He used to go to the National Board Games in Texas where he was known as GOD( Game Operations Director). Lenny played about three of those early games. One day, he came to me and asked, ' Have you ever thought of, instead of just a storyline, actually using role playing, where players could portray another person for the period of the game?' I thought that was a great idea, so we incorporated what he had done in the board games into what we were doing in our scenario games. That ' s how the role-playing part came into the scenario game. Instead of a big game, we involved players in a scenario inasmuch as they could be James Bond, an Ultimate fighter... or a captain of a [ military ] division.”
And this all began with an idea in 1985, which developed into players getting mission cards and objectives to complete— and eventually into 24- and 48-hour games.
Wayne went on to say,“ Because we played on the weekends, we started playing at about 10 a. m., and by 4 p. m., everybody wanted to go home. So one day I thought that it would be fun to have a night game. We would start playing at twilight and continue until... whenever. The shadows change, so you can get a lot closer to
someone creeping around. So we organized a couple of these night games, and they went really well. So then we decided, ' Well, let ' s go straight through the night, into the next day, and play twenty-four hours.' Back when we started these games in the 1980 ' s we were diehard players.”
That first true scenario night game, dubbed“ The Longest Night,” was held at Wayne ' s field in 1987. The first-ever true 24-hour game took place the next year. That one was called“ Operation Stealth,” and it sparked what would become one of the standards for scenario paintball over the next two decades.
“ The game was billed as an endurance tournament. We were all so exhausted afterward, but history had been made, and boy were we all stoked,” said Diane“ Mother” Howe, a future scenario game producer herself, in an interview for this special edition magazine.
Two years later, in 1990, Andy Van Der Plaats partnered with Wayne for a period of four years. That partnership ended when Andy left and ran his first game in Tampa, Florida, called“ Contra.” Van Der Plaats would run four events in the next two years and eventually got the
Ice Station Zebra scenario
026 paintball. media magazine
026 paintball. media magazine