During the winter months, i.e. the wet season, I don’t get as much tagging in as I like. The problem is that it’s such a big risk scheduling a game for fear of rain. LTTO gear does OK in light rain for a little while, but too much rain, and after a while it seeps in and the tagger stops working properly. Sometimes I go too long between games, and it gets to the point that I really don’t care about the weather, so I schedule a game anyway, and just hope for the best. All week long, rain was predicted for the weekdays and the weekend.
I try not to watch the forecasts too much in the week leading up to a game day, because it seems that when I do, things look good, and then turn bad right before the game. This week, I peeked a few times, and was not happy with what I saw. It didn’t help when forecasts called for rain, and then the days of the week were actually sunny and warm. It was too good to last, so I was sure there would be rain on game day. I even practiced setting up my second canopy for extra rain protection during the games.
There were a few sprinkles in the morning as I packed the gear into the van, so I didn’t change any plans. The forecast this morning still called for 50% chance of light rain. I’ve had 30% chance turn into rain, so I didn’t take any risks and change plans.
We got to the park and got set up. Ingrid and the boys are a great help with the whole thing as always. It would take me twice as long to set up without them. We were ready to go a few minutes before the scheduled game start time of 1pm. By that time we had a few regulars there, ready to play, and even a few newbies ready to learn. Mere minutes later, I was looking at a healthy turnout, and was ready to get the games going… and then more people show up.
It all happened so fast, that I was simply laughing out loud at all the people showing up. Returning players, new players, accompanying family… it was crazygonuts! By the time we finished playing warm-up games of LTAG, and explaining the system to the newbies, we had MORE people show up. Even after we played a scored game, yet more showed up. I think we had close to 40 people there wanting to play laser tag, not counting their family that brought them who just watched. Well, for those that don’t know, Lazer Tag Team Ops has a limit of 24 players when running hosted, scored games. We prefer hosted games because we like the scores, but also the flexibility of the game types. When we have had games with 25 or 26 players in the past, I was fine sitting out, or someone else would sit out. With so many more than 24, there would be a lot of people sitting out each game.
The task at this point was to figure out how to make sure everyone got plenty of chances to play. After doing a head count to see how many we had, I told everyone what our options were.
We could play a large scale LTAG game. This doesn’t have a player limit, but isn’t very flexible. You can’t disable friendly fire, and you can’t increase the number of tags until out (only 10), and they can disappear fast. This means that the games are often very short, or a lot of people get tagged out early, leaving only the best players to play hide and tag while the other players just sit around.
Another option is to host two games simultaneously. By a stroke of luck, it’s possible for players on two different games to interact, as long as their games each have the same number of players. We’d have done this, except that we had an uneven number of players that didn’t allow the kind of splitting we would need to do.
The final option was to simply rotate players and just run 24 player games while some people sat out in turn. We decided to do this because everyone prefers scored games, and we couldn’t do the multiple interacting games idea. I also fortunately had some game sign up sheets for just such an occasion I expected a long time ago. We whipped out the sign up sheets and people lined up to fill in the sheet for the first game.
As soon as the first sheet was full, I began hosting that game, and the remaining people started filling in the sheet for the next game. I didn’t play the first game, because there were already some more players that just came and would need instructions on using the gear for their first time. I got the first game going and those players ran off to enjoy themselves, and so I got back to work teaching the newest set of players how to use the gear. It’s not complicated gear, but I always like to make sure there aren’t any problems that come up just because a player didn’t know where to aim, or “what that button does.”
With the newbies playing some warm-up LTAG, I put myself on the list for the next game. Hey, I love it when the kids have fun, but I’m doing this because I like to play! The first game ended and we got the scores which I recorded on the sign up sheets themselves. Since we didn’t split up into specific groups, I had to then figure out who to let go first to take the remaining spots on the next game. I decided to pick those with the lowest ranks first, and as I called their names, they were allowed to go get in line to sign up for game #2. This worked out ok the first time, but not so well the next time. After the second game, I was told that a couple players didn’t wait for my instructions, and signed up as soon as they got back from the game they just played in. This wasn’t a really big deal, so I didn’t make a fuss, but I was more determined to make sure everyone got as many chances to play as I could offer.
Once all four of my game sign up sheets had been used up, we took a group photo. Unfortunately, some of the players had left by the time we got together for the group photo, so this photo doesn’t even represent the total number of players. Imagine a few more in there.
After the group photo, we took another head count to see if we had the right number for a multiple host game. As it turned out, enough decided not to play again that we only had 25 players. By the time we got the hosting started, we only had 24. For our final game, we played a Medic! game, which many of the players had been begging to do previously. Medic games are a lot of fun, especially when everyone has plenty of tags to go through before out.
Check out the gallery of photos that Ingrid took for us.
The end of the game day came, and people left in a hurry. I wonder if they had somewhere else to be? Or maybe they saw the clouds that were bringing the rain that was soon to come. In any case, we packed up and grabbed some pizza for dinner, the food of laser tag champions!
Thanks to everyone who came!
great looking group