2010-09-13 12:28![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
digitaldiscipline
digitaldisciplineDespite being encouraged by various members of my corporate chain of command, I did not strip to the waist to be shot with paintballs at the close of yesterday's adventure. Taking a round straight to the dick does tend to bring a certain degree of common sense back to such proceedings. But I get ahead of myself.
I'd never done paintball before; laser tag, yes. The suggestion was to wear long pants and a long-sleeved t-shirt, preferably with something under it. Keen observers of this space will recognize that I live in Florida, where it's still ninety degrees and fairly humid. Add to that a full-face visor (admittedly, a fairly breathable one), and it's a recipe for being, shall we say, pretty sweaty. If that wasn't going to melt the snot and crud out of my body, I'd need to make an appointment to take a nap in a microwave oven or something. Upon rolling up, most of the other guys had jeans, sneakers, and a couple of t-shirts on. I'd put on my last pair of surviving camo BDUs, my combat boots, and three layers of shirt (compression/wicking workout shirt, long-sleeved T, and black RTFM short-sleeved T; look, if I'm going to be shooting my coworkers, I want my attidude present and on display). Newer colleagues remarked that, in this getup, with my visor down, "That's a disturbingly appropriate and good look for you." There will probably be pictures, since the proceedings were documented thoroughly for the company newsletter.
Paintballs, for those who haven't done this before, look like nothing so much as Milk Duds; ours were a chocolate-brown exterior surrounding a yellow dye load. While I am not a huge fan of malted milk balls, I can attest that they taste much better than paint balls, because my kill shot in the second game we played hit me right in the mouth (or would have, had the mask not been there), delivering a fair bit of its payload where I could taste it. For the record, the vegetable-dye based rounds taste more or less like earwax.
Combat was an interesting experience; there were both grassy lawns with static cover pieces, a fort to assault, and a stretch of more or less untamed forest salted with cover options. The last was, for me, the most enjoyable, and not just because it was also the shadiest; it seemed the most realistic and intense in terms of what my perception of actual jungle combat is/might have been like. My inner Rambo has no idea what he's doing, but I did have a lot of fun.
Unfortunately for me, I'm entirely too law-abiding, because in two or three occasions, I didn't get shot, but declared myself out because my gun's hopper took a hit. Given the option, yeah, that's just as well, especially after seeing some of the rather exciting welts my cohorts were showing off (I've got three myself - one on my left bicep, and one on the front of each thigh, and they look like nothing so much as a nifty case of ringworm, about half an inch or so across).
There were, as anyone who has done much FPS gaming, several different scenarios available - we stuck with team-based combat for obvious reasons (there were a dozen of us at the outset, though fatigue and other obligations caused attrition). There were simple "kill 'em all" encounters, traditional CTF, and "capture the steve" (steve is a mannequin head on a stick, who was placed in the center of the playfield, and had to be carried back to one team's base), and, the one I found the most entertaining, "President," where an unarmed player had to make it halfway across the field without being hit, accompanied by a retinue of expendable and armed meatshields (excuse me, "secret service agents") against terrorist opposition.
The last act was something they call "Gettysburg," and it's just about what you'd expect: in an open field, beginning a couple hundred feet apart, two skirmish lines face off, fire one round, take one step forward, and repeat until everyone on one side has cried uncle (whether or not they've been hit, no matter how many times... sort of "Terminator meets Appomattox"). This would be when the lucky shot referenced in the intro occurred, as well as another hit to my shoulder, and one to the leg. Sure, it stings, but you get over it. And putting a round into another guy's visor so it looks like he got shit on by some kind of radioactive seagull is totally worth it. :-)
Next time, we're going to bring folks from other department, because a target-rich environment is a lovely thing... and we're going to wait until the wether cools the hell off, so sometime in November, December, or whatever else passes for "winter" down here.
At the end of our session, th
I'd never done paintball before; laser tag, yes. The suggestion was to wear long pants and a long-sleeved t-shirt, preferably with something under it. Keen observers of this space will recognize that I live in Florida, where it's still ninety degrees and fairly humid. Add to that a full-face visor (admittedly, a fairly breathable one), and it's a recipe for being, shall we say, pretty sweaty. If that wasn't going to melt the snot and crud out of my body, I'd need to make an appointment to take a nap in a microwave oven or something. Upon rolling up, most of the other guys had jeans, sneakers, and a couple of t-shirts on. I'd put on my last pair of surviving camo BDUs, my combat boots, and three layers of shirt (compression/wicking workout shirt, long-sleeved T, and black RTFM short-sleeved T; look, if I'm going to be shooting my coworkers, I want my attidude present and on display). Newer colleagues remarked that, in this getup, with my visor down, "That's a disturbingly appropriate and good look for you." There will probably be pictures, since the proceedings were documented thoroughly for the company newsletter.
Paintballs, for those who haven't done this before, look like nothing so much as Milk Duds; ours were a chocolate-brown exterior surrounding a yellow dye load. While I am not a huge fan of malted milk balls, I can attest that they taste much better than paint balls, because my kill shot in the second game we played hit me right in the mouth (or would have, had the mask not been there), delivering a fair bit of its payload where I could taste it. For the record, the vegetable-dye based rounds taste more or less like earwax.
Combat was an interesting experience; there were both grassy lawns with static cover pieces, a fort to assault, and a stretch of more or less untamed forest salted with cover options. The last was, for me, the most enjoyable, and not just because it was also the shadiest; it seemed the most realistic and intense in terms of what my perception of actual jungle combat is/might have been like. My inner Rambo has no idea what he's doing, but I did have a lot of fun.
Unfortunately for me, I'm entirely too law-abiding, because in two or three occasions, I didn't get shot, but declared myself out because my gun's hopper took a hit. Given the option, yeah, that's just as well, especially after seeing some of the rather exciting welts my cohorts were showing off (I've got three myself - one on my left bicep, and one on the front of each thigh, and they look like nothing so much as a nifty case of ringworm, about half an inch or so across).
There were, as anyone who has done much FPS gaming, several different scenarios available - we stuck with team-based combat for obvious reasons (there were a dozen of us at the outset, though fatigue and other obligations caused attrition). There were simple "kill 'em all" encounters, traditional CTF, and "capture the steve" (steve is a mannequin head on a stick, who was placed in the center of the playfield, and had to be carried back to one team's base), and, the one I found the most entertaining, "President," where an unarmed player had to make it halfway across the field without being hit, accompanied by a retinue of expendable and armed meatshields (excuse me, "secret service agents") against terrorist opposition.
The last act was something they call "Gettysburg," and it's just about what you'd expect: in an open field, beginning a couple hundred feet apart, two skirmish lines face off, fire one round, take one step forward, and repeat until everyone on one side has cried uncle (whether or not they've been hit, no matter how many times... sort of "Terminator meets Appomattox"). This would be when the lucky shot referenced in the intro occurred, as well as another hit to my shoulder, and one to the leg. Sure, it stings, but you get over it. And putting a round into another guy's visor so it looks like he got shit on by some kind of radioactive seagull is totally worth it. :-)
Next time, we're going to bring folks from other department, because a target-rich environment is a lovely thing... and we're going to wait until the wether cools the hell off, so sometime in November, December, or whatever else passes for "winter" down here.
At the end of our session, th
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Well? Don't leave me hanging man!!
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A work one though? I don't even like my coworkers enough to shoot at them on my spare time.
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