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Organizing a game of "Assassin"
Grey Ghost
Registered User regular
Registered User regular
So lately I've been thinking about organizing a round of Assassin on my college campus. Exact rules tend to vary depending on who's running it but you can find a good rundown here.
A few questions:
1. Have any of you guys and gals ever participated in or organized a game, and if so do you have any general pointers for making things go smoothly?
2. Do you think Facebook is a good way to inform people and keep them posted of developments? I plan on inviting a few of my friends and telling them to invite some of theirs who might be interested. I don't want a huge group, not bigger than me and a couple other guys can keep track of.
3. Most importantly, have those of you who've done it had any sort of problem with campus security or police, and do you have any tips to avoid trouble with them? Obviously I'm not going to allow assassins to rain NERF darts on unsuspecting crowds just to eliminate one target, but I want to know if you guys had anything specific to suggest.
A few questions:
1. Have any of you guys and gals ever participated in or organized a game, and if so do you have any general pointers for making things go smoothly?
2. Do you think Facebook is a good way to inform people and keep them posted of developments? I plan on inviting a few of my friends and telling them to invite some of theirs who might be interested. I don't want a huge group, not bigger than me and a couple other guys can keep track of.
3. Most importantly, have those of you who've done it had any sort of problem with campus security or police, and do you have any tips to avoid trouble with them? Obviously I'm not going to allow assassins to rain NERF darts on unsuspecting crowds just to eliminate one target, but I want to know if you guys had anything specific to suggest.
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Facebook is good to keep track of everything, although you could potentially have people who want to participate who dont have/use facebook. Emails work well also.
If you keep it simple, only use direct methods of elimination, like popsicle sticks or spoons, and no one is chasing anyone down the halls or bothering classes then you should have any problems with cops or security. also no illegal activities should be allowed, ie breaking into someones dorm to assassinate them when they walk in. now if his roommate allows you in there thats different. So a good rule is that assassinations occuring when something illegal has been done make the assassination void.
good luck.
Yeah, this is what I would like to do. Nerf guns and those nifty little rubber band pistols.
First off, rules like "no chasing down halls or entering classes"? Don't count on them being enforced at all, your only symbolically laying them down.
In our game there was prize money involved for the ultimate winner. Maybe that was mistake, but that was also the ambition. There were two weapons, a knife (a shank), and a water gun.
There comes a point where some people may not give a fuck. My buddy and I were both in the game and we both had this one class together, and halfway through the class I notice some guy comes and sits in the very back in a hoodie. He starts taking notes and stuff so I think "whatever".
Later, I notice he's moved up a few seats. Now I'm really finding this odd. I tell my friend I'm moving away to another seat because I can't hear the professor.
After a few minutes, I look back and see my friend handing the guy his target card.
Assassinated. The guy gets up and leaves the class.
One time I was in the gym working out and I had to fucking stop because a dude was looking at me. I dipped out and went to the showers, showered, and changed clothes, put on sunglasses and left. Turns out the guy wasn't my fucking assassin at all either. Just some dude that wasn't even playing.
This shit will consume your life dude. I would have to park far as hell away from other cars and would cautiously turn by corners.
And you know how I ultimately died?
Bathroom. Taking a shit. I see a water gun appear over the top of the stall and the dude pulls the trigger. It's over.
Our rules are currently:
-Obvious melee weapons (light sabers/the like) allowed
-Nerf guns allowed
-Non-Sharpie markers allowed
-Cell phones/egg timers allowed as 'car bombs'
-No killing during school (this is the major kicker; you absolutely can't do anything on school property, but since this is high school, we don't actually live there, so it's ok)
-No killing at church or place of work
-No doing anything illegal (breaking into someone's car-- alternatively, if they leave it unlocked on non-aforementioned property, it's ok)
-All you are given is your target's name. That's it. You have to find out everything else about the target through friends/what have you, but any legal method of getting info is ok
-You can form 'death squads' of up to 4 people that all share targets and can collectively go after their targets
-Each squad has a 'card holder', which is the person holding the card with your squad's targets written on it. If the card holder dies, your squad dies
Our current game is going for 3 weeks, so it's a long term game. It's a bit restrictive with the rules, but I think I'd rather have restrictive than someone breaking into my house to shoot me with a nerf gun.
Concerning specific questions:
1. If you don't want the game interrupting classes, make a 'no killing in class rule.' Tell everyone who joins that if someone 'kills' them during class, it doesn't count and they don't have to hand over their card/Popsicle stick/what have you. I'd also suggest a no work/church rule like our game has, but home is going a bit far for college purposes.
2. Facebook is OK, but not everyone has it, so you'll probably want to rely on e-mail more, and send out a copy of maybe a word document or something to the players' emails with the rules in it.
3. Another thing about our game is that we have a 'police squad,' which is basically everyone who gets killed. An assassin who kills in view of bystanders is said to have been spotted and is reported to the police, who can then keep on the watch for him and stun him-- stop him from killing for 24 hours-- so it's a nice deterrent to doing it out in the open.
Anyways, a few rules that our campus has with games like these that tend to work pretty well, and are good for your own paranoia/sanity:
-No tag outs in class/lectures
-No tag outs in your own bedroom
-No tag outs in any bathroom
-No tag outs in your kitchen, if you have one
-No tag outs in the cafeteria
-No tag outs in a religious building or place of work (only active durng services/your shift, respectively)
Yeah, it seems like a lot of rules, but it keeps things civil. You REALLY want at least a few of them: class NEEDS to be a no-hit zone or your professors will get super pissed off, and the same goes for religious services and work. The cafeteria/kitchen and bathroom rules are not necessary but they're good to have, as you don't want players in the game to be discouraged from eating and good hygeine. Bedroom's nice for the same reason - it's nice to have that safe zone so you don't have to be a total recluse for the the month of the game.
Basically, the people at my school just get creative when it comes to assasinations. A lot of tag-outs occur on the way to class, so there's a lot of memorzing of typical "walking routes" and the changing of routes to throw off would-be assasins. Halls of buildings were a big place too, as was the outside of the cafeteria (just because you couldn't be tagged inside didn't mean you couldn't be tagged on the way out).
A lot of the most epic tags occurred way off campus, at restaurants and concerts and the like. One even happened in another city - guy's friend spotted his target, called up guy, guy tailed his target half an hour to another city, followed him to a concert, and tagged him in line. So it can still get pretty intense with safe zones
As for the police, just inform them that you're starting up a game soon, which will explain all the nerf paraphernalia. Most campus security are really cool guys, and they tend to be hired basically to pick you up and get you off the street with little to no punishment before the REAL police find you. And it's the real police you should worry about, but only a little bit. They're just nerf guns, and the guys would have to be proper assholes to nail any of you with a public disturbance charge or whatever. But just warn your participants to not do anything stupid/illegal in the game, especially off campus. You shouldn't be held responsible if any of them to....well, unless a LOT of them do. But if that happens, it's your prerogative to just call the game off.
I'm starting a game up soonish in which I plan to give everyone a polaroid of their target. If you kill your target, take his polaroid. If you kill your assassin...well I'm thinking I'll give everyone 2 targets to start with. Because otherwise you'd have people stop hunting you really fast.
I'm out of school, and working full-time though, and I'm in my own display center for my company, on my own, so I'm not near a large concentration of people all the time.
A shame.
If you college campus is only 1800 people, and pretty much every bathroom is public, the bathroom rule is practically a necessity. You generally can't lock shower curtains (or block the tops and bottoms of stalls), and the last thing you want to be doing is discouraging people from taking a shower or a shit.
Dorm room's more about people not becoming recluses and allowing them to have a place they can safely meet people that isn't a bathroom, but it still isn't entirely necessary.
Allowing people to kill their assasins is a bad idea, it makes a mess of the game really quick. If you don't know who your assasin is, you get people just shooting any dudes who look suspicious. The best thing to do is allow targets to "stun" their assasinins for an hour or so if they hit them. Really, knowing who your assasin is gives you an extreme advantage, so allowing targets to kill them too is pretty unnecessary.
Some people in high school did this years back and it was great. I remember hearing one story of someone hiding in the rafters of someone's garage, and then shooting them when the garage owner pulled into it.
water spirals the wrong way out the sink
I'd make one but I don;t know how to advertise it
Have a bunch of hand outs, saying:
Hear ye, hear ye!
A game of ASSASSINS is forthcoming!
In it, there shall be NERF GUNS,
LIGHT SABERS,
and other assorted MISCELLANEA.
Epic kills shall be had.
Email <your email> for more info/a list of rules.
I think emphasizing you have no problem booting people would be a good thing.
Maybe I'll think of a 'WOW-Assassin' game. Open a trade with someone and they're out.
Facebook is definitely the best way to organise this, at ours everyone was on it. You'll want to change your photo privacy rules and change the course your on, and change your status to give our false information if you want to stay alive.
1.) You were in the bathroom (our bathrooms only lockable from the OUTSIDE ...
2.) You were in class
3.) You saw your assassin (or whoever you believed your assassin to be) coming and put both hands on a wall. The second you removed either hand from the wall, however, you were fair game again.
The third rule sounds like a pain, but it actually created some hilarious situations wherein someone would get trapped, start scooting along the wall trying to get away, only to have to try to get past open doorways/people who decided to get in their way.
Once you started to rack up kills, you were allowed to "buy" extras, like poison (1/2 index card that you had to get in someone's food without them noticing) or hirelings (already-killed players you could hire to help you try to kill your target).
Some games have allowances for this. Like, if you see your assassin (and he has to have his weapon drawn, so you don't go shooting suspicious looking people as was pointed out above), you can try to fight back with your own weapon. Because, this being Assassins, you should have a weapon on you at all times.
Most games either have a system of safe zones you can run to, give you te ability to defend yourself, or both. Usually, "defending" oneself with weapons just stuns the assasin and makes him unable to tag you for 15-60 minutes, depending on the game.
I have never seen a game where the victim can "kill" his assasin ending up well, because then you get people with two targets and all kinds of ridiculous shit. Part of what makes the game cool is that once it's set up, it practically runs itself.
Though we had to shut down our game last year, because, and I shit you not, a black girl in the game was shot multiple times by a white student and two of his friends (one who was also black). She complained that the incident reminded her too much of the Sean Bell police shooting, and the BSU kicked up a shitstorm until the campus made the Assasins organizor shut down the entire game. I fucking hate our BSU sometimes.
We used squirtguns and names/room numbers. That added an element of a "stakeout".
I didn't kill a single person in the game, but had a "turtle" strategy where I only left my room for dinner/class/occasional social thing. I had my girlfriend walk with me at all times, since you couldn't "kill" someone if there was someone else who saw it.
Did you just say Zombies vs. Humans? I must know the rules to this immediately.
You know, I was hoping someone would ask me this. 8-)
Zombies v. Humans is sort of a combination of Assasins and Octopus Tag.
There are two sides: the humans/survivors, and the zombies. The zombies' goal is simple: tag bitches and turn them into zombies. The humans' goal is to survive as long as possible, the "winners" reaching a certain day you arbitrarily decide on (usually something like a week), or if you don't get that far, the last human standing.
Each side must be easily discernable at all times from a distance. In our case, humans wore a bright red band around their arms, and zombies wore headbands/bandanas.
As a zombie, you must "eat" (tag a human) once every 48 hours, or you "die" and are out of the game (besides having each victim report who has eaten him and when, there's no way to moniter this, it's just an honor code thing). You don't have to get the "killing blow" in order to feed - as long as you tag a human 5 minutes after he has already been tagged/zombified, you will sate your hunger. This encourages zombies to roam in packs.
As a human, there are certain safe zones that you can go and not get tagged, such as the cafeteria, library, classes, bathrooms, a "human HQ" dorm, etc. Most of these safezones become dangerzones after hours or at night (prepare defenses during the day, fight at night!). Humans are also allowed to use some kind of sanctioned projectile weapon (water guns, nerf guns, rolled up socks, etc) to "stun" zombies for a certain amount of time, allowing safe passage through dangerous areas.
Basically, the game begins with everyone as a human, with one person arbitrarily designated the first zombie (its usually an organizer). It quickly goes to hell after that!
The game is super fun and oftentimes pretty hilarious, since you never really have to be "out" unless you decide youw ant to be out. I remember many days last semester when I'd be eating lunch with a few friends while some zombies at another table stared at me menacingly, waiting for me to get up and walk out of the cafeteria (a safe area) and somewhere they could get me. I had to sneak out the service entrance/windows of quite a few buildings each week to avoid the zombie horde that perpetually waited outside places like the cafeteria and the science building.
A lot of the survivors formed little groups and would roam around together, giving each other covering fire and support, just so they could get to class and stuff. Some even went "zombie hunting" to thin out the zombie hordes around lunchtime and whatnot It was great
I don't know about Chopper, but the way we play Zombies typically goes like this:
-Choose a large outdoor area, possibly including a building to go inside of.
-Gather a big group of people (30+) and meet there shortly before dark.
-Start the game when it becomes dark
-Divide people into squads of 3-5, and have one group be zombies, with the rest being humans
-Humans have to capture two flags (symbolize necessary materials) and return them to a 'terminal', where a set amount of time after the game starts, the 'bus' will arrive to get all of the humans to safety. Note that the terminal is not a safe zone before both flags are captured, and humans therefore cannot just sit there the entire game.
-Only squad leaders can have flashlights and can use their cellphone to check the time, thus you need a squad leader to know when the 'bus' is arriving and leaving.
-Before the game begins, the zombies hide the flags
-Zombies cannot use flashlights
-Zombies cannot open doors (if in a place with a building, there are also usually open doors in some part of the building)
-Zombies cannot run (alternative: zombies can run last five minutes, etc), and must moan whenever moving
-Zombies can jump out quickly when first attacking someone (e.g. if they're crouched down or whatever, they can lunge out at someone to begin with), but must thereafter walk 'like a zombie'
-If a zombie grabs a human in such a way that the zombie could tackle the person to the ground, the human must stop, and after fifteen seconds becomes a zombie (alternatives include two-hand touch, actually tackling, whatever)
Games usually run for 30-40 minutes. Even if you have only 3 zombies starting out and 40 people total, it can easily turn into zombie paradise.
There are alternatives where 'mercenaries' come in at the last five minutes (when zombies can run as well, sometimes), and have nerf guns, helping the humans to kill off zombies.
It's pretty awesome, but remember to bring water, because running around for hours gets you pretty thirsty.\
EDIT: Looks like Chopper's rules are quite different, involving long term stuff. Our games are usually just for one night-- Big difference there.
edit: a quick Googling seems to confirm my version as the standard college campus variant, but I definitely want to try Argus's version now...
Muahaha, the seeds of dissent grow.
Take that!
Also, how much other info should be supplied. What with stalking and all, it's a tricky issue.
if they don't have pictures or anything, some good old fashioned sleuthing would heighten the satisfaction of finding, IDing and completing a kill
I've also played in games where 1.) you can only kill in populous places if you're killing with poison, or 2.) you get only 1 point for killing with witnesses, versus 3 for killing without. (Where points are used to get you more abilities and such.)
Those rules were very similar when we played it at our high school. The Game Master would post note cards on the wall or locker bay. One side with the alter ego name and the other side with the target. At a certain time they are allowed to be retrieved. There is a grace period* not sure exactly how long it is*. Our methods of killing are fairly simple.
Stab with a tooth brush to the torso.
-Block using a text book.
Possible to counter strike.
"poison" food with tabasco. that was banned from our school.
Also the ruled above applied.
It was fun.
For example, lets say there are 26 players (one for every letter of the alphabet) for convenience, and the targets are assigned randomly and then just checked once over to make sure no two people only have each other. What if, then, A was hunting F, F was after Q, Q was after T, and T was after A. That would suck.
I suppose you could solve this by randomly assigning every player a letter, and then making it go A hunts B, B hunts C, etc.
Guess I solved my own question there.
I plan to have an assassin take the target of their victim as their own, like you played it.