Between my second and third years, I played with the idea of running an airsoft game. Rather than it being some gamemode that ends in deathmatch, to be more than just that. For those who might not know what airsoft is. It's like paintball, but instead of shooting each other with balls with paint, in airsoft we use small plastic bbs. And instead of using markers, we use replicas of actual firearms. Inspired by video games like Escape from Tarkov and the S.T.A.L.K.E.R. series, I wanted to do something more focused on player interaction than teamfighting. Feeling of being left behind and not knowing who to trust, as nearly any met person could be an ally or a danger.
The goal of the players is to escape(extract) from the zone; they could do that by collecting artefacts and delivering them to the manager. Those artefacts also acted as currency and could be used to resurrect themselves by the Player. While designing the game, I wanted to have some kind of currency for the players to exchange for items they might use. But the separate currency would have added another layer of complexity to the rules to be kept in mind by the player. While it could work in a bigger/longer scenario, one that lasted a few hours was too much. As the players needed to remember rules about extracting, artefacts, and more. So artefacts are also the currency of the game.
Example of an artefact.
During the early stages of writing this scenario, I reconnected with a friend who was interested in it, as he was an airsoft player and part of a local airsoft group. Because of that, an opportunity revealed itself to host and run this scenario at their local field. But there was a problem or two. First, I did not know the field the game was about to take place on. Second was how to mark used artefacts (Those which were used to resurrect and couldn’t be exchanged for extraction or items), which could not be revered on the field. The solution to the first problem came from the same friend who went to the field and gave me a digital tour of it through video call. Solution for the second one came in the form of fishing glowsticks, which once broken,n couldn’t be reused and gave artefacts a radioactive vibe.
Map of the field of play.
After two months preparing props, factions, npcs, POI,s quests and quotes,s the scenario was nearly ready. Wait quests? Factions? Yes, let's start with the former. There were two other factions prepared. One which was cultists was not used during the game. After players extract they would finish the game, and the game could take a few more hours to finish. To prevent their boredom, they would rejoin as one team in the form of cleaners with tasks of hunting remaining players. On the other hand, quests were another way to get players engaged. During the gameplay, tasks could be announced that awarded a discount for the extraction (as there could not be another reward due to wanting to maintain simplicity). Tasks themselves were simple: find X and bring it to me. Just trying to complete the task was a pretext for interaction with other players and emergent gameplay and story. And keeping them simple kept them easy to remember. Those tasks kept the game dynamic and more interesting. It also helps to pace the game according to the needs of the players on the ground. Tasks were announced using the radio by the manager. He also communicated the state of the battlefield and events that were happening during the game. Which helped with vibes and enforcing the climate of the game. This also gave often-needed information to the players, for example availability of artefacts and cleaners entering the zone.
The game was run on 28 September 2024. Below, I attach a postmortem from the English version of the scenario. Please forgive the poor orthography of the scenario itself.
This scenario was in the summer of 2024. Here are some thoughts about it. Remember Hindsight is 20/20.
What Worked:
- Emergent storytelling - The players generally made stories during their play, sometimes knowingly, sometimes not. Of course,e there were more or less exciting ones. I still remember the story of two players who teamed up and found the journal. After the manager announced the quest for it witha response from the commissar, they decided to give him the journal. This allowed them to cover and escort the commissar to the safe zone and extraction.
- Locations - Locations and placement of Items and artefacts worked. Mostly, but all in all location we played at suited the scenario with abandoned garages and buildings.
- Gameplay - general time-to-time and objective-based gameplay worked as intended. With cleaners preventing the players from being bored after the extraction and waiting for the game to end. Despite the overall amount of the rules for the players to know their simplicity made them easy to remember and use for the players.
- Dynamic objectives - With quests, the players had something more dynamic objectives in the form of a quest, which gave them something new to look forward to. Other than collecting artefacts and fighting among themselves.
What Didn’t:
- Promotion - There was some poor marketing. While we posted an event on local airsoft Facebook groups in Poland near Warsaw. The lack of reminding the people of The incoming event was a mistake and one of the causes of the lack of attendance.
- Lack of a list of players - We didn't do any sign-ups for the events on Facebook. Those are often public lists of players who would attend the event. This often shows precisely whether the event will have enough players to run smoothly. In the end, we had around 10. Which was not a bad number, but we expected double that.
- Expectations - Of course, this isn’t your typical airsoft scenario. Because of that, some Players may expect and want to just shoot each other in the chaos of the deathmatch rather than be careful and watch their backs and count shots.
- Not everyone - unfortunately, not everyone had a great experience when we ran this scenario. Some just could not find any artefacts, and after finding one, they were killed and looted. This might be due to luck (or lack of it) or that when you design multiplayer PVPVE events, there often might be players who might have unpleasant experiences. In this case, it was around 10%, and there was no option to look for the next match for them.
What was neither:
- Theming is a mixed bag. While named Operation Stalker does not always live up to its name. It has artefacts which players collect and trade with, but the NPC and other enemies resemble nothing but stalkers. Which goes closer to the Escape from Tarkov than Stalker or even Metro. But unfortunately, it's easier to organise guys with guns who look cooler than mutants from Chernobyl.
- Reviving with artefacts - There was one instance of the player reviving themselves with an artefact during the game. This instance failed due to the proximity of the enemy to the dying player.
- Not all - Due to the low number of players, we didn’t have a chance to run it with all the features, which include quests, NPCs and items.
Conclusion:
To conclude this post-mortem, I want to say that this scenario neither failed nor succeeded as a project. I would like to play or run it again, but this time with a more informed player base to match their expectations and with more of them to test the power of the whole scenario.
This scenario is available to download in both Polish and English.
