<![CDATA[Interactive Training Games by Shaun D. McMillan - Updates & Ideas]]>Wed, 13 Aug 2025 22:09:30 -0700Weebly<![CDATA[New ALLIANCE Last Days "Ground Zero" expansion now in development for Gen Con 2019]]>Tue, 16 Apr 2019 10:05:37 GMThttps://mymegagame.weebly.com/updates--ideas/new-alliance-last-days-ground-zero-expansion-now-in-development-for-gen-con-2019
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I'm beginning work on ALLIANCE Last Days (the 100 player sequel to my original megagame) in preparation for the huge board game convention GenCon in Indianapolis, Indiana which will take place in early August 2019. Tickets go on sale May 19. 

I'm developing a standalone expansion in which some 4 or 5 teams of players will be able to investigate Ground Zero. They'll visit multiple locations, have to make serious story branching choices, and have to choose whether to work with or against the other teams, each with their own secret objectives. They will carry out battles and collaboration by building decks which either make them strong allies or vulnerable prey. Hopefully we'll be able to explore some interesting moral dilemmas through these interesting choices. 

Sign up for the newsletter to get updates on the game before Gen Con tickets go on sale, as well as for updates on when this game get's published as a standalone board game. 
]]><![CDATA[MegaGames Are Catching Fire in Asia!]]>Mon, 01 Apr 2019 02:48:06 GMThttps://mymegagame.weebly.com/updates--ideas/megagames-are-catching-fire-in-asiaI moved to South Korea last last August and ALLIANCE now seems to be blowing up in popularity here in Asia.

We held a MegaGame and Hiking Retreat at Daedunsan mountain, South Korea in September with a bunch of KAIST University exchange students. Then in March I visited Taiwan and held games for both Tsing Hua University in Hsinchu and National Taiwan University in Taipei. 

Good news, Taiwan loves MegaGames! The players loved ALLIANCE so much that they vowed to bring me back in late May, and assembled a team to begin translating the game into Chinese. They have already added Chinese subtitles to the rule explanation video on YouTube. 

In May I will run the game again in Taiwan, and pay a visit to Singapore and Malaysia to run games for them as well. Ernest Sutanto once ran the game in Singapore, so this will be the 2nd time it’s been held there. Saem, who helped me to develop Conspiracy while here in South Korea is organizing possibly 3 different ALLIANCE games for my week in Malaysia! 

Thanks to my friends in South Korea I have also been able to finish development on the small card game, Conspiracy. I’ll post more about the game in June when I have more time to prepare a KickStarter campaign. 

To see photos of recent events please join our International Peace Games ALLIANCE Facebook Group!]]><![CDATA[Comic about Wargames]]>Tue, 18 Dec 2018 23:46:42 GMThttps://mymegagame.weebly.com/updates--ideas/comic-about-wargames
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Just found this on https://www.facebook.com/groups/mmakers/

Edited it a bit in Photoshop to clean up the original image. 
]]><![CDATA[New Blue Chip Rules and Prime Minister Control Board]]>Sun, 16 Dec 2018 23:25:46 GMThttps://mymegagame.weebly.com/updates--ideas/new-blue-chip-rules-and-prime-minister-control-board
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New Rules

After playing the game with a bunch of engineer undergraduate students we found some simple ways to make the game more streamlined and balanced. 

I'll share more of these rules in the next few posts. 
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​Blue Chips are much more useful now

Green tokens are necessary for nearly every expense in the game making them very valuable. But depending on the randability of science dice rolls, players often got frustrated when working really hard to gather green from a bunch of teams just to see it lost on a tech gamble. Meanwhile, blue which are supposed to represent armaments and advanced tech weaponry often don't get used much. 

So instead of requiring players to ...
gamble green tokens on weaponized tech gambles, we are now asking them to use blue. This makes total sense to me and I'm surprised it took me this long to figure this out.

We're also considering to give players an small compensation each time they lose a big gamble on science or technology. In the real world research might not be successful, but it usually leads to other fruitful ideas or unintended knowledge. ​

New Prime Minister & Sec. of Defense Handbooks

With these new rules I will need to update the handbooks. I'll write a newsletter and a website post as soon as I finish editing them. 
]]><![CDATA[New Edition of ALLIANCE Will Soon Be Available!]]>Sun, 16 Dec 2018 01:03:12 GMThttps://mymegagame.weebly.com/updates--ideas/new-edition-will-soon-be-available
Publishing a game of this scope is a challenge. I am constantly updating, experimenting, and innovating with it. But at which point can a designer be confident to say this is a version worth announcing? Well after a few years I guess the answer is always and never. Let me explain...
The game works. A previous version worked quite well for a school administrator in New York, a middle school teacher in Ohio, and a youth pastor in Singapore. I personally have run the sequel with MegaGame designers and control players as the players, and college students mixed in with adults and middle schoolers. I've run it for 3 hours, sometimes 4 hours, but almost always with first time megagamers.

These results gave me the confidence to secretly silently publish the game over the course of the past two years. I haven't sold many copies, but to be honest I never really marketed it and it's, I admit, not a casual purchase. 

Running the original version in 3 hours for college students, most of whom are studying engineering, with a staff of control players who themselves had never played a megagame, using the newest streamlined rules has helped me to really test the mechanics. Engineers, as you can imagine, are not the most talkitive socializing play-it-up with hammy acting roleplaying type of players. They are the min-maxing let's take advantage of every imbalance in the game type. So with a few modifications to the game I am now confident to openly publish the game and announce it to the world!

But before I can do that I need go in and update all of the control boards, rule books with a more streamlined and balanced system.

I also want to add in the new tech tree science system that seems to work pretty well. These cards already have mechanics on them so it will take the burden off inexperienced Control players who are not comfortable with inventing mechanics on the fly. 

I'll post new images and new rules as I get them implemented, and of course I will announce when the new edition get's posted in the next couple of weeks. 

Look forward to new posts and a new edition!

~ Shaun D. McMillan
​shaunDmcmillan@gmail.com
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