The Shattered Zone

About 3 years ago I tried launching my first agorist business. As a kid I was good coming up with alternate takes on other games so I attempted to do that with The Shattered Zone. With so many kids’ games being turned into adult leagues like kickball and dodgeball I wanted to do my version of Manhunt.

For my neck of the woods our Manhunt was just an enhanced version of tag/hide & seek usually as the sun started to go down. I wanted Shattered Zone to be an overnight experience people will begin to gather in the area designated as the Agorist Zone. Teams and nomads would purchase supplies, information, or power up through the Game Master. Supplies would be things needed for an extended game like extra water or food. Information would be clues about where various treasure caches would be located. In addition to it being like tag it has the elements of a scavenger hunt along with capture the flag. Powering up brings in the my appreciation of RPGs. Players start with one flag football belt that has the standard two flags. With more experience you can increase the number of flags or you can pay to make yourself a tank or healer. Healers would have white flag that cannot be removed but they are not allowed to attempt to remove those of other players.

Those flags are used in the Counting Coup scoring system. When a player removes another player’s flag they would need to get it to the GM table in the Agorist Zone or their team’s base in the Shattered Zone. A team can elect to have one player bring the in accumulated flags. Though if that player has all of their own flags removed they must forfeit those flags. Besides the flags of players a team will have a large flag on their base. If that flag is removed, the base is no longer a safe zone for that team.

The reason I couldn’t get this off the ground is that I relied too heavily on Meetup to do my advertising, I wasn’t organized enough, and I should have created a tangible rulebook. I feel that the concept was solid but my follow through is what I was lacking. I should have created a budget for the things I needed besides equipment. I should have allocated funds for making flyers post around the area. I was walking to work at the time I could have posted them to bus shelters and light poles. Signs should have been made and placed in areas with heavy traffic. A dedicated website in addition to social media pages. I can now look back at this and learn from my previous mistakes.