"...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