The Sydney Megagamers is a non-profit association passionate about designing and running large-scale social simulations that examine diplomacy, politics, strategic thinking, problem solving, roleplaying and board-gaming.

Our goal is to deliver a diverse range of high-quality Megagames. Our events usually run for 6 to 8 hours with dozens of participants. They look at ways to make gaming fun, immersive, educational and intellectually stimulating.

Our team members are all involved through their passion alone. Each project is designed by a small, dedicated team, and each event is run by a handful of volunteers. All sales from our events are used to fund production and design of our games, and the facilitation of our events.

We are based in Sydney with a community spread across Australia.

Keen to see a Sydney Megagamers event in action? Look no further.

We were blessed by the filmography and editing skills of Genji in 2024, who came along and captured some footage of the second run of The Generalissimo is Dead.

Megagames are large scale social simulations which observe dozens of players (sometimes hundreds) convening on a single day to play out the narrative at hand. They touch on diplomacy, social interaction, politics and strategic thinking, pulling directly from the realms of roleplay, theatre and board gaming.

All megagames are different, both in the mechanics that govern them and their setting.

Players spend the game, often six to eight hours, dealing with one another through the mechanics of the game. These are often as simple as holding discussions and negotiations, though can be more complex like the card and token resource management players might associate with board games.

Throughout many megagames players also pursue goals and objectives. Their pre-game briefing material may lead them to covet certain resources, build specific relationships, or make progression in a certain field of the game.

At the end of the megagame there are no winners or losers – rather, players get to reflect on the collaborative story they have told, and the incidents they encountered (and conquered) together throughout the day.

To hear how we describe megagames (and, in future episodes, talk about designing and running them) you can tune into the first episode of our podcast, The Great Game.

For a now world-famous video record of an iconic Megagame, Watch the Skies, check out the Shut Up & Sit Down video here.

To read a player's account of one of our games in Sydney, check out Sympathy for the Devil by Tony.