San Francisco, where i've lived for my entire life, is not such a place. Its pretty normal for someone to not want to do something because the activity at hand is "too far away." "Too far away" ranges anywhere from having to take the bus more then 20 minutes to simply out of one's neighborhood. As such, for the totality of my life, I've been rolling like the big shot that I am in my BWM: BART Muni Walk. With no other option but to zip around the city in my BMW, in particular the W aspect of it, I've gotten somewhat familiar with the finer points of the city's architecture and lay out.
During a recent conversation about Nerf game planning, I came to a realization of sorts. Most, if not all the activities I enjoyed most as a kid and teenager (before the internet sucked me into its dark abyss, some time around 1997) were activities that were influenced and almost reactions to what I had at hand outside. This ran the gamut from bird watching, playing war games in the park up the street, riding bikes and skateboards up and down the giant hills near my house, breakdancing on concrete and writing graffiti on buses and walls all around the city.
Though maybe not the most morally respectable hobby for a youngster to pursue, in retrospect writing graffiti influenced how I plan Nerf games more then any other factor or facet. It didnt give me an early start at stealth training or some super Parkour climbing skills. It taught me how to look at a piece of real estate and evaluate its worth towards my pursuit in less than a minute. When I was writing graffiti, I would find a spot that I thought was cool (in the opinion of many at the time, hitting up [writing] in a really cool spot was almost as good as hitting up with a cool style, ie. "Yeah, that looks wack but damn, he did it off the side of a freeway"), figure a way to get there or write without being seen, write my name and try not get caught. Every time I wanted to write. Standing around just staring at something was bad news, even if I was just a kid. Thats obviously not a concern today, as I don't have to worry about Johnny Law or getting kicked off the bus for planning games.
But the mental process is pretty much the same. When I have a game or concept I want to do, I go to the general area where I want the game to take place. Then its a matter of just walking around the neighborhood, taking in my options. If I say "Oh! Damn!" a couple of times before I even get to where I want the game to start, I know the area is special.
followed by "What the hell is that thing?"
I still don't know what it is, but I used it for my first game of Tactical Ops: Squad vs Squad and will be coming back to it for the next game as well. I was walking around China Beach, near the new ballpark (As Candlestick will always be "the ballpark" in my dictum) when I came across this structure. As stated this was the first game, so I wanted to push the envelope a little bit with the concepts. One mission in particular was called "Meth Lab." The goal in this mission was for the team on the offense (known in the game as the Special Operations Force, or SOF) to clear a particular area of rivals in an allotted time. If they failed, the defensive team, the Insurgents, would finish their batch of proverbial meth. Sounds simple enough, right? Walking along the boulevard, I had the aforementioned oh damn moment when I saw this beauty.
The third thing I thought after oh damn and what the hell is that thing was that if you boarded it up, somebody could really cook some meth in there. Might be a little tough in the middle of the UCSF college campus, but if you take that weird three-quarters shack thing up on the side of a mountain you'd be in business. That qualified enough in my opinion, but since you can't run a game on story line alone it needed a closer look. Stepping inside of it, the immediate defensive advantages for the Insurgents were apparent, especially the fact that they could fire out of the spaces between the wooden planks. The disadvantages were apparent too, considering that aside from some cars in the parking lot, the Meth Lab was the sole cover available to the defensive side.
Meth Lab was the second mission of the game, but since the first mission lasted less than 10 minutes, it was the first mission in the game where the two teams heavily engaged each other. I was the team leader for the Insurgents and before the mission started, a player named Arthur (who had played once or twice at the time but since has become a mainstay) asked if he was allowed to climb on top of the structure. I said sure, go for it man. Then I saw that he was armed only with a Strongarm. I asked him how much ammo he had and he replied in an admirably nonchalant manner "just whats in the gun." On the other team, there were numerous people armed with Stryfes, a guy named Alex dual wielding Vigilon Disc guns (which is what he brings every game) and a few people with Retaliators. I wanted him to shoot from up there, but the advantage would be negated if he only had 6 darts. I handed him a bag of ammo and said have fun.
Arthur ended up getting more kills than anyone, didn't die or even get shot and in the end keep it safe enough for the Insurgents to cook their batch of sweet sweet ice. With the lab so secure at points in the round, the defense was able even to go on the offense a few times, charging forth across the street and pushing the offense back, though we always had to retreat.
One player on the other team was Ben who runs the weekend games for Jericho, San Francisco's Urban Spy Game. After the mission, with an exclamation of "Dude! That was intense!", Ben asked me how I found the structure and what it was. After a quick back and forth about the quarter-shack's benefits and flaws, he said that he wanted to do a mission there himself.
And now we are. On June 29th, we're co-hosting the third installment of Tactical Ops and in truth I'm honored. The first nerf game I ever played was a Saturday game of Jericho hosted by Ben. It was during the first mission of that game that I was bitten by the Nerf bug, a bite thats been left completely un-treated and now is pumping a steady stream of nerf toxin directly into my heart. I couldn't be happier, because that game wasn't all that long ago and we're already working together. I'll definitely be blogging about it in the lead up to the game and afterwards.
In the mean time, i'll be hitting you tomorrow with another story from the first Friendly Game of Assassin in my countdown to the game's start on the 20th.
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