Article Up At Fantasy Magazine

6 Responses to “Article Up At Fantasy Magazine”

1. 

   Gary Farber Reply 24. Oct, 2009 at 12:51 pm

   Thanks for explaining to this ignoramus on these matters, Steve.

   On the other hand, I still can’t figure out what you mean by “on the concision (or lack thereof) of genre fiction and paintball,” which doesn’t seem to make any sense.

   Are you sure “concision” is the word you want? Because I have no idea what you mean by this.

   http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/concise

   Main Entry: con·cise
   Pronunciation: \k?n-?s?s\
   Function: adjective
   Etymology: Latin concisus, from past participle of concidere to cut up, from com- + caedere to cut, strike
   Date: circa 1590
   : marked by brevity of expression or statement : free from all elaboration and superfluous detail

   — con·cise·ly adverb

   — con·cise·ness noun

2. 

   The Crotchety Old Fan Reply 24. Oct, 2009 at 6:47 am

   Gary,

   that guy I mentioned who treed himself. The betting on the ground was whether he was wearing a cup or not.

   Turned out not.

3. 

   The Crotchety Old Fan Reply 24. Oct, 2009 at 6:43 am

   Gary,

   Laser Tag was tried after experiencing paintball (probably about a year after I’d started playing regularly) and was immediately dismissed as a very pale, unexciting and “too easy” version of the same thing.

   My teammates and I had thought that it might be a good alternative for practicing during the winter months (laser tag was all indoors at that point) and found that not only was it inappropriate, but it taught lessons that were bad for a good paintballer to learn.

   Game-wise, it was not nearly as “sophisticated” as paintball; shooting someone turned their gun off for a set time period (ten seconds?) and major points were scored by shooting the main target – which you were only allowed to shoot 3x for points. The first game my buddy and I played, we easily ran to the main target, got our 300 points each and then took up a relatively concealed position where we just pot-shot at opponents.

   Later we learned that you could use the barricades to block your sensors so that you could shoot others with impunity.

   Mentally/psychologically they are two far different breeds. Laser Tag remains non-physical: the consequences of getting shot are a buzzer in your ear. Firing the gun makes a different electronic sound. As we said at the time “whoop de doo.”

   Paintball is very physical and there is a vast difference between a sound in the ear and a projectile flying through the air at 300 feet per second and impacting you – or almost impacting you. (Quite a rush to have tens of balls per second flying right past your head.)

   In the early days, paintball was much more the ‘perfect’ mix of mental, psychological and physical. Fields 40+ acres in size in the woods, games lasting an hour, 15 players on a team. Physical enough that folks who are playing really hard and seriously have sustained some major injuries; I’ve sliced open the top of my scalp and separated a shoulder, along with lots of other less serious wounds. I’ve crawled more than 100 yards through mud, back-stroked down a mountain stream, jumped off a cliff into a sand pit (the drop was estimated at over 30 feet) and done other crazy things because mentally I was “in the game”.

   (Another difference between laser tag and paintball is – paintballers that get injured just want some electrical tape to hold themselves together for the next game, while laser taggers want the emergency room.)

   The game planning for paintball – the strategizing – was also much more rewarding (at least for me). An entire plan could rest on an action that took no more than a second or two, or be something very complex, like lulling the other team into believing something – using psychology against them.

   These days there are several efforts that seek to combine the two – lazerball uses the indoor laser tag arenas and a re-usable foam ball fired from a paintball gun and another company introduced a laser retrofit kit for paintball guns so you can practice paintball outdoors without expending paint (which becomes expensive even at 2 cents per ball when each player is shooting a couple of cases of paint per day in practice).

   But like most things around here, I personally prefer the original, in its original form – hunting other, similarly armed humans in the woods of North America (or the rain forests for that matter: one guy I know took up a position behind a deadfall ‘covered in dirt’ that turned out to be an enormous fire ant nest. To his credit, he retreated towards his own team’s end of the field and got the ants off, and then continued to play, lol). It’s really quite the adrenaline rush to be able to sneak right up on people who are hunting for you, shooting them and then making your escape for the next go-round. (Stories. Have I got stories! The idiot who thought it would be a good idea to climb a tree, the gun-naked run right down the middle of the field, the 7 to 1 odds victory, the game with no shots fired, the victory against the first British team to visit the US that turned on the use of of the phrase ‘Dunkirk’….)

   Hope the preceding gives you some idea. Paintball is as simple as a game of tag and as complex as you want to make it. The “real bullets” in the air adds an immediacy to the game that none of the other shooting sports – with the possible exception of airsoft – can match.

4. 

   Gary Farber Reply 23. Oct, 2009 at 5:06 pm

   That is, I’m kind of presuming that you prefer paintball to laser tag, and I’m wondering why you might find one preferable to the other, speaking as someone who has never played either. (I’d suggest that one reason lots of fans aren’t into paintball is simply that lots of fans aren’t athletic.)

5. 

   Gary Farber Reply 23. Oct, 2009 at 5:04 pm

   Incidentally, what do you see as the important distinctions between paintball and laser tag?

6. 

   Gary Farber Reply 23. Oct, 2009 at 4:59 pm

   Concision?

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