Marcus Watney had an interesting (I would hesitate to use the word good) idea
about how the Settlers of Catan tournament should be run at OxCon. He proposed
that we took all the Settlers sets present, mixed them all together, and had just one
big game with all the players on the one map.
        Curiously, I had been thinking the other week about how one would run a game
of postal Settlers (so that I could run a postal Settlers zine, and set up a postal
Settlers hobby, and have conventions dedicated to Settlers, which got reported in
Settlers zines, which got up the Dip players' noses quite as much as the notion that
this is essentially a postal Diplomacy hobby gets up mine) and had wondered about
the possibility of running it as a campaign game over dozens of turns with huge
empires that had taken years and years to form. The same "big map" basis was a
common theme in my idea to his. Nothing's come of that thought, yet, by the way.
        However, as you may know, Marcus Watney runs an annual megagame, Gulf
Crisis (NOT on Mastercon weekend this year as you might have heard), and it got me
thinking as to how a megagame comes about. For megagames strike me as being Awfully
Good Ideas and Nice Things To Have, but I wouldn't know how to go about writing one
(more to the point, one that people would want to play in) preferably avoiding
getting all historical and accurate and horrible and non-fluffy.
        So here are some thoughts about how to run a Settlers-based megagame. This
is purely out of curiosity. I'd be interested to know if anyone thinks it's a good
idea and if anyone would play in it were it available for play at a con some day.
        I would "pre-deal" a map (draw it out in advance, drawn at random) very large
on a BIG (A0 - or bigger?) sheet of paper which would form the communal game board
to be altered as people add roads, towns etc. to it. Working on the assumptiono of
24 players and 6 GMs I'd intend to have a 5-layer-deep (61-hex) map (on the thinking
that the standard game has a 3-layer deep map with 3 hexes on each side. The types
of terrain and number-disc of each hex would be drawn in advance; the terrains at
random and the number-discs non-random so to create good, but not overwhelming areas.
        The most crucial difference between traditional 4-player Settlers and this
would be to abandon principles of running in sequence. Once the game has started the
dice are rolled every four minutes on the dot. Each GM has responsibility for four
players - the GMs keep track of how much of each commodity every player has, and how
much they pick up each turn. This record-keeping should be complete within the first
minute of each turn. Players then diplome and trade commodities with one another; all
trades are overseen, and the records altered by the players' GMs. Furthermore, each
GM has a special responsibility for buying things. If you want to buy a road, then
see GM A about it; a settlement needs assent from GM B, a city GM C and a card GM D.
        I've skipped quite a bit there. What if two players want to build the same
road in the same turn? An interesting solution comes with the concept of precedence.
Essentially, players with higher precedence move before players with lower precedence
in the same turn. Precedence is allocated by Dutch auction in the set-up. Before the
game starts, I would allocate 24 starting positions on the map. Each would have one
town starting on the coast and one some way away inland. Some would be better than
others based on the hexes the positions touch. So after people had had a chance to
study the map (I might even send it out in advance) a Dutch auction takes place to
decide who starts where. The starting positions are auctioned one at a time. If any
player will take that position with 1 preference, it's theirs. If not, it goes to
any player taking it with 2 preference. And so on up to a maximum of 24 preference.
(No two players may have the same precedence.) Should no player accept it even with
the maximum possible precedence I may offer extra commodities or even extra VPs for
the very worst positions to sweeten the deal. Eventually the package offered will be
so generous that some player will take it.
        The basics of the game are there. I need to work on my plans for things like
what cards do, what the victory conditions are, and I have a nice idea or two for
encouraging alliances and teamwork (VP bonuses to players who form trade routes; an
alliance of players' whose road networks stretch from one coast to another). Well, I
have plans, which I could put here, but I want to know:
(a) if people think this is essentially a good idea
(b) if this is a game that people would want to play (at some convention someday?)
(c) if anyone's solutions to how to cope with problems are neater than my own.

Besides, I can fill the space with the best Christmas cracker joke in the world ever.
What do you call a donkey with three legs?                              Wonky.