You think you know who your friends are... and then one day they stab you in the back with a spoon labeled "knife". And they're not even sorry about it.
Kingman is playing Assassins right now, or as I prefer to call it, Asesinos! We're all roaming Berkeley with hunted expressions and concealed weapons waiting for the appropriate moment to do some dirty work. My assassin should have had an easy job -- I'm a sitting duck at my desk at work all day -- but he bungled it on Friday and tried to attack me in a safe zone, so not only am I alive, I know who to watch out for. For now.
Originally the plan was for the players to have standard squirt guns, but bulk squirt guns are hard to find in toy stores in March and co-opers aren't too patient. So it's up to each individual assassin to find a weapon and label it appropriately. As it turns out, I did have a squirt gun, and I dutifully wrote "Gun" all over it so there could be no ambiguity. I was fairly proud of my Gun gun until the 5th time it inspired Elliot to do his Jar-Jar Binks impression, and then I not-too-accidentally left it at work so I'd have an excuse to find another weapon.
I scoured my room -- X-Acto knives? No, wait, those actually hurt. Knitting needles? Too long to fit in a pocket. Pliers? Hard to justify as a deadly weapon. Slingshot? Good, but carrying enough projectiles to make up for my bad aim is a nuisance. I finally settled on something with less devastating range than the Gun gun but far more postmodern irony, namely, the spoon that says Knife. Who am I to deny its identity?
One of the rules of the game is that if you know who's trying to kill you, you can pre-emptively kill them for 24 hours at a time. I found myself walking to work this morning behind my would-be assassin, so I jogged up behind him and dealt him a vicious stab in the shoulder blade. He totally failed to crumple to the ground in agony, but I tasted the sweet thrill of temporary victory nonetheless. Stand back! I've got a knifespoon! And, well, it's not that I'm afraid to use it, it's just that there's no way of using it which could actually result in injury to you or anyone else!
Posted by dianna at March 6, 2007 11:27 AM