Surprising Finale - Deathmatch Island S1

Thursday night we wrapped up our first ever campaign (or season) of Deathmatch Island that we began back in April, and let me tell you what a pleasure it is to witness so many surprises as the gamemaster!

Despite being touted as a low-prep, narrative forward system (based on the PARAGON system used in AGON, a game of mythical Greek heroes), it was challenging for all of us to adapt to a game where the results are so random, and the bulk of the narrative is created after the dice rolls.

I don't think any of us have ever played a role-playing game where player-vs-player competition is such an expected result. Players initially collaborate and work as a team on the first two of the three islands, and characters build trust through questions they ask each other in between rounds, which can be spent to give additional dice or prevent injuries.

Even while collaborating there is pressure to win, however; the highest roll of each competition is the winner and gets the most 'followers', which work like experience points in other games. Competitions involve players building and then rolling pools of dice and then adding the highest two, trying to beat the roll of the Production Player (or game master - me) as well as each other. Failing to do so builds fatigue and occasionally injuries, but more followers can increase both the size (d6, d8, d10) and the number of dice you roll.

The real crux of the game comes when the team of players is split up on Island 3, and after they each overcome their individual challenges, they enter the Standoff. Here each player must secretly choose whether they want to Play to Win and win the Deathmatch Island competition, or to Break the Game and try to take the spectacle apart from the inside, but this only happens if all the players agree to it (without discussing it - a true Prisoner's Dilemma!).

Dexter "Crash" Knapp had become increasingly ruthless as the game progressed, leading players to think he was likely to 'play to win', and getting an advantage dice for being a backstabber. Some waffled but most of them gambled on Break the Game. One player, though, thought their best shot at escaping the island and returning to their family was to win it all alone.

(despite testing them beforehand I just could not get the cool Roll20 ballot cards to work, and the delays in trying really sucked the air out of the reveal in a lot of ways; thankfully the players were fine messaging me privately so I could reveal the results in our Discord chat).

The shock at the results was genuine for everyone else, including the Production Player, and was like nothing else I'd experienced in the medium I had enjoyed since I was 12.

The players (as well as two surviving NPCs) were put into two groups by the player whose character won the Scramble stage, but I had decided beforehand which one would Play to Win, and they ended up grouped with the game-breakers, so it turned into a melee. Strangest of all, the first cluster saw a conciliatory toy maker beat an overly intense martial arts instructor in a physical fight to the death.

Even the description of how this plays out is fascinating though, as the vanquished player has to consent to the ending described by the winner. Lyric's player rejected Harley dropping a Jumbotron on him, and then rejected her stabbing him through with a piece of wreckage, extracting the maximum pathos from the scene as he forced her to choke him out.

In the other pool, everyone expected Gus "Tough" Love to fall to Crash, who was not only less injured, but had achieved two additional tiers of followers. But in any game involving dice, surprising results can happen...

The players start the game as amnesiacs knowing nothing more than their pre-game occupation, then filling in the rest over the course of the game and during player-crafted flashback sequences between islands. In recent sessions, it had not only been revealed that Harley was a former member of Deathmatch Island's Production Team, but that Gus had been her guardian. (And the fact that the two players behind these characters are brothers in real life? (chef's kiss))

Despite being the only player able to use Trust in this final contest, Harley was unable to best Gus' amazing roll of 20 (the second of the night), making him our first ever victor of Deathmatch Island!

There is an epilogue that allows for a bit more group participation by all the players, and the potential to return to the same islands as different characters in "New Game +" mode, where the goal from the onset is to Break the Game. I am hoping we can come back and do this after a bit of a breather - this game is pretty intense.

And although the islands may be the same, the players and their new characters will be interacting with an entirely new cast, so there could be still more surprises in Season Two!

I stand by my assessment that Deathmatch Island is not a game for everyone - it is as much an exercise in shared storytelling as it is an RPG, and requires a certain degree of flexbility of all players (especially Production!). Once we wrapped our heads around the idea that the game unfolded in the 'Confessionals' that followed the dice rolls, and how much agency that gave the players, it became a lot of fun. 

And I cannot say enough good things about the Roll20 iteration of this game, from the quality maps, the brilliantly branded character sheets with easy inventory control and dramatic macros for dice-rolling, all the way through to the 14-track soundtrack, sound effects and even a video sting I could introduce each game session with. 

If you do remote gaming at all and are looking for a change-up, give Deathmatch Island due consideration. And remember: Play to Win™!