Killer

Hmm…the Daily Post people are being quite kind to me today; free land and free resources.

I think we’ll avoid the more obvious and saccharine sweet responses. Though I might choose one of those, if the Money Genie dropped a pile in my lap–it would make for a pretty boring topic to read about.

Instead, I want to build something trivial and fun. I’m going with a paintball variant.

Steve Jackson published a game called “Killer” back in the dawn of time, when I was in college. If you’ve ever played paintball or laser tag or anything similar, you’re probably familiar. Every kid that’s ever played “Tag” could pick it up quickly enough.

But basically, you get a bunch of Bros, give them a hit list, and send them out to “Kill” each other….with squirt guns, water balloons and the like as weapons. Any weapon you can “improvise”, as long as it’s certifiably non-lethal.

Bitten by rubber snakes!
Poisoned with peanuts!
Electrocuted by ropes!
Bombed with pillows!
Shot with a banana!
Hosed & sprinkled, squirted and boffed . . . even ping-ponged!

Paintballs hurt. I preferred the disc guns and dart guns, much more personal and foot chase-inspiring. Nerf makes loads of perfect weapons for Killer, so does Super Soaker.

The big problem with the game (as we found out while being chased around Bradley U. by campus security) is that there aren’t many available locations where your “bros” can chase each other like kids around in the dark waving guns, safely. We also got chased out of Bradley Park by the Peoria cops (apparently fireworks on public land was frowned on, who knew?)

But it is fun as hell. Good, clean, white-boy nerdy fun. All we need is a well-designed building, with lots of good ‘hiding places’. And enough insurance, I suppose. Ugh, sign of the evil eye, lawyers begone.

We played once in I.C.C., which had a cool snaky-building layout with lots of cubby-hole hiding spots, but not enough stairs or floors.

Designing the perfect layout for Faux Urban Warfare would actually be the very best part of the challenge.

Stocking a store with Faux-improv-weapon “supplies” would be a good time, too.

Obviously, it would be nearly impossible to turn this into a viable business. So we’re talking about spending a boatload of money for a really, really trivial purpose.

Just-for-fun answer given a Cash-Genie scenario, right?