BY MIRIAM HAUSER

In print | Published October 8, 2009

If you passed the Science Center Saturday evening, you probably saw them: the monster hordes dressed in trash bags, clutching Fun Noodle swords, in fearsome battle against human hunters. You probably also saw the Pterodactyls with their frightening cardboard wings and super-soakers and the wizards with their staffs and red cloaks. And maybe you saw me, running around like a fool, pretending to be a goblin and dying every two or three minutes.

All of this was part of the Dactyl Hunt, an annual live action role-play event begun in the early 1980s and run by the Psi Phi Club. The basic idea of the game is this: three pterodactyls have descended upon Swarthmore’s campus (specifically, the lawn between Kohlberg Hall and the Science Center), and all of the many types of monsters have banded together to protect them. It is the goal of human hunters to kill the three pterodactyls and retrieve their hearts.

“We’re doing the whole army-of-darkness thing,” William Hopkins ’11, one of the three presidents of Psi Phi, said at monster orientation. “Forces of evil against forces of good.”

The basic rules of the game are simple: monsters kill hunters, forcing hunters to drop their weapons and acquire new ones. Hunters kill goblins and orcs, allowing them to receive money (poker chips), with which they may upgrade their equipment, and forcing the goblins and orcs to re-spawn by touching the side of Kohlberg. Money could also be used to buy hunting licenses, which allowed hunters to attack the three Dactyls themselves. The game ends not when the Dactyls are all killed, but when all three of their hearts (made of glow sticks) are returned to the Wizards without the person returning the hearts getting killed on the way there. No head shots: if any participant hits someone in the head, the person doing the hitting dies. Only striking in the torso region will result in a kill.

“Your head is made out of explosives, and if they hit you in the face, they explode,” Benjamin Schwartz ’12 said. “There are rules, and then there are rules of physics … It’s just one of those things.” Schwartz, along with Psi Phi president Orion Sauter ’11, played the role of Wizard in the hunt. The Wizards run the hunt, ensuring that rules are followed, settling disputes and keeping track of which side is winning: monsters or hunters.

The game is made more complicated by an abundance of invincible special monsters and players. The deadly Cheshire Cat, played by the third Psi Phi president Rachael Mansbach ’11, will kill for you, but only if you bribe her with a fish, acquired from the Fishmonger. The Sphinx, played by David Edelman ’11, will reward you, but if you answer his riddle wrong, you’re dead. And the deadly ninja strike team, the Kobolds, comprised of the fencing team, may be killed, but are armed with better swords than the average monster.

The Dactyls are well-guarded by the Dactyl Guards, who, as Sauter described in an e-mail to those who signed up to be monsters, “know that the pen[cil] is mightier than the sword, which is why they are armed with giant pencils and, more importantly, shields inscribed with the opening of the Aeneid.”
Players were encouraged to have fun with their characters. “Feel free to act out your wounds,” Schwartz said. “It’ll make it so much funnier … It’s not every day you get to die.”

After hunters and monsters attended their separate orientations where they were provided with costumes (white trash-bags for hunters, black for monsters) and acquired their weapons, the two sides were unleashed on each other — and quickly demonstrated that, for the most part, neither side was particularly interested in fair play.

Goblins and orcs banded together and ganged up on hunters. Humans stabbed monsters in the back; monsters stabbed humans in the back. Limb and head shots were unavoidable in the chaos of the game. One goblin wore a stolen white trash-bag hunter uniform in order to avoid death by pretending to be human. And in general, the lawn descended into wild, happy chaos.

Within five minutes, I was killed at least three times. Within ten minutes, I had killed at least five hunters, lost my band of brethren at least twice and discovered that I am a terrible, terrible swordfighter. A group of Bryn Mawr orcs and goblins, largely comprised of the Bryn Mawr fencing team, cried out the Bryn Mawr chant. And I grew sick of Kohlberg, as I returned again and again to it to re-spawn, invariably forgetting to “make the video game noise of your choice,” as Schwartz had instructed us to do during orientation.

Two hours later, I had learned that the Fishmonger’s fish — actually cookies — are both delicious and, if you’re a monster, free. I had learned that attempting to get the Cheshire Cat to kill the Wizard will get you punished and monsters are not immune to mosquito bites. I had learned that there is some safety in numbers and turning down duels will probably still end with me getting killed. And I had learned that while I am not particularly ferocious, being a monster is still a lot of fun.

And then the last Dactyl was killed and the heart brutally extracted and brought to Schwartz. The game was pro-claimed over. Good had once again triumphed over evil. Participants were invited back to the Science Center to eat pizza and watch “Starcrash,” described as “the Italian rip-off of Star Wars” by Sauter.

While my hunt was a genuinely enjoyable experience, some expressed frustration with much of the rule-breaking that occurred. Emma Spady ’13 said she noticed that some of the hunters responsible for killing the Dactyls did so even after monsters had killed them. Some monsters did not reward hunters for killing them, and many people simply ignored the fact that they had been killed.
But for many of us, the rule-breaking was simply swallowed up by the chaos of the evening. And for all of us non-seniors, we can already begin looking forward to next year’s hunt.

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