Voiceover: “And this week in Lazer Tag news….”
I did some more play testing of the barriers. Ok, at this point, it’s not really testing so much as playing. 🙂
I scheduled a last minute, bring your own tagger ALTC game last Saturday. Notice for the game went out the day before. I didn’t want a big game, and I didn’t get one. In fact, this was the second smallest game I’ve ever had. The smallest was a game in 2005 where no one came at all, and the four of us played a little before going home early. This one had one player come. That’s ok. Tod is a good guy. It was nice, actually, ‘cus the boys could just play and hang out, and I could relax and chat with Tod about ideas and stuff between games.
What I really wanted to do was try a few Zone games with the barriers. A Zone game is a game where the goal is to be in the “zone” generated by the dome of the host tagger for as long as possible. If you’re tagged, you have to get OUT of the zone ASAP, or face being tagged out by the zone. It’s a tricky game to learn to play, because the zone is an invisible dome of IR emitted by the host tagger sitting on the ground or something. Without good cover, there’s a lot of running to be sure you’re back out of the zone once you take a tag. We try Zone games at ALTC every once in a while, but they usually fail to impress people because it’s so hard to get the concept and visualize the invisible dome of light, and how big it might be.
I only had ten barriers made at that point, but it was enough, especially for such a small group. We set them up in a rough circle, with three openings. There were two lengths of three barriers, and one length of four. The barriers are triangular in their footprint, and so we had the interior of the circle more or less flat, and the exterior was all “spikey.” The Zone device was on the ground in the very center of the circle.
The first game went very well. It was obvious that the barriers would make Zone games more understandable and more fun for people. We played a couple more games, and decided to play around with the arrangement of the barriers. We tried turning some around, and even having them all standing individually making a larger circle. My favorite was when we had a couple in the wall of 4 barriers pointed inward, creating a small alcove on the inside of the circle. This gave a player more protection while in the zone gathering zone time for himself or his team. I think the ideal arrangement will be with 15 barriers. 3 walls of 5 barriers each, with two of them pointing inward to create an alcove for each of the walls. I’ll be bringing that number of barriers to ALTC games from now on, and playing one or more Zone games. I have a feeling they will be a staple game from now on, once people experience it with the barriers.
Changing tunes a little bit, with all this coroplast, I had one extra sheet than I needed for my barriers. This was fortuitous, because I had some “Game In Progress” signs that needed something to hold them up to be put up at the park entrances where we play. I cut my extra piece of coroplast into 4 smaller pieces, which were perfect for my signs. I double-stick taped the printed signs to the coroplast, and punched holes in the corners to run twist tie through to hang them on the fence near the entrances to the park. When we arrived at the park on Saturday, I put up a sign at the main entrance, and had Alex put the others up in the back.
Well, after playing a few zone games, we decided to play a two on two team game using the entire park, particularly the wooded area. As Nikolas and I were stalking the other team, Alex noticed one of the signs missing! Fortunately, it wasn’t completely gone, just torn down. Some hooligan obviously thought it would be funny to him and his buddies to grab the sign and give it a good hard yank. The result is that two of the holes were torn through the coroplast, and the other two twist ties came undone or something. While I guess I should expect this kind of disregard for people’s property in a public place like that, where the signs were unattended and out of eye shot from the people who put them up, it still hurts a little. I hope my children don’t do things like that, now or when they are older.
So anyway, I decided to reinforce the holes with grommets tonight. I’m not sure why I didn’t at first, but I guess I just didn’t think the signs would be such an enticement for vandalism, just hanging on a fence at the back of a park like that. I have a feeling it was one of the young men that came to attend a party that was being held in the park while we were there. I’ll leave race and culture out of it, but there was alcohol being consumed there. I hope the group does not make that their favorite park for their drunken partying in the middle of the day every Saturday. Public drunkenness and loud music with questionable lyrics is not something I would want to subject my club members to if I can avoid it.
Anyway…
So I’m also continuing with the barrier construction. I hammered away for over an hour tonight, pounding grommets into the piece of coroplast, readying them for their roles as the sides of the 15 additional barriers I am to make. Hopefully I can finish installing grommets tomorrow, and start assembly. I’ve got to get the living room cleaned up before Nikolas’ sleepover party on the 18th. 🙂