It’s the start of the month, so you know what that means - another episode of the Finding Games podcast! (If we say stuff like that, it almost starts looking like we’ve got a regular release schedule.)
This time around, Sophie’s talking to John Mizon, who runs South West Megagames. This is a full-time endeavour that aims to bring megagaming to the South-West of the UK (and sometimes beyond). Megagames are still a surprisingly niche hobby, which have started to see more mainstream appeal in the last few years after a Shut Up & Sit Down video brought many new eyes to the genre. These games are massive day-long experiences that blend roleplaying, board game-style mechanics, social gameplay and model-UN style simulation to a venue filled with anywhere from 30 to 300 players. Though the themes of games can range from sci-fi colony planets all the way to medieval courts, the unifying feature is simulating a massive, confusing crisis or conflict, and seeing how the existing structures and factions deal with the challenges of information and communication that the situation brings.
If you’re still baffled by the idea of Megagames, here’s a video that John put together to explain what they are:
If you’d like to get involved, here’s a schedule of South West Megagames’ upcoming games, as well as the event calendars for two other groups, Megagame Makers and Megagame Assembly. You really should give it a go if it appeals to you even slightly - Sophie and I took part in a Megagame a few years ago, and we still talk about some of the things that happened on the day!
As Sophie mentions at the end of this episode, you’ll probably notice a significant jump in audio quality on this episode compares to the previous five. This is because we’ve been putting our Patreon funds to good use and securing some new audio equipment! No more huddling around a USB mic and a webcam - we’ve got a sound board and everything now. Our Patreon backers get access to a load of exclusives, including Episode Zero of this podcast where we talk about how I ended up writing games for a living.
Links
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Website: www.needycatgames.com
Twitter: @needycatgames
Facebook: Needy Cat Games
Music from filmmusic.io (incompetech.com):
"The Show Must Be Go" by Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)
Licence: CC BY (creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/)
Massive thanks to Simon Taylor and Michael Trent on Twitter, who helped us out with some weird audio issues!