Bomb The Lantern

Bomb The Lantern
Designer:	Gwyn Morfey
Year:	unknown
Players:	6 - (untested)
Stuff required:	A torch for each player. Boundary markers. A lantern and a box. "Bombs", which can be almost anything.
Crew required:	Two Safety Officers.
Preparation:	10 minutes.
Time required:	10-15 minutes per round
Place required:	A large dark area with plenty of cover.
Activities:	Running, shouting, acting, sneaking, teamwork.
This is a tested game. It's been tested in real life, but needs a bit more polishing before it's fully playable.
This game is made available under an Attribution-Noncommercial Creative Commons licence. (What does this mean?)

Setup

Put the lantern and box in the center of the play space, and mark a boundary around it at a radius of perhaps 10m.

Put a bomb stash at the edge of the play space and mark a boundary around it.

Split the players into 'attackers' and 'defenders', and brief them.

Start the timer and sound the air horn to start the game. When the timer expires, end the game.

Play

Attackers: Attackers aim to get their 'bombs' into the lantern box. Each player can carry only one bomb at a time, in their hands (not hidden in pockets). They can move freely.

Defenders: Defenders cannot enter the marked boundaries, so they can't get too close to either the lantern or the bomb stash.

A defender can 'tag' an attacker. The attacker must hand over the bomb if they are carrying one (taking it out of play).

Scoring

One point per bomb in the box. Presumably you'll then switch the teams around and play again, for comparison purposes.

Tricky Bits

Teams are not marked, may not know each other, and it's dark. Pretending to be on the other team ("don't worry - I've got this area covered" or "hey, I'm nearly there, give me the bomb!") is entirely legitimate.

Moving the bomb stash closer to the target (only one bomb at a time) is legitimate but risky, since defenders don't have a carry limit and can confiscate the whole thing if they find it.

Rationale

This is a variant of Storm The Lantern. It attempts to avoid either a positive feedback loop reinforcing the winning team (by having caught attackers become defenders), or player elimination (which is boring). By working to a fixed time/ammo count, it also attempts to avoid the possibility of very short games.

Variants

Tagging people is quite dangerous when they're running at speed in the dark. You can use giant inflatable swords to make this safer, although it also makes it harder to pretend that you're on the other team.

The 'freezeray' variant allows defenders to freeze attackers just by shining their torch on them. They still have to actually tap the attacker to make them drop their bomb.

Game Reports

Fire Hazard has run this game twice. It's great fun, and not violent if you're using freezelights or inflatable swords, but still involves running full-speed with lights off.