, who had successfully gotten their rival nations and former oppressors to kill each other outside of Polonia.

The design was based on the National Security Decision Making System (NSDM) format that uses over-sized name tags to display to the world what every knows about the individual or faction the player represents while detailing the player’s private objectives and motivations on the back.

 

The second defining feature of the NSDM format is the freeform system of how players do things.  In order to do actions or undertake initiatives, they simply need to fill out what they want to do on a card and then have the appropriate factions also sign off on it.  If you want to mobilize the military, a general’s signature is required.  To raise tariffs, get the trade deputy’s signature. This is a simple system that turns what is often GM-player interactions into player-player interactions. Below are some initiatives from the game.