[HN Gopher] I organized a 20-acre game of Capture the Flag
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I organized a 20-acre game of Capture the Flag
Author : ntnbr
Score : 220 points
Date : 2024-05-18 16:21 UTC (6 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.ntnbr.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.ntnbr.com)
| pavel_lishin wrote:
| There used to be a group that organized Capture the Flag games in
| FiDi, in lower Manhattan. It was a ton of fun, even though I was
| always worried that some overzealous guy with a flag patch and a
| machine gun would get antsy about a bunch of people running
| around.
| ertian wrote:
| During orientation week at University of Alberta, way back in
| the late 90s, there was a huge campus-wide game of capture the
| flag. All the buildings were fair game, which made it a great
| way to both meet people (while hiding in a nook or running
| through the quad) and also explore the campus. It was great.
| canadiantim wrote:
| If anyone wants to play a supremely addictive online capture the
| flag game, there's a completely underrated browser game called
| tagpro: https://koalabeast.com/ (no idea why the url is that, but
| I been playing it for a decade, to give an indication lol)
|
| Tagpro is legitimately what I think the model of the ideal game
| is, which is you don't level up characters and grind, instead you
| depend on building up your own skill manipulating the physics of
| the game. It depends on how well you can judge momentum, people's
| intentions, and it's all about "juking" people. Such a simple
| game, but because of its physics it's exceptionally skill-based.
| I'd love an mmorpg that had similar physics that PEOPLE master,
| so anyone can jump in and play without having to grind. Levelling
| up your reflexes instead of in-game character stats.
| nvy wrote:
| My brother plays rollyball^W tagpro and it's amazing how much
| people get into it.
|
| I'm terrible at it.
| zoky wrote:
| Weird, I remember that game was all over Reddit about 7-8 years
| ago, then when I remembered it and looked it up a couple years
| back it was completely dead. No active players in any games,
| couldn't seem to find much discussion about it, even the
| subreddit seemed like a ghost town. Has it come back from the
| dead?
| aaronax wrote:
| Same vibes for
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/SubSpace_(video_game) I reckon.
| NikkiA wrote:
| SubSpace was always just a lousy rip-off of XPilot anyway.
| glenneroo wrote:
| We used to do something similar here in Vienna at
| Turkenschanzpark, one of the biggest (and my favorite) parks in
| Vienna at night with 20-40 people. It was always so intense,
| especially not easily knowing who was on your team.
| alwaysbeconsing wrote:
| If you have time, people, resources for such you might also
| interest in more elaborate variation, my favorite
| https://killerqueenarcade.com/fieldgame Three different win
| condition, and one player have special role as "queen bee".
| Myself have only played arcade version unfortunately.
| germinalphrase wrote:
| The arcade version is great. I've had a lot of fun playing
| local co-op on the Nintendo Switch version as well.
| rossdavidh wrote:
| I live in Austin, and I find out that this happened via HN!
| Still, cool effort. I'm wondering what the demographics of the
| players was, for example age range.
| ramesh31 wrote:
| I can't possibly imagine a more Austin thing than this
| ProllyInfamous wrote:
| Early 2000's, we'd regularly play organized games of CtF upon
| the capitol grounds -- it was incredibly entertaining, even
| if you weren't actually playing very much (became sort of a
| HS social / mixer). Typically only a few dozen serious
| players, but often 100+ participants.
| ntnbr wrote:
| I (the author) am a senior in high school. It was mostly high
| school kids. Average age probably 16-17.
| dukeofdoom wrote:
| Feel like things like this should be something City Park
| Departments should do. Fun group activities for adults in their
| parks. Yoga or maybe star watching, and so on. Kind of like
| libraries do to stimulate the mind.
|
| Capitalism is great, but it kind of sucks that poor people have
| very few free things to do as soon as they step away from the
| screen.
| geraldwhen wrote:
| City parks do do this. And anyone can take their friends and go
| outside to a public park whenever.
| creer wrote:
| What's wrong with city neighborhood - if anything a "downtown"
| business area that has places open and people around? A common
| solution around here.
| tazjin wrote:
| > If you don't believe me, ask anyone over the age of 30 this
| question: "What are your best memories from your youth?"
|
| Wait, but I _am_ in my youth!
| StevenXC wrote:
| the kids are alright. Reminds me of when I organized a real life
| version of Pac-Man on the quad in 2006, inspired by this game ran
| on the streets of Manhattan in 2004.
| https://www.pacmanhattan.com/
| ntnbr wrote:
| Dude that is actually so cool. I love the creativity!
| Hayvok wrote:
| We did night CTF (~9 pm) at our local grade school campus. Easily
| 40-50 kids. We just rode our bikes to the gathering. Similar
| rules to what this article had, except no out of bounds. We had
| kids making huge circuits around a nearby corn field to evade
| detection.
|
| It was indeed someone of my best childhood memories.
|
| Unfortunately it was all brought to an end because people kept
| calling the cops. They'd see kids after dark at the school and
| just assume we were up to no good. No property was ever damaged,
| the principal knew what we were up to, etc. Wholesome fun.
|
| After the fifth time of coming home with a "the cops showed up"
| story, our well-meaning parents asked us to please find another
| game to play.
| LtWorf wrote:
| And that's when you started to do armed robbery for fun
| instead? :D
| emptyfile wrote:
| >hey'd see kids after dark at the school and just assume we
| were up to no good.
|
| That sounds totally crazy to me, did these people get into any
| trouble or fined for just calling the police like that? I
| assume you're american, in my eastern european country they
| would NOT be happy about getting called 5 times for this...
| creer wrote:
| It's not entirely impossible to get fined or arrested for
| calling the police in the US but you have to go extremely far
| out of bounds. Calling the police because there are kids near
| the school (hehe) is completely acceptable.
|
| If anything it's the opposite: if you do anything slightly
| out of the usual - all the way to walking through a
| neighborhood that doesn't know you - there is a good chance
| someone will call the police. And that some patrol car will
| check it out just for breaking the dullness of the day.
|
| Some of the cops who respond (because they might ALL head
| there, if it sounds fun enough), some will be smiling and
| relaxed and civil, while others will be very much looking for
| trouble and aggressive from the start. Such that for example,
| using plastic pistols in dark or day in public is a serious
| bad idea in the US.
| __MatrixMan__ wrote:
| Can confirm. As a high schooler, I used to meet up with
| friends in the middle of the night at an elementary school
| playground. Mostly we would just swing on the swings and
| chat. Occasionally we'd share a 6-pack of beer, shame on
| us.
|
| One night, somebody called the cops, who called school
| district security. When they drove up we left without
| saying hi because we get it, we're not wanted here.
|
| Well they called the cops back, who chased us down (we ran,
| 'cause we were stupid). I was apprehended and from the back
| of the cop car I counted six other cop cars and a
| helicopter all looking for my friends for the crime of
| being near a school at night (the cops never mentioned the
| beer).
| creer wrote:
| Some cop noticed the beer, most likely - and they were
| one of the good guys.
|
| Another one might have taken this opportunity to start an
| in-depth "investigation" (read "bullying spree") to
| figure out who sold the beer and who bought it and passed
| it on (if anyone in that bunch might plausibly have been
| underage.)
| __MatrixMan__ wrote:
| Seems likely. It's still weird to me that it was worth
| all of that taxpayer money to keep the helicopter in the
| sky while they searched for my friends (most of whom took
| to the storm sewer and were not caught).
| bongodongobob wrote:
| They need to justify having it in the first place, that's
| why it'll get dispatched for less than needed situations.
| Use it or lose it.
| creer wrote:
| Once when it happened to me and the whole gang responded,
| the "lead responder" was clear that he considered that
| this was a bullshit call and that WE totally had the
| right to do what we were doing and HE was sorting out a
| nuisance call to the police. He may also have been
| playing "good cop" - it's not like I was trusting him.
| While one of his buddies had parting words for me: "Do
| you realize what it looked like <insert saucer eyes>?"
| and "It could have been XXXXX, so of course police has to
| respond."
|
| About a helicopter, the problem is compounded because
| that whole outfit needs some quota of flying hours to
| remain certified. It might be a boring area, and any
| opportunity to take it out and fly then counts as
| training, if nothing else can be written up for that
| flight. That there is a helicopter guarantees that it
| will be used. And same for SWAT and such.
| Atotalnoob wrote:
| Large cities usually have helicopters in the sky 24/7.
| It's better (meaning get overhead faster) than trying to
| scramble when actually needed.
|
| The helicopter will go and respond to random calls if
| it's not needed for anything in particular.
|
| Not defending the practice, just explaining why a
| helicopter might respond to something that's overkill
| __MatrixMan__ wrote:
| Yeah that makes sense. We weren't large enough to justify
| it though. They cancelled the program a few years later
| (2010ish). I haven't seen a police helicopter over this
| town since.
| pineaux wrote:
| Yeah. I cringe that this mentality is also exported from the
| US to other countries. I firmly believe that breaking a leg,
| getting lost in the woods for an hour, being able to play
| somewhere without any adult supervision, really made me a
| stronger, more capable, stress-resistant adult.
| psychlops wrote:
| The more calls the police get, the more money they are able
| to justify by pointing to the amount of calls received.
|
| And, I think, generally it would be a much more enjoyable
| call to go talk to some parents about a few kids, than to
| respond to more demanding complaints.
| whimsicalism wrote:
| oh definitely american.
|
| i've had the cops called on me frequently for stuff like
| breaking into my own house?? they're also really on edge,
| i've had them shout at me to take my hands out of my pockets
| which... fair i guess?
|
| not to stereotype, but America just has lots of SAHM busybody
| types
| IncreasePosts wrote:
| We just told the cops we would be out there on certain nights
| and they were cool with it.
| sircastor wrote:
| One time in Highschool at a party we played a game of
| "Fugitive" across a few miles of neighborhood. I don't think
| anyone crossed any private property, but the police showed up
| and told us "You're scaring the heck out of some people". We'd
| basically finished up anyway.
|
| It's tragic that this kind of fun gets quashed. Arguably
| avoidable with a little community communication. I generally
| think it's a product of fear-mongering. People being told that
| their neighborhoods are under attack from nebulous "others" who
| don't look or sound like them. A ghost story.
| ryandrake wrote:
| It's super sad how much childhood joy and fun is being sucked
| out if the world purely due to nosy busybodies. And the fact
| that police even respond to these (when they won't even show
| up if you're actually robbed) is also ridiculous. Mind your
| own business, people.
| s1artibartfast wrote:
| I'm certainly glad to have grown up when I did. Lots of fun
| memories of fugitive when we weren't cooking up fireworks or
| something from the Anarchist Cookbook. Most of we thought was
| fun would probably be in jail time these days.
|
| There was a lot of risky Behavior, but it was all non-violent
| so if anyone got hurt, it was us, or sometimes our parents
| property. I don't know how kids these days are supposed to
| learn you need to cook up white phosphorus Outdoors and not
| in your friend's kitchen
| tw04 wrote:
| We did this at boyscout camp until one year my buddy shattered
| his ankle hitting a hole running in the dark. One ambulance
| ride, several surgeries, major issues with morphine withdrawal,
| and that was the end of that.
| beardedetim wrote:
| We played tag or hide and seek at a school one time after dark.
| We were probably 16 or 17 since at least some of us could drive
| by then. Cops called all of our parents and said we'd go to
| jail if it happened again.
|
| The funniest thing to me was my parents just straight yelling
| at me about it as my only rule at that time was "don't get in
| trouble with the cops". I tried explaining it was just tag, the
| cops were over reacting. They didn't buy it. I told them "I was
| with Friend A and Friend B. I'm telling you the cops were being
| ass holes". They immediately changed their tone to "oh, if A
| and B were there, those cops were ass holes"
| assimpleaspossi wrote:
| Back in 2001 or so, I organized a 127 acre airsoft game called
| "The Art of War" with over 100 players from all over the midwest.
|
| Actually, we probably only used 80 acres of it but still....some
| called it the best game ever.
| bhickey wrote:
| This would've been 2014, I played in a 100 v 100 paintball game
| in Western Massachusetts. It was February, so the snow was
| pretty deep. At one point I stepped through some ice up to my
| knee.
|
| Rather than run straight up elimination, teams accrued points
| by holding positions at certain times. You've got the bunker at
| noon? That's a point. 12:05? Nothing. This led to us
| desperately defending objectives against 6-to-1 odds waiting
| for the ref to announce that we'd scored the point.
| koutsie wrote:
| Thats sounds like the type of fun I'd be at! Long term
| objectives in a short term game
| RyanOD wrote:
| When I was a kid, a couple of us had original Splatmaster
| "marking pistols" and I desperately wanted to do this but as a
| massive paintball game. Living in the midwest, there were plenty
| of moderate sized woods one could utilize.
|
| While that never happened, we did have a couple games on a large
| abandoned farm. Stalking each other within the darkness of the
| huge barns or climbing up to the top of an old grain silo to
| snipe was damn fun.
| karmanyaahm wrote:
| So cool to see another person going to UT on HN! I'd love to
| organize a Jet Lag style game in Austin sometime.
| ntnbr wrote:
| Not at UT yet, but going to UT in the fall to study applied
| math! I'm definitely looking to organize more fun stuff like
| this in Austin.
| ledauphin wrote:
| a friend of mine organized 40+ player games of CTF at night on
| campus back in the day. The nighttime element was really key to
| how much fun it was.
|
| I don't think we had many, if any, disputes about whether anyone
| had been tagged, even without the belt flags.
|
| I love the "ball flag" idea.
| ntnbr wrote:
| Thanks! The "flags" (balls) really make it more fun, because
| you can pass to other people.
| tpurves wrote:
| Around 2003 a gf of mine organized a large CTF game at midnight
| across 9 blocks of the financial district of Toronto. Hell of a
| fun night, but we only got away with doing it once.
| abeppu wrote:
| I think a giant gap in this is that the list of rules doesn't
| account for non-players in the game area. This planned over a
| large public park which presumably other people use. Do you play
| around people? Do you avoid them with a minimum radius out of
| respect, or do you weave by them if it helps prevent someone from
| getting your flag? Participants loved the game, but how did non-
| participants in the park at the same time feel about it? Did they
| feel uncomfortable using the park with the game on all sides?
|
| If you and your friends play soccer in an open area of the park,
| probably all agree that other people should avoid setting up
| their picnic in the area of play. Parents and dog-owners should
| keep their kids and pets from entering. If you and your friends
| declare the whole park to be the area of play, including the
| playground, children's garden, bathroom, splash pad and parking
| lot as shown in the finished map, I think this ceases to be a
| reasonable expectation, but what the norms should be is
| ambiguous.
| MatthiasPortzel wrote:
| This is why stuff like this doesn't happen more often.
|
| I played a 10-day game of tag in college. (Called Humans vs
| Zombie, "humans" were able to tagged by zombies any time that
| they were outside. We would start with ~150 humans, at the
| beginning, and by the end of the game only ~30 were not
| zombies.)
|
| The amount of work that the core-team put in to run the game
| was insane: reserving space on campus, marketing it to
| students, defining and refining rules, communicating with
| campus security, negotiating with campus administration,
| dealing with rule violations, and more.
|
| I think it's a shame that it's so much work to put together and
| play what is ultimately a very simple game with very little
| potential to harm anyone. But there are a lot of people who are
| scared and uncomfortable when other people start running
| around.
| giantrobot wrote:
| > But there are a lot of people who are scared and
| uncomfortable when other people start running around.
|
| Gosh, and for no reason whatsoever at all! /s
| ntnbr wrote:
| True. I got lucky: when we played, there were maybe 20-25 non-
| players in the entire playing area, so avoiding them was no
| problem. I didn't hear any complaints about our game. It could
| have definitely been a bigger problem; thankfully, it wasn't.
| pineaux wrote:
| There are many variants played by scouts all over the world. The
| different versions: 1) all players get a wool thread around their
| arm. If the thread is pulled loose from the arm, you are "dead"
| and need to go back to a "spawn point". This is quite a physical
| version with some nice wrestling and wolfpack elements. I prefer
| this version because its visceral. 2) A version where every
| member gets a certain "rank" from a spawn point. When a player
| tags another, the ranks must be revealed. This can be a rock
| paper scissors system or with some wildcards like "mines" that
| arent allowed to tag, but are deadly for all players except the
| sapper. You need a card system for this. Many card systems work.
| 3) a version with paintballs or laser tag. Also fun but you need
| a lot of gear to do it with a lot of people.
|
| Overall these games are best on long stretches of terrain. There
| is an optimal terrain width for a nice game. It is biased towards
| a narrow and long playing field with a lot of good cover
| interspaced with larger open areas that dont expose the whole
| width of the field.
|
| Chokepoints can be nice but can also make the game a bit boring.
| So there is definitely a strong dropoff on the narrower fields.
| baron816 wrote:
| Would anyone want to help me organize this in SF?
| haburka wrote:
| Clearly GGP is great since it's just a large rectangle
| tangled wrote:
| Yes! Email in profile.
| ntnbr wrote:
| A bit of advice if you end up organizing it: make sure there's
| interesting terrain on both sides. Flat, open parks tend to be
| less fun to play in. Good luck, though!!
| arpinum wrote:
| great memories as a kid playing 48 hour CTP in 100 acres of
| woodland. Camo, tackling, building prison cells, escaping from
| prison, getting lost for hours. Built character.
| theodpHN wrote:
| Nice. Brings back memories of playing Capture the Flag at night
| at Warren Dunes State Park long ago as a Boy Scout. A quick
| Google search shows kids are still doing that!
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Warren_Dunes_State_Park
| https://www.glencoescouting.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/05/W...
| Kaotique wrote:
| In my scouts group we used to organize a father and son police,
| robber and fence game in the woods at night. Robbers had to
| transport logs to the fence to gain points. Every player had a
| string round their arm and you could wrestle the players from the
| other teams to get it. It was very cool to see the boys battle
| each other and see dads wrestling other dads, older brothers and
| scout leaders. Or sneaking in the dark with their dad carrying
| the logs. It was a real father and son bonding experience. Great
| memories.
| kej wrote:
| I had tons of fun playing this in Boy Scouts, and when I worked
| at summer camp we would have a weekly game with around 50 campers
| on each side.
|
| My dad and I also had a bunch of fun with this shareware version
| for DOS, so much that a few years ago I finally called Mr. Carr
| and paid for three copies so we could play the full version:
|
| https://archive.org/details/capflag4_zip
| sequoia wrote:
| We played to play campus-wide capture the flag at the camp I went
| to as a kid a couple times and I will never forget the
| experience. The camp spanned an enormous area with all kinds of
| varied terrain and we had ~170 campers and counsellors playing. I
| vividly remember patrolling in an out-of-the-way part of our area
| by myself amongst the rhododendrons and detecting some movement;
| a counsellor from the other team was hiding amongst leaves. A
| frenzy chase ensued.
|
| One twist to this game on the enormous area was that neither team
| knew where either flag was, so you had to send groups to scout
| your own side to figure out where your flag was. I get why the
| person who posted this article chose not to have jail, but the
| jail was another fun dynamic. It gave the opportunity to break
| people out of jail, which was another goal besides the flag.
|
| The author is completely correct that these are lifelong
| memories.
| ntnbr wrote:
| Thanks! Was definitely considering implementing "jail", but I
| wasn't sure where to put it for both teams, so I decided
| against it.
| patchorang wrote:
| @ntnbr, the state capitol is also a very good spot for large
| capture the flag. We played there a few times in college. I
| remember it being more or less symmetric too.
| ntnbr wrote:
| Wow! I would be slightly worried about getting in trouble
| there, but yeah: it's pretty symmetric and has some interesting
| terrain. Thanks for the suggestion!
| polishdude20 wrote:
| Anyone wanna help me organize this in Vancouver, BC?
| puddingvlaai wrote:
| We played infinite variations of this game when I was a member or
| leader at our youth movement in Belgium. (I don't think such a
| thing exists in the US?)
|
| Some examples:
|
| A battleship variant: each team first their his ships in a
| battleship field. Then, when a player can reach the other team's
| camp without getting tagged, they can shoot one shot into the
| field of the other team.
|
| A Stratego variant: every team gets his own stack of cards which
| represent the different players of Stratego, the board game.
| Players take a card before leaving their camp. If they are
| tagged, or tag someone, they show their card to the other person.
| The winner according to the Stratego rules wins the card of the
| other person, and the loser must go back to their camp for
| another card.
|
| Some more games with paint, animal cards, ...
|
| Lot of good memories from that time.
| tern wrote:
| There's an intensive wilderness school in Washington, and their
| capstone activity is IIRC a _2 week long_ game of capture the
| flag in an even larger area of dense woods.
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