=The Assassination Game=

"You have seven days to assassinate twenty-nine other Players. Prize: $1,000,000 cash. Participation by invite only. You have twenty-four hours to decide."

~x~

On the Internet there exists a community known as The Assassins' Guild, it gathers Players of The Assassination Game and organises Rounds amongst members living in the same cities. An invite has been issued to thirty lucky members to participate in an international round of TAG on an unchartered island, with a prize pool of $1,000,000 waiting for the winner. But what started off as a friendly game of TAG between strangers quickly turns into a race for survival; someone is playing for real and elimination from the game has fatal consequences.

1: Tag, you're dead.

"Smile for the camera, sweetheart, I just killed you." – Jayden Ceres, Player #13

~x~

Beep. Beep.

Jayden froze as something vibrated in his pocket and emitted a beeping noise that seemed as loud as a clap of thunder. He heard the crunch of boots against the dead leaves and stripped bark that littered the forest floor and knew that his quarry was escaping. The opportunity to assassinate his Target lost, he stepped out from behind the tree he had chosen as his hiding place and glowered at the other man's fleeing back. It had taken over twenty minutes to locate his target and silently make his way to a position where he could see the target but the target would be unable to see him. Mentally he berated himself for making such an amateur mistake and forgetting to silence his Tagger. Another few metres and he would've scored the first kill for this round of The Assassination Game.

Irritated by his failure he began to trudge a path parallel to the route his would-have-been victim had taken and pulled out the small communications device that had ruined his assassination. Palm sized and rectangular, the Tagger strongly resembled a mobile phone; it had one side equipped with a touch-sensitive screen and a small 5 megapixel camera used for "assassinating" targets fitted into the reverse side beside the small letters T.A.G. which had been embossed into the metal. Impatient, Jayden drummed his thumb against the screen pausing briefly to note the statistics for this round (0/15 Players assassinated. 2 hours and 38 minutes remaining.) before flicking past the picture and name of the Player he had been assigned to and skipping to the notification that had caused that damned beeping.

GM #4 – Tailor: More than 20 minutes into the game and 0 Player eliminations so far. Either you're all really good at hiding or you suck at finding your targets. Announcing EL directive 1: Players Tagged without a flower in their hand will be eliminated from this round, even if the Tagger is not their designated Assassin. Assassins of Players who are eliminated due to this directive will receive the Player responsible for their target's elimination as their new target. Target double-up possible. EL directive 1 active in 3 minutes.

Hastily Jayden muted the Tagger and shoved it back into his pocket, scanning the vicinity for any sort of bud or bloom. Flower… flower… he needed to find one quickly or anyone would be able to kill him. He quickened his pace, unable to glimpse a single sprout. Seriously, he thought as he searched, You'd think that they'd be more than common in a bloody forest.

A flash of purple caught his eye. For a moment he thought he had imagined it, but closer inspection revealed a small shrub hidden in the shadows of the tree, dark green foliage with tiny purple buds pushing their way through. Without hesitation Jayden plucked out one of the tiny flowerings with a smirk; now he was safe from anyone who thought to take advantage of the EL directive.

The sharp crack from his left made him turn. Jayden had long since gotten used to the rustling and creaking of the trees as the wind blew through their limbs and the soft crackling that came from underfoot when he walked, but that resounding noise, not unlike that of a gunshot, could only be the result of someone breaking a branch. Jayden grinned to himself and darted out from his cover, this was his chance to catch a possibly flowerless Player with their pants down – or so to speak.

The Player, a girl he vaguely recognised, didn't even have time to react to his appearance before he taken a snapshot of her bewildered face and Tagged her. Her lips were slightly parted in the middle of an uttered curse as she stepped off the rotting bough that had broken neatly in half beneath her foot.

Jayden winked and her jaw dropped open in an expression of horror at the realisation that she'd just been assassinated. "Smile for the camera, sweetheart," he called out to her, waving the Tagger in the air where the LCD screen was displaying the picture he'd just taken. "I just killed you."

He winced as she let out an outraged cry and quickly ducked back behind the trees to where he'd found the flowers. A moment later the Tagger vibrated in his hand: Player #8 – Victoria Faradaye – Assassinated. 0 Prior Assassinations – No additional Kills awarded. The message was accompanied with a darkened image of the girl he'd just Tagged.

The device shook again and the screen presented him with the photo of young guy with dark hair and a long nose: Secondary Target acquired: Player #10 – Samuel Adams.

He committed his new Target's features to memory and then flicked to the statistics (1/15 Players assassinated. 2 hours and 23 minutes remaining.)

He grinned slightly as a sudden rush of adrenaline coursed through his veins, he felt more alive in this single moment than he had in weeks; now he had two Targets to go after, and two Assassins after him.

=TAG=

T.A.G. Database :: How to play the Game

The Assassination Game is simple, perhaps you've played it before under a different name? Some people simply call it Assassins.

It is a live-action game where each player is given a target who is also a player in a game, however no player is permitted to have the same target as another. Players must locate and "assassinate" their targets by tagging them with a "weapon" (stickers, plastic spoons, nerf guns – you name it) to eliminate them from the game and after a successful assassination the player will receive their victim's former target as their new one, continuing until only one assassin is left standing.

A game host (or moderator) keeps track of eliminations and an eye out for rule breakers. TAG may be played anywhere at any time, each game is almost guaranteed to have different rules and a different method of elimination.

In the T.A.G. (The Assassins' Guild) version of the game, Targets are Tagged/Assassinated by taking a snapshot of their face with the Tagger - this image is uploaded to the T.A.G. server and the assassination is verified by the GM in charge of the round who then notifies the Players of the assassination if he/she judges the kill valid.

EL (elimination) directives are new rules that can be implemented by the GM to speed things along and/or make the Round more interesting, allowing for circumstances such as target double-ups to occur.

PR (protection) directives can also be introduced, creating safe zones or actions that prevent the target from being assassinated/make kills invalid.

Interested in playing the Game? Then please, feel free to join us here at The Assassins' Guild...