Bomb The Lantern
| Bomb The Lantern | |
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| Designer: | Gwyn Morfey |
| Year: | unknown |
| Players: | 10-25 |
| 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: | 10-30 minutes. |
| Time required: | 10-20 minutes. |
| Place required: | A large dark area with plenty of cover. |
| Activities: | Running, shouting, acting, sneaking, teamwork. |
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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.
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), and return to the start point before attacking again.
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.
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.
Work To Do
How wide do the exclusion areas need to be? Do attackers really need to return to the start, or may they hang around (but now dis-armed)?
