I started playing scenario paintball in 1999, at a game called Genesis 2. I’d been playing paintball for a few years already, and I’d been at my local field and saw a sign for this “24 hour scenario game” being hosted there. Intrigued I e-mailed the producer, a guy named Viper, and asked a bunch of questions. I then called him and asked more questions, and he patiently talked me through what his games were, what was going on, and that, no, you don’t want to be wearing all black during the night portion of the game. Hopefully for obvious reason. All around, he was a patient man and willing to abide a very new player to his style of games and answer the MANY questions, probably pretty idiotic at times, I posed to him.

Scenario paintball, for those who don’t know, (usually) has overall commanders for each side, who receive missions and generally try to organize a couple hundred people into a force to achieve the objectives needed to win. And those, generally, don’t mean shooting the other players. That happens, all the time, mind, but that’s not the objective. Instead you get missions like ‘go to X location, and report back to your base what happens for Y amount of time.’ They are also longer games than your usual 5-15 minute affairs at your local field where you rotate around the various fields in various combinations of players. Viper’s games, along with Wayne Dollack’s and a number of other producer’s, started at noon on Saturday and would run until noon on Sunday with a one hour final battle shortly after. There was also a dinner break in there so you could rehydrate and maybe get some food into you. And, yes, they would run into the night. In those days they ran WELL into the night. So long as players were on field, one side wasn’t getting completely dominated by the other, and missions were getting run and turned in the game would continue. Around 11, or so, the calls would go to the commanders to start asking about player counts, mission status’ and various other factors that would cause the shutdown decision to be made, but these games usually ran long into the night. It was a completely different style of play and form of play that what we were used to. It was intense, it had places you had to go and things you had to do, and you didn’t immediately see your opponents when the game started.

IT WAS FUN! And I was immediately hooked.

As with everything in life, though, things change. They morph into new things based on what’s being observed, and what’s being said by, to, and about events and activities going on. There’s also the adaptation that happens in each of us. We stop being teens and acting as a teen does. We have children, weddings, divorces, tragedies, and exultations. Each of these things changes us and changes the priorities we place. What applies to the macro also applies to the micro, in this case paintball.

This past weekend, after 25 years of producing games, Kerry “Viper” Rosenberry has retired from scenario paintball production. For those who’ve known Viper for any length of time this really didn’t come as a surprise to us. Viper and his better half run an exotic animal business and it’s been steadily growing since its founding. Others have come before him to decide that it’s time to exit the stage and let others take over, and others will come after who will make the same decision at some point, voluntarily or otherwise.

I was incredibly fortunate that I was able to come home to play this last game and see quite a few faces I hadn’t seen in a long while. I was also reminded of some of those tragedies that happen when we discussed Choctaw of the Dogmen, whose real name escapes me, Karl “Dragon” Wolff, Liam “SeaWinkle” (among others) Holmes, Ken “Ninja” Prejean, and the cook from Paintball USA whose name escapes me. All of these folks were taken from us too early, and are missed. I also was fortunate enough to see Darrell and Kelly McNeill from Paintball USA/TXR Paintball. While I’m sure there are others I’m missing, these are the ones I most remember, especially from my earlier days of playing paintball.

The game that I played was barely recognizable from the games I played starting in 1999. Is that good? I don’t know. Is that bad? Also, don’t know. But it was different, and it was good to be back on the field. I’m going to end this post here. There will be another post in the near future.