Okay, someone brought it up to me that they'd like to have a TagFest night with just adults, as they felt some games would go better and smoother with an all adult game.

So this brings a question to my mind...should TagFest be longer?


Use Thursday as a setup, Friday as an "Adults Only", Saturday as a free for all...and Sunday as a clean up...

Or use Sat & Sun, with Sunday being an Adults only...or Sat Adults only, and Sunday an any age....

...or is the age thing not really an issue?

I'd like to get everyone's comment on this...

Thanks,
Dave......

David,
I would not want exclude the kids from playing for an entire day. Maybe the adult game during a specific time would work. At night or maybe a few times during the day as well.

Mike Yates

I would be interested in an adults only night, but I don't know if Tag Fest is the appropriate venue for that (other than just getting folks together).

Given that Tag Fest seems half tradeshow, half gaming, it seems fine to keep that whole event as public as can be.

Longer, definitely! Especially for those of us who show up as reps of one line of gear or another, it is very hard to get much socializing in when we only have 1-1/2 days altogether and have to spend a good chunk of that setting up or tearing down or teaching new players how our gear and games work.

In the future, if I am going to be showing up with the barricades and all that, I think I might want to show up the night before and begin setup before TagFest officially gets rolling. This way I can have everything in place by the time the people arrive, so I'll have time to help set up the cooking area and cabins and still be ready to start right away with the games at noon. To this end, I'll probably stay in Wilsonville the night before TagFest and show up at the crack of dawn to set up the barricades and put batteries in all the gear.

I would reccomend that we continue the friday noon start, and have all day friday and friday night be the hardcore adults day as it was this time. Then Saturday can be the open-to-all day, where we host games for the kids and everyone else from the general public who wants to show up. All us rep types can take turns manning our little areas and hosting games with our gear throughout saturday and saturday night. Sunday could be a combination of unlimitted-gear games, gear testing, shop talk, and general tag-related socializing in the morning and mid-day, and tearing down in the afternoon.

One of the things I would have really liked this TagFest would have been to spend a lot more time talking with all of the people in the Tag community -- everyone who has been playing hardcore for years, making and modding their own gear, etc. But as it was I only had time for a few games, and I'd have hated to come all the way to TagFest and not got any games in!

Several of the people attending did a great job of stepping up to the plate and hosting games, especially once the kids were there. I want to thank them for that, as this provided the only chances I had for chatting with the people who I came to meet. In future TagFests, perhaps we can have a schedule that people will sign up to take on this task, so everyone can best plan when they will be playing, when they will be demonstrating gear, and when they will be just hanging out and chatting. I don't want to structure things too rigidly, I just want to make sure that the load is shouldered evenly so everyone gets a chance to accomplish everything they came for.

My wife has respectfully requested that it be held later in the year so that it wont be so cold!

"if I am going to be showing up with the barricades and all that" ...is this another TagFerret hint at future goodies?

I think a friday night adults only would be great. Problem witrh that however is that not all of them will be there until Saturday. A little later in the year would be great as well. I think Larps are for an older crowd but games with objectives should be fine for scouts. I would also like to see a game or two with WoW mode super gear.

"...is this another TagFerret hint at future goodies?"

I brought prototypes of our inflatable barricades to TagFest, so that we could get everyone's impressions of them. Also prototypes of the TagMaster Blaster.

I would expect that next year I will be bringing prototypes of whatever gear is in the development pipeline at the time.

I would really like to have Saturday set aside for Tag enthusiasts and their friends.

I personaly get a lot of opportunities to play lasertag with large groups of kids.

What I really look forward to, at tagfest, is getting together with other experenced players and getting down to the deep crazy fun.

I vote:

Friday - open to all
Saturday - Taggers and close friends
Sunday - Open to all

Unfortunately, unless we move the event to the summer when kids are out of school (which means a ton of mosquitos), the event will have to remain as Saturday being the day open to the general public, as kids are in school on Friday. Personally, I liked having the kids in the few games I got to play on Saturday night....I felt like a tag-commando as I was taking out 5-6 of them before I was taken out.....I even got the extra bonus of tagging out Peter in the mix on one game. Even though my team consistantly lost due to us not achieving our objective, I thourally enjoyed being able to take out several people before walking out of the woods with my red eyes showing.

From the way some people are talking though, I'm beggining to wonder if I need to split the event and have a TagFest and and a Tag-Out for just the serious taggers. The original and main purpose of TagFest was to start drawing in new people to keep the sport going, and to try out new ideas and gear. The idea is just to have fun and not take anything all that serious...eventually I'd like to see it develope to be fully open to the public as a sort of showcase/carnival atmosphere event.


I've been thinking of staring up a seperate early summer event called Tag-Out (spelling) which is an event for strictly tag enthusiasts that really get into the game and develope their own gear....which would be a more serious event, scheduled out like a TagCon and limiting the number of attendies to 30.

We could make TagFest and all LTTO event and Tag-Out an all Steradian event.

The only thing is that as I see it, we only have about 3 more years of oil prices being low enough to were everyone can afford to travel these kind of distances to come to this kind of event. According to several major resources, Oil production is supposed to peak world wide around 2007, then gas and travel prices are going to steadily climb till our civilization comes up with some other means of providing cheap/quick transportation. So, we need to enjoy this kind of stuff while we can!

(can you tell that I need to get back to work)

"I've been thinking of starting up a seperate early summer event called Tag-Out which is an event for strictly tag enthusiasts that really get into the game and develop their own gear....which would be a more serious event, scheduled out like a TagCon and limiting the number of attendees to 30.

We could make TagFest an all LTTO event and Tag-Out an all Steradian event."

The main problem I see with this is that we have people like Mike Yates, Duncan Mackinnon, and others who are now starting to use LTTO as the basis for their mods. Now that Doug Ross has played with LTTO, I can hardly wait to see what craziness he can come up with for it! And people like Flux are creating some great mods that would be a lot of fun to see in the flesh, or in the plastic or whatever. I see a lot of future cross-over between LTTO and homebuilders/modders, and I think this is exactly the sort of thing that gets the more serious people serious in the first place -- the "wow, I had no idea you could do that!" reaction.

Also, the kids absolutely love the sound effects in the Steradian gear, the light-up headbands, and the realistic looks that make the gear so cool. It really helps generate enthusiasm for the higher end of the sport, and it's also likely to attract the parents into games more so than the LTTO gear would.

I really think it would be better to have a LONGER event rather than two seperate events. Having a first full day that is just for the hardcore enthusiasts seems like the ideal solution to me, but I may have an easier time getting off work for this sort of thing than other people do (not having kids at home to worry about helps too).

Well I think we are on to something here. Gear is not that big of a deal.. if anything we can use wow mode. It is when and where and who we need to focus on. I really liked the kids there but come night fall and Larps games it went downhill for me. LTTO is a toy meant for daylight use and it works great for that. So friday will be big boys day/night..Sat day open to the public as such.. Sat night we send all the kids packing and breakout the big unlimiteds?

Some great ideas here. I like the idea of a Friday event before Tag Fest that could be used for Older players (Late teens and up) and custom gear. Maybe one LARP conetst and a few head to head matches. Perhaps an unlimited contest as well to inspire custom builders to push the envelope and use there imagination. Then use Saturday as a general Tag Fest day.

Mike Yates

I think Friday for adult only and Saturday for everyone

That means set up thursday night or early friday AM to be ready to play at noon on friday

I do not mind playing with kids 14 and older, the younger ones are a bit annoying after a few hours, but I love the enthusiasm and energy, plus it means more targets.

I would love more military simulation gaming
meaning fewer tags to get out (like 2 or 3, this gives and advantage to the good hunter who gets the 1st shot in) The games with 10 or 15 tags are a bit annoying)

Also games with more respawns during the games. This goes well with the few tags to get out idea as you can get back in the action with only a 2-3 minute "penalty" for getting tagged.

also Less "down time" while there is daylight burning, I am sure we all agree on that one.

to summerize

games of 30-60 minutes in length
progressively increasing detail and game features (medic, multiple objectives, etc)
few tags to get out
multiple respawns
10-15 minutes of rest between games

Peter Montgomery