Tagcon Midwest 2004 Review

TAG CON MIDWEST 2004 Awards

Best Costume - Andy Hassara
Most Valuable Player - Dan Shipp aka Audie Murphy
Most Character Points earned - Tunde Akinde
Best Custome gun - John Haugland

What I did this weekend by Andy in Indy

My review of Tagcon by Doug Ross

TagCon 2004 by Peter Montgomery

Pictures | Video Clips

What I Did This Weekend by Andy in Indy

I’d like to say that TagCon this year was a pain in the neck for me, but then I’m afraid that only my friends would get the joke J My participation this year was scaled down due to the accident, from which I am still recovering. Peter likes having the point – counter point of seeing TagCon from different points of view, so who am I to buck tradition.

I’ll begin my story at the end of a 4+ hour drive from Indianapolis, only to find that the address and phone number I had for Peter were out of date. Luckily, the helpful coworker in Peters office directed me to his new cell phone number,, so that Doug Ross help guide me in with the help of the GPS.

BY the time I arrived at Peter’s house, he, Doug Ross, and Kevin and Tom from Steradian Technologies were already there. Peter drove us over to do a drive by tour of the Rennasaince Fair site. The light was getting dim, and the bumpiness of the road kept me from getting a good read of the site, but I got the basic lay of the land before heading over to Imo’s Pizza for dinner. Peter had set up a lot of his barriers, as well as a plywood Stargate, and had planted his clues and reset keys across the large area, and everything was ready to go for Saturday.

While at dinner, we were joined by two players from Doug’s past – Lazerbait and B.J., as Well as Tunde and J.T. who drove all the way from Arizona. We had a fun time over pizza, and left from there as the sun went down to play some night games in the Rennasiance Village.

After we got there, we got our Big Bad Hit for the weekend. We had arrived shortly after 7pm on Friday night at the park, when two Park Rangers came by to politely inform us that the insurance policy Peter uses did not meet their (fairly high) requirements, and we could not play there that night or tomorrow until this was resolved. Peter then spent the next hour trying to track down his agents to get his insurance issue resolved, while the LTTO and Steradian gear was passed around to many OOOHS and AHHS. Lazer bait found out to his frustration that the demonic looking gun he had built with the help of Phil Higgens was not going to be compatible with the team setup for the next day – this left him very bummed about that. After some considerable frustration, we adjourned to the Holiday Inn while Peter went by his office to look for the phone numbers of some local politicians of Peter’s acquaintance, and see if we could get an okay from them to override the policy issues.

Ten minutes after we sat down in the bar to "hob knob", Peter contacted us to let us know that we had gotten the OK to play that evening, and we all drove back out to the park. There we broke into two teams using the Steradian gear and played against each other around the Jousting Field where Peter had set up his Lazerblitz barriers. With green and yellow glow sticks to separate the team, players dash, ducked, and dove across the field until 11:30 at night, when hunger and fatigue finally drove most of us away.

The Steradian gear is wonderful at night. The combination of muzzle flash, red lights on the headbands when you are hit, and lighted display make this spectacular to watch a game in progress. Tom and Alex have developed a programmer/controller box which makes it possible to program, reset, and "administratively terminate" groups of gear and players. We used this to make the turn around time for games almost nothing. We had started b allowing friendly fire, but at the request of players who didn’t like being shot from behind more than the front, teams and Player ID’s were programmed. This way, team tags could be turned off and you could tell who was tagging whom. I spent most of the evening on the king's dais, announcing the start of new games and resetting players.

This was my first opportunity to see the S-5 up close and personal. They’ve done a wonderful job of customizing this gun. The version I saw did not have the long black barrel between the gun and lens assembly, which is much better in my opinion. They used a real MP-5 shot sound recording, and it was set for a high rate of fire, with a very short vibration for each shot. The gun balanced very well, and the bolt charging lever was used as the reload switch. Other that the Gun-in-a-Box, this is what I would buy if money was no obstacle to my laser tag neurosis.

The next morning started early for me – Peter asked that I get up early in case he needed a translator while talking to his insurance agent. Luckily he did not. By whatever means he used (and with a few frantic prayers), Peter got permission to use the field with the insurance as was (although he did manage to wrangle a backup field, just in case). Doug and I drove just after 9 AM without having breakfast (someone brought Crispy Cream doughnuts, though) , and Peter was orienting some of the newer players while the Steradian crew played with a Laser Skeet Shoot system. I ducked under the flight path of reflective frisbees, donned my costume and helped Peter pass out the Maps and Schedule to the other late arrivals.

At 9:30 we gathered at the pub for Peter’s initial briefing on our story: It seems that Merlin is gone. Passed away. Deceased. Dead. He is an Ex-Wizard, and he ain’t dropping by for tea no more. In his will, he left directions for the citizens of Lyons to unbury the Stargate, and have the Wizards Ulric (myself) and Lucas (Luke for the St. Louis club) perform a "mock battle" by summoning Champions from across Space, Time, and the Bad Part of Pittsburgh using the N’Tars (which is short for N’Tar, according to T’elc) to determine who should be his replacement. The players did not remember their past at this time, as a side effect of the trans-temporal jump through the Stargate, but there memories will be returning after lunch. I found the Jedi Mind Trick worked fairly well on him, and the briefing was concluded early. The kindly King Arthur (Peter Montgomery) separated us into a red and green army, and sent us off to opposite ends of the Ren. Fair village. My army was the Green army, and we were based on the South End of the village, aboard a mock ship, the Salamander.

My instructions were to inform the team that the North Wizard, Lucas (who commanded the Red Army) was in no Wizard at all, as anyone could plainly see by his outfit. While I am in fact a Wiz of a Wiz, he is just a lousy hypnotist, trying to pawn off his cheap Vegas stage act on the King. What is worse, he plans to keep everyone there in Lyons (where there is no running water or flush toilets) after he wins, while I have every intention of sending my champions back where they comfortably belong.

Our objective was a game of Domination. At seven control points across the village, Peter had placed Chess clocks, which count down time for each team. The idea was to get to the clock and hold it long enough to count down the time on the other teams clock. The team with the most time remaining at the end of the game (about 2 hours) was the winner. We broke into four Squads, and each squad had a radio in the hands of an experienced player. After taking 4 hits, they had to go to a respawn point, where a key was hung to reset their gun. There were eight of these respawn points across both sides of the field. By the time I got my team organized and briefed, to was 10:15 AM, and we started our first game of the day.

Let me tell you, 2 hour games over uneven terrain are murder on the players. J The clocks toward the middle of the field were uphill from either base, and were frequently changing hand. The North team had easier access to the control points on their side, but it was harder for them to reach the respawn points. We could easily see our nearby respawn points from the base. In fact, we could stand at our base and shoot the freshly reset players at two other respawn points.while we stood in our base area. Eventually, we were attacked en masse by red team scouts, but we managed to clear them out with the help of The King, who was switching sides every time he reset. I guess the other Wizard, Lucas, was using that "Flashy Thing" from Men in Black a little too much on our monarch.. Peter had given each of the Wizards a limited function control box (Steradian Multi-Box), which was set to give an instant kill to anyway in its blast (including the Wizard). This proved to be very helpful in keeping the other team at bay.Just after our based was rushed, it was reported to me that the Red Base was lightly defended. Not foreseeing the outcome, I commanded my team to, "Take it and hold it". About twenty minutes later, I hear Peter being called down there to settle some disputes about my team’s control of the base. Apparently, all may be Fair in Love and War, but TagCon isn’t a war. Peter suspended the game while he checked this out, and then made a ruling that team members could only respawn at locations clearly on their side of the field. My players had to soon abandon their hold on the Lair of the Red Wizard, and respawn on their side of the field.

Around noon, as the game ended, we gathered at the Pub in the center of the village to meet the citizens of Lyons (real Ren. Fair people) who had come to help as non player characters. There were two ladies dressed as nuns, and a Scotsman in his tartan kilt, who had a lunch with him. Unfortunately, no amount of Jedi mind control over the Kind could make the pizza arrive any sooner, but when it did there was plenty of Pizza Hut pizza and Gatorade drinks for everyone. Peter tallied up the times form the Control points, and it looked for a short time like the Green team had Dominated. Unfortunately, there was a control point that had been left untouched be the Green team, giving the Red time a very decisive victory in our first game. Now I know how Al Gore felt in 2000.

After Lunch, Peter filled us in on the next phase of the game. People were given player cards, which represented their memory returning to them. Each card gave the player a certain number of points is the completed the task they were given. For some, this might be to steal items from their Wizard, to eliminate another player, or to simply hang onto their card for the rest of the day. With only four hits, and the rule that you had to drop your card, and any other game items you had, when you were tagged out, I think the survivor cards were the hardest to fulfill. It didn’t help that I had given my team order to retrieve any papers the other team dropped, who as to steal their clues and to keep the other team from getting points.

Peter also announced that the Stargate control device had be sabotaged with an explosion. The 36 control crystals had been blown across the village, and we had to retrieve as many as possible. The villagers would give us clues (pictures of places where the crystals were buried) if players answered riddle correctly or beat hem at a simple board game. Each crystal had an additional clue attached to it, which helped decode a message left by Merlin and addressed to each of the competing Wizards. There instuctuction were supposed to be for this to be given to each Wizard aloud with the first substitution, and instruction to hand deliver this to the King when decoded. Directions got garbled, and the Red Wizard decoded his, but didn’t realize that it needed to be delivered to the King. I got mine several minutes into the game, but with no initial letter to start decoding. In fact, I had received 2 crystals with their substitutions before I got the message.

Tunde took early advantage in the game to come around and snipe at our base with his Nighthawk. I simply stood next to the key and reset myself every tie his did that while I worked to decode the message. Peter called about ½ hour into the game to ask if either wizard had decoded the message. The red Wizard did not respond, and I faked back, asking, What message?" and, "How were we supposed to decode that?" as I finished the message. I then asked what we do when we’re done as I finished (by this point we had about eight crystals, but I was guessing letters faster that I could check in the crystals). I thought Peter would just have me read it off over the radio, but I had to made the walk up the hill and run across the open field to get to King Arthur's throne. Luckily Kevin from Lafayette, Dan (who was playing Audie Murphy) and two others were there to escort me. I brought the crystals with me, mistakenly thinking the game would end with the Messages being decoded and to protect them from theft.. We brought the decoded paper to Peter, explaining it was a message from Merlin from Beyond the Grave. It said that the Red Wizard plans to use the Stargate to hypnotize everyone and take control of the kingdom from King Arthur, so we should bury the Stargate ASAP to prevent this from happening. The king then read this aloud, and declared that the Red Wizard must have destroyed the Stargate controls. By this time many red team players had arrived, and I was hoping the game was over. Unfortunately for me Peter sent me back to my base. Along the way, I lost all but one of my escorts, but did get the crystals back safely.

I have to add a big thumbs up to our Audie Murphy guy! He was great. He would complete every mission he was sent on, and was always helpful. He’s my Hero! He even came back from one mission with an extra Gatorade for me (since I couldn’t leave the base). What a Guy!

Peter then proceeded to fight for the Green team, telling us where to find crystals, and using his gun, set to instant kill, to "Bring Justice to the land" by tagging out any Red Team members he came across. It was reported to me that He stood on top of the ridge looking down into the Red Team Base and "rained down a mighty vengeance" for their attempts to control Lyons. I also found out from Peter that the Red team wizard has solved the puzzle much more quickly than I did, but failed to bring the message to the King in person, so he only got partial points for that.

Kevin and many other players were wearing thin by this point. It was 3:00 PM and the temperature had gotten up to 87 degrees F. Kevin swapped his character with Tom Baker, who had been photographing the event and filming his gear in action. Many other players were sitting and resting for long periods of time before returning to play because of fatigue, too. Unknown to Me, Peter was trying to wrap up the game, so I was late in returning to the pub for debriefing.. When the crystal were counted and the points totaled, the red Wizard had 8 crystals, and 5 character points for Tunde, who was playing an escaped prisoner from a German Prison, versus 14 crystals for the Green Team, and 3 character points for our man, Audie Murphy (Go Dan!). This gave us the advantage for the 3rd event, the Tournament of Champions.Since it was late, and everyone was tired, Peter skipped to Tournament of Champions and went straight into the fourth event, which was, Quite literally, Borg Assimilation. The Kind and his new Wizard (me) had taken an Adventure through the Stargate, but had been captured and Assimilated by the Borg. Now we were back to get the rest of the Human race. Our only restriction was that the Borg could not fire until they had come out of the Stargate. After two games, even with switching teams, is seems the Borg were destined to take over medieval England (for the record, I told the King it was a bad idea, but NOOOOO he had to get all royal and insist on going). With that note, we called it an Adventure, and the out of towners returned to Peters house for a cookout, history of tag, reliving of TagCon’s past, and eventually sleep.

One of the purposes of TagCon is to explore new ideas and (inherently) learn new things to use when planning games. This year I learned the following:

US Tag players don’t dress up to role play – OK, I’m just a drama queen, but all the other characters who dressed up were in some sort of gear or outfit designed to get them a tactical benefit.. Note to Self, - Don’t ask people to dress up for Tag events.

Sometimes, there can be too much – Last years TagCon was not as fun as this year. Peter trimmed back some of the possibly complexity to make the game easier to understand and therefore more fun to play (thanks Doug for the comments on this)

Let the host provide the gear – Lazerbait was disappointed that his WoW compatible gun would not work in the scenario because it was not compatible with the digital format needed for some of the special codes the scenario gear used. If I had built electronics into my equipment, it would have had the same results. This leads to the next point.

People who bring custom gear need to be informed if it will be compatible – This goes back to the idea that we need an "open standard" for equipment. Otherwise, nobody can bring in the custom gear needed to "deck out" a character. I would have loved to add a shield effect, a damaging blast, and a healing effect into the staff I had, but the cost and Time involved made that impractical.

Its time for a TagCon Insurance policy – Peter’s problems about coverage leads to the realization that we need a policy to cover TagCon and TagFest events on a national level. I will be researching this, but it is very likely that we will need to define a set of safety rules that cover the gear and behavior at these events.

ACK its 1 AM, I am sore and I can’t remember the other point that Doug brought up. Someone will post pictures, soon, I hope. Until then, TTFN!

-Andy in Indy

My review of Tagcon by Doug Ross

The tag site was incredible! I would say, almost as interesting as Seattle's Fort Worden since it was a medieval town over a 20 acre areas used for renaissance fairs. I talked to the designer and builder of the town before the game and he said that he put about $20,000 of materials into building the site. It looked like a Hollywood movie set design. There were a lot of medieval buildings, rope bridges and interesting terrain in a nicely wooded area. There were also medieval in-character role playing actors who provided clues for obtaining crystals for points so the interaction for us as “soldiers from the future arriving through the Stargate” was fun. During a game, we had to acquire the walking stick of a Kilted Scotsman (played by one of the renaissance actors) to trade for pictures of where crystals had been hidden throughout the tag site. When we found him, he required us to trade something for the walking stick. We tried for 15 minutes to get him to trade items we had on us, short of trading our guns, but he wasn’t interested until I offered to trade my camelback water carrier (the camelback water pack is basically a mini backpack (the blue pack on my back in the picture below (hmm, looks like I should have pulled up my camo cover on the pack. That blue is easy to spot which would explain why Dan always saw me coming from a mile away.) with a plastic reservoir to hold water with a siphon hose for drinking water when your are on the go). Andy in Indy had one last year at TagCon Midwest in Indiana and I really wished I had brought one as well since I was often hot and thirsty during the games. During the negotiations with the Scotsman we were getting pot-shotted by the opposing team which was building for an assault on our location. I tried to explain what the Camelback water pack was but the Scotsman didn't understand until I called it a goats-bladder from the future for carrying water. He thought that would be useful so we traded. At that point, we grabbed the walking stick and got the heck out of there.

I had a another embarrassing experience reminiscent of a game I attended at Dropzone 98 in the UK. In a Terminator themed game at the Dropzone, I gave the only nuke to destroy the Skynet HQ to a human-looking terminator whom I thought was a human teammate. When a player was tagged out at this Peter's TagCon, he/she had to drop all of his/her crystals and ID cards, reset at a re-spawn point back in his team area and come back for them (hopefully they haven't been found to add to their points by the opposition). Fortunately, I dropped the crystal before Peter (on the other team) came up to me to ask if I had any point items like crystals of Character ID Cards. Due to a fence corner between us, Peter hadn’t seen me drop them in the tall grass just moments before he asked for the items. I declared that I had no crystals on me so he let me go on my way. I walked about 200 yard down a hill from my stashed loot to my reset station (containing keys to reset the guns). I then tried to gather a group of my teammates to go back to retrieve the items since they were worth a lot of points. I grabbed three players and explained to them exactly where the crystals were (in case I were tagged out before reaching them so they could still find them). I then saw Peter stand up and grinning on the hillside 40 ft. in front of us. He then turned and headed straight towards my hidden crystals while calling back, "You should have whispered that location Doug!" Nooooo! I tried to fire at Peter before he could get out of sight over the ridge but had forgotten to hit the reload button on my gun. We all had a 4 second wait for my gun to reload but by the time I could fire, Peter was long out of sight. I still pursued Peter up the hill, but then heard Peter excitedly exclaim to his teammates that he had found the stash! By the time I reached the peak to get medieval on Peter’s butt and dish out “a firestorm of infrared revenge”, he was long gone with the loot. There is never a “Cone of Silence” around when you need one!

Sadly, I didn't take any pictures to post during TagCon. I was trying to travel as light as possible.

Thank you Peter for all of your hard work, expense and your tenacity with the Parks Department on making such a successful event. I had a blast! I can hardly wait for next year's TagCon Midwest in Indiana!

Take care,

Doug

TagCon 2004 by Peter Montgomery

As we are getting ready the Park Rangers arrive and inform me that the insurance policy I bought for the event is too small and we have to leave. I make a few frantic calls to my political contacts and we get permission to play tonight only and that TAGCON on Saturday is canceled. Totally bummed I gather my nerve and we play some great night games from 8 pm till 11:30. We kept to the jousting field that had all the LASERBLITZ barriers set up in it and played multiple version of 5 on 5 with Andy playing game master and resetting the gun with the game controller. I had unfair advantage of knowing were all the hidden ways around the field were and was able to score some literal come from behind victories. Thinking this was the only tag we might get this weekend I made the most of it. We wore glow sticks to keep from being totally dark (not safe) John Haugland and BJ called these “shoot me sticks” we compromised and moved them to behind our heads like Indian feathers. Finally we all were exhausted from over 3 hours of non-stop gaming and we headed in.

Andy and I stayed up to 2 am truing to find and insurance “miracle” on the Internet, but to no avail.

At 6 am I got up (notice I did not say woke up as I did not sleep a wink) and began the scramble to find a new place to hold TAGCON. I had a friend offer 50 acres of woods 30 miles to the north that would have worked, but a last minute call to the parks director and a lot of sweet talking later we received permission to have TAGCON at the park.

9 am we head up to the field and the newbies play a few practice gamers to get comfortable with the gear. Then we divided the 30 players into to 2 teams and I explain the story.

I am “King Arthur” of the village of Lyon, in France, the year 1425. My Wizard “Merlin” has recently died and in his will he left instruction on how to chose his successor. The 2 apprentices dug up the “Stargate” and the manual on how to use it. They then proceeded to bring forth warriors from many different times and places here to do mock battle. The Wizards will be Generals in the battle and the winner will be the new Wizard. Andy arrived with a complete wizard costume with staff. My war-gaming friend, Luke Peterson, from my club arrived in army fatigues.

10 AM
Andy took the south team and Luke the North. Scattered around the park were 7 “chess clocks” set top count down from 2 hours. The teams had to find the clocks and set them to count down the opponent’s timer. Then hold the location to keep the opponent from switching the clock to count down their timer. The game lasted for 2 hours with clocks switching hands many times. Tagged out player could retreat to 10 different “respawn” points and the try to retake a position. No points were awarded to “kills” only for control of the vital clock points. To add a random element, King Arthur joined the battle and kept switching sides’ everytime he was tagged out. This was to simulate that King Arthur’s mind was being affected by spells of influence being cast by the battling wizards. As King Arthur I chose a Piranha gun that had a long-range gun set to 2 tags per tag and a short-range scattergun set to instant kill. My sensor was set at 4, the same as the rest of the players. Each team also had one player’s gun set to instant kill (but very limited ammo, and one sniper, 2 tags per tag with only 4 clips of 10 rounds) each team also had a traitor.
The battle raged and proceeded as I had planned. Lots of great fire fights, too many to comment here but players will talk about them for years to come. In this kind of game you set your own pace and are only 2-3 minutes or 100 feet from a firefight at any given time. Take a break for 5-10 minutes then walk up the hill and join in an assault or defensive action.
The outcome had the North Wizards army winning by a large margin.
We then had lunch, Pizza bought by one of club members Ben Kercher. Drinks all day were supplied by another club member John Stiles and Carrie Davidson.

1 PM the second game begins
During the battle the Stargate was damaged and the crystals that power it were scattered through out the Village of Lyon. King Arthur declares that the Wizard’s army that finds the most crystals will be the winner. At this time the Stargate’s effect is beginning to wear off and the players are starting to remember their lives before walking through the Stargate. Some of them were warriors in WW2, Korea, Vietnam, US and Soviet. Some were War lords in a drug cartel fighting each other over turf, some were prison guards and other escaped prisoners, some were villagers butcher bakers, candle stick makers, not to mention the grave digger and the Captain of the King’s Guard. Each has his won agenda that might conflict with his wizards’ game plan. Each player will earn his or her own points for completing their characters goal.
The team split up again and began looking for the crystals. King Arthur plays his role again as the rogue player, but now has a counter part played by John Haugland, the mercenary. The mercenary is really Mordred, King Arthur’s half brother who is trying to overthrow the King. The King and Mordred switch sides often and battle each other when every the see each other, occasionally all wiping out large numbers of the other players in their battles. At one time while fighting for the south team King Arthur stood on the ridge overlooking the North team and kept 6 players including their wizard pinned down all the while taunting them and asking where their mercenary was, as only he could save them. A few minutes into this “reign of terror” John Haugland who had snuck up behind me tagged me out.

To complicate matters more the wizards had to figure out a cryptic message and deliver it to King Arthur to win him permanently over to their team and win them some extra crystals. The clues to the message were on the crystals and the villagers knew where the crystals were. The villagers, played by 2 very mean nuns and a really stingy Scotsman would ask the players riddles and if answered correctly they would let them know where a crystal was hidden and give them a set of photos showing the locations. Needless to say it took over an hour for the wizards to get enough crystals to decode them message and deliver it to me. Andy, the South Wizard is the first to complete this task. The message is from Merlin and it implicates the North Wizard in as plot to use the Stargate to control the King and take over the whole village. The enraged King Arthur then confronts the North wizard only to find he has also decoded a message that implicated the South Wizard in the same plot. The King chooses to believe the 1st Wizard, the south Wizard and joins his team. The Mercenary joins the North team. The King helps the South team to find more crystals at the Mercenary tries to get the south team members to join him and the north in a revolt against the King. I happen to over hear this conversation and shoot all the traitors. Man was I lucky on that one, as it was not scripted. The Game ends with the South find more than twice the number of crystals as the North

After a short rest and fluids, the Last game begins

4 PM Borg assimilation
The South Wizard wants to show the King that the Stargate is truly a Time and space portal and not a hypnotizing machine as stated by the North wizard. He takes the King and the North team through the Stargate. Unfortunately he takes them to a planet that has been assimilated by the Borg and they all become assimilated. They them began to pour out of the Stargate and try to assimilate the North team. Tagged out player had to stand still and wait for a team mate to hand tag them so they could return to their base and get their gear reset. If an opponent tagged you, you went to his base and were converted by his wizard to the new team. The game was over when everyone was on one team.
Amazingly the Stargate/Borg team was able to assimilate the North/Pub team in less than 10 minutes.
Eager for more tagging we switched sides and the North team, now the Borg came from the Stargate and in a much longer game, over 40 minutes they too were able to conquer and assimilate the whole village, “resistance was truly useless”

6PmAll the remaining player retreated to my house for Hotdogs and Grilled chicken served up by another club member Steve Klipp. We all ate, drank and swapped tag stories until midnight. I finally crashed after being up for 36 hours straight.

For me, this was the best TAGCON ever

Peter Montgomery

Best Costume - Andy Hassara
Most Valuable Player - Dan Shipp aka Audie Murphy
Most Character Points earned - Tunde Akinde
Best Custome gun - John Haugland