12 ms·

I organized a 20-acre game of Capture the Flag

435 points by ntnbr 2y ago

pavel_lishin 2y ago
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 2y ago
  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 2y ago
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/ 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.
- deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
- nvy 2y ago
  My brother plays rollyball^W tagpro and it's amazing how much people get into it. I'm terrible at it.
- zoky 2y ago
  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?
  - canadiantim 2y ago
    Might have just been the servers you were connected to. They revamped the joiner so you auto join the best server in a better way now, maybe that’ll help? It’s definitely still very active in that there’s always games you can join (atleast during day time NA timezones) but also definitely still slowly dying due to lack of new players. The skill gap between established players and new players can prly be a little overwhelming
- aaronax 2y ago
  Same vibes for https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/SubSpace_(video_game) https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/SubSpace_(video_game) I reckon.
  - NikkiA 2y ago
    SubSpace was always just a lousy rip-off of XPilot anyway.
glenneroo 2y ago
We used to do something similar here in Vienna at Türkenschanzpark, 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 2y ago
If you have time, people, resources for such you might also interest in more elaborate variation, my favorite https://killerqueenarcade.com/fieldgame 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 2y ago
  The arcade version is great. I’ve had a lot of fun playing local co-op on the Nintendo Switch version as well.
rossdavidh 2y ago
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 2y ago
  I can't possibly imagine a more Austin thing than this
  - ProllyInfamous 2y ago
    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.
    - leoqa 2y ago
      Hey I was there, remember playing on the capitol at night around 2005-2009.
- ntnbr 2y ago
  I (the author) am a senior in high school. It was mostly high school kids. Average age probably 16-17.
  - rossdavidh 2y ago
    Cool!
dukeofdoom 2y ago
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 2y ago
  City parks do do this. And anyone can take their friends and go outside to a public park whenever.
- creer 2y ago
  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 2y ago
> 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!
- deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
- msrenee 2y ago
  Same here. I'm trawling through the comments hoping to see someone mention an ongoing game near me.
StevenXC 2y ago
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/ https://www.pacmanhattan.com/
- ntnbr 2y ago
  Dude that is actually so cool. I love the creativity!
Hayvok 2y ago
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 2y ago
  And that's when you started to do armed robbery for fun instead? :D
- emptyfile 2y ago
  >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 2y ago
    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.
assimpleaspossi 2y ago
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 2y ago
  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 2y ago
    Thats sounds like the type of fun I'd be at! Long term objectives in a short term game
  - tern 2y ago
    This reminded me of a game of capture the flag I played also in deep New England snow, with just a few friends, but over maybe a half-mile schoolyard with various buildings and playing fields. Long periods of silence and slow creeping punctuated by moments of sprinting when you were spotted. Some of the most fun I ever had.
RyanOD 2y ago
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 2y ago
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 2y ago
  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 2y ago
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 2y ago
  Thanks! The "flags" (balls) really make it more fun, because you can pass to other people.
tpurves 2y ago
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 2y ago
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 2y ago
  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 2y ago
    > 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
    - master-lincoln 2y ago
pineaux 2y ago
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 2y ago
Would anyone want to help me organize this in SF?
- haburka 2y ago
  Clearly GGP is great since it’s just a large rectangle
- tangled 2y ago
  Yes! Email in profile.
  - stnevans 2y ago
    Can you also email me at mc12stoud at gmail? I'm happy to help.
- ntnbr 2y ago
  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 2y ago
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 2y ago
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://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Warren_Dunes_State_Park https://www.glencoescouting.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/05/Warren-Dunes-Info-Sheet-FINAL.pdf https://www.glencoescouting.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/05/W...
Kaotique 2y ago
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.
- shlant 2y ago
  we also played a game in scouts called Survival. One of the funnest activities I remember from the trips we went on. There were different roles and a hierarchy between them which made for varied player experiences. https://www.scouts.ca/resources/activity-finder/activity-finder/survival.html https://www.scouts.ca/resources/activity-finder/activity-fin...
kej 2y ago
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 https://archive.org/details/capflag4_zip
sequoia 2y ago
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 2y ago
  Thanks! Was definitely considering implementing "jail", but I wasn't sure where to put it for both teams, so I decided against it.
- stephenhuey 2y ago
  We played as a kid and it was always fun but a bit annoying when players would argue about whether they had safely crossed the line when the other team tagged them, so in my 20s, I had the idea to solve that once and for all with 1,000 feet of yellow caution tape! I organized multiple games at Spotts Park in Houston, a city not known for having elevation changes, but Spotts has a bit of hilly landscape to mix things up, plus plenty of trees and other things to hide behind. It wasn't pitch black since we were in the middle of the city, but it was big enough that people could sneak to the other side undetected if they kept looking for routes with no enemy patrols. We actually used glow sticks as the flags and the only particular rule was that they had to be visible from multiple sides if you were several feet away. A lot of adults came out to play--at least a dozen per side but sometimes twice that many!
patchorang 2y ago
@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 2y ago
  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 2y ago
Anyone wanna help me organize this in Vancouver, BC?
puddingvlaai 2y ago
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 2y ago
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 It's a great way to test stalking, camouflage, and survival skills. A lot of the game is played in pitch darkness, where moving silently becomes critical. Rather than a fast-paced running game, capturing the flag often means inching into enemy territory over the course of days, and moving back to your side just as slowly without being detected.
- carpdiem 2y ago
  That sounds crazy, and amazing. As I've now got a kid of my own who might eventually be interested, could you point out _which_ intensive wilderness school in Washington that is? I did some googling, but wasn't able to find it.
  - jrgoff 2y ago
    https://wildernessawareness.org/ https://wildernessawareness.org/ - I went there over 15 years ago now and did what is now called The Immersion adult program. The capture the flag type event was around 4 days long, there was another capstone experience that was around 4 days on a survival trip. I think they probably still do these activities but I'm not certain. I thought it was a great program for me. They also have programs for kids and teens including summer camps. I've heard great things about the teen wolf tracking expedition and I imagine their other programs are great too. There are a few other wilderness schools in the area, some of which may have similar activities, so I am not sure if that is the same one the GP was referring to.
- at_a_remove 2y ago
  We did a lot of, uh, unofficial versions of these as Dungeons and Dragons-obsessed tweens and teens, resulting in some slightly maniacal, if ultimately harmless, behavior. Our pitch dark bits involved sneaking out via a window and completing a circuit of the neighborhood, which escalated into taking and leaving items stashed in various places as proof, finally culminating in a "yeah, but can you do it completely naked without being spotted?" set of dares. Our various forest pellet free-for-alls may have resulted in one of us entering the military in some kind of scouting capacity. My personal stratagem was camouflaging myself by remaining stock still in bizarre positions and orientations, resulting in my profile not being an immediately recognizably human outline from a distance, then getting the drop on someone. Others could cover large amounts of ground without much noise, and so forth. In retrospect, we ended up getting quite good at that kind of thing, very quickly, and with age I realize that this is probably a large part of the evolutionary history of humanity: skulking, hunting and being hunted, deception, complex strategies for evasion and capture, tracking and being trackless, first against the other animals and then likely against each other. This was likely just built-in, waiting for the right prompts to develop.
WaitWaitWha 2y ago
If you like this, and want to try individual "capture the flag", get into orienteering. Capture the flag on potentially hundreds of acres. (I believe there is a team version too, but I never done that.) And, if you want to up a notch, try radio orienteering aka fox oring aka transmitter hunting. Imagine a national park. Now drop (usually) five radio transmitters (no bigger than a briefcase) where each send out a unique morse code. You build a radio receiver that is light but sturdy that can pick up the signal if you point it at the radio, but the reception gets weaker as you turn it away. Run! Through the woods, swamps, creeks, crevices. You have to find all transmitter, get a stamp and finish before the others. Good luck!
- coffeebeqn 2y ago
  We always did that in school where I’m from. I figured it was quasi military training. Here’s a topographic map and a compass kids, now run a few kilometers to the spots marked on your map and report back
- ivm 2y ago
  Local national parks will not be happy with so many people going off the trail, especially running.
  - WaitWaitWha 2y ago
    "Running" is really a stretch. I run a kilometer/klick/0.62 miles, re-orient, run, re-orient, and so on. With radio as I get closer and closer it becomes harder and harder and visual search is required, lots of triangulation with the radio. Old fashioned orienteering is similar, but replace the radio orientation with pulling out a map & compass, re-plot, stash, and run. Some do longer, some do shorter distances. When I write "run" I mean I try to move as fast as possible. I can run on flat ground, but sometimes hillsides is just crawling, creeks will slow me down, swamps & bogs are the worst. I do not know what country your response is based on, but there are lot of national parks in the world, and most parks will work with and even help organize an event. This topic came up in discussions and the general consensus was that if it is completely denied, people will do it in clandestine fashion. If, on the other hand parks work with the run organizers, it not only makes sure rules can be established (e.g., no off trail, restricted zones, zones where only one path allowed, timing) and the park is promoted for general public. A win-win-win-win ;)
doitLP 2y ago
I started reading this expecting as usual for it to be located in some far flung location like Germany or Denver. Imagine my surprise when he happened to be in Austin where I live and using the same park I take my kids every weekend. Definitely a great space for CTF.
danielodievich 2y ago
I live on a dead end street with forest park across, very quiet. For when my boys were preteens, we celebrated their birthdays together and one year we had the typical party with probably 30 kids, I blew up bunches of balloons and made them about a hundred icely sharpened spears out of branches from the forest to throw at balloons to see who can pop the most. My wife thought that was a bad dangerous idea that other parents wouldn't like but it was the most fun part of the event that night for kids. Everyone chucking spears,girls, boys, little hunters came out in them all. Nobody got hurt, except the bballoons. Fun!!!
popohauer 2y ago
This would be incredible. Back in high school we would play this in a friends backyard. His parents had around 10 acres of woods, creek, and open field. Would be amazing to have an organized event with so many players like this.
jaredhallen 2y ago
When I was a teenager, some of my friends and cousins and I used to play capture the flag out in the field on horses. It was a whole lot of fun until a serious accident put a girl in the hospital for reconstructive facial surgery. Needless to say we didn't do that anymore after that. On the bright side though, she recovered fully and ended up marrying my cousin who was there that day and happened to be a first responder.
pontifier 2y ago
I organized a huge game of capture the flag for the dorms at the University of Utah back in 1999. We had 3 teams, one for each dorm building. The RAs were given special powers to free people from jail and couldn't be tagged, but weren't allowed to carry a flag. I think most people had a great time. It really helped people get to know their neighbors and the RAs for the year.
thuridas 2y ago
I remember doing a LARP variation of this. Imagine the same but with soft combat swords, spears and bows!! Players with armor could stand more hits because the stamina needed to run to the respawn compressated it. With scenario variations like capture the flag, keep your fortresses, protect the VIP there was a lot of tactics to do. We called the cops beforehand and asked for a permission because it was a public land but we had no problem (Spain)
rossant 2y ago
I want to see pictures! ;)
ragebol 2y ago
In the Netherlands there's a scout event called Hike and Seek, where there's a 100 checkpoints in a 8 km radius around the start. Some 70 teams try to get as many of those as possible without being spotted over the course of Friday evening until Saturday night. Seekers can be any car, horse or bicycle or even also walking essentially, so it's a tense game. And hard to find an empty enough place in NL to do this. Great fun though.
munichpavel 2y ago
> "What are your best memories from your youth?" as an over 30 year old, that's easy, and they fit with this post: 1. Playing jailbreak with neighbors 2. A marathon ultimate frisbee game in Valley Forge National Park that went 2hrs without a single goal 3. Playing capture the flag with my youth group
mycologos 2y ago
Man, I haven't thought about it in a while, but running in the dark is exhilarating, something about the blur of low light vision makes it feel much faster.
- ntnbr 2y ago
  We actually didn’t even run in the dark! We played from 4:45-6:30pm, where the sun was very much still shining. Maybe next time I host I’ll do it at night.
hyping9 2y ago
[dead]
karaterobot 2y ago
Back in the days when playing Steve Jackson's Killer was less likely to get you arrested, I organized a pretty large CTF event at a local park. It was a long, thin park that ran along the river, and the team bases were about a kilometer apart. Standard Killer weapons could be used: water guns, polaroid cameras, water balloons, etc. Being 30 years ago, I don't remember the exact rules, but I think everybody had a couple lives. It was a lot of fun, extremely exhausting, but what I remember the most was that my teenage planning capacity had not accounted for the fact that there would be a lot of people picnicking in this narrow park, who would really not appreciate a bunch of nerds running around pretending to have a war. Oh, and dogs.
berniedurfee 2y ago
Did this at camp in the way deep woods. The troop I was in was sort of “outside” the mainstream campers. It was a blast though. So many good memories. I would definitely recommend it if you’ve got the space.
cainxinth 2y ago
That was a fun read. At summer camp as a kid we played many a large scale game of capture of the flag, but my personal favorite was the in-person Stratego variant. Everyone gets an index card with a Stratego rank on it. When someone tags you, you and they show each other your cards to see who “wins” the tag.
mdnahas 2y ago
Did similar in NYC in Central Park. Organizers were lawyers, so rules took 3 hours to sus out, but the game took less than 2. The other team brought walkee-talkies! My team won. A devious member waited and then changed clothes into a bright floral full-length dress with a large floppy hat. Disguised as a random park user, she strolled in, grabbed the flag, and strolled out undetected! Highly recommend.
novia 2y ago
The great betrayal of the cybersecurity field is that when they talk about playing capture the flag, they don't mean it.

435 points by ntnbr 2y ago

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 2y ago
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 2y ago

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/ 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.

deleted 2y ago
[deleted]
nvy 2y ago
My brother plays rollyball^W tagpro and it's amazing how much people get into it. I'm terrible at it.
zoky 2y ago
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?
- canadiantim 2y ago
  Might have just been the servers you were connected to. They revamped the joiner so you auto join the best server in a better way now, maybe that’ll help? It’s definitely still very active in that there’s always games you can join (atleast during day time NA timezones) but also definitely still slowly dying due to lack of new players. The skill gap between established players and new players can prly be a little overwhelming
aaronax 2y ago
Same vibes for https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/SubSpace_(video_game) https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/SubSpace_(video_game) I reckon.
- NikkiA 2y ago
  SubSpace was always just a lousy rip-off of XPilot anyway.

glenneroo 2y ago

We used to do something similar here in Vienna at Türkenschanzpark, 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 2y ago

If you have time, people, resources for such you might also interest in more elaborate variation, my favorite https://killerqueenarcade.com/fieldgame 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 2y ago
The arcade version is great. I’ve had a lot of fun playing local co-op on the Nintendo Switch version as well.

rossdavidh 2y ago

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 2y ago
I can't possibly imagine a more Austin thing than this
- ProllyInfamous 2y ago
  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.
  - leoqa 2y ago
    Hey I was there, remember playing on the capitol at night around 2005-2009.
ntnbr 2y ago
I (the author) am a senior in high school. It was mostly high school kids. Average age probably 16-17.
- rossdavidh 2y ago
  Cool!

dukeofdoom 2y ago

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 2y ago
City parks do do this. And anyone can take their friends and go outside to a public park whenever.
creer 2y ago
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 2y ago

> 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!

deleted 2y ago
[deleted]
msrenee 2y ago
Same here. I'm trawling through the comments hoping to see someone mention an ongoing game near me.

StevenXC 2y ago

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/ https://www.pacmanhattan.com/

ntnbr 2y ago
Dude that is actually so cool. I love the creativity!

Hayvok 2y ago

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 2y ago
And that's when you started to do armed robbery for fun instead? :D
emptyfile 2y ago
>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 2y ago
  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.

assimpleaspossi 2y ago

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 2y ago
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 2y ago
  Thats sounds like the type of fun I'd be at! Long term objectives in a short term game
- tern 2y ago
  This reminded me of a game of capture the flag I played also in deep New England snow, with just a few friends, but over maybe a half-mile schoolyard with various buildings and playing fields. Long periods of silence and slow creeping punctuated by moments of sprinting when you were spotted. Some of the most fun I ever had.

RyanOD 2y ago

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 2y ago

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 2y ago
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 2y ago

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 2y ago
Thanks! The "flags" (balls) really make it more fun, because you can pass to other people.

tpurves 2y ago

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 2y ago

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 2y ago
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 2y ago
  > 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
  - master-lincoln 2y ago

pineaux 2y ago

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 2y ago

Would anyone want to help me organize this in SF?

haburka 2y ago
Clearly GGP is great since it’s just a large rectangle
tangled 2y ago
Yes! Email in profile.
- stnevans 2y ago
  Can you also email me at mc12stoud at gmail? I'm happy to help.
ntnbr 2y ago
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 2y ago

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 2y ago

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://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Warren_Dunes_State_Park https://www.glencoescouting.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/05/Warren-Dunes-Info-Sheet-FINAL.pdf https://www.glencoescouting.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/05/W...

Kaotique 2y ago

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.

shlant 2y ago
we also played a game in scouts called Survival. One of the funnest activities I remember from the trips we went on. There were different roles and a hierarchy between them which made for varied player experiences. https://www.scouts.ca/resources/activity-finder/activity-finder/survival.html https://www.scouts.ca/resources/activity-finder/activity-fin...

kej 2y ago

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 https://archive.org/details/capflag4_zip

sequoia 2y ago

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 2y ago
Thanks! Was definitely considering implementing "jail", but I wasn't sure where to put it for both teams, so I decided against it.
stephenhuey 2y ago
We played as a kid and it was always fun but a bit annoying when players would argue about whether they had safely crossed the line when the other team tagged them, so in my 20s, I had the idea to solve that once and for all with 1,000 feet of yellow caution tape! I organized multiple games at Spotts Park in Houston, a city not known for having elevation changes, but Spotts has a bit of hilly landscape to mix things up, plus plenty of trees and other things to hide behind. It wasn't pitch black since we were in the middle of the city, but it was big enough that people could sneak to the other side undetected if they kept looking for routes with no enemy patrols. We actually used glow sticks as the flags and the only particular rule was that they had to be visible from multiple sides if you were several feet away. A lot of adults came out to play--at least a dozen per side but sometimes twice that many!

patchorang 2y ago

@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 2y ago
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 2y ago

Anyone wanna help me organize this in Vancouver, BC?

puddingvlaai 2y ago

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 2y ago

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 It's a great way to test stalking, camouflage, and survival skills. A lot of the game is played in pitch darkness, where moving silently becomes critical. Rather than a fast-paced running game, capturing the flag often means inching into enemy territory over the course of days, and moving back to your side just as slowly without being detected.

carpdiem 2y ago
That sounds crazy, and amazing. As I've now got a kid of my own who might eventually be interested, could you point out _which_ intensive wilderness school in Washington that is? I did some googling, but wasn't able to find it.
- jrgoff 2y ago
  https://wildernessawareness.org/ https://wildernessawareness.org/ - I went there over 15 years ago now and did what is now called The Immersion adult program. The capture the flag type event was around 4 days long, there was another capstone experience that was around 4 days on a survival trip. I think they probably still do these activities but I'm not certain. I thought it was a great program for me. They also have programs for kids and teens including summer camps. I've heard great things about the teen wolf tracking expedition and I imagine their other programs are great too. There are a few other wilderness schools in the area, some of which may have similar activities, so I am not sure if that is the same one the GP was referring to.
at_a_remove 2y ago
We did a lot of, uh, unofficial versions of these as Dungeons and Dragons-obsessed tweens and teens, resulting in some slightly maniacal, if ultimately harmless, behavior. Our pitch dark bits involved sneaking out via a window and completing a circuit of the neighborhood, which escalated into taking and leaving items stashed in various places as proof, finally culminating in a "yeah, but can you do it completely naked without being spotted?" set of dares. Our various forest pellet free-for-alls may have resulted in one of us entering the military in some kind of scouting capacity. My personal stratagem was camouflaging myself by remaining stock still in bizarre positions and orientations, resulting in my profile not being an immediately recognizably human outline from a distance, then getting the drop on someone. Others could cover large amounts of ground without much noise, and so forth. In retrospect, we ended up getting quite good at that kind of thing, very quickly, and with age I realize that this is probably a large part of the evolutionary history of humanity: skulking, hunting and being hunted, deception, complex strategies for evasion and capture, tracking and being trackless, first against the other animals and then likely against each other. This was likely just built-in, waiting for the right prompts to develop.

WaitWaitWha 2y ago

If you like this, and want to try individual "capture the flag", get into orienteering. Capture the flag on potentially hundreds of acres. (I believe there is a team version too, but I never done that.) And, if you want to up a notch, try radio orienteering aka fox oring aka transmitter hunting. Imagine a national park. Now drop (usually) five radio transmitters (no bigger than a briefcase) where each send out a unique morse code. You build a radio receiver that is light but sturdy that can pick up the signal if you point it at the radio, but the reception gets weaker as you turn it away. Run! Through the woods, swamps, creeks, crevices. You have to find all transmitter, get a stamp and finish before the others. Good luck!

coffeebeqn 2y ago
We always did that in school where I’m from. I figured it was quasi military training. Here’s a topographic map and a compass kids, now run a few kilometers to the spots marked on your map and report back
ivm 2y ago
Local national parks will not be happy with so many people going off the trail, especially running.
- WaitWaitWha 2y ago
  "Running" is really a stretch. I run a kilometer/klick/0.62 miles, re-orient, run, re-orient, and so on. With radio as I get closer and closer it becomes harder and harder and visual search is required, lots of triangulation with the radio. Old fashioned orienteering is similar, but replace the radio orientation with pulling out a map & compass, re-plot, stash, and run. Some do longer, some do shorter distances. When I write "run" I mean I try to move as fast as possible. I can run on flat ground, but sometimes hillsides is just crawling, creeks will slow me down, swamps & bogs are the worst. I do not know what country your response is based on, but there are lot of national parks in the world, and most parks will work with and even help organize an event. This topic came up in discussions and the general consensus was that if it is completely denied, people will do it in clandestine fashion. If, on the other hand parks work with the run organizers, it not only makes sure rules can be established (e.g., no off trail, restricted zones, zones where only one path allowed, timing) and the park is promoted for general public. A win-win-win-win ;)

doitLP 2y ago

I started reading this expecting as usual for it to be located in some far flung location like Germany or Denver. Imagine my surprise when he happened to be in Austin where I live and using the same park I take my kids every weekend. Definitely a great space for CTF.

danielodievich 2y ago

I live on a dead end street with forest park across, very quiet. For when my boys were preteens, we celebrated their birthdays together and one year we had the typical party with probably 30 kids, I blew up bunches of balloons and made them about a hundred icely sharpened spears out of branches from the forest to throw at balloons to see who can pop the most. My wife thought that was a bad dangerous idea that other parents wouldn't like but it was the most fun part of the event that night for kids. Everyone chucking spears,girls, boys, little hunters came out in them all. Nobody got hurt, except the bballoons. Fun!!!

popohauer 2y ago

This would be incredible. Back in high school we would play this in a friends backyard. His parents had around 10 acres of woods, creek, and open field. Would be amazing to have an organized event with so many players like this.

jaredhallen 2y ago

When I was a teenager, some of my friends and cousins and I used to play capture the flag out in the field on horses. It was a whole lot of fun until a serious accident put a girl in the hospital for reconstructive facial surgery. Needless to say we didn't do that anymore after that. On the bright side though, she recovered fully and ended up marrying my cousin who was there that day and happened to be a first responder.

pontifier 2y ago

I organized a huge game of capture the flag for the dorms at the University of Utah back in 1999. We had 3 teams, one for each dorm building. The RAs were given special powers to free people from jail and couldn't be tagged, but weren't allowed to carry a flag. I think most people had a great time. It really helped people get to know their neighbors and the RAs for the year.

thuridas 2y ago

I remember doing a LARP variation of this. Imagine the same but with soft combat swords, spears and bows!! Players with armor could stand more hits because the stamina needed to run to the respawn compressated it. With scenario variations like capture the flag, keep your fortresses, protect the VIP there was a lot of tactics to do. We called the cops beforehand and asked for a permission because it was a public land but we had no problem (Spain)

rossant 2y ago

I want to see pictures! ;)

ragebol 2y ago

In the Netherlands there's a scout event called Hike and Seek, where there's a 100 checkpoints in a 8 km radius around the start. Some 70 teams try to get as many of those as possible without being spotted over the course of Friday evening until Saturday night. Seekers can be any car, horse or bicycle or even also walking essentially, so it's a tense game. And hard to find an empty enough place in NL to do this. Great fun though.

munichpavel 2y ago

> "What are your best memories from your youth?" as an over 30 year old, that's easy, and they fit with this post: 1. Playing jailbreak with neighbors 2. A marathon ultimate frisbee game in Valley Forge National Park that went 2hrs without a single goal 3. Playing capture the flag with my youth group

mycologos 2y ago

Man, I haven't thought about it in a while, but running in the dark is exhilarating, something about the blur of low light vision makes it feel much faster.

ntnbr 2y ago
We actually didn’t even run in the dark! We played from 4:45-6:30pm, where the sun was very much still shining. Maybe next time I host I’ll do it at night.

hyping9 2y ago

[dead]

karaterobot 2y ago

Back in the days when playing Steve Jackson's Killer was less likely to get you arrested, I organized a pretty large CTF event at a local park. It was a long, thin park that ran along the river, and the team bases were about a kilometer apart. Standard Killer weapons could be used: water guns, polaroid cameras, water balloons, etc. Being 30 years ago, I don't remember the exact rules, but I think everybody had a couple lives. It was a lot of fun, extremely exhausting, but what I remember the most was that my teenage planning capacity had not accounted for the fact that there would be a lot of people picnicking in this narrow park, who would really not appreciate a bunch of nerds running around pretending to have a war. Oh, and dogs.

berniedurfee 2y ago

Did this at camp in the way deep woods. The troop I was in was sort of “outside” the mainstream campers. It was a blast though. So many good memories. I would definitely recommend it if you’ve got the space.

cainxinth 2y ago

That was a fun read. At summer camp as a kid we played many a large scale game of capture of the flag, but my personal favorite was the in-person Stratego variant. Everyone gets an index card with a Stratego rank on it. When someone tags you, you and they show each other your cards to see who “wins” the tag.

mdnahas 2y ago

Did similar in NYC in Central Park. Organizers were lawyers, so rules took 3 hours to sus out, but the game took less than 2. The other team brought walkee-talkies! My team won. A devious member waited and then changed clothes into a bright floral full-length dress with a large floppy hat. Disguised as a random park user, she strolled in, grabbed the flag, and strolled out undetected! Highly recommend.

novia 2y ago

The great betrayal of the cybersecurity field is that when they talk about playing capture the flag, they don't mean it.