I'm Connor McCann and thank you for checking out my first blog! As you will come to see, I am into Nerf guns and games (understatement), whether as an organizer or as a player. I first got interested int outdoor/real life game at the start of this year, and I'm striking my first blood now as far as the blogosphere goes. As such, I have a story about first blood that I feel is appropriate given the circumstances.
In a little more than a week, I will be kicking off A Friendly Game of Assassin II: Team Challenge , a 5 week, 24 hour a day game taking place in the real world. Players are formed into teams, assigned targets and aside from a few places that are off limits (insides of homes and jobs/schools), take them down where ever they catch them. To enter the game, players email me their home and work addresses, as well as a recent picture. This story takes place during the first Friendly Game of Assassin, which concluded in May and was won by Trevor Holminski (a past collaborator, very frequent team mate at games and my eventual Nerf murderer in Game 1).
My target was a guy named Ajesh, who with his wife Ami, had attended the first game I had ever run back in February. I hadn't gotten a chance to see him play, but I had talked to him and his wife for a bit between games and they were very friendly people. He was my first target in the game and I was excited to draw him, mostly because he lived about 10 minutes away from where I grew up in the Mission. I had a strategy: rent a Zipcar, find a place to park near his house (which were he lived wouldn't be easy), let him walk by me and jump out behind him. In the passenger seat next to me sat a Rough Cut 2x4 and a Strongarm.
Like I said before, I wasn't familiar at the time with Ajesh's playing style. I was also a little antsy on the drive over, as I had never jumped out of a car and tried to shoot somebody before. This was both my first time organizing and playing in a game (to keep things honest, my girlfriend did the actual target selecting, ensuring I didn't know my Assassin), so I didn't really know what to expect. However, Ajesh had already, unwittingly, helped me out. Ajesh is a fairly avid user of Facebook and in the week that transpired between when the game started and when I went on the hit, had checked into 3 or 4 places on Foursquare. If you're trying to assassinate someone, not much is going to help you more then knowing where they are. Sadly, every time he had checked in somewhere, I was at work, un-able to pay him a visit.
Still, the information helped me out in another way. I saw that he checked into places at around 5:30 or six clock monday through thursday. On Friday is was earlier, which lead me to believe that if he was able to get off work early, he would do so around 3:30/4. Friday was the only day our schedules synced, so to speak, so I headed over to the Mission in the never ending search for a parking spot at around 3:45.
Without saying where he lived, I knew I wanted to find something on Mission street itself, halfway between his house and the BART station. I knew he had a car, but I didn't know what it looked like, or if he would chance using it on a Friday afternoon. Before looking for parking, I wanted to swing by his pad and have a look around. Luckily, I found a parking spot 20 feet from his house. I turned my music down, un buckled my seatbelt and waited. Maybe 10 or 15 minutes had passed and I gave my girlfriend Courtney a call, saying that I would hang around for maybe 30 minutes more, but I doubted any longer.
Maybe a minute had passed when Ajesh walked right infront my car. It was weird, because I saw him but it took a second for it to actually make sense to me. When I released I needed to get off my hind-quarters and take a shot at him, I saw the look on his face. Any one who's lived in The City would recognize it: narrowly drawn, glazed over eyes placed a top an responsive, stone face, a face that says its been a long ass week and I'm tuning every thing out until I get home. You can frequently find me walking around here with such a face.
I knew he didn't see me and as I crept up to within half a foot of him, I knew he didn't hear me either. He was about five feet from his front door, while holding my rough cut, I debated with myself whether to barrel tap him or just shoot him with the darts.
I shot him with the darts.
He had the same reaction to getting shot as I had seeing him: he looked down at the darts on the sidewalk, recognizing them for what they were, but unable to make a connection. Then it hit him, and after a quick burst of profanity, he shook my hand and said "nice kill!" I asked him if he was armed and he told me he wasn't. He wasn't even planning on coming home: he was just going to go straight to a bar (it was Friday after all) but he decided he didn't want to carry all of his work crap with him. I said I had figured if he was going to be coming home at any time before 9 or 10 it was then. I said I was surprised he hadn't walked up from Mission, instead coming from the opposite direction and likely contributing to my momentary inaction. He then told me that he "hated me now", was bummed that he didn't get to try out his plan for his target, but would be coming to my Humans vs. Zombies game the next day (which he did).
I was happy to take him down, but the experience was still a bit strange. As noted above, I'd never ambushed someone infront of their house before. Prior to the hit, I had a semi-grand plan of what I was going to do, where I was going to take cover if needed, what angle to attack from, if i should run back to the car to get another weapon etc. I didn't have any clue that it was as simple as finding a really good parking spot and quietly walking behind someone. This proved to be the case in later hits, which I'll talk about as the June 20th start of Game II draws closer.
In the meantime, thank you if you're still reading (its a bit to commit to the first time you meet someone, I know) and here are the links to my groups if you're in the Bay Area and what to play Assassin, Humans vs. Zombies, Tactical Ops or more traditional games like Capture the Flag and Team Death Match:
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