This is the conclusion of the critical analysis of MEGALOS. You can find the first part here.
5. Disassemble Engine
Games have a flow, which, when you hit, the game pretty much runs itself. It is extremely satisfying. After examining the interactions of game elements, we single out the most important - the one that sets the pace of sessions, or even campaigns. We focus on how that engine works, how it makes the game move along, and what to do to make it do what you want to do - and how to keep it running clean.
Ludo
The game claims as inspiration Anima: Beyond Fantasy, a deeply flawed game that I love a lot. The way the engine comes together fits with a care that betrays the same love — and the frustration of no such engine comes together in Anima. Where it may be most transparent and successful is how the dice pools of the core resolution system work: maximizing the joy of getting a lot of dice, the joy of random rolling, and making every outcome desired and satisfying.
Getting extra dice to roll always gives a good feel of getting more powerful/being good at what you are trying to do. You have multiple ways to increase difficulty and play around it, rolling a critical feels as meaningful as it is unlikely, and failing at anything generates a constant flow of a resource — grit. Grit turns out to be the grease that keeps this wheel turning, making sure a story continues despite setbacks. Doing things you are good at also generates grit; there is a constant payout and an internally correcting system that makes failures and successes feel costly/earned AND keeps generating the state of play MEGALOS wants you to experience for the artform.
While this is good at chaining actions, I hesitate to consider this the engine. I would say the Lifeline and its bonds are the real engine that keeps MEGALOS churning more MEGALOS. As you play the game more, your Lifeline becomes more complex, tangled with Stress and Despair, as you are pushed to do Stress Actions — where your character has to descend to their lowest before they can pull themselves back again. The fuel line for this engine is in the Cutscenes.
Cutscenes are masterwork design, making use of the possibilities offered by asynchronous storytelling into the ongoing action and making powerful use of success and failure in any situation. Cutscenes can be flashbacks or meanwhiles, and are efficient in their simplicity: pick an approach to address the cutscene, perform a standard roll, and return to the ongoing scene with a boon, a penalty or Despair that pushes you into further Stress — and the temptation of corruption.
Brad
Megalos exalts in giving you big fun dice pools to do cool stuff with and honestly, if that doesn’t appeal to you I don’t know what will. The Grit Economy is so important to the game, meaning that even when failing you gain a resource to earn later successes, you also gain Grit when you roll more successes than strictly needed which provides yet more Grit to the flow, you then spend Grit to either make a roll easier, or to roll more dice, so you always have a very satisfying feedback to it.
The combat engine in general is pretty fantastic, but I will hone in on its initiative system. You as a player determine whether you are going to act before the monsters, or after and if you go after you gain one more Action Point, which gives you access to significantly more options in a round. You would expect a crunchy tactical game to use a more traditional initiative layout, but this one adds the first layer of many to Megalos’s combat engine.
6. Essentials For Session One
So, you got this game, you going to play it, but you don’t have the time to read everything. Or even worse, your have read it and now it is all jumbled together. Here we break down the things that you absolutely want to try to get right and/or hit during your first session, so you get the felling of what makes this game stand out from similar art.
Lucrécia
Honestly, the best way to get into MEGALOS with minimum prep, reading and withing a single short session is to pick a bunch of pre-generated characters and throw them into a simple quest that involves a single fight. MEGALOS comes with an extensive selection, with a grand variety of combinations of powers and roles (pg. 61). Additionally:
Reading on Conditions lets you be able to interpret the powers of your quick character (pg. 46).
The Glossary is pretty good, and by itself lets you decipher the rest of your options (pg. 48).
Know your role and what you do to help win a fight (pg. 58).
You will also need to grasp the core rolls (pg. 13), especially how they affect defenses and saves.
Of course, there is the question of what they are fighting. The encounter guidelines are pretty solid (pg. 232). A group of minions and two elites has been pretty good learning encounters that still feel exciting. Perhaps a War Wizard (pg. 326) with a “pet” experiment Mistborn brute (pg. 329) and accompanied by various apprentice Academicians (pg. 334)?
Brad
The core rules of Megalos are beautifully laid out and will help you learn and run the game. The best way to learn is to have everyone roll up a basic character and run through an adventure with a fight.
As a player, make sure you know what you are capable of, make a condition cheat sheet if you have to, and remember how defenses work.
As a gamemaster, help your players build a party of balanced roles, and do not be afraid to quickly lookup a rule, the game is laid out to help you do that.
7. Playing The Game Wrong
Games are played wrong. Rules will be misunderstood, interactions will be confused, the importance of certain tech disregarded; etc. This is good, and it is good to acknowledge for: you cannot have the designer at your time, and even if they were, they would be just another player - and entitled to play it wrong. After identifying stress points of the game, things that don’t connect that well, we think of the things that are more likely to be (our have been) “played wrong”. What happens when you forget a line in page 273 clearly saying this is impossible?
Ludo
Players may feel like they are at the mercy of dice — getting even a hit at the lowest difficulty may seem unlikely. However, players have a lot of control of ways to improve their chances — core traits give a single reroll, grit can be used to make all difficulties easier, and reducing the penalties imposed a situation, can and should be used to make even the most difficult roll manageable. Getting into the flow of MEGALOS is easier if you consistently remind each other of these options.
Speaking of difficulty, remember there are only so hard things can get: the number of successes required to succeed can only be increased up to +4, each increase with a different requirement.
Advantage and Disadvantage does not feel as intuitive as the other mechanics of roll manipulation in MEGALOS. It is not as elegant as the rest of the game when it comes to stacks of it, or at zero dice in a dice pool or when a stack pushes past eight. Interactions between these can cause speedbumps to even those already in tune with the core engine. You will need to pay attention to Conditions and items — the most common form of both — and find a convenient way for your group to track these stacks. Alternatively, you can shorthand all uses of Advantage or Disadvantage as “add/remove a die” and remember you cannot roll zero (you roll two dice and choose worst) or more than eight dice; it will not substantially change the outcome of mechanics and will let you enjoy the great things about MEGALOS rules on their own.
Stress Actions are especially used for when you have overstressed your bonds, but these anti-social and destructive actions may be used before that point — if one so wishes, or would be more narrative fitting. Be sure to consider their use at any point!
Brad
I think Lu handles this section perfectly and don’t have anything to add (Fun fact, I forgot the aforementioned difficulty cap until reading this article)
8. What to Steal
Experiencing good art is the most important step in making good art. We look back at the things that worked and did not work about this game, see what we learned for design work, interesting tech and just a general overview of things that we will take from this game and bring into others. Or more honestly: since many of us may not play this game and we have it in our library, this way we can get some use out of it.
Lucrécia
I mean, don’t do all this for the price they were asking for, for starters. A game like MEGALOS deserves and should have demanded extra. I would love to see more games like this in the artform, but please, for all that is sacred, do not hurt yourself in the process. No art is worth that.
Another point is one about going the extra mile in curiosity being rewarded. The games everyone recommends or become daaaaarlings often do so because, well, they have some degree of mass appeal that allows that in the first place. But if you are looking for something unique, niche, radical or that just scratches your itch for the art-form differently. If you find yourself thinking “good but quite not there”, you may want to look into smaller, less supported and more unknown projects. You know of Fabula Ultima because it was heavily pushed and won popularity awards, because it is of much wider appeal; but perhaps you did not find it believing it to be quite what you wanted, and well, maybe MEGALOS is that. Or, just as likely, your MEGALOS is out there and waiting for you to delve deeper into the most overlooked offerings of the art-form.
MEGALOS is a masterclass in scaling. Three classes, three roles, and yet the game is full of meaningful and impactful choices that still feel unique. The game is both whole and has the potential for exponential explosion.
Inventory and Crafting are amazing systems that I have not touched before, and it would be an error to overlook them. They are simple and fit neatly into the main beats of the game, while being meaningful. Exactly what you want from those things when they are not the central focus of a game. Worth getting MEGALOS just for a look into these.
Brad
Megalos is a wonder, this game is beautifully and lovingly crafted. It seems a crime that it went under my radar as long as it did, and now that I have had a chance to experience it, I can only hope it spreads. You should 100% steal its dedication to itself, Megalos knows exactly what it wants to be and then just becomes that, you should also steal its love of its subsystems, I wanted to talk about vehicles badly but just couldn’t find a space to slot them in and they are cool as hell.
Megalos has dedication and shows dedication, and I think that in that alone, it is a stunning example of what could and should be in this art form.