Talk:Schniper

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I REALLY want to play this. --benhenley (talk) 2009-06-22 13:19:33

We played it across Regent's Park with a couple of Motorola TLKR 3 walkie talkies (which were about twenty quid for a pair, on eBay; they seem pretty good, but we haven't tried them in a dense inner city yet). I can bring them along to the Sandpit on Wednesday, if you want to give it a go between other games.

The game seems pretty much fully-formed - we did experiment with a "warning shot; five seconds to get to cover; second, proper shot if still in view" rule, but I'm not sure it needs it. It could use a few more playtests, with different players and strategies. --Kevan (talk) 2009-06-22 14:59:55

Ah, the walkie-talkies are being used by another game this Sandpit actually, at least until 9pm. --Holly (talk) 2009-06-22 16:02:49

This looks very cool. It's a pity as I was away this weekend and wanted to play a game. I had walkie- talkies as well. Oh well, hopefully I'll get chance to play this sometime. --Peads (talk) 2009-06-23 18:03:06

This looks awesome. I own four TLKR3s now.

A couple of bits are non-obvious to me:

• What's the purpose of the "30-second freeze to return fire" system? Is this just to make sure I play as an actual sniper, instead of just running up behind you and shooting you from five metres away? It does seem that to get a net point, you have to take a position such that you can see the enemy and they can't see you within 30 seconds, otherwise you'll just get shot once each.

• The ideal strategy for a sniper, in general, is camping. How do you stop both players from camping and making the game totally boring?

Could we extend this into some sort of escort-the-VIP-through-sniperville team game? Would laser pointers make it more awesome or just more dangerous to play? Should the "gun" (whatever it is) make noise to allow location of snipers by sound? Oh, and would the Barbican, with its maze of overlooking skywalks and twisty little places to hide, be the most awesome venue for this ever? --gwyn (talk) 2009-10-18 14:58:04

Yes, the thirty-second pause is primarily there to encourage sniping from a safe position, to make the game more tactical and to prevent back-and-forth gunfights. It also gives the target plenty of time to run away, so that they don't just keep getting shot if they've strayed too far into the open.

The "warning shot" variant goes some way to discouraging camping, as it gives the target a chance to triangulate the sniper's position, and sneak into a position where they can shoot back from a different angle.

An escort game feels like it could be pretty tough, that the snipers would just have to cover a few obvious choke points to lock the game down. But if you pick a venue that has a few too many routes for the snipers to cover effectively (and yes, the Barbican sounds ideal for this), it'd work. Multiple walkie talkies would be nice for letting the snipers coordinate, as well; if the sniper call is "this is Beekeeper, the VIP is in the courtyard, taking him down in five", then any other snipers within radio range will know where to focus their attention. --Kevan (talk) 2009-10-18 18:18:54

The 'camping' case I was worried about is where the game starts, both snipers run away, and both camp in separate clock towers out of sight of each other until the game ends.

I think the escort game would have to allow some misdirection; perhaps the snipers know who all the players are, but don't know who the VIP is (but can infer it from formation movement, overheard comments, etc). Not totally sure how this'd work, since the snipers might need to kill the escorts in order to get a clear shot at the target.

I'm exploring that idea just because feedback from Twilight Rush was that team games are awesome - and scale better. --gwyn (talk) 2009-10-18 18:37:13

I've now played this game about 20 times in a park, in a woods and in a house/garden. The camping thing never really happens, in my experience. As you both want to win, drawing is effectively a 'lose' for both of you, so there is incentive to move. In a team version this might not work so well, especially if it was snipers vs. VIP, but it could work.

Perhaps in the escort setting, if there were 'policemen' that had pistols or something short-range, maybe even truncheons. When they catch a sniper, the sniper is out or something.

If you put in a time constraint then this could be very tense. Snipers trying to shoot the VIP as you move out of the building/area, with policemen running round arresting the snipers. This would stop 'camping' as there would be a BIG incentive to move. Ideally there would be several choke points so the policemen had to take out the snipers before the VIP reached the choke points. Oh, and the policemen could be sniped as well. --Peads (talk) 2009-11-10 12:33:06

i had a good trawl through here before i put my own sniper game up and somehow completely missed this one. It sounds fun.

Sniper's Alley is over here at: http://ludocity.org/wiki/Sniper%27s_Alley.  A different feel to Schniper a load more fiddly

sadly don't know enough people who like to play to test it, so any thoughts are much appreciated.

thanks --bene (talk) 2010-03-04 11:08:20

Aha, good to see another take on the genre. I've posted some comments on its thread. --Kevan (talk) 2010-03-04 12:53:02

Actually, if we're going to use the CAT/FAD method, then we could use SMS like this:

CAT->Schniperbot: "FAD"

Schniperbot->Everyone: "FAD is hit! FAD returning fire..."

(CAT holds position for 30 seconds, until the next message from Schniperbot)

FAD->Schniperbot: "CAD"

Schniperbot->Everyone: "FAD fails to return fire!"

(FAD now needs to change their ID) --gwyn (talk) 2010-03-08 08:48:01

Multiplayer

Ran this at Kew today and played around with multiplayer variants. Pairing people up with targets and hoping that alliances would emerge naturally didn't really come together as well as I'd hoped - we ended up explicitly putting players onto two teams, and allowing them to snipe at anyone on the opposing team, which seemed to work pretty well.

Saying that players couldn't snipe the same target twice in a row seemed easier than the 30-second reload rule - possibly just needs a backup rule of "can't shoot the same person twice in the same minute". Being able to easily pick off a pair of opponents carelessly discussing their plans in the open seems fair enough. --Kevan (talk) 2010-04-10 19:10:11