My First(ish) Big Game

I have been making games for a long time with little intention in the early years. Twenty years ago, however, everything changed with PacManhattan. I learned that what I had been creating since I was eleven is valuable to more than just small groups of campers or scouts. This is the first of possibly many post-mortems of the games and game-like projects that I have had the pleasure to share with the world.

Note: I am both a photographer and a facilitator. I only get the hero images my games deserve if someone else pays! I'm sorry for the lack of media.

Our neighborhood played Ghost in the Graveyard, essentially Hide and Go Seek at night. The goal was to catch all the hiders or return to the base without being caught, depending on your role in the game. We didn’t have teams (beyond the finders vs. the seekers) or modify the game beyond that - it was just a good excuse to run around at night through the woods and neighborhood yards. As we became older, it was a good cover for snuggling with teen romances (not me; I had to live vicariously through more attractive friends).

The game aspect of Ghost in the Graveyard bothered me, as being good often meant waiting patiently and entirely still for an hour or so. Not fun. I did change up strategies, though, and would often pick a dark, prominent hiding spot to scare the life out of an unsuspecting seeker. I was more interested in Capture the Flag, but that never caught on as a neighborhood hit.

My first big Capture the Flag game was at Boy Scout camp. I was too young to know how to impact the game positively, but running around in the dead of night with hundreds of other scouts was exciting. And the climax of a team bounding back with the flag caught my imagination in a way that other games rarely achieved.

“Perhaps Capture the Flag is the perfect game?”

We played in physical education several times, solidifying the rule variations and strategies. And on one occasion years later, my high school friends played in the middle of the woods, which always ended up as a total failure. What went wrong?

The problem with pick-up Capture the Flag is that organizers often need to put boundaries around the field of play - and don't. This results in microbursts of tag that could go hundreds of yards off-course. We had dedicated players jumping into and navigating the waters of a swamp to avoid capture - not fun for anyone on a chilly Spring day.

Another significant issue is the flag location - which always needs more consideration than it’s given. Camping around the flag zone results in stalemates that could drag on for hours. Worse than that, there is an interpretation of the game (at least with my friends that particular day) where the flag location is unknown to the other team. So, the game is first about locating a flag that can be anywhere (in our case, a forest) before even strategizing how to get the flag without being caught. Some hardcore players can devote entire days to this pursuit, but it loses the magic of the field sport I learned in school.

What to do? Capture the Flag feels best in the woods, but the rules break down without the scaffolding and organization of a field game.

In May 2004, my classmates and I created a game called PacManhattan. The game is a live-action version of the arcade machine initially intended to be played on the grid around Washington Square Park. The game was a big hit and incorporated some Capture the Flag mechanics, but it also had some challenges. The main issue was that the grid was quite large, so running the entire maze, which is the fundamental goal of the game, took much energy (and we were technologists and artists, not athletes).

That summer, I took it upon myself to make a game incorporating the aspects of Capture the Flag and PacManhattan that I liked while fixing the problems I encountered. Well, that’s partially true. I did accomplish that, but I’m not sure it was a goal. I was in my early twenties, so trying to figure out why I did anything I did, especially in retrospect, is impossible.

I created Territory Tepee because, as Camp Director, I wanted to create a reason for the young staff to have positive social experiences outside camp time. There were too many parties between a small group of popular staffers, and this crept into the day-to-day. Folks were being left out, and that harmed overall morale. I was fresh off of the victory of PacManhattan, so satisfying this need with a game seemed obvious. And, heck, I had such fond memories of the Boy Scouts Capture the Flag game that it must have seemed obvious.

Territory Tepee is named after Camp Tepee, a YMCA day camp in Monroe, Connecticut. The official name of the game is now just Territory: [Blank], with [Blank] indicating the particular location (such as DUMBO or Oakland). The game is a large group, team-based activity that mixes Capture the Flag and the board game Risk.

The goal is to get the most points before the timer expires - or before a team crosses a certain threshold of points. Teams get points by conquering territories, and, similar to a risk board, groups of particular territories are rewarded bonus points. The bonus points mechanic proved to be one of the more substantial design decisions, allowing teams to vary their strategies drastically. Teams that captured a territory were granted tag rights, meaning they were safe within their territories and could tag opponents - and tagged opponents were required to “reset” by going back to their team’s base. Everybody had tag rights in neutral territories.

The game was played over our entire camp, with between three and five teams (I expanded it over time as interest grew). Three key pieces were necessary to make the game work: walkie-talkies, territory boxes, and maps. Walkie-talkies were given to every team to be distributed among the players at their discretion. This was taken directly from PacManhattan, as I loved how team coordination and planning are improved using better communication techniques. Territory boxes were plastic crates with different colored paper on each face. There is one per territory, and the color (or lack of color) facing up indicates which team is in control of the territory. The maps were an artifact given to every player and updated for every game - this is how the players knew the territory locations and point values.

The game was a huge success, and the initial implementation worked. The scoring improved over time, and Territory became a tradition that outlasted my time at camp. I wanted to go bigger, though, and while I rarely revisit games (bad habit!), I decided to reinvent Territory for Come Out and Play.?

Territory: DUMBO was the same basic idea in an urban environment with a few fundamental changes. First, I eliminated bases and gave each player a flag to wear at their waist. One central headquarters was a neutral spot in the middle of the Territory grid. Players could return there at any time and receive one point for each flag stolen. If a player loses their flag, they must return to headquarters for a new one. This simplified the tagging element, as players in Territory Tepee had little motivation to return to their base - especially when it was on the other side of the map. I may have varied the tag rights rule per game to see how that changed the outcome, as it’s a finicky rule to enforce.

The second change was the elimination of walkie-talkies, as all players had some smartphones by 2015. Instead of creating distinct party lines for the teams, however, I only made one. This meant that all information was shared across both teams, for better and worse. Players had to contact the headquarters operator when capturing a territory, and a map was updated. If the teams wanted to check on the status of a territory, they could ask the operator. And, of course, players could use the party line for light communication at the peril of letting other teams know what they were up to. This mechanic made the headquarters a spectacle for folks queued up for the next game - although I would likely create an interactive digital version of the map in future iterations.

The final change is that instead of boxes, we used chalk. Each team had a color, and at each territory, the node was labeled (I believe with a letter, for ease of navigation).

Note: One of my jobs for PacManhattan (and the subsequent PacManhattan 10-year celebration) was to chalk all street corners with coordinates for the players. I did the same thing in DUMBO the morning of Territory: DUMBO and was detained by the police/security that worked the area. Despite wearing gear that said “Come Out and Play,” having maps that indicated that we were playing a game, and having the backing of fellow Come Out and Play facilitators, I had to spend over an hour waiting for sign-off that I wasn’t some criminal mastermind. The main reason was that they searched my bag and found that I had Sharpies, something necessary to have on hand when running a game festival. Shockingly(?), that was the closest to being arrested in New York City that I’ve ever been.

The claiming team would draw a circle in their color near the label. If there were already a competing circle, they would cross it out. This was mainly for disputes and breadcrumbing, as the headquarters was the source of truth on territory ownership. Glorious battle remnants were on every street corner by the end of the day.

The game was a big success and was modified and replayed in Pittsburgh at City of Play, called Territory: Oakland, presumably for the neighborhood where the game took place.

However, like most of my games, it went into stasis after a good showing. I had other things to try! I occasionally hear from old camp folks reminiscing about playing Territory Tepee, and I consider bringing it back.

And perhaps someday I will.