A Messy Road to Freedom: My American Revolution Megagame Experience

Transforming Into My Role

Benjamin Franklin is a personal hero of mine. Or perhaps calling him a hero is a bit strong, but I have a fascination with him as an historical figure. He was brilliant, accomplished in numerous fields, and by all accounts was a far better human being than many of his peers that are revered in my country to this day. He was still flawed in some notable ways, but worthy of respect, both for his time and in general.

So when I idly mused before the game that maybe I’d get to play as Ben Franklin, it wasn’t a serious thought. I’d be assigned 1 in 60 possible historical people, at least 59 of which wouldn’t be him. I came into the room happy to accept whatever was given to me.

So when I arrived a bit early to check in, and they said “you’re a colonial delegate from the mid-Atlantic, choose a role from one of these five states…” and one of the states was Pennsylvania (PA), my eyes lit up and I knew a bit of magic had just occurred. I rifled through the stack of PA roles. He was the last one, sitting at the bottom, waiting for me.

My entire game changed in that moment, and I walked into the room with my new “Benjamin Franklin, Pennsylvania” name badge with renewed purpose.

I started working the room. The game hadn’t started, but I could greet everyone and chat with them. I knew no one would remember “Mark” (or really, even care about my real-life name) so I never used it. No one in the room knew me by anything but Ben Franklin. I broke this rule in the game’s last hour with a few players I’d worked closely with, but this was long after we knew exactly who we were in-character. Otherwise, to them I was Franklin, with the unspoken promise that I would work tirelessly to make things happen for our cause. Even amongst social deception players, LARPers, and those with previous mega-game experience, I was possibly the most social person in the room for its duration (besides the controllers, who have the Herculean task of responding to approximately 5-10 questions or requests per minute for 5 hours).

I had a special character ability related to the Lawmaker role, as if there had been any doubt about my purpose anyway. I also had a possible Quartermaster (QM) bonus, but using my Lawmaker bonus removed the QM one as a possibility.

Another Franklin (William) was a delegate from New Jersey. We did a bit of pre-game internet digging, and he may have been my extra-marital son! In-person, he was a man about 15 years my elder and 6 inches taller than me, so this was some good fun for us. We worked together quite well during the game, and shook hands warmly at the end, congratulating one another. He was one of our best quartermasters and kept a lot of logistics humming along.

A Note on Scope, Scale and Perspective

What follows is a very me-centric telling of the game. You might be tempted to think that I was the central figure in the war and game as a whole, shaping all its events in sweeping ways.

This is not the case. Not even close.

I did quite a bit that I do think helped to shape our course. But the beauty of these games is that so much is happening, no single player can take in even a fraction of it.

The narrative below will hint at or discuss a few such items, ones that clearly dominated the entire games of numerous players and required all sorts of negotiations, stratagems and actions, but which had nothing to do with me, my actions, and I was only barely aware of them. Undoubtedly other sub-plots existed that I will never know about, not even in hints and whispers among the chatter during the game.

What’s more, I could tell you very generalized things about the tactical war that played out on the tables-long map of the colonies, but could tell you NONE of the details. My time was too preoccupied with governance, communication and coordination to even know a fraction of it. This was exactly as it should be.

I was also tempted to do this writeup in-character, but this would be a disservice to the experience. This was true roleplay in many senses, but the telling of it will be stronger if I frame it as Mark’s experience, not Ben’s.

Turn 1: Rallying the Coffers

The colonies lacked cohesion and resources relative to the British. As Lawmakers, we could only pass two laws per round, and there were many priorities.

I found a pre-made law (we could write our own, but stuck mainly to pre-gen stuff for the first few rounds) that reduced enlistment cost by one, in perpetuity, for every colony. This seemed wildly helpful to protecting our interests (we weren’t formally at war yet), outnumbered as we were at the start and being bullied on the map.

I proposed and debated for it, and it passed…

…and then we had to pay for it. See, it was an expensive bill, albeit with long-term financial benefits. And so I had about five minutes to round up 20 money (the game’s abstracted currency) to actually fund the bill.

Many colonies hadn’t yet declared independence from England. Several colonies had their existing money earmarked for other purposes. There was perhaps only 30 money total available between all of the 13 colonies at this point, so I needed around 2/3 of ALL our cash reserves, even though the bill could (and did) repay that amount easily over the course of the game.

What followed was a negotiation and persuasion whirlwind, one that I’m not sure I would have succeeded at had I not already established a rapport with many people in the room. Getting to 20 was extremely difficult, but I just made it, counting it in from of our American controller moments before he had to turn in our laws to be processed by the master controller.

Turn 3: Declaring Independence

I’m going to skip ahead a bit (and then skip around back and forth a bit later) since a linear telling of everything would be impossible.

The north had declared independence from England, but the mid-Atlantic (yes, including Pennsylvania) and the south hadn’t yet. This was becoming an increasing issue, because our ability to garner foreign support and pass laws that affected all colonies was hindered mightily by the fact that we weren’t actually in accord on our direction in this conflict.

We needed unity, and fast. Generals were expressing fear at the state of the war, but we were increasingly impotent to do more than we’d already done from a legislative standpoint.

I began working the room again, this time to broker a single, unified swing to declaring independence. I needed to talk to delegates from about nine states and convince each of them.

They had their reasons, of course, and didn’t necessarily understand all the concerns we as lawmakers were seeing. The mid-Atlantic was trying to goad the British into a false sense of security, not realizing it was hindering their own side in oblique ways. They all agreed to declare independence…if the South did.

The south was trickier. Much of their land was British-occupied. They were considering negotiating with England for peace as a separate body, apart from the mid-Atlantic and northern states. This would have doomed the rest of us. Emotionally, they wanted independence, but weren’t sure if it was feasible. They needed the assurance of the mid-Atlantic declaring, and certain other immediate actions, including the appointing of a Commander-in-Chief.

I gave as much of a promise as I could on all fronts, but the decisions were out of my control.

The moment came. All declared independence. We swiftly named a Commander-in-Chief, Patrick Henry from Virginia (he of “Give me liberty, or give me death!” fame, among other historical achievements). The gentleman playing him was an enormous find in the role. He volunteered for it (it was surprisingly tough finding someone who wanted to be Commander-in-Chief), but then became a rock-solid leader for the colonies.

Foreign Support

My diplomatic special ability as Franklin involved establishing relations with a foreign power.

To do this, I needed a Prestige Cube, which could be earned in a variety of ways and allowed for a variety of super-charged actions, as well as special asks of the controllers.

Prestige cubes were tradable, and I discovered this early on, as the first were just being earned in the game. I became a minor broker of cubes from this point onward, making sure unused cubes got into the most useful hands. To activate my personal power, I negotiated my way into one from an ally, but later on it was usually to send the cubes elsewhere.

Franklin’s ties to the French are somewhat famous. To boot, we had a French delegate in New York (Lafayette) who promised to be able to strengthen our ties to the French, and we believed we could entice them into the war against Britain.

So naturally, I made contact with the Bavarians. I can explain.

There was a pre-made law I’d spied that would help bring the French into the war, and Lafayette had his own special power related to them. I figured we’d be able to court them without my aid.

Hessian mercenaries were historically a large portion of British forces in the war. I wanted to undermine this. Master Control called me into a sidebar conversation, though, to explain the politics of what would later become Germany. The Hessians were extremely entrenched with England, and attempts to undermine this diplomatically could easily get me executed over in Europe. However, the Bavarians weren’t as close with England, and could be entreated to some sort of alliance. I made my case and we formed an agreement.

They never entered the war formally, but sent money and food to PA for the remainder of the game each round. We had to keep a particularly naval area controlled for them to do so, but it was in the heart of our territory, and so we managed this.

I doubled down on my special action the next turn as well and invited them to send immigrants to enlist in the army, promising land in PA to the families of those who enlisted and devoting much of PA’s existing food stores to help kickstart this effort.

A round (year) later, Master Control walked toward me with two dice (troops) in his hand, thrusting them upward above his head as he made eye contact with me. “The Bavarians have arrived!” he yelled. I cheered.

I have to imagine that this was a bewildering moment for most others in the area, who had zero context for what this meant, and many of whom never learned anything about this little sub-plot of mine. Regardless, some of our forces from that point onward were from our new Bavarian allies.

France never formally entered the war either; they similarly sent some aid through various channels, but ironically this alliance never quite manifested as I anticipated. Still, the Bavarian presence amused and pleased me.

The Assassination Attempt(s)

And now for something completely different. The action was halted because one of our delegates was the target of an assassination by a British player and one of our own colonialist players! But during the attempt, the colonialist who was supposedly there to assassinate another colonialist turned on the British assassin and tried to kill her as well.

I can’t stress this enough: I have no idea what any of the context behind any of that was. Clearly a large plot had occurred, with numerous actions and communications. And I knew of none of it.

This was the biggest moment where I couldn’t help but laugh, because I was recognizing that entire games’ worth of intrigue was happening elsewhere in the same room that I was completely oblivious to. I still don’t know the details behind the assassination, and never will. It’s sort of what I imagine “The Bavarians have arrived!” was to some others.

The original target was killed, sadly. The counter-assassination attempt failed. That same counter-assassin later defected themselves and their colony (Connecticut) briefly from colonialist to British, even while the other 12 colonies remained independent. I have no idea if this was connected to the assassination, or something entirely different. Fascinating and wild stuff either way!

Dropping Balls

In another amusing moment, a guy I’d never met from my side (I thought I had met everyone!) came up to me. “Bro, what the hell are you doing?! You’re dropping the ball on Pennsylvania!”

You see, I was PA’s only player, which meant that if I took the Lawmaker role in each year, I couldn’t take Quartermaster or General, and thus PA was under-represented in those areas. And so it largely sat inert on the map. We had passed some laws to allow quartermasters and generals to operate some outside their home areas, but without active management, PA was contributing far less than it could to logistical efforts on the map.

So despite all my efforts…I was also apparently hurting the war effort! I dutifully explained my predicament, only slightly angered by his insistence that I was not fulfilling my responsibilities to the cause.

I couldn’t very well be in two places at once (or three!). However, I used this as an excuse to discuss with my son (whom I legitimized and promised to make part of my will and estate) how he and the other quartermasters might be able to do something about this. He was a great help in this regard.

I also need to talk about someone else at this point, whose presence informs some of the problems above.

The British Defector

A friendly teenage girl – I forget her in-character persona – had been sent by the British as a peaceful correspondent. Some noble lady or other of England, I believe. Connecticut welcomed her, but she had little to do, though we noticed she was sending letters back to the British. She did not hide this. This was early in the game.

A short time later, seeing the injustices put against us, she defected to the colonialist cause and became an official Connecticut representative. But Connecticut was flooded with delegates already, and I happened to make her acquaintance. She explained the predicament. Needing help with the logistics of Pennsylvania, I proposed a transfer from Connecticut, whereupon she could act as Quartermaster or General for PA. She, Connecticut, and the game’s controllers agreed. Thus she sort of came under my wing in Pennsylvania, and I caught her up as quickly as I could.

Now, even at this point we all suspected her of being a spy who was working for the British, and that the colonial defection was a ruse. I did not make this offer of her being a PA delegate with my eyes closed. However, my logic was that if she could get something – anything – positive done for us on the map (which I had been unable to devote any attention to), I was fine with her continuing to send letters back to the British, which she was. I’d trade some tactical secrets if we could actually mobilize Pennsylvania. The war effort as I understood it desperately needed it.

I gave her some broad direction and a prestige cube to make certain things happen.

A short time later we reconvened. The prestige cube had conveniently disappeared and none of the tasks I’d suggested were completed.

She had some plausible-sounding excuses, but the truth was obvious. We had a full-on British agent (spy) in our midst. Lesson learned.

This also contributed to the previous section, and the very forward chap who was happy to tell me I was doing a poor job with PA. It turns out, a couple of the things I wanted to have happen in PA, didn’t, and it was because of her undermining our efforts. So I was genuinely trying to address the issue he’d pointed out, but this particular development stymied those efforts.

At this point, I had a conversation with both my son and one of our more engaged Generals, the latter of whom was a furiously competitive woman who would suffer no fools (nor spies) in the game, basically getting them to agree to babysit her. For a couple rounds thereafter, we did actually get a couple useful actions out of the British agent, because we made sure she had no opportunity to sabotage them.

I also personally oversaw a couple Pennsylvanian actions that didn’t conflict with my Lawmaker role, contributing as much as possible to the Hearts & Minds track for PA, without her sneakily reducing the total.

I spoke with her afterward, and it was clear she thought she had duped us for longer than she really had. I didn’t break the illusion by telling her the truth; she did indeed hinder us, so she fulfilled her role well. I simply took a gamble by giving her some power, hoping it wouldn’t fully backfire and using the opportunity to discern her true affiliations. The gamble failed, but I had known it was a possibility. Ah well. If I’d had done this over again, I would have considered attempting to jail her for crimes against the colonies. It would have been a dramatic moment. But I thought of this too late.

We left (in real life) on excellent terms, and I congratulated her on a well-played game. I even ran into her the following day at the convention and we chatted some more, with her boyfriend listening on with bewildered amusement.

Lines of Communication and Forms of Emergence

For a brief period during the teach, I was worried that the game would be about optimizing one’s colony board, generating resources onto the map, then min-maxing the war effort like a dutiful mechanical gamer.

I couldn’t have been more wrong. If the sections above about my lobbying efforts aren’t enough to convince you, I can provide an additional example…

In Turn 1 we passed the enlistment law and then…just sort of dispersed and tried to tell people about it. It was horribly disorganized, and some people missed the news as a result.

As the game progressed, streamlining communications became paramount, and channels for communication occurred organically, without mechanical oversight. At one point the lawmaking body appointed a liaison to the Commander-in-Chief (at his request) to create a single point of contact between us and the military. This was nowhere in the rules. We simply created it and agreed upon it because it needed to happen.

Theaters affected one another in oblique ways that we couldn’t have predicted. Our Commander-in-Chief would consult with us on laws to remove his primary struggles, and that of his generals and quartermasters. A chief quartermaster was named in some regions to assist in coordination efforts. An engine fell into place, but not a mechanical one. A human one.

We also struggled for the first couple rounds to actualize the entirety of our potential from our colony boards (which managed resource production) to the tactical/strategic map. What we needed, where, where it would move, for what purpose, how defended it was, were all considerations that most didn’t take into account until about midway through the game. This was an enormous logistical task that took tons of communication and effort by many players.

The concept of emergence in games is both self-evident at times and also hard to pin down, because there are different types of possible emergence in games. But I tend to enjoy games with more overt examples of it. And the staggering amount of social, political, mechanical, intra-system and inter-system emergence in this game isn’t something I can fully quantify. It’s amazing, frankly. But back to the game.

Odds & Ends

In no particular order, and happening concurrently with much of the above:

At some point we became aware of native tribes aiding the British. I imagine the southern states knew sooner than the rest of us. This was an issue, since the Brit’s main war push was from the south, and it’s where we had the most trouble with them throughout the game.

To relieve some of this pressure, we as a Congress appointed an official ambassador to the tribes, naming a southern delegate, and shortly after, Georgia seceded part of their state to the Cherokee nation in exchange for non-aggression. I was not a part of these negotiations, and I believe other tribes remained British allies at least nominally through the rest of the game. So the efforts were not as successful as they could have been, but still helped.

Much of our other time was spent debating and passing laws aimed at providing governing infrastructure that would aid Generals and Quartermasters, who had certain restrictions imposed upon them due to lack of unified colony laws as opposed to individual colony laws. We were catching up throughout the game to provide unified direction and support.

Working Toward a Peace

The British had sent a couple official proclamations early in the game, related to lower taxation and such. But their offenses outweighed the offers.

Late in the game, they proclaimed that they’d welcome us into Parliament. But by this point the war had waged for some time, and we sensed perhaps we could win. Outrage was also high that only now did they offer this. Their offer was quickly declined.

However, Patrick Henry (our Commander-in-Chief) came to Congress with a request: we needed a counter peace proposal, or else we’d look like barbarians.

With a few guiding suggestions from Henry, I was asked to craft the proposal. None objected. A gentleman from one of the southern states sat down with me, we discussed things briefly, and I began to write. I’m sad that I don’t remember his exact state or in-game persona, because while it was my pen that wrote the proposal and I did bring some individual ideas to its composition, at least half the document’s contents sprang from his mind. He was of great assistance, and while nobody had asked him to be present for the writing alongside me, he clearly had a vision that my words helped bring to life.

We had a few main goals: one, gain our independence, be recognized as an independent commonwealth, and have this as the core tenant of the proposal. Two, cover as many major grievances as possible to avoid objections. And three, bake in some items to use as negotiations chips, so to speak, so that if our full proposal wasn’t accepted, the compromise would still be acceptable to the colonies.

I am now long delinquent in mentioning the Marquis de Lafayette, whose efforts across various theaters were both spectacular and integral to our success. He and I became fast friends, both from Franklin’s perspective and Mark’s. This report is already long enough, but if I lengthened it, it would include a lot more of his excellent efforts. Here, at least, he gets his due.

With the proposal written, Paris agreed to host a peace summit and Lafayette was appointed to be our negotiator. He did a stunning job, arguing fiercely for us with the British negotiator. I was present in Paris, but only contributed a couple clarifying questions to ensure the proposal was properly understood.

We received…most of our asks. The chiefs concessions we made were not gaining Nova Scotia or Quebec (two of my aforementioned bargaining chips anyway; I never expected them to become part of the colonies), and committing to defending England should it be attacked in a foreign war (but being under no obligation if England was the aggressor). We also committed to providing favorable trade relations with England in relation to other countries, with details to be determined at a later date.

In return, the British removed their troops from our soil, removed their naval blockade, recognized our independence, and made some minor agreements of non-interference in various other foreign relations.

I had the honor of reading the proposal to Congress following this, and we required that it be ratified by each colony (now state) to pass. I called for the vote. It passed unanimously, and its tenets were put into effect shortly thereafter. The Marquis de Lafayette co-presented the approved and signed treaty to all present in the room, along with the British negotiator who was present in Paris, and they were met with resounding applause.

Why Did the British Agree So Easily?

Insane to think that there was a whole other game going on over on the British side, one that was opposing us. But I got a glimpse into it after the game when I was talking to the main controller.

See, we were losing the war. Probably, at least. To my untrained eye, I think that we were still easily within striking distance on the Hearts & Minds track going into the final round. But those more knowledgeable than I on the war front assured me it would be a steep climb, and that the British were likely to maintain their Hearts & Minds lead. Some fortuitous dice rolling had helped them, and the delay in fully coordinating our logistics engine didn’t help either. It was still a close-fought thing, but we were a couple points back on the track and without obvious ways to close the gap.

So they could have won through bloody force and retained control of the colonies. So why didn’t they? And why did they accept a peace agreement that seemed relatively pro-colonialist, without a ton of negotiating, particularly given their leverage in the war?

Two parties – Tories and Whigs – were at philosophical odds in Parliament. Apparently the Whigs had remained in power throughout the game, and their goal was to end the game peacefully. There was also pressure on them to end things peacefully, to prove that they had the influence to do what they said they could. Had the Tories overtaken the Whigs, it’s likely no peace agreement would have happened.

This is what I learned after the game. And I’m glad I did, because it didn’t fully make sense to me at the time. I felt like there was some piece missing to my understanding of the Paris negotiations.

So we got lucky. Everything we did, all our efforts, and we were losing the war. And a political struggle across the ocean falling a particular way is ultimately what allowed us to gain our freedom from England. Just incredible.

But Wait, There’s More…

The delegates from Georgia appeared before Congress and threw a couple barbs at the colonies for leaving behind their interests (they had remained controlled by the British the entire time). They had separately relinquished the entirety of their land to the Cherokee and had brokered marriages for themselves into the Cherokee nation. With that, they walked off defiantly.

This was met with good-natured laughter and more applause. The 12 United States (as opposed to 13) would thus begin their new journey together.

This more-or-less ended the formal game. Some thanks from the organizers, requests to fill out a post-game survey, and then players either left or – in many cases – stuck around for a while to have side conversations about the game’s events. I stuck around for perhaps 10-15 minutes, talking mostly with the delegates from my mid-Atlantic region, with whom I’d worked most closely.

The Aftermath

I walked through the convention hall following the game, a bit in a haze. Real life existed out here. I still didn’t.

I let the experience flow over me in ways that I hadn’t allowed myself to while it was happening. I had to be reacting and thinking. Now I could simply feel. I’d pushed us toward independence. Secured scarce funding to bolster our defense. I’d written the damn peace treaty that was accepted by two nations, then presented it to my peers, who had all expended vast amounts of their own emotional and cognitive resources in that room.

I had also been a part of something far larger than myself. I will never know the whole of what I was a part of, much like our real lives and our place in the world. It pushed me into a different type of experience than I’ve ever had in gaming. My eyes got a bit watery and a contented smile crept over my face.

So there you go. I’d probably do some things differently if I ever play in something like this again. But I’m also a little unsure that the stars will align in such a perfect way again in a mega-game for me. I couldn’t have scripted a better role in the game and its events for myself than what happened. Literally, whatever I imagined as a best-case scenario going in pales in comparison to what actually happened.

I would say that I fear something like this will never come together so well for me again in such a setting. But I don’t feel fearful. Such moments must be cherished, and need not be repeated to hold their power. I’m simply happy that it happened.