War is a terrible thing, there is no question. It can be argued that the ancient Greeks had two deities associated with warfare. Ares was a brute, the wild and cruel side of battle, and he was usually portrayed pretty negatively. Athena was the personnification of strategy in armed conflicts and had much better "PR". It's a little ironic that I'm choosing to talk about my son's battle plans on Remembrance Day but I'm trying to focus on the Athena side of the equation.
The girl and the boy have been involved in a project associated with Ryerson University about creating a game on online privacy. At the end of one of the sessions, the boy had some homework: "beta test" the game he had invented in class. His description, scribed by one of the adult leaders of the workshop, is below in blue.
AIR RAIDERS RULES
1) Each person must have a hula hoop.
2) On each team's turn - they walk around for 5 seconds - after 5 seconds are up, you put the hula hoops down and stop.
3) Each team is trying to outnumber the other team.
4) The team with the smaller amount of planes (within 3 steps) dies.
5) If it's the same amount on each team someone has to decide on a number. Both teams have to guess - the closest wins and the other team dies.
6) Teams can group up to make a large battle plane that shoots missiles. Everything within 2 steps dies.
The boy was a bit reluctant to polish his game plan but we did some game-testing. It reminded me of another rule-honing moment to perfect a fighting game.
When my son and husband bought Nerf swords, my boy really enjoyed fighting with us. However, I found his "rules" for combat were inconsistent and heavily slanted so that he would win. That was fine the first couple of times we played, but I soon tired of having my shots declared null and void because he was using the healing powerup but his blows always counted. Finally I told him that if he wanted to play this game with me, we had to come up with some fair rules. These were the rules of our "Nerf Sword Battle Game", in my words.
1) Each player has a sword and starts on the opposite side of the room.
2) To begin the battle, each person must utter some heroic or action-movie cliche line (such as "Taste my steel" or "Bring it on").
3) If your enemy hits you in a limb, you are no longer allowed to use the limb (e.g. hit in your sword-bearing arm means you must fight with your opposite arm - hit in your leg means you must hop and can't walk)
4) If you are hit in your torso, you die and fall to the floor dramatically.
5) The winner is allowed to cleave you in twain, behead you, and/or taunt you over your fallen form.
This took several "play-throughs" for us to agree to the rules. However, once we ironed it out, the battle was a lot of fun. It reminded me of the "green army guys and golf ball bomb" game that my siblings and I played when we were kids - what constituted "dead" was mutually agreed on, there was set-up, and it was clear how to play.
Since the boy's game involved lots of people, it was hard to play-test. However, here are the changes we made (in red).
AIR RAIDERS RULES
1) Each person must have a hula hoop.
2) On each team's turn - they walk around for 5 seconds trying to get close to the enemies- after 5 seconds are up, you put the hula hoops down and stop.
3) Each team is trying to outnumber the other team and the team decides to attack
4) The team with the smaller amount of planes (within 3 steps) dies.
5) If it's the same amount on each team someone has to decide on a number or a letter because numbers will be too easy. Both teams have to guess - the closest wins and the other team dies.
6) Teams can group up to make a large battle plane that shoots missiles. Everything within 2 steps dies.
7) There has to be a captain. The captain decides to attack or flee.
8) There has to be a sky master that decides the letter in a tie.
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