The Forge

First: an explanation.
I don't know how many of you know what the game assassins is, but luckily for you i'm about to explain it. Actually i'll explain how i think it ought to go down, and then i tweak it to explain how our game goes/went.

The game begins with every person playing getting his/her name on a piece of paper. The paper goes into a hat (or similar container) and then each player extracts the name of a fellow player. The name on the paper you extract is your mark: you must kill him. In a better-constructed game, a nonaffected party would actually sit down and set up who should be after whom, only to avoid separate circles (ie person a after person b after person c after person a, thus leaving no entry into the circle and no mark for whoever outlasts the other two).

As far as the actual murders go, the weapon of choice is a black sharpie. Other groups have been known to use water guns or other objects, but since this is a college campus and we've got tact, we're not carrying supersoakers around. I say a black sharpie because it allows for anonymity; if people can use different colors, then all one needs to do is accidentally let slip the color of your weapon and all of your murders become easily traceable.

Speaking of anonymity, your kill needs to be in secret. No other player in the game can see the kill. This allows for you to sneak up behind someone in the cafeteria and pick them off, so long as no other players are watching. In fact, public kills are encouraged because the new victim has to explain why someone just swiped a permanent marker across his neck or forehead. This is particularly enjoyable when the victim is trying to "score" with a group of females.

Not only should no other player see the kill happen; no one should find out who did it. If person a kills person b, and then person b tells everyone that a killed him, the game becomes ridiculous. People can easily begin to trace the line of killings and by process of elimination figure out who is after them.

Which brings up another point: if you find out who is after you, or if the person attacks you and you react quickly enough, you can kill them in self defense. However, particularly in the former case, one must be careful. The penalty for killing someone who is neither your mark or the assassin after you is death- and the other person doesn't stay dead.

As with the real world, a death that goes unwitnessed shall be discovered via one of two methods (sometimes both). The only way you'll know that someone has died is by seeing the corpse--that is, seeing the mark on their neck or head (the only valid areas of attack). Consequently if you are marked, you cannot remove your mark until the following morning. If this results in utter humiliation, so be it. The second way to find out that people have died is to read the obituaries. Thus every morning a "paper" will be put out that explains who has died in the past twenty-four hours. These stories can be creative or factual, but they are usually better when they encompass the first of those.

If you are killed, you need to end up on the floor for ten seconds, regardless of where you are. Lunch line or shower, bedroom or classroom, you must be on the floor. Obviously death scenes are encouraged but we recognize that not everyone is as awesome as they should be to play this game, so a simple sit-down is permitted. Again, this works well when it interferes with romantic attempts.

Upon killing someone, you need to take their mark.

The winner, of course, is the person who outlives the others, either by lasting until his mark is the only person left, or else killing his way through everyone.

Now then, as far as our variations go:
-any sharpie could be used, not just black
-poisonings, or hot sauce in someone's food or drink, count as a kill
-bombs, or sound-recordings of explosions planted in someone's room for them to stumble upon accidentally, also count
-nerf guns, rather the single gun in the RA room, could be used as long as it was removed and returned without witness
-no penalties for talking resulted in perhaps the greatest deterioration in this game
-deaths were reported on by the victim, moments after death, on the hall wall. although creative thought ran well, it doesn't make for the best of secrets and is certainly not condusive to a killing spree while others remain oblivious to your movement through the player population.
Finally, there was a sort of gentleman's agreement that murders could not take place in the Great Room, and those committed in sleep would be so pathetic that they weren't worth doing. Also, after killing you could not kill until after 8 AM the following morning (unless your kill was just in self-defense). Although this was interesting, it did not allow for a true spree and thus wasn't quite as fun as it theoretically could have been.

So this is how we played, and how i think we ought to play. Leave comments if you like certain things over others, or whatnot.

Oh by the way, serious sinus infection came in last night and looks to be a tough customer for the next few days at least. So pray for that please; i don't like walking around with tissues in my nose when i could be at a dance.