Well this is only my second post on airsoft, which is mostly down to the fact that I've been too busy dealing with the treatment of my rheumatoid arthritis, and the side-effects of chemotherapy's effect on my Real Life(TM) to pay much heed to the game. However, I've just bought a new (well second hand) gun and feel inspired once more.
I'm not going to reveal today what my new gun is, as it is still in the post on its way to me. So what I want to do is talk more about the game I play and the scenarios that have entertained my interest in the game for nearly 10 years.
Contact! is as much an RPG as it is an airsoft game. The two can go hand in hand, and for some people this is a good thing, and for others not so much. The upsides are that there is always a good reason for being outside shooting your friends, as there is a story being told, which only unfolds at the pace of the players ability to root it out. The downsides are that the story only unfolds at the pace the players find out stuff, and that the safety requirements for airsoft make face-to-face communication difficult for lots of people who are more use to traditional LARPs.
So like most LARPs you have to create a character to play in the game. This can be difficult to do as one only really know what works in the game for you, after you have been playing for a while. Dean who runs the game does allow the players considerable leeway to allow people to let their characters evolve.
So the first character I ended up inventing when I started playing Contact! was called "Doctor Morticia Ash". She had a background in anthropology and biology, as I thought these would be good things to have for the game, and described how she had been working for a real science think tank called Starlabs, and made her someone who had been seconded to the Contact command.
The Contact! game has an organization called the United Nations Stargate Command or UNSGC. Immediately the Stargate film and TV series springs to mind. While there are some loose similarities between them both, Contact! is more eclectic. There are references to Dr. Who and UNIT, also to UFO and Shadow and overlying it all there is a strong conspiracy flavour reminiscent of the X–Files. Add quite a few other influences on top, like Quatermass, Alien Colonial Marines and you get a uniquely new product.
For the purpose of the Contact! game, Stargate the TV series is a part of a disinformation programme. In terms of what happens in the game, to what you see in the TV series, then Contact! is to Stargate, what the episode Wormhole X–treme was to Stargate. The Contact! game is also very strongly a military simulation, or milsim airsoft game. That means that the rules are set up to limit the airsoft weapons so that players can't just spray & pray. So no one is allowed to use high-capacity magazines.
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