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Lowell Kempf
United States
Chicago
Illinois
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Lately, I have been writing about the elements of gaming that are actually outside of the game itself. Meta gaming and gamesmanship, the parts of a game that don’t involve the rules or the pieces but the behavior and intentions of the players.
The nature of these elements that exist out of the game could be described as what we put into the game and what we get out of the game.
Over the weekend, I talked to an old friend who used to play The Assassin Game. In this particular case, this refers to a live action role playing game where a group of people agree to a play a full time game of last man standing. Using a set of rules that are designed to keep from anyone actually getting hurt (spoons for stabbing, nerf for shooting, etc), the players are open to getting eliminated from the game 24-7 until one person is left.
Now, I’ve never actually played a game like that, which means I really don’t know the rules or the system. I do understand that there is a referee system so there is some organization and adjudication going on. Beyond that, as far as I can tell, it’s just a bunch of nuts pretending to kill each other in the streets.
To be honest, I don’t think I’d ever want to play a game like that. Too much stress and too much time commitment. And, while my friend looks back upon his time of playing the game fondly, his stories make me even less inclined to ever want to play.
I’ll call him Mr. A because I think confidentiality is really needed in this case. Mr. A when played the Assassin Game was apparently someone who was willing to go to ridiculous lengths to eliminate other players. People who were involved in his games told me stories, like how he hid spoons in people’s lawns during the night so he could look unarmed or hid under someone’s porch overnight. I do know he snuck into someone’s office and sent them a ‘bomb’ note (just a piece of paper that says If you are reading this, you have been assassinated) in their inner office mail. He even apparently took to learning how to talk with a miniature spoon in his mouth so he could have someone pat him down and still get them.
In fact, when he heard about how, in a current game, a player had been transferred to Prague for two weeks, his comment was “If I was still playing, I’d be pricing plane tickets right now.”
Needless to say, he had to quit playing the Assassination Game because he got too wrapped up in it. When he was playing, he was willing to things like trespass and aggravate a lot of people who weren’t in the game just to make one kill. When he lectured me about how to play the game, he said that you had to realize that your actions had consequences and then you had to accept those consequences if you wanted to win.
So what does this have to do with my own gaming experiences? While Mr. A is a good friend and I like him a lot, I still think that the game drove him a little crazy and that he is better off never going anywhere near it again.
It’s because this was his final word on the subject: “At the end of the day, what I got out of it was a lot of great stories, stories that I would never be able to tell if I hadn’t played.”
And, while I am never planning on sneaking into someone’s office in the name of a game or spending eight hours under their porch, I do have to admit that the stories that I get from gaming are sometimes one of the biggest rewards.
No, I don’t have any stories like Mr’s A’s. I have never had to risk getting arrested for a game of Settlers, although I have probably come close to getting a punch in the nose. However, I did meet the woman who I’m going to marry over a game of Settlers.
And there are certain games that you play because the overall experience of the play is going to stay with you for years to come. Advanced Civilization is one that stands out for me. While the number of players you need and the time it takes to play means that I am lucky to get in one play a year, every game becomes a story that you talk about for years to come.
Games become part of the story of our lives. Hopefully they don’t become the entire story or the most interesting part but they can certainly become something to remember and to talk about.
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