Games - Assassin

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	Games - Assassin

Assassin (also called Assassins, Paranoia, or Killer) is a game commonly played on college campuses. Assassin is, essentially, a live-action roleplaying game where players' goal is to "kill" each other, and to be the last surviving assassin.

Assassin is described as a "lifestyle-invading" game in Salen and Zimmerman's Rules of Play. Play is not restricted to a specific time interval, but is integrated into the players' everyday activities. A game will last for days or weeks, and while the game is in progress, all players are targets of some other player, and have targets of their own. The game is intended to induce an atmosphere of paranoia, since an assassination attempt could occur at almost any time.

History

As Assassin is mainly a tradition on college campuses, where turnover is high, it is not known precisely when and how the game originated. The MIT Assassins' Guild was reportedly running games as early as 1983 and possibly before. KAOS, in New Zealand, was founded in 1981, when the founders heard about the Assassin's Game being run elsewhere. By the early 1990s, there were groups operating regular games at a number of colleges including Cambridge University and Hampshire College, where the game is known as "Wassassins".

A simple version in which an assassination was performed by saying, "You're dead," was mentioned in Harpo Marx's autobiography, Harpo Speaks!. This particular part of the autobiography covers the 1920s.

The idea for the game is essentially that detailed in the 1953 Robert Sheckley short story "Seventh Victim," which was filmed in 1965 as "The Tenth Victim." The "game" is established as a replacement for large-scale war, as an outlet for violent tendencies, which are inherent in people, and without which we would become soft and retrogress. Those who desired could sign up for one-on-one legalized murders. In Sheckley's vision, "At least there weren't any more big wars. ... Just hundreds of thousands of small ones." As further described in the story: "Anyone who signed up to murder, under the government rules, had to take his turn a few months later as Victim. ... The Emotional Catharsis Board picked the Victims' names at random. A Hunter was allowed two weeks in which to make his kill. This had to be done by his own ingenuity, unaided. He was given the name of his Victim, address and description, and allowed to use a standard caliber pistol. He could wear no armor of any sort. / The Victim was notified a week before the Hunter. He was told only that he was a Victim. He did not know the name of his Hunter. He was allowed his choice of armor. He could hire spotters. A spotter couldn't kill; only Victim and Hunter could do that. ... There were stiff penalties for killing or wounding the wrong man, for no other murder was allowed." Reference: The Collected Short Fiction of Robert Sheckley, Book One, 1991, Pulphouse Pub., p. 114-115. For the sake of brevity, the game Assassin is played with each Hunter simultaneously a Victim, without a time gap between turns as Hunter or Victim.

Media influence

Interest in the game also spread when similar games were used as a plot device in various films, including:

Tag, the Assassination Game (1982).
Gotcha! (1985).

Rules

Assassin is not a published game (although Steve Jackson Games has published a booklet on it, under the name "Killer") and rules vary considerably from group to group. There are certain common elements, however. At any given time, each player has a "target" (or possibly more than one) that they are trying to kill, and each player is in turn the target of another assassin (again, or possibly more than one.) Players are assigned their targets by the game's coordinators, but do not know the identity of the person assigned to target them. In larger games, players may not know the identities of any players other than their target or targets.

Kills

"Kills" are made by various means, as defined by the rules of whatever variant is being played. Some games have only one way to make a kill, or have a short list of well-defined methods. These may involve the use of fake weapons such as water guns, Nerf weapons, or balled-up socks. Other games allow more creative means like "poisoning," "mail bombs", "knives", or even "bombs". Still other rules require some item such as a clothespin to be stolen. The key is that all players agree on what methods are legal and how they can be implemented.

Witnesses

Some variants restrict assassination attempts made in the presence of witnesses. Kills made in the presence of witnesses (or in the presence of a sufficient number of witnesses) may be disallowed or may result in the publication of the assassin's identity (in games where the players do not generally know each other).

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