12/07/2017
After Action Report, Watch the Skies, Denver (Skypath Games), from Cameron Gramarye
After writing two and running four megagames of my own, I finally got a chance to play in one this weekend. Bloo (also known as Fatima, the other half of Hybrid Vigor Studios) and I made the trip to Denver to play in Skypath Games’ first game, the obligatory run of Watch the Skies.
Many of my complaints about the experience can be traced back to a lack of experience among Control – from the sound of it, a few of them had played World Turned Upside Down, and that’s it. I talked with them a bunch at the decompression, so I’ll try not to rake them over the coals too badly here.
I will say that the level of explanations of rules and mechanics was pretty paltry (only a little bit ahead of time, and effectively nothing on the day), so many teams spent the first third of the game trying to figure out what they were doing. Some only then realized that they were missing components that should have been present in their supply packs at the beginning.
Bloo was officially the GNN editor, but with only one other reporter, ended up acting as a reporter herself as well, which meant running pretty much continuously. Bob, the Master Control brought her lunch because she couldn’t get away long enough to get it herself.
I played one of the aliens: Zeta Reticulans, who are disgustingly pacifistic, to the point that the mere thought of personal violence makes them physically ill. But apparently setting up dominos that end in people getting killed keeps their conscience clear, as long as they don’t have to do the dirty work themselves. Whatever.
Most of what follows is my report, with some of Bloo’s headlines interspersed, as well as a bunch of insights gathered later, either things I picked up afterward or from Bloo’s investigations (none of which did we aliens see during the game).
We had talked previously, and she hadn’t been given any direction on what kind of news outlet GNN was supposed to be, only that taking bribes was encouraged. So we thought it would be fun to treat it like a tabloid, and throw random silly-to-nonsensical stuff in amongst the real stories. Her overall goal was to keep things funny and short, so people would actually read them, and be more willing to interact with her.
As aliens, our official goal was to prevent violent humans from escaping from their solar system and posing a threat to the rest of the (peaceful love-and-starlight) universe. The primary ways of accomplishing that goal were to make them all peaceful, or just to contain them.
I asked Control very early about the possibility of EMPing the entire planet. The idea was to effectively set the Earth back to pre-industrial tech, from which they wouldn’t be able to rise again, because they’ve already burned through (literally!) their supply of cheaply and easily available fossil fuels, and there isn’t enough left to rebuild all of that tech from scratch, especially since all of their power plants will have gone offline, along with sanitation and medical services, which would crash their economies and civilization as a whole.
Obviously, that would be a backup plan, if our other more gentle solutions didn’t work out, but I wanted to have that Plan B in reserve.
The second time I asked, somewhere around turn 4, I was told that it was a Tier 4 tech, equivalent to one of the others that was provided. Since we had still yet to achieve our first research project at that point (more on that in a minute), I wrote it off as impossible and moved on.
On turn 1, we sent out all of our UFOs, trying to get all of our Infiltrators on the ground as soon as possible, because that was our primary source of resource income (continuous one per turn, as long as they’re out there). We figured we’d take some losses, but if we scattered, they wouldn’t be able to do too much to us, and we’d make some progress. We were wrong on that point, and only marginally successful at putting them out. Bloo was at the map at the time, and noted that once the first country that attacked gained some tech cards, the others quickly followed in hopes of get something themselves.
We also sent messages (via whiteboard tablet) to many of the world governments, some of which were simply crop circles. Bloo saw Brazil’s and asked about it, but they tried to say it was nothing, just a doodle, and ended up taking a PR hit because of it, because the populace thought the government was hiding stuff from them.
We also sent a message to the UN saying “We come in peace, merry Christmas” accompanied by a drawing of a snowman. With no knowledge of the UN’s snowman message, the GNN ran this story at the end of day 3:
Antarctic penguins “scared” of aliens
Antarctica has been infiltrated by aliens… do they like building snowmen with Elsa? They’ve also infiltrated Russia.
At this point, we knew that communications were going to be interfered with, but we didn’t know how it was going to be implemented. It turned out to be just wiping words and portions thereof out of the messages going either direction.
The possibility occurred to me that rather than trying to create messages ourselves, what if we just cut together some of their own video clips and posted them to YouTube? Another alien promptly started pulling up a link to a video. “Shiny Happy People?” I asked. No, something else I wasn’t familiar with (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0cRm2gDWVeA), and if I’d known what it was at the time, I wouldn’t have gone for it. I have no idea who that message was sent to, and it didn’t matter in the end; because of the interference, it came back as a 404.
News Flash! Elvis returns, claiming he’s been experimented on by aliens for the past 40 years.
One of the starting techs we were prompted with, Red Mercury Survey, required a significant amount of Red Mercury and Rare Earth Metals to research it. We didn’t get any in the first turn or two of map action, so we figured we’d ask for some in trade from some of the Earthlings we were talking to. We didn’t know at that point that there was no way for the humans to acquire those resources, and that the ONLY way for us to get them was via infiltrations and abductions on the map. So those messages were just confusing for the humans, and wasted everyone’s time.
We received overtures early on from Brazil, Australia and a very interesting pictograph message from China that (due to selective erasures by Control), as best we could tell, was offering us a handshake and beer. Sure, what the hell? A bit later, a mixed six-pack of local craft beer was actually delivered to the Aliens. In return the Chinese got a very nice thank-you note, with the addition that the strange human liquids make our alien brains feel funny.
Unfortunately we ended up not contacting Argentina, Japan, India, and some others until turn 3 or 4, because we forgot and/or got distracted. Oops.
News Flash! Amelia Earhart turns up in Mexico claiming she’d been abducted to work on alien piloting mapping and strategies.
By the end of turn 2, we had explicit invitations to meet face-to-face with China, Brazil, and Australia, who offered us “kowalas.” So on turn 3, we went to meet with them all and more – and got our asses blown off by everyone except the US and China. Australia later claimed that their general was drunk, and offered seemingly genuine contrition. Bloody Aussies…
Also on turn 3, Australia and Argentina (it sounded like it was the former’s idea, which the latter then picked up and ran with) founded a group called A**S, which stood for Alliance of Nations Under Science. Apparently setting the humorous tabloid tone for the GNN directly led to the players generating the name “A**S”. Bloo therefore apologizes to all of the players for the unforeseen repercussions of the media’s actions, but also disavows responsibility for any of the eyeroll-inducing jokes that made it to publication after the initial announcement of the group’s formation.
A**S started off as a Ponzi scheme which then went legit, and became a real, worldwide tech-sharing organization – which Control said later that they should have quashed, or at least limited, because it became too powerful. They pooled their resources and distributed the discoveries to benefit all member nations. Or at least, that was the theory.
According to the Russian scientist later, nobody paid attention to who contributed what, so they took the opportunity to swipe a few extra tech cards and pocket them. Bloo notes that the Russians were also the first to bribe the media, first with chocolate and Oreos, and later with a few million yuan, to keep the bad rumors away from them.
News Flash! Doctor Who appeared in the UK with the TARDIS. Teleportation technology has been boosted.
(Again, written without knowledge that one of the aliens was wearing the Doctor’s scarf and carrying a sonic screwdriver; Bloo’s face lights up with a satisfied smirk every time I mention something like this.)
Turn 4 was my first time at the map, and we sent two UFOs to China and four to the US, since they were the only ones that weren’t aggressive toward us the previous turn. Commence the flood of messages from everyone else wanting to meet with us in exchange for tech.
Wait a minute, what tech? We have tech to give them? How? I mean, obviously, we’re an advanced civilization and should be able to, but how do the mechanics of that work? Oh, here are some more cards that you should have had at the outset. These are the things the humans are looking for in order to develop their own tech, and which they can only otherwise get by shooting down your UFOs. Well that explains a few things…
Since our dealings with the various world governments weren’t getting us much of anywhere yet, we also sent a message to the GNN in turn 4. Mindful of the redactions, our missive consisted of:
We come in peace
Hands up don’t shoot
Guardians of the galaxy
Salam alaikom
(Play to your audience, right?)
The media received the message, but didn't know how to reply, or even if they could – a sentiment echoed by other nations as well. So Bloo took the whiteboard to China, believing that some particular tech was needed to return messages to the aliens. Which was half true, the Chinese had a tech upgrade that allowed for better communication, in the form of less redactions. But it lost the GNN control of that exchange.
We’d gotten a few infiltrators out in the first round or two, but by about this time they had all been rooted out and ejected. We’d also lost about six of our initial 17 UFOs, and a bunch more had sustained damage. At this point, we started getting more of our infiltrators back out on the map in friendly countries, and more in turn 5, when we sent UFOs to everyone except the UK. The Brits were nervous, and had told us to cease operations in Europe and Asia. We told them (truthfully!) that at that point we were only going where we were wanted, and to chill.
As it turned out, Russia, India and Japan took the opportunity to blast us again. Traitorous bastards.
The infiltrators are beginning to show some benefits, and we were finally able to develop our first technology, which gave us absolutely nothing in and of itself, but was a necessary prerequisite to every other alien tech except for the Red Mercury Survey. OK, fine, it’s a stepping stone, but that was a really long, slow step, and we had nothing to show for it.
The way Abductions worked was that we sent a UFO somewhere and could either take a resource card or pick up a member of that country’s team to bring back to our mothership to talk without messages getting scrambled.
Two problems there. #1, the tokens we had to put on the map all said Abduction, which implied nonconsensual, and waved red flags for everyone. #2, at this point everyone wanted to meet (or at least claimed to), but we were seriously running out of UFOs, and our ability to get around was badly hampered.
Which leads to another question: Why do we, the supremely advanced interstellar civilization, have to spend our valuable resources (including human DNA, tech, and cultural artifacts) to research how to do repairs to our own UFOs? You would think we’d already know how to do that kind of thing, and that such primitive human junk and skin scrapings would be useless for a project like that.
A possible way to deal with that issue in future games would be to say that the alien mothership has 12 launch bays, so only 12 UFOs can be on hand at any given time. In addition, in order to do repairs, they need to be taken out of service for a turn, and it takes two turns to build a new one from scratch. It would keep the pressure on, prevent recklessness, and would be much more thematically consistent, but wouldn’t lead to being just plain screwed.
In any event, we did manage to (consensually!) abduct a few officials, and had some good talks and trades. The general from Australia in particular was bending over backwards to get back in our good graces after the little mishap from a couple turns ago. He explicitly said that whatever we wanted to do, Australia was on board with. We could conquer the Earth if we wanted, Australia was good with it, they just wanted in on the action.
News Flash! The Aussie general was abducted. What happened? And why was he so happy to go?
News Flash! Aliens invited to insert themselves in A**S
Zorak, the alien, visited the science convention and was publicly invited to join A**S. Zorak states that they would like to experiment on humans and research “your biology.” Let’s hope they do understand boundaries.
By turn 6, we’d found out what our agent is good for, and that we can send it to the UN, so we can talk to all the countries at once. We had all of our infiltrators out on the map, and we finally had some serious resource income. We also managed to make the next tech step, which again served no purpose other than as a prerequisite. That was getting old.
Part of our problem was that we were just getting screwed by the deck. The one necessary component that we were chronically short on throughout the entire game was the one that (supposedly, according to Control) was the most common in the deck, we just weren’t drawing them.
News Flash! The First Lady… Mrs. Zorak?
An abductee reported anonymously that the first lady of the USA is really an alien, who likes to play dress-up.
News Flash! Japan + USA –> < 3 ??
Japan and USA have agreed to an informal treaty of marital trust. No more spies or secret infiltration between these two.
(Bloo confirms that “marital” is NOT a typo.)
I was back at the map again on turn 7, where the theme of costly acquisitions continued apace. The major new development was a plague of some sort that had broken out in west Africa and Brazil. I guess it had been growing for a while before making it onto the map, because one of the news blurbs from turn 4 said that Brazil was working to “Gotta Cure ’Em All!”
We managed to get enough resources that turn to finish researching superfoods, which had the potential to solve world hunger. The catch was that we only had four tokens to give out. So rather than dealing with that rough decision, we just gave them all to the UN and let them make the decision. Which may have been a mistake, because the UN never actually distributed them. China tried to sneak one, but was caught and forced to return it.
Communication channels were improving with most countries (not necessarily getting nicer, just less garbled), but we were still unable to communicate effectively with the press. Bloo figured out that she could reply to us on her own, but without their own tech advances, the redactions were still a problem. So we tried to set up a direct interview with them, like we had with the nations, and got an explicit request to abduct a reporter.
At first we were told by Control that we had to go to their base in New Zealand – so chosen as to be far away from the player countries, and out of the crossfire. So we went to New Zealand, where nobody should have bothered us, but India took it upon themselves to cruise on over there, invade New Zealand air space, and shoot us down. Again. Needless to say, the media disapproved, rethought their plans to be in a defenseless, independent country, and roasted India.
One of our remaining research projects is curing disease, which would be a good thing to do, given those plagues down on the planet, but we’re starting to lean more and more toward going the other direction, and unleashing our own engineered virus on the as****es.
On turn 8, China and the UK turned on us, the latter of which sent us an apologetic note (and some caramels) afterwards, saying it was a mistake and that we should come back. We were pretty sure they were just trying to lure us in for the sake of more target practice and spare parts, however, and didn’t go for it.
(It turned out that that really WAS a mistake, much like the Aussies earlier, a miscommunication between the Ambassador who told the PM we were headed for the UN, when he meant the UK. The PM saw us inbound without notice and shot us down.)
Brazil and Australia, on the other hand, had been extremely solicitous, and Australia had been behaving since our little talk in turn 5. After a couple of incidents elsewhere, we’d relocated all of our infiltrators to their countries, as well as the US and Argentina, and our resource income stream was flowing well.
Which meant that we were finally getting close to developing Mind Control, but between our delayed start and A**S’s speedy acquisition from pooled resources, they were already immune to it. But again, it was a prereq for other things, so we had to go through the motions, which included convincing earthlings to volunteer as test subjects.
Our mission to the US this turn also included meeting with the GNN (now rebranded Galactic News Network), since we’d now been told that we can arrange a meeting anywhere in the world that the media gets permission to go. POTUS largely bogarted the meeting, however, trying to blackmail some sort of crystals out of the aliens in order to maintain peaceful relations.
News Flash! Alien Crystal M**h? Pretty and powerful. Soon in USA markets.
People have been trying to reach the UN so that they could be abducted by aliens.
China is researching Uber Black. Racist much.
Military coup in Thailand. They want to change their spicy diet.
In turn 8 the aliens got a seat at the UN. Apparently at the expense of Russia, who got stripped of their vote (and therefore veto power) while their rep was away. Not that we were given a vote, but at least we were now AT the table, rather than just being ON it.
Russia, on the other hand, without an official vote anymore, had switched to a sh*t-stirring strategy, making things as chaotic as possible, and oppose the general opinion out of spite.
Also by turn 8, we’d collected nearly everything we needed for both Mind Control and its successor, a more or less literal op**te of the masses, a drug that will pacify the planet, and allow them to join the galactic community, which was our end-goal as aliens. We actually had a shot! Bloody amazing!
We had good relations with Brazil, but not nearly as solid as with Australia, so in turn 8 when we brought a Brazilian official back to the mothership, we got him to sign on as the volunteer for the Peace Drug, even though we couldn’t actually finish it until we did the Mind Control thing. The plan was to grab an Australian in turn 9 and get them to agree to be the Mind Control test subject. We figured that would be easy, given how eager they were to please, and especially so given that they already had immunity against it.
It almost didn’t happen at all. I was back at the map, and set down a stack of three UFOs on Australia, which India then swooped in to destroy. Completely aside from my vested interest as an alien, I was a little incredulous that Australia didn’t do anything about it. I mean, that’s a violation of their air space, and an act of war, right?
From what other people were saying later, that wasn’t the first time someone had jumped borders to blast aliens, but I can’t speak to that personally – aside from the previous turn when India did the same to New Zealand to prevent us picking up the reporter. But New Zealand was an NPC, and the lack of backlash against them for that could very well have been an oversight by overworked and distracted Control. Fine.
Australia, on the other hand, with their own military, and more importantly their own space interceptors, should bloody well take umbrage at the very least, and more likely stand up and protect the aliens. Especially if they want to continue to maintain positive relations.
Apparently, in none of those other illegal incursions had anybody suggested intercepting the interceptors. Or at least, that was how the Map Control guy reacted when I suggested it, and his immediate response implied that that wasn’t allowed. He caved pretty quickly though, and gave Australia the option.
Australia declined, and hung us out to dry. Two of the three UFOs we sent there (both carrying relocated infiltrators) got damaged and turned away. The one that got through was (fortunately!) the one with the abduction mission, allowing us to bring an Aussie back to talk.
I grabbed the scientist, since he was so eager for it, and he’d understand the problem, and the solution. But by the time I got back to the mothership with him, there was a message waiting there saying that the Aussie head of state was waiting to be abducted. So we grabbed him instead, which was probably a mistake.
We argued with him for a long time, and he was trying to convince us to go along with something that seemed vague enough that I never got a handle on it. The feeling was definitely mutual, though, because when he asked what our new tech was going to do, all we could do was show him the two lines of flavor text on it and say, “Beyond that, we don’t know, they haven’t told us any of the mechanics.”
He was on the verge of walking away when it rolled over into turn 10 (yes, he’d been there and resisting and trying to get us on board with whatever he was talking about for THAT LONG) and Russia announced that they were going to DEFCON 1 – which then allowed anyone else to also go to DEFCON 1 in response at no penalty (I believe). That pushed him over into going along with our Mind Control research, but we had to sign a treaty agreeing not to use it on anyone except India – even though all of the A**S nations were immune to it, and as it turned out, so was India. So it was a near-complete waste of time.
By now, France has joined the US in demanding tech from us, when we don’t have any to give. We didn’t have much to begin with (once we belatedly got any at all), and apparently had no way to get more, other than trading for it with the humans – but they’re trying to get it from us, so why should they give us anything?
I’m sure the view of us being overly stingy with our tech was helping the UN to turn against us. They’d demanded earlier that we stop abducting anyone who didn’t volunteer, which was already our protocol anyway, despite whatever rumors were flying around. Now they demanded as an act of good faith that we pull all of our infiltrators off the board.
By this point, we had more resources than we needed, so it wasn’t a loss in that respect to pull them. It did hamper our other operations, however. Remember that EMP thing? I grabbed Control again and said, “OK, we’ve got a Tier 4 tech, like you said the EMP was, look at what we’ve got to work with, is this enough to make it happen?”
The verdict was yes, and a bunch of resources were flagged. Surprisingly few of the really high-powered ones, like red mercury and rare earth metals, and I don’t know what we were supposed to do with the human cultural artifact. Then we find out that in order to make that work, we’d have to have infiltrators in 9 of the 10 player countries on the board. We had four of them, but there was a reason we didn’t have any presence in any of the others (anymore), and they weren’t about to open themselves up to us.
We also only had six UFOs left, which left even less wiggle room.
So basically, we were screwed.
I was annoyed at the time that with all the rest of our excess high-power resources, that we still had to land all of our infiltrators on Earth to be able to pull off the EMP. Talking to Control about it later, they basically said that if I’d pushed for it at the time, they would have let us do it from orbit (it is, after all, the only way to be sure), but oh well.
And then we found out about the UN’s demand to pull our infiltrators, and our UN rep (who had already tentatively agreed to that demand) found out about our EMP stratagem.
We figured our only hope of pulling anything else out was to go along with what the UN wanted, try to hold onto some semblance of good will, and see what happened.
But wait, what about the peace drug thing we just developed?
Yeah, minor problem there too. In order to deploy that, we had to execute terror missions (another type that we hadn’t used all game, because we were trying to avoid that kind of reaction as much as possible), also in 9 out of 10 player countries, with the additional requirement that they lower their defenses.
Since we only had six terror mission counters, it was impossible to pull that off in one turn. And since our only hope of being able to get nine missions down onto the planet on six damaged saucers and get those countries to drop trou and cooperate hinged on them agreeing to our plan, we had to follow through with pulling everyone off in turn 11.
News Flash! No Nukes in the A**S
A**S has said that any country that is at DEFCON 1 will be evicted from the A**S community.
News Flash! Russia back to the UN after its military leaders get assassinated
Rumors that France committed this crime have been circulating, especially since Russia is the only one not working with the aliens.
Also in Turn 10, both Russian generals were assassinated. One player returned as an (additional?) UN rep, while the other became an additional scientist. Which then led to another news blurb that turn: Russia gains new scientist, do they make them in petri dishes?
We were told at the outset that there would be either 11 or 12 rounds, and I think it was mid-10 that the announcement was made that round 12 would in fact happen. Last turn madness kicked in in round 11 anyway, however, as Russia launched nukes at DC, Paris, and others that failed to hit.
And of course, it wouldn’t be a megagame without communication failures and misinformation. We, the aliens, heard that round 12 wouldn’t happen after all, because the US was launching nukes too, which would trigger nuclear winter. We also heard that Russia had ceased to exist as a player nation, which, according to Bloo, may have had something to do with losing all of their PR and money, which means they became a failed state. They told her later that they knew that they were going to fall, so why not be remembered with nukes?
The US didn’t have the cash left to launch all (any?) of their own missiles in retaliation, and tried to sell what they had left. That didn't work out and they were also flagged as a failed state.
So rather than the full-on nuclear winter, which would have spelled the end of the human threat to the rest of the galaxy, and give us the victory, it was only a mild nuclear autumn, and they were still bearing down on us.
News Flash! World peace, or in pieces…
Russia nuked the USA, which resulted in retaliation. The two countries have now gone bankrupt due to their attempts to save whatever was left. As a result, the UK took a violent stand against Russia. The UN declared a treaty for world peace, stating that any aggressive acts at all will cause all the other countries to attack.
News Flash! Instant toasts? With Argentina’s nuclear Nano-bots you can get toast anywhere in the house. Maybe it will toast the world. Oh wait, Russia has already done that.
So it seems that the UN prevented the nuclear winter, and allowed things to continue into turn 12 anyway. Bu**er.
There was some confusion as to whether Russia still existed as an entity, or if their players were just out of the game. The reduction in number of player countries (even if it turned out not to be true) opened up a new possibility for us, though. If we could further reduce the number of countries that we needed to land in, we might still be able to pull off one of our goals, either the EMP or the peace drug.
So we put it around to everyone that the only way we could save everyone was if they consolidated into six nations and let us land there. Which inevitably got misinterpreted as some terrorist threat. Australia got the message, though, and they begain running around trying to find someone to annex them. Brazil and Argentina were on board with it too, and from the sound of it were willing to consolidate with anyone for the sake of getting the numbers down.
But there wasn’t enough support for it, and when we approached the map that final time in turn 12 and started putting down markers in the friendly nations, India swooped in to attack again. This time their interceptors did get intercepted (by the US, I think), but it didn’t matter, because that was when the announcement was made that India had sent a nuclear fireship (with the help of Russia, as I found out later) to destroy our base on the moon.
Wait, what? A moon base? Yeah, that took us by surprise too. Granted, we found out about it a little earlier, somewhere around turn 6, but up to that point we’d just assumed we were on our mothership in orbit, because we hadn’t been told otherwise. Whatever.
Regardless, that tore it. We picked up the UFOs that we’d put down and walked away. As far as I could tell, nothing else significant happened the rest of the turn, because it had already been finished, word just hadn’t gotten around.
China had apparently made another (successful!) attempt to steal the superfoods from the UN, and as a PR stunt offered TWO of them for humanitarian relief to the hungry of the world.
The US and Japan (independently?) developed star gate travel, which, in combination with nuclear war, clearly meant that we, the aliens, had failed to keep the violence contained. Humans were now free to rampage across the universe, conquering all of the other intelligent races that had moved beyond the need for violence.
Possibly. In the round of epilogues from the various nations, that was the way our rep stated it, which I was personally very dissatisfied with. Here’s my take on it:
Because humans have proven themselves to be irretrievably violent, the rest of the intelligent races of the universe must exterminate them in self-defense. Because we so abhor personal violence, it must instead be couched in terms of bureaucracy. Therefore, the Vogon constructor fleet will arrive shortly, to demolish the Earth to make way for a new hyperspace bypass. Through the magic of time travel, the plans have been on display at the local planning office at Alpha Centauri for fifty Earth years, which you bloody humans would know about if you would only take an interest in local affairs.
Despite all of my annoyance, Bloo and I absolutely think it was worth the trip from mid-Missouri, and would absolutely play again with this crew. It is a bit of a hike, though, so we’ll see if we can make it back for the next round in February.
Thanks to Bob, Corey, Sven, Jason, and the other Controls whose names I either never got or have forgotten, for putting on a hell of a show, and being so open to feedback.
Bloo and Cameron about to begin Skypath Games' first Watch the Skies in Denver.
