Fort Worden Lazer Tag in review…

The soreness has more or less subsided, I’m still fighting a chest cold that my wife passed on to me over the weekend, aided by the colder weather of Saturday, but darn it if I’m not gonna write up a review of the event!

I was up bright and early Friday morning, getting ready to leave for the weekend. The event was planned almost a full year in advance, and Nikolas really wanted to go this time, so Ingrid took Friday off as well. Yes, the boys “skipped” school to go play Lazer Tag that day. They made up their work, of course. So, anyway, we manage to pack more or less everything we needed for the 2 night stay in the dorms and 2 days of lazer tagging goodness, and headed down the road, snagging some McDonald’s breakfast on the way out of town. The drive itself was uneventful but for a call from Laserbait saying he’d be even later than he originally expected.

We arrived at the fort, and since I knew where the offices were, headed straight for them. I hopped out, and saw the PIC about my arrival, getting keys and a quick run down of the rules. Since we couldn’t actually check-in until 3pm, and games started at noon, I made sure I would still be able to check in and get room keys and food vouchers after our games ended at 5pm. Fortunately, they would be there until 7pm, so we were good to go. I was even allowed to leave the gate “fake locked” so that Laserbait could come up to the battery without someone needing to go down with the gate key to let him in.

DX, SparkySU1, and GadgetGirl were already there and ready to go. Alas, the van was packed full, and I did not have any spare room for their bags, so they had to carry them. Fortunately for at least one of them, there was a luggage type bag with a handle and wheels. 🙂 We made our 10mph way up to Battery Tolles to unpack and set up while the others walked up. Since we were there well before 11am, we had plenty of time before the scheduled play time rolled around.

By noon more players had arrived, including 7 of 69, Big Guy and Long Range, who had already finished putting up the barriers in the upper field area to provide cover for players who risked that area. Spike arrived with his TMB and World War I helmet that he got when he was a kid. He was totally into it. Noon came, and it was time to start playing tag! We warmed up with some CUST games, switched things up with some randomly assigned 2TMS and 2SRV games, and had an all around good time. Click here to start the photo gallery at the beginning with Battery Tolles games on Friday.

Some of the more memorable things from Friday for me are: Spike being a crack shot with the TMB missile. He loves it so much that he used it quite a lot. If it weren’t for shields being used intelligently by his targets, he probably would have landed a fair share of his tags by missile; Laserbait showing up at 2:30 and asking for a warm-up game. Sorry LB, warm-up games are at the START of the games. 😉 ; The hippie bicycle riding dude who was probably homeless or on a mild acid trip being asked to play with us. He turned out to be an ok guy and a fun player, but at the end of the day was trying to convince some of us to attend a burlesque show at a local tavern; Playing capture the flag twice and having players err in their judgment both games (one time a player did not release the flag when NEUT, and another time a player removed the flag from the pole held by a player who was NOT NEUT, in both cases clearly breaking the rules).

5pm rolled around on Friday so we packed up. It was great having the help of everyone putting the barriers away. Some of the players were already at the Commons (where the dorm people would have dinner) by the time we came down the hill in the van, but it only took a few minutes to get the keys and food vouchers. We were still early for dinner so I went in and found out how that works out from the Commons staff. At 6 we all had our food vouchers and headed in to have a seat in the dining room. Dinner was great with a good variety of items for people to choose from.

After dinner we headed over to the dorm to start claiming rooms. My brain was in neutral or something, because rather than open all the doors with my master key, I had everyone take keys and open doors, which then forced me to collect all the unused keys after everyone had finally made their choices. Next time, I’ll know better. 😉 The rooms were what one would expect from a college dorm. A small bed, desk, chair, dresser or closet, and a window. Some people found the beds comfortable, but I did not. I like them firm, so ended up putting my mattress right on the floor to give me some real support. Anyway, people had fun hanging out and chatting. Spike had a Steradian S-7 Tactical that he showed off. It has a WoW compatible mode, as does the LTTO Master Blaster, but for some reason nothing could make the S-7 land a tag on the TMB. The TMB could tag the S-7 just fine, though. Spike wasn’t too pleased about that. Steradian gear is NOT inexpensive. The kids really loved the long open hallway to run around and play in while the adults chatted in the common room or rested in their rooms. They loved turning off the lights and playing hide and seek games and stuff. Some of the adults decided to explore the rest of the dorm, most of which turned out to be unused or even in disrepair. Not sure what’s up with that, but our section was decent enough. Some say we should have played tag throughout the dorm, but I’m not so sure that would have been a good idea. Either way, it didn’t happen. I took some time that evening to distribute FWLT shirts to those that had them coming. They turned out really well, and I highly recommend Custom Ink for large orders of custom silkscreened apparel.

Bright and early Saturday morning, I woke up the wife and got ready. Breakfast was at 8am, with gaming scheduled to begin at 10. The dormies met at the Commons again for breakfast, which had all the normal breakfast items in plentiful supply. It was hard not to leave that with a full stomach, which is good since we were likely to need that energy. 🙂 Breakfast was over at 9, giving people an hour to get ready and up to Battery Benson. The weather wasn’t as nice today, and we feared rain, so I brought a bag full of washcloths so that people could try to keep their taggers dry if the liquid sun fell on us. Without our sleeping bags (bed linens were an extra cost) or luggage in the van, we had enough room for a couple bags of other people’s and so we made a couple people’s walk easier.

Battery Benson doesn’t really have any areas that needed the barriers, so those stayed in the van. The weather was really windy, but fortunately the valley between the battery itself and the hill on the other side of the road provided adequate shelter from the wind all day. We set up the hosting station and people started arriving. We encouraged people to take a good look around the battery with flashlights BEFORE they started playing. The place is dangerous enough when you KNOW it, let alone when you are unfamiliar with it. Laserbait wanted to go through the place as a group, and I thought that was a good idea, but too many people had already done their exploring and wanted to play, so we ended up making sure everyone was firmly warned that this place is downright dangerous. Twelve foot drops from level to level onto concrete is not something I want to see become part of someone’s day. I also distributed FWLT shirts to Izzy and Kari when they arrived, as well as to a couple other players later on. Unfortunately, a few players who said they’d come didn’t make it for some reason, so I’ll have to mail them their shirts. Click this link to skip to the part of the gallery that starts on Saturday at Battery Benson.

I think we started with a warm-up game of CUST to get going, but we quickly had more people than it was safe to try to remember what team they were on, so we divided into 3 teams which were filled as more people arrived. I gave team captaincy to Laserbait as well as 7 of 69 and Big Guy so that they could choose teams. Laserbait didn’t want to, ‘cus he didn’t know the players that well, but he did ok. He got me, anyway. 😉 The other teams chose well, too. From there we played a variety of 3 team games.

We had lunch delivered to the battery for those who stayed in the dorms. Others fended for themselves, but we did have a big bag of pretzels, water, and other snacks for people to sustain themselves with. The boxed lunches were pretty good, though the kaiser rolls used for the deli sandwiches was a little dry. I hate that. But they all came with fruit, soda, cookie, and even some potato salad, so were a good sized lunch. This was truly a perk for those who stayed in the dorms with us. I also took a few minutes in the middle of the day to get pizza preferences and place the pizza order at Pizza Factory for that evening’s dinner.

In and among the various 3TMS and 3SRV games, we also tried a couple of the less ordinary games. One of those games was a 3TOZ game, aka 3 Teams Own the Zone. The zone tagger (Starbase) was set against the back wall of one of the large rooms right in the front of the battery on the lowest level. This room had a lot of ways to get in and out, as well as a few places you could try and catch some zone time without anyone knowing. As I recommended, players from each team chose or alternately played the part of the zone time collector or bunker buster, trying to keep the other team’s players out of the zone. I spent some time trying to get in and get zone time, but when my shields were out, I reverted to trying to defend the zone by tagging any other team player, and sometimes just shooting into the room, hoping for some splash tags on the other team. Team Tags were turned off, of course. 🙂 This was the game that found itself being videoed, so here you have a few unedited minutes of that game.

One of the other unique games we played involved using DX’s Universal Way Point (UWP) devices. These are very flexible devices as far as how they can be used, but they are also a little complicated to understand how to use them properly. This game was set up as a kind of 3 Kings Own the Zone. Only player one (the King) on each team could score a hit, or capture, on the UWP. This alone make the game tough enough. But we kicked it up a notch by hosting it as a 3TOZ game. Why? Because the defenders of the UWP would be unable to protect the UWP white NEUT(ralized). This is because the UWP was programmed to be defended by its team’s IFF beacon signal, and could only be captured by tag signals coming from Player 1 on the other teams. People were excited to try this interesting take on Capture the Flag type games, and so I did my best to explain the workings of the UWP and the game to everyone. Unfortunately, my understanding was incomplete, and therefore my explanation was also lacking, resulting in poor or just plain incorrect understanding of the mechanics of the game by most players. The important part that I failed to understand and pass on was that the “Capture Clear” timeout on the UWP was set to 4 seconds. WTF does that mean? Well, I had forgotten at the time. Later I was reminded that Capture Clear meant that at LEAST TWO SIGNALS had to be received from the capturing player in 4 seconds WITHOUT a defending player’s IFF interrupting it for the capture to take place. I thought that a single shot was enough to make the capture, as long as the defenders were NEUT, but I was wrong. This improper understanding of the game led to some frustration with the game for many people, for which I greatly apologize. DX’s team, however, did well I think, probably because he was able to clear up the confusion for his team. I love DX’s UWP devices, but they need a much simpler user interface and easier to understand game requirements. Fortunately, the flexibility of their settings just means that it takes play testing to hammer out the best settings for different game types.

Toward the end of the day, Laserbait wanted to play another “old standby” called Fernhead. This game was designed for systems like ESS where each player only had a preset number of tags before out (usually 10) and they could easily reset their taggers and get back in the game. In the Fernhead game, the players would shoot the “other” people, and change sides when they reset their gear after dieing. If they died as a Fernhead (indicated by having a fern leaf tucked into the headband of the player, the restart as a non-fernhead. If they died as a non-fernhead, they would reset and play as a fernhead. The game ends when everyone is on the same side. The biggest problem with this idea was that with LTTO, there is no headgear with straps to wear, and so most people had no way to “wear” the fern leaf to indicate what side they were on at the time. I’ve played this game under the name of “raghead” where we would use the headwraps as the indicator. Ragheads wore their headwraps until out, etc. Unfortunately, we had already taken all the headwraps since we didn’t think we needed them again, and they were all in a jumbled pile of sweaty rags. No one likes wearing someone else’s sweaty rag, so we didn’t play it as a raghead game. In the end, much to Laserbait’s chagrin, we decided not to play Fernhead and instead just played a final CUST game to finish up the day. It was still a great game, though.

Before everyone left, we took a few group photos, including silly ones, and a couple shots of just the people wearing their cool FWLT shirts. You can see these in the gallery.

At 5pm we packed up all our stuff only to find that Laserbait had lost his keys! For some reason, SparkySU1 had them. Maybe he had to get something from Laserbait’s car or something, I dunno, but he started walking back to the dorms with the keys! Doh! The worst part is that my van was blocked in by Laserbait’s car. Fortunately, DX stepped up and chased after SparkySU1 and retrived the keys. I took the time he was gone to make a 5 ot 6 point turn in the small space I had available to do so. DX came back with the keys and we made our way down the hill. Those who were going to pizza were told the location and time again. We had time to go to the dorm to warm up and/or change into clean clothes (some people got pretty messy on the hill or in tight areas of the battery).

At 7, a large group of us met at the Pizza Factory in downtown Port Townsend. Since I had ordered the pizza in advance, it was just a matter of filling the reserved seating, getting a pile of drinks, and having fun! Izzy and his family came, as well as almost all of the dormies. Spike and his friends who came on Saturday decided to head off and do their own thing, but we look forward to having Spike at future games. It took a little longer than it should have for the pizza to arrive at the table, given that it was ordered hours in advance, but it wasn’t too bad. We were just all so hungry, it seemed longer than it was. Of course, the pizza was delicious. Laserbait even said it was much better than he remembered from when they went to that same place a few years ago. Waterfront Pizza is great, but they can’t handle large groups well, so I think we’ll do Pizza Factory for large groups in the future. Since we had a couple no-shows and a couple early departures (Laserbait ;-), we had extra meals, and so invited Izzy and his family to join us for breakfast the next morning, and I gave them the extra food vouchers.

After filling our bellies with delicious pizza and soda, most of us headed back to the dorm for our final evening. Of course the kids ran around enjoying themselves some more, and the adults sat around talking about this and that. SparkySU1 “opened up shop” in his room with some of the stuff he brought from his online business (One Source Laser Tag), and a few of us enjoyed perusing his wares and purchasing some of the things we liked. I bought a set of digital camo ACU from him. He had my size! In one of the photos, I’m trying on a small chest pounch/holster type thing, but it didn’t suit my needs so I left it. I think 7 of 69 picked up a pair of ACU pants to match the shirt/jacket he already had, and I think DX also got a set of ACUs. 7 of 69 got a 3 point adjustable rifle sling, too. I’m pretty sure SparkySU1 sold a few of his scope clamped LED flashlights during the event. Those were pretty popular for the darker rooms and tunnels in the batteries. I wish I had remembered to bring mine. 😉

We had bunches of extra pizza and snacks that night, but I don’t think I was the only one who was so full from the Pizza Factory that they didn’t eat much more of anything that evening. Well, the KIDS couldn’t get enough cookies, but that’s how kids are. 😉 Off to bed for me and most everyone else.

The next morning, we dragged our aching bodies out of bed and cleaned up for one more meal as a group. Breakfast! The selection was the same as the previous day, but nothing to complain about. I think I had more fruit and cottage cheese and less French toast and bacon this time. Izzy and family came a little late, but not too late to get some yummy in their tummies.

With breakfast so early (8-9am) we had plenty of time for everyone to get their stuff packed away and give me time to make sure all the rooms were clear and that I had all the keys back so that I could check out without any complications.

On the way out, we decided to take a closer look at Battery Kinzie. Unfortunately, it was REALLY windy that morning. This was good for me, ‘cus I was hot and needed some cooling down, but it meant that the wife and kids stayed in the van while I took a look around. When I got to the battery, I saw SparkySU1, GadgetGirl, and DX also looking around. It’s a really cool battery, kept in much better condition than the ones on Artillery Hill that we played at. The stairways and levels all had very solid steel pipe railings on them, and it even seemed cleaner overall. The reason for this is also the reason we are usually unable to play there. Battery Kinzie is one of the most popular/busy batteries on the fort. It’s right next to the campground and RV park on the fort, and it has VERY easy access due to parking lots only a few hundred feet away. It’s also right next to the beach. People see this battery most often, and visit it much more often than any of the batteries on Artillery Hill. The Park rangers don’t mind us playing during the off season (i.e. non summer months) and on the less traveled batteries, but they don’t seem to want to let us play on the best one on the fort. We’re going to see if we can work something out, but I’m not very optimistic about it. Battery Kinzie is really cool, though.

After a short look around Battery Kinzie, I headed back to the van to begin the drive home. I couldn’t wait to get back and relax in my comfy computer chair, and sleep in my comfy bed that night. I also can’t wait until next time!