Megagame Design The Easy Way
Many megagame designers have used existing board game or computer games as an inspiration or framework or basis for a megagame idea. This can be an extremely good way of getting into designing your own games.
Jim Wallman talks game design in his blog No Game Survives
There are some advantages and also some pitfalls for the the unwary new megagame designers. It is important to remember that a megagame is superficially like many types of games but its characteristics mean that its design is not like designing a role-playing game, a board game, a LARP or a wargame.
Merely ‘porting’ an existing game from an existing genre, adding more players and calling it a megagame does not easily work very well. And this has been my experience.
However, that does not mean that concepts and some of the mechanisms from other game genres might not be usefully used in the megagame context, obviously with some important adjustments. This is an especially attractive route, particularly where the designer is new to megagame design and maybe does not have to confidence or experience to develop all the systems and mechanisms needed for a game from scratch.
That said, even the most experienced designers will draw on their own personal ‘toolbox’ of systems, structures and procedures that they have developed in earlier games or borrowed from other designer’s games.
Many of our most successful games started with inspiration from another game. BUT when drawing on another game design remember to allow for the unique dynamics of the megagame.