When ASSU Senate Chair Chris Nguyen brought a water gun to the Undergraduate Senate meeting on Jan. 24 to protect himself from would-be killers, it served as a clear indication that Assassins season was back. Yes, the persistent reality game is once again sweeping Stanford dorms this quarter in a variety of forms. With games running in Freshman / Sophomore College, Rinconada and Branner, the paranoia-inducing game of hunters and the hunted is causing many around campus to guard their backs carefully.

“Rules of Play: Game Design Fundamentals” defines Assassins as a “lifestyle-invading game.” It is “essentially a live-action roleplaying game,” according to Wikipedia. Players are secretly assigned a target, whom they attempt to kill — by means which vary depending on the rules of the particular game — knowing that they too are being hunted by another player.

Games vary from the extremely involved, with pages of rules and ubiquitous water guns, to the simple. Branner’s game, characterized as an “unofficial pick up game” by its freshman creator Amara Humprey, uses Post-it notes for weapons. Rule concerning safe areas also tend to vary. While class and the target’s living quarters are considered safe in most versions, some games also exempt computer clusters, dorm events and bathrooms.

Assassins has been played at least since the 1980s, according to Wikipedia, and is most popular on college campuses.

“It’s great, especially in the beginning,” said freshman Amir Ghodrati, who leads Branner’s game with nine kills. “But as it goes on, people stop trying to kill each other and it gets boring.”

To keep the game from stagnating, FroSoCo employs a “terminator” rule, where any assassin failing to report a kill within a certain time limit is hunted down by terminators, who are essentially indestructible assassins with the express purpose of removing those who play too slowly.

As of Saturday, five people remained alive in the FroSoCo game, a game rife with betrayals. Freshman Denise Sohn, who on Friday was one of fewer than half of the 78 initial participants still alive, got her first kill while wishing her college assistant a happy birthday.

“People have become extremely paranoid, carrying their water guns around at all times and being afraid to go anywhere alone,” she wrote in an e-mail to The Daily.

Paranoia is both the consequence of and the key to success in this game, said Francis Ring, coordinator of the FroSoCo game.

“Most kills come from stalking people on their way to class,” he wrote. “Also, of course, there are the many betrayals by so-called friends.”

Hoping to capitalize on the popularity of dorm Assassins, the ASSU Student Life Committee sponsored a campus-wide variant in spring of 2002 that drew 35 participants from 19 dormitories.

Few now remember the game.

Andrew Cross, a history major who graduated last quarter, recalled his experience. “I was a freshman and I killed this dude in ZAP,” he said. “And then, somehow I blew the job on someone in Roble and died. It was cool, but not as cool as it could have been.”

Although publicized in The Daily, the game drew relatively few participants.

After the game concluded, game organizer Eric Lai, Class of ‘03, said, “At a school with thousands of students, I know there must be more than 35 people paranoid enough to enjoy a campus-wide version of Assassins.”

But the idea of a renewed campus-wide game has met a lukewarm reception. “I don’t want to play with a bunch of people I’ve never heard of in my life,” said Ghodrati. “It’s not fun.”

“The concept of stalking people you don’t even know would be a little scary, even in a game,” Ring agreed.

In spite of the alleged creepiness, some intrepid souls expressed that they would be interested.

Said freshman Danny Berring, “Is it invasive? Yes. Would my privacy be threatened? Yes. But that’s what makes it fun.”

“If they could get it together again, it would be awesome,” Cross agreed.