Something worth considering regarding fps caps and ammo allowed is that they can affect how the game plays out in practice, it’s not just all about safety. The higher the fps cap, the more I have found that people tend to stick to cover as open areas become more dangerous. This means you tend to either need to add more and more cover, or have the pacing of the game slow down to become more tactical as people go for picks on key players who are holding certain angles. For ammo types, stuff like rival can allow players to stay in combat for longer due to higher capacity blasters. It makes reloading less of a factor for players, and makes the windows of opportunity against players less. Neither of these things are innately bad, but they will affect how your game plays out. And it’s worth keeping in mind when designing the rule sets.
For more infantry combat style games, you can keep the pace up by requiring the teams to have only 1 or 2 "designated snipers" with 250 to 300 fps blasters, while the "riflemen" are limited to 130 to 150 fps primaries.
I love that this series got started. The way the teams were divided up at the KCNC October War was highly effective. 3 groups (Stock, slightly modified/Nexus/Stryker, and Oh God Why? - Highly modified blasters/ Proton Pack) then just count of 1,2,1,2,1,2 and Poof!!! Two “Equally Balanced” teams
Good advice all around. The way I've been doing it is we do 130 fps cap at the start, and then move up to 150 partway through the day, and finally finish with 200 fps cap. I then adapt this based on what ages show up. If it's a lot of kids and new players then I keep the 130 fps cap longer and maybe don't do the 200 fps cap. It's seemed to work well so far. Excited to see the rest of this series.
The timing of this series couldn't've been better! One of my friends is starting their own Nerf club, and well-presented informational videos like this will be very useful in developing and balancing game types. Thank you for all your contributions to this community. You really do care about making our hobby more fun for everyone!
My group is supposed to be a 130 fps cap, but we basically tossed it aside this last year with all the pro stuff that came out. Having played through and seen a bunch of accidental face shots, we're probably going to keep it at 130 in the next year. Otherwise we're pretty casual, running monthly events in spring and summer, with a larp-style event in October
There was much discussion if fps caps should be raised because of the Dart Zone blasters. Seemed a silly question to me. Why should safety be discarded because powerful blasters can be bought at Walmart? Besides, most can be easily modded to lower the FPS to safer levels.
@@CaptainXavier I wonder if a game organizer could print out a bunch of de-tuning caps for the Nexus/Stryker and sell/loan them to people who want to bring those blasters. Might make things easier for people with no modding experience, but want somewhere between 80 and 150 fps.
Excellently done. "Let's have a Nerf war" or "Epic Blaster Battle" can mean as many different things as there are people playing. Setting expectations for oneself and players is too often overlooked & not thought through. This series will be/already is-yes after a mere 1 episode- impoertant & necessary. Thank you. Personally, I really like your simple explanation btwn what's fair vs what's equal. Right...they are NOT the same. That distinction is applicable to just about anything judged, competitive, plainly experienced or overseen: nerf, sports, real estate, government, love & war. Again, Thanks, well done & looking forward to the next episode. -Scopes Maverick
It'll be interesting to compare my hypothetical dream scenarios (siege style HvZs, Trench warfare style PvP) with some of the advice you give in this series and further refine them.
Excellent points in this video. Running a club is a very subjective thing. I run the Maryland Nerf Herders which is a 12 and up group with a 200fps cap. I’m sure you have a video planned for this but one subject that I think needs to be discussed is the difference between public and private property and how one isn’t necessarily better than the other but allows for different styles of gameplay and rules. Maryland Nerf Herders plays on private property but I’ve played many games at public parks which is also lots of fun. I think it’s definitely a subject worth diving into.
I had actually originally filmed game type and location together (as they are very closely related) but it ended up to long and to complicated. So I split them into two topics. Location will be next.
We made it mandatory that one parent had to be onboard if the kids were under 14 years old straight after the first event. Otherwise some parents literally drop of their little bugger, wave good bye and are gone for unknown times. If that´s not bad enough, be assured the little kid will find more than one reason to get your attention.
This is a good primer as I've been mulling over the idea of reaching out to my small town to see who'd be interested in local games and how many are okay with winter games since we're in the arctic. I look forward to future discussions and ideas and hope to put in my two cents!
looking forward to more of this series. I stand to learn a lot about how to do nerf events in particular, but even completely unrelated events. Once again, thank you for what you do for the community!
Good starting discussion - I'd like to see more milsim accurate battles with complete fire teams now that Rival Grenade launchers and ammo are readily available, but folks have been so affixed on point targeting that it will take a discussion prior to address the new value and dynamics of HxRs, 15 foot tag out radius, direct hit sacrifice, shield and barrier busting along with a more dynamic arena from finally having foam grenades in play.
Thanks for doing this series. Based on my own experience a lot of these things ring true. I would be interested in your opinion on how best to disseminate this information. I found that I had to simplify my communication to only provide the bare essentials otherwise people tended to not read the whole thing. I usually then had a link to a more detailed description.
Yes, that, keep the post as simple as possible but include the most vital information. A post should include, location, time, who can play, ge style,, and what weapons are allowed. Much more than that and as you said, people won't read it.
Exactly why I make a point of verbally giving a 2 minute rundown of the rules to each new player that shows up. I can usually knock most of them out at the beginning of the day. In my mind as well, it's not enough that you skimmed the rules. I want to know that you were told what's expected of you at this event :)
Rather than having an FPS cap we use MEDs (Minimum Engagement Distance). Lets us use 300+ fps with a greatly reduced risk of injury and allows people with low FPS blasters to dominate in CQB. This is partly because a lot of the places we play tend to be huge, open areas with sparse cover in parts. It tends to shift typical engagement distances out further (20-40m). Unless you're standing out in the open dodging darts matrix style... Looking at you Pandamonium :P. We tend to balance the teams based on FPS and RoF first then see if player skill is going to be an issue. Some of our game types are asymmetric which can be more difficult to balance but fighting against the odds can make it much more fun :). Despite the prevalence of HPA and 200+ springers in our group a hammershot or grenade still comes in handy so it's not necessarily a case of a paywall/pay to win with uncapped FPS.
Minimum engagement distance is also good for games that aim to be more realistic, as actual militaries use high-velocity low-RoF blasters for long range sniping, and lower-velocity high-RoF blasters for closer engagements.
I love setting up just a normal free for all or tdm where you can use pretty much any blaster you want unless it's crazy powerful because it's too basic to disappoint
This was a really interesting, engaging video; thank you so much for putting this information out there. I feel like even though I don't organise my own games (yet), it was still really useful to understand the processes that go on behind game types and realise how much thought goes into planning events. Great job! 🧡💜💙
Another subset of limitations you can set is ammo capacity. During "Team" games (CTF, TDM, Carpe Testiculum, Ect) MANO has a capacity limit of 100. If your blaster has a capacity of 100 or more, it cannot be used for that game. It has helped make those games less of a stalemate due to "Dart Hoses" keeping too pinned down when they only have one direction they want to go.
Great video, excellent exploration of game logistics and how that goes hand in hand with game rules. Very insightful. Felt like this was made just for me 😂
I don’t know if you’re done with this series or not, but a Captain Xavier style “Hello Internet, welcome to Game Theory” would be a lovely tongue in cheek Matthew Patrick reference.
I don’t know if this is a game type but I want to see a game where there are certain items in large quantities scattered about the area where the teams are supposed to collect the items and drop them off in a centralized area. Each team has to drop off in the same area in a separate container. Any player that is tagged before dropping anything off must drop all items and respawn. I think it would make for a cool game mode. It would be a really cool concept given the game could flip in either teams favor in a matter of seconds. Also all players should have a dedicated dump pouch to hold the items. And there should be a limit to how many one person can hold. Say maybe 8?
Since me my friends are kids and are very new to the hobby are running low fps guns as well as using health systems and death match as we find it fun so we haven’t really ran into these problems.
Ey captain, have you seen the qwk challenger mk3?, it’s a pretty cool blaster, your should check it out! "Where you recognize evil, speak out against it, and give no truces to your enemies." - 'Hávamál'.
Food for thought regarding Fair vs Balanced in a competitive game type: per U.S. military doctrine, if you find yourself in a fair fight then your tactics suck, not your gear. Also, mindset and practiced skill are far bigger force multipliers than numbers or gear.
Is there a resource out there (like collected google docs?) of some of the basic and general game types and the guidelines for running them/rules? Id love to start organizing some stuff for my kids and their friends (ages 6 to 12) but not sure where to start. No crazy modded blasters, but we do have Rivals and Nexus that have a bit more oomph
Are you going to go more in depth on how to make a good agenda? I think discussing how long rounds should last, how much time to provide between rounds and how frequent to have dart sweeps would be interesting. When I ran wars we only scheduled it for 2 hrs and had about 6 10 minute rounds of gameplay but I have been to other clubs who scheduled it for 6 hrs with about 14 5 minute rounds. In the end you get almost the same amount of gameplay although the second one had more variety of game modes.
I play with my insane max Stryker that has 4 springs inside and a brass barrel with a sharp fire integration I went to an airsoft event and the chrono area said 381 😂 if you have no nerf scene just make a crazy Nerf gun and show up to an airsoft game it’s fun
Another comment might be sinful, but what I need to know is “How do I start a public nerf community in my area?” I live in Nowhere, Kansas, where the main demographic seems to be old people and my high-school peers seem to be “miserable” without things to do in-town. I have tried hosting wars of my own, I told at least 40 people that it was happening, and the most people I got was 8. How do I get from where I am to where you are, Captain? How do I get to the point of doing this thing that I’ve discovered I love, and how do I share it with the most people possible?
fair vs balanced is one of the best descriptions of what makes a game casual or competitive that I've heard
Something worth considering regarding fps caps and ammo allowed is that they can affect how the game plays out in practice, it’s not just all about safety. The higher the fps cap, the more I have found that people tend to stick to cover as open areas become more dangerous. This means you tend to either need to add more and more cover, or have the pacing of the game slow down to become more tactical as people go for picks on key players who are holding certain angles. For ammo types, stuff like rival can allow players to stay in combat for longer due to higher capacity blasters. It makes reloading less of a factor for players, and makes the windows of opportunity against players less.
Neither of these things are innately bad, but they will affect how your game plays out. And it’s worth keeping in mind when designing the rule sets.
Excellent points, I have added them to the list
For more infantry combat style games, you can keep the pace up by requiring the teams to have only 1 or 2 "designated snipers" with 250 to 300 fps blasters, while the "riflemen" are limited to 130 to 150 fps primaries.
I love that this series got started. The way the teams were divided up at the KCNC October War was highly effective. 3 groups (Stock, slightly modified/Nexus/Stryker, and Oh God Why? - Highly modified blasters/ Proton Pack) then just count of 1,2,1,2,1,2 and Poof!!! Two “Equally Balanced” teams
I agree that worked extremely well and it was a ton of fun.
Team balancing will be a whole episode. :)
Good advice all around. The way I've been doing it is we do 130 fps cap at the start, and then move up to 150 partway through the day, and finally finish with 200 fps cap. I then adapt this based on what ages show up. If it's a lot of kids and new players then I keep the 130 fps cap longer and maybe don't do the 200 fps cap. It's seemed to work well so far. Excited to see the rest of this series.
The timing of this series couldn't've been better! One of my friends is starting their own Nerf club, and well-presented informational videos like this will be very useful in developing and balancing game types.
Thank you for all your contributions to this community. You really do care about making our hobby more fun for everyone!
My group is supposed to be a 130 fps cap, but we basically tossed it aside this last year with all the pro stuff that came out. Having played through and seen a bunch of accidental face shots, we're probably going to keep it at 130 in the next year. Otherwise we're pretty casual, running monthly events in spring and summer, with a larp-style event in October
There was much discussion if fps caps should be raised because of the Dart Zone blasters. Seemed a silly question to me. Why should safety be discarded because powerful blasters can be bought at Walmart? Besides, most can be easily modded to lower the FPS to safer levels.
@@CaptainXavier I wonder if a game organizer could print out a bunch of de-tuning caps for the Nexus/Stryker and sell/loan them to people who want to bring those blasters. Might make things easier for people with no modding experience, but want somewhere between 80 and 150 fps.
@@valerielastname9508 I think that is a great idea.
The 100fps tuning caps are a godsend for HvZs and low fps wars. And just tossing a 175 on when you want to compete with caliburns is nice too
@@valerielastname9508 my nerf group in vancouver sells tuning caps for the nexus pro for a cheap price. I think it's a great idea.
Excellently done. "Let's have a Nerf war" or "Epic Blaster Battle" can mean as many different things as there are people playing. Setting expectations for oneself and players is too often overlooked & not thought through.
This series will be/already is-yes after a mere 1 episode- impoertant & necessary. Thank you.
Personally, I really like your simple explanation btwn what's fair vs what's equal. Right...they are NOT the same. That distinction is applicable to just about anything judged, competitive, plainly experienced or overseen: nerf, sports, real estate, government, love & war.
Again, Thanks, well done & looking forward to the next episode.
-Scopes Maverick
It'll be interesting to compare my hypothetical dream scenarios (siege style HvZs, Trench warfare style PvP) with some of the advice you give in this series and further refine them.
Excellent points in this video. Running a club is a very subjective thing. I run the Maryland Nerf Herders which is a 12 and up group with a 200fps cap. I’m sure you have a video planned for this but one subject that I think needs to be discussed is the difference between public and private property and how one isn’t necessarily better than the other but allows for different styles of gameplay and rules. Maryland Nerf Herders plays on private property but I’ve played many games at public parks which is also lots of fun. I think it’s definitely a subject worth diving into.
I had actually originally filmed game type and location together (as they are very closely related) but it ended up to long and to complicated. So I split them into two topics. Location will be next.
We made it mandatory that one parent had to be onboard if the kids were under 14 years old straight after the first event. Otherwise some parents literally drop of their little bugger, wave good bye and are gone for unknown times. If that´s not bad enough, be assured the little kid will find more than one reason to get your attention.
This is a good primer as I've been mulling over the idea of reaching out to my small town to see who'd be interested in local games and how many are okay with winter games since we're in the arctic. I look forward to future discussions and ideas and hope to put in my two cents!
Do it!
looking forward to more of this series. I stand to learn a lot about how to do nerf events in particular, but even completely unrelated events. Once again, thank you for what you do for the community!
This will indeed be a useful series - good shout, Captain.
Found your channel today, love your stuff, good to see you’re trying new stuff.
Good starting discussion - I'd like to see more milsim accurate battles with complete fire teams now that Rival Grenade launchers and ammo are readily available, but folks have been so affixed on point targeting that it will take a discussion prior to address the new value and dynamics of HxRs, 15 foot tag out radius, direct hit sacrifice, shield and barrier busting along with a more dynamic arena from finally having foam grenades in play.
Thanks for doing this series. Based on my own experience a lot of these things ring true. I would be interested in your opinion on how best to disseminate this information. I found that I had to simplify my communication to only provide the bare essentials otherwise people tended to not read the whole thing. I usually then had a link to a more detailed description.
Yes, that, keep the post as simple as possible but include the most vital information. A post should include, location, time, who can play, ge style,, and what weapons are allowed. Much more than that and as you said, people won't read it.
Exactly why I make a point of verbally giving a 2 minute rundown of the rules to each new player that shows up. I can usually knock most of them out at the beginning of the day.
In my mind as well, it's not enough that you skimmed the rules. I want to know that you were told what's expected of you at this event :)
Rather than having an FPS cap we use MEDs (Minimum Engagement Distance). Lets us use 300+ fps with a greatly reduced risk of injury and allows people with low FPS blasters to dominate in CQB. This is partly because a lot of the places we play tend to be huge, open areas with sparse cover in parts. It tends to shift typical engagement distances out further (20-40m). Unless you're standing out in the open dodging darts matrix style... Looking at you Pandamonium :P. We tend to balance the teams based on FPS and RoF first then see if player skill is going to be an issue. Some of our game types are asymmetric which can be more difficult to balance but fighting against the odds can make it much more fun :). Despite the prevalence of HPA and 200+ springers in our group a hammershot or grenade still comes in handy so it's not necessarily a case of a paywall/pay to win with uncapped FPS.
Minimum engagement distance is also good for games that aim to be more realistic, as actual militaries use high-velocity low-RoF blasters for long range sniping, and lower-velocity high-RoF blasters for closer engagements.
I love setting up just a normal free for all or tdm where you can use pretty much any blaster you want unless it's crazy powerful because it's too basic to disappoint
I really enjoyed this video and I am very much am looking forward to future installments of this!
This was a really interesting, engaging video; thank you so much for putting this information out there. I feel like even though I don't organise my own games (yet), it was still really useful to understand the processes that go on behind game types and realise how much thought goes into planning events. Great job! 🧡💜💙
Came back to say, really love the focus you put on managing expectations. Often overlooked part of game design.
Sounds like a cool new series. Can’t wait to see more!
Another subset of limitations you can set is ammo capacity. During "Team" games (CTF, TDM, Carpe Testiculum, Ect) MANO has a capacity limit of 100. If your blaster has a capacity of 100 or more, it cannot be used for that game. It has helped make those games less of a stalemate due to "Dart Hoses" keeping too pinned down when they only have one direction they want to go.
*cries in Perses hopper extension*
I've been looking forward to this and am ready for more!
As someone who is currently planning the December SWNC WAR event, this video is perfect
Great video, excellent exploration of game logistics and how that goes hand in hand with game rules. Very insightful.
Felt like this was made just for me 😂
I would love to throw my high end larp weapons into a nerf battle, the rarity of mega for shield busting at an event could make it really fun
I don’t know if you’re done with this series or not, but a Captain Xavier style “Hello Internet, welcome to Game Theory” would be a lovely tongue in cheek Matthew Patrick reference.
Who?
Good content! I wanna see an in depth video about game modes for smaller groups if you can cover that
I don’t know if this is a game type but I want to see a game where there are certain items in large quantities scattered about the area where the teams are supposed to collect the items and drop them off in a centralized area. Each team has to drop off in the same area in a separate container. Any player that is tagged before dropping anything off must drop all items and respawn. I think it would make for a cool game mode. It would be a really cool concept given the game could flip in either teams favor in a matter of seconds. Also all players should have a dedicated dump pouch to hold the items. And there should be a limit to how many one person can hold. Say maybe 8?
That sounds amazing
But it's pretty much a battle royale but you can respawn
@@paytonracine7124 yes but it’s in two larger teams. Though you could easily make it fit multiple teams.
Sounds like a fun scenario. They basically did that at the Kansas City game I went to.
Thank you that really helps
what an interesting series
Are you planning on the next Black Friday Goodwill run?
Yes
If this video doesn’t end with “That’s just a theory, a game theory, thanks for watching” I stg
I give up.
Yeah...stealing other peoples catchphrases is generally consider not cool...
Really helpful. I am looking to start a club in my area and had no clue how to get started.
I have a whole video on starting a club. It covers the basics. This series will be going into far greater detail.
Since me my friends are kids and are very new to the hobby are running low fps guns as well as using health systems and death match as we find it fun so we haven’t really ran into these problems.
This will be very helpful thanks
Well put. I know it is a challenge to run monthly events been doing over the past few years. Next time you're in Texas just come play
But hey that’s just a theory, a game theory!
Ey captain, have you seen the qwk challenger mk3?, it’s a pretty cool blaster, your should check it out!
"Where you recognize evil, speak out against it, and give no truces to your enemies."
- 'Hávamál'.
An amazing start of a series, I’m curious to see if HvZ is covered or is this going to be more pvp focused
It will be PvP. HvZ is a WHOLE different beast.
@@CaptainXavier excellent to know, I’ve come to know HvZ fairly well but this will be amazing to build up my pvp knowledge.
Food for thought regarding Fair vs Balanced in a competitive game type: per U.S. military doctrine, if you find yourself in a fair fight then your tactics suck, not your gear. Also, mindset and practiced skill are far bigger force multipliers than numbers or gear.
Is there a resource out there (like collected google docs?) of some of the basic and general game types and the guidelines for running them/rules? Id love to start organizing some stuff for my kids and their friends (ages 6 to 12) but not sure where to start. No crazy modded blasters, but we do have Rivals and Nexus that have a bit more oomph
There is actually. A website...but I cannot remember the address. I will have to track it down.
Are you going to go more in depth on how to make a good agenda? I think discussing how long rounds should last, how much time to provide between rounds and how frequent to have dart sweeps would be interesting. When I ran wars we only scheduled it for 2 hrs and had about 6 10 minute rounds of gameplay but I have been to other clubs who scheduled it for 6 hrs with about 14 5 minute rounds. In the end you get almost the same amount of gameplay although the second one had more variety of game modes.
Yup, that will probably several videos on that.
Have you seen the MILSIG M79 or the MILSIG HR3? If not it’s on the AACS channel, they are very heavy duty nerf guns, anyways awesome video btw
nice vid what are some good good wills in your area
I play with my insane max Stryker that has 4 springs inside and a brass barrel with a sharp fire integration I went to an airsoft event and the chrono area said 381 😂 if you have no nerf scene just make a crazy Nerf gun and show up to an airsoft game it’s fun
Feeding algorithm for more of this.
New Subscriber
Can we buy any of his guns?
No
Captian
Fantastic new series. Thanks for the wonderful content.
Bangarang
Noice!
At what point is legality considered? Signing waivers and stuff like that?
That falls under "safety standards" and will get its own episode.
Another comment might be sinful, but what I need to know is “How do I start a public nerf community in my area?”
I live in Nowhere, Kansas, where the main demographic seems to be old people and my high-school peers seem to be “miserable” without things to do in-town.
I have tried hosting wars of my own, I told at least 40 people that it was happening, and the most people I got was 8.
How do I get from where I am to where you are, Captain? How do I get to the point of doing this thing that I’ve discovered I love, and how do I share it with the most people possible?
I made that video years ago.
ruclips.net/video/Tysp4kHLIcA/видео.html
Hey its me ray for the nerf war I was wondering wen the video will be up
Eventually?
If you are going to make a seris out of this, you should make a custome intro parodying Game theory. It will be hilarious!!!!!!
How about dart collecting? You cant mark your darts that easily
That will be discussed in this series eventually.
Can you count how many times the Captain says “200 Fps Caliburn” ?
I counted 4.
@@CaptainXavier well didn’t expect a response from the man himself thank you for your hard work and hope your having a wonderful day
This is random I have seen your warhammer bolter I’m a mega geek could you make a lasgun
Yeah, it has been lots of times. Easiest way is using the Fortnite AR-L as the base. All it needs is paint and a little cosmetic work on the barrel.
Keep it simple.
That's just a theory, a game theory! Thanks for watching!