Talk:Bomb the Lantern

Old forum comments

(The Ludocity website previously had integrated forums, but they fell into spam-covered decline and were shut down in 2015. The comments in this section have been automatically converted from that forum.)

Any thoughts? I might run this at the Heath soon, as part of a less-shooting-more-sneaking version of Play Dead. --gwyn (talk) 2009-10-02 09:27:13

A couple of gaps in the writeup: What's the objective? To get a target number of bombs into the box? To get more bombs through than are confiscated? Something else? And you imply that the Bomb Stash also has a boundary - is this also 10 metres?

Giving the players the option to stand around after being caught seems fair enough; there's obviously a big incentive to head back anyway, to get a fresh bomb, but letting them try other tactics (either short-term "well, fine, I'll just follow you around and warn everyone that you're a defender" or long-term "I'll be a scout and a decoy for the whole thing") should make for a healthier game.

Teams not being marked is fair enough, but you should do something to avoid the (cheating but dramatically satisfying) defender tactic of "lie about being an attacker to get to the Bomb Stash, and just carry their bombs out and ditch them". I think you'd just need a moderator guarding the Stash, checking for stickers or ribbons or UV stamps before handing a bomb over.

Player-vs-player chasing is always going to be risky. The Stash zone should help with that - if your quarry is able to run to a safe zone, then there's less point in chasing them down mercilessly. I'm not sure what else you could do. I guess you're intending to run this alongside Night Watch, so would want to avoid reusing mechanics like the player-freezing torch?

Any idea what the bombs are going to be? Something "breakable" so that the defenders can dump them near the lantern without worrying about attackers stealing them back? Something like a snapped glowstick in a clear-plastic 500ml bottle; when the defender confiscates one, they unscrew it and remove the glowstick, which they keep in their pocket, and they just dump the bottle back near the lantern.

(And oh, "bomb" is an even worse word than "gun" to be bantering around in a pub beforehand...) --Kevan (talk) 2009-10-02 10:49:56

The team score will be "number of bomb hits". Presumably we then flip the teams and play again. I think the teams will have to be asymmetrical, though (twice as many attackers as defenders, maybe), so it's either a 3-way tournament or just fairly informal.

I think there should be a large cordon around the Bomb Stash that defenders can't cross. Otherwise they can just camp it and hit attackers as they leave anyway. This is also a way to check people for sure ("so, you say you're an attacker? follow me!").

I'd like the bombs to be quite small because I'm sick of carrying huge bags of stuff.. and although glowing is cool, it makes stealth much harder for the attackers. Ben suggested reflective tape. Perhaps on pens, or ping-pong balls

Yeah, what's a better word? --gwyn (talk) 2009-10-02 11:02:30

Alrighty, we're going to play this on Saturday! (www.fire-hazard.net) --gwyn (talk) 2009-10-05 18:07:18

Ah, I assumed the instruction about having to carry bombs in your hands meant that you were trying to make them a little difficult to conceal.

Maybe just normal glowsticks, which the attackers can carry in a way that mostly conceals them, and which defenders can just pocket? It'd make it easy for both sides to notice and collect dropped bombs (even if they were sneaking around with no torch), and would save you from having to clean up. It'd also be easy to have a clear, different colour for each round, so that later teams don't accidentally pick up old bombs from the ground (or discover them in forgotten pockets).

Glowsticks would make good nuclear fuel rods, and "rod" would be a safer word to mention in pubs and on the heath. A game of Night Watch to sneak into the radiation zone, and Bomb the Lantern to smuggle radioactive fuel rods from the ruined power plant (which the already-dosed defenders daren't get too close to) to the black marketeer. Get a geiger counter MP3 on your phone, and practise your Russian shouting. --Kevan (talk) 2009-10-06 17:33:33

This is brilliant. I'd been shying away from using glowsticks just because we need them to mark trip hazards, and I didn't want to confuse people (they'll collect all my trip hazard markers and use them to blow the lantern :(), but this is compelling. Right. Red sticks for trip hazards. Green sticks for everything else. --gwyn (talk) 2009-10-06 17:39:29

Alrighty, I'm ordering some inflatable weapons. I can think of three possible variants:

BARBARIAN: Instead of tapping attackers with their hands, defenders use inflatable swords/axes/baseball bats. This is actually _safer_ since with an extra 1m of range, there's no need to crash-tackle.

FREEZERAY: Defenders can 'freeze' attackers at moderate range (< 10m) by shining a torch on them. Frozen attackers must drop their fuelrod - but they can pick it up and start running again the _instant_ the beam is off them.

EXTREME: Both teams are attacking and defending at the same time, using red/blue fuelrods. Anyone can go anywhere, but there's no capturing in the circles around the lanterns. Players destroy captured fuelrods on-site (by pocketing the glowstick). This adds a new element, since teams can vary their ratios of attackers/defenders.

Thoughts? --gwyn (talk) 2009-11-02 08:53:50

Sounds pretty cool.

We once played an impromptu game in the dark once. You had to collect a cone of your team colour from one guy, and take it to another guy without being caught by bandits. It was amazingly intense in a woods.

The Extreme variant sounds like great fun. I assume in Freeze Ray the defenders can grab the fuel rod when the attacker drops it? --Peads (talk) 2009-11-10 12:12:19

Yes, defenders are free to grab dropped bombs and don't have a carry limit.

We tested Freezeray on Saturday. Two defenders were able to protect the zone against four attackers, with three of eight bombs making it through. We were using 'torches only freeze: taps force a drop'.

Freezeray seems to be incompatible with Extreme, since otherwise an attacker could freeze a defender while attacking! We *could* do something like 'you can only be frozen at all if you're carrying a bomb'. Then you could 'fake freeze' without a bomb, forcing the other player to walk all the way over to you to see if you dropped anything.

There is still a lot of dangerous running-in-the-dark in this game. I'm not sure it's possible to reduce it. --gwyn (talk) 2009-11-16 11:50:06

Danger is the spice of life!

But when doing public games, I guess you have to keep danger to a minimum. Either that or specify explicitly that the game involves some danger of falling etc. --Peads (talk) 2009-11-16 19:29:48