I’ve just run my first megagame, and there aren’t many places that show you how much a megagame costs to run. Most megagames are run by enthusiasts, and the costs seem to vary wildly from speaking to game runners. So I thought I’d keep some notes for my first megagame “Lit By Another Sun” which ran last weekend in Edinburgh.
Megagame Costs
My day job is running projects, so I’m used the idea of creating budgets for things and then monitoring how that went. For ‘Lit By Another Sun’ I started off looking at the fixed costs (venue, printing maps, components, travel) and the number of people that I needed as a minimum, and also the maximum number. When I pitched the game to True North in Oct 2024 I had it as needing 17 players as a minimum and maxed out at 32.
Mostly the initial estimates were done with help from a favourite search engine, and rounding up what looked like the cheapest option. I decided early on that I was going to do coloured t-shirts for the control team, with a back print of their name and role, but only if the game was big enough to cover the costs.
The venue cost is worth picking out. I booked the Quaker House in central Edinburgh. Just for asking I got the not-for-profit rate, and because I paid up front in November 2024 I also paid the 2024 rate for the venue. So this saved me quite a big amount of money (I’d have paid £540 if I’d have gone for the commercial rate and paid after I’d sold all the tickets). Given how precarious most megagames are in terms of break even etc I think this is something that others should consider. Especially if you are properly constituted as an organisation (True North is a brand, but not an organised group).
Setting Ticket Prices
So on my initial estimates I needed about £470 for the minimum run with 17 people. A quick bit of division gives a ticket price of around £27.50; which is in the ballpark when you look at what other megagames cost. So I took a pragmatic option of going for £30 and then offering a £5 discount for early booking, and a £10 discount if you booked a team/faction ticket for three players. I figured that this would give me an average ticket price of about £27.
When the tickets went on sale I sold a faction ticket before we’d even announced that they were on sale. It took until the end of the first month to sell the 17 tickets I needed to be certain of being able to run the megagame. That said I sold 15 tickets over the payday weekend, and went from 7 to 22 sold. About half-way through the month it looked like I was going to max out at 32 (and it did hit 31 sold at the end of the month). I added eight more roles into the game, one into each of the eight factions, bringing them from three to four players each. It was just as well as I then sold another five tickets bringing the total to 36.
I also gave away two free tickets, for my children (20 & 13) the elder of whom has played several megagames and the younger was interested in trying it out too (and they had fun, so that was worth it). If I hadn’t been running this game then I’d have been paying for those myself.
In total I sold 10 early bird tickets for £25 each. Five faction tickets (one at £75, four at £80), and all the rest (14) were individual tickets at £30 each. One ticket was refunded because a player was ill on the day and couldn’t make it.
Megagame Costs – components
I spent a lot more on components than I expected, and also more than I really needed to. Over the years I’ve accumulated lots of (plastic) gold coins, coloured blocks and counters, playing cards, and various items of stationery that are useful for running games and prototyping things. So I drew a bit on stocks, and also extended what I have. In this area I acquired:
- 332 meeples (assorted colours) £28.69 – these are all re-usable and most of them seemed to come back after the game
- 5 second-hand Scrabble games, plus 2 sets of coloured tiles (red and purple) £42.17 – I have all of these intact, and could either host a small Scrabble tournament, or use them in other games. At a push I could sell them on.
- 100 name badge holders £14.99 – again reusable, I’ll almost certainly not run out of these for quite some time even if I ran regular megagames.
- Storage boxes (44.29) -there were three of these in different sizes, although the two smaller ones went into the big one:
- I bought a 64L really useful box that the entire game less the map fitted into. This was really handy for transporting on the day. Most of the content was either printed material that was recycled, or re-usable components (see above) that I have other homes for.
- I also bought a Photo Case Carrying Box – this was a genuis idea I stole from Becca at God Emperor. There’s a carrying case for 16 boxes made to fit 6″x4″ photos. It meant that each team had all its starting components and player briefs in a box we handed to the first player in the team to arrive.
- The last storage box was an A7 file index box capable of taking about a thousand A7 cards. This last was used for the scientific sample cards, and also the map events and mystery plot clues. All of those were driven by the scrabble tiles, and they had letters printed on the reverse.
- Misc components £21.97 – I bought some more playing cards to ensure we never ran out, and some more cubes, dice, and gold coins for the same reasons. All of these were used during the game along with existing items from my stock.
Looking back I think I just underestimated the cost for components. If I hadn’t had lots already available then it would have been more expensive. The Scrabble idea came from a later playtest on how to streamline the survey/samples. There might be an even easier way to do this (like just pre-stack some decks and give people the top card).
Specifics
This is a sub-set of the components, but I thought it useful to break out the things I expected to be able to re-use (making them capital) from the things that I definitely wouldn’t be reusing. The costs here are lighter than they should be, partly that’s because I ended up using card, labels, paper, envelopes and laminating pouches that I already had. If you aren’t the sort of person that routinely holds all those sort of things in quantity then you’d probably spend a lot more on this.
Things I used but didn’t track costs for:
- foamboard – Becca and Ciaran made my foamboard counters, using approximately 6 A4 sheets worth.
- Lamination – my children helped with the labour, and I think there were about 20 A4 laminated sheets, including six with A4 stickers (done double sheeted so the stickers are laminated when you cut them apart).
- Briefings and rule sheets – I probably printed a couple of hundred sheets overall, on my colour laser printer that’s maybe £5-£7 worth (I think it’s about 3p per page to print, for paper and ink but not including a share of the capital)
- Envelopes – the briefings all went into C6 envelopes with playing cards and character cards
Stickers
Not strictly speaking megagame costs, but certainly one I incurred. I budget for 50mm stickers for players of the mission patch for the game. My initial estimate was based on 50 stickers of one design. I actually ended up making 200 stickers of 11 different designs, of which 50 were the design I intended initially. Almost all of the players got one of the main stickers, and the rest went to anyone that asked, got stuck on the boxes (the other designs were the factions, so I labelled each faction box appropriately).
Generally this was overkill, I’ve probably still got 6 or 7 of most of the factions left over, and about 20 of the main mission patch. I think if I were to do it again then I’d stick with one design and a print run of about the number of people in the game.
T-shirts
Another one that isn’t strictly speaking megagame costs, but it is something that a number of megagames have done over the years. Given that Lit By Another Sun was the first megagame I’ve run as a designer (despite it being by 83rd megagame) I really wanted a t-shirt for it. I acquired 20 t-shirts, of which 7 had back printing. So the average cost of the t-shirts was £11 each, and the six control got one as did both of my children. I sold two for £10 each at the game. I gave a few away too, and had six left (2 each in 2XL, XL & L).
With hindsight I didn’t prep the t-shirt designs early enough, both the t-shirts and stickers should have been sorted out before the game tickets went on sale. Along with the links for the discord server, the casting questionnaire and Player Handbook. If the whole package had been there at that point then I would probably have got the order right rather than taking a risk on it. If I’d just ordered the t-shirts that I needed for control and my family then I think it would have been around what I’d budgeted or slightly cheaper).
Refreshments
This wasn’t in the budget. I made a conscious choice when it was clear that I was going to go beyond the maxing out of tickets that I would manage spending to ensure that the megagame costs were enough to balance out the income so that I could happily avow that it was a not-for-profit event if challenged. The simplest way to do this seemed to be to provide refreshments on the day.
There were two scales for tea & coffee, with and without biscuits. With biscuits was £1.2 per person per serving. So I ordered a 0915 and a 1215 serving of tea, coffee and biscuits so that people could have some when they arrived, and also when we broke for lunch. I also went for the highest rate when ordering lunch for the control team and my family, with eight sets of sandwiches, savoury bites, cake and drinks. Between them these added £214 to the cost, which was enough to put it back in the balance.
I’ll almost certainly keep this in if I run megagames in future, although it might not include biscuits or the full on control lunch unless the overall numbers and ticket income supports that. I can give everyone a couple of hot drinks for £1.80 on their ticket price, and I think that’s worth it and it saves players having to leave the venue in search of a brew during the game. It also gave another space where people could talk out of sight/earshot of others.
Megagame Costs – Conclusions
I don’t think that it’s inevitable that your megagame costs will exceed your ticket income. I think if you are disciplined about it, do some research and set a budget, and work on how your game scales, then you can absolutely make a surplus from running a megagame. I wouldn’t go so far as to call that a profit. If I’d paid myself at minimum wage for the effort I put in then that would have far exceeded the ticket sales!
One thing I didn’t buy, but could have used, was insurance. I went into hospital as an emergency admission the week before the megagame. It didn’t stop the game, but I was genuinely worried it would. Thankfully I had a brilliant control team who rallied round and made it work despite my illness.
You do need rather a lot of money up front to afford to run a game. Not everyone has this, which is all the more reason to set things up properly so that the group you need to make this work can pool money, get their loans back when needed, and also build a buffer for future events.What I would recommend doing is setting your megagame group up properly, with a constitution etc, and have that as a not-for profit. You can then access discounts at a lot of public and social sector venues. This will keep your costs down a lot. If you do make a surplus then you can build a fund to help run future games, which wouldn’t be unreasonable. You can also pay a designer royalty, and game runner expenses, which are also reasonable while still being ‘not-for-profit’.
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