Christians and Romans

[Fireproof]

Has anyone ever heard of this game? It's like uber-hide-and-seek. I played if during the 30 hour famine at my church.
How it works:
1. The kids are Christians, and the adults are Roman Guards. The Christians are trying to get to the worship area.
2. It takes place in a big church at night with lots of Sunday school rooms and such, with almost all the lights off. The worship area is hidden somewhere in the church.
3. All the Christians start in jail. You can get out by convincing the guards you aren't Christian or sneaking past when they "fall asleep." (They pretend to sleep for a while to let some people out.)
4. If you get caught by a guard, you can either be honest and get sent back to jail, or you can talk your way out of it. If you don't stop when a guard tells you, they can touch you and kill you. Dead players are permanantly out of the game.
5. Once you reach the worship area, you can stay there, or go back and retrieve Christian prisoners by convincing the guards there'sa good reason you're taking them out of jail, or sneaking past the guards if they're asleep.
6. If the guards find the worship area, the game ends.

When I played, I slipped past the jail guard after she fell asleep and made up stories to get past the guards. I eventually found the worship area. I was returning with some Christian prisoners when the guards found our worship area and the game ended. It turned out that one of our own had ratted us out. >=(

[oro!]

We played the persecuted church once. The secret police were everywhere. Your chaperone could be one, the informant could be one. You never know. The object was to get to the hiding place by clues that you get from each informant...an across town kinda thing.
I got there scot free, but not so for an unlucky few. They were TORTURED in hte prison...

[glitch1501]

i dont understand, wouldnt the adults know that your a christian since your a kid and just send you back to jail, or just follow you to the worship area?

[White Raven]

Wow that is just like the game my sis made up when I was little.
We called it "the witch game." Someone would be the “Witchâ€

[Stephen]

Till the end of time there will be variations of hide and seek style games. Its been ages since I have done it...but I used to love doing flash light tag. Get a group of like 10-15 people together...and use a big area with a little woods. Its freaky to see the lights bouncing around and stuff. Fun memories indeed.

[Fireproof]

i dont understand, wouldnt the adults know that your a christian since your a kid and just send you back to jail, or just follow you to the worship area?

You're kind of supposed to be in period, so the guards will let some people by if they can make an excuse for being out at night. (The Christians and the guards would have been the only people out after the curfew. Christians to go to a secret worship service, guards to enforce the curfew.)

[Kawaiikneko]

We've played something like that before, except it was called persecution. We played it at our church once, and what you had to do was start in the gym and find your "church" There were a bunch of guards and plants around, so you had to be careful. Somehow, you had to buy a bible and a story thing without the guards knowing. Then you had to find a place to hold a service, which consisted of worship, bible reading, story reading (about a martyr), and prayer. If a guard found you, you could try to talk yourself out of it. Also, some of the guards could be converted, so if you wanted to witness to them and risk the chance, you could. If you got caught the guards dragged you off to jail (pastor's office so it was kinda hard to escape...). I never got caught, but I heard they were pretty harsh in there. They offered people money and food ect. to renounce God and Jesus. The whole game would have been more fun if everyone was serious about it though it was part of an overnight thing, but it was in middleschool, so not everyone was serious....my group got through most of our service before it was over, but it really went too short.

[uc pseudonym]

I've played a game similar to this, though in a woodland, not a church. In our game everyone was randomly (and secretly) selected as Christians or Romans. The problem was that most of the Christians just wandered around and never really did anything. If they got caught they were sent to jail after being interrogated (which was actually fairly intense, if you took it seriously). Our guards didn't fall asleep, but it was possible to escape (made more complex by the "no running" rule). A few people did it.

Ironically, I was captured early on, despite the fact that I was a Roman. While in jail, I found out the location of the Christian meeting place, but almost no one came to it, so it didn't matter.

[soul alive]

haven't heard of this version of hide and seek before... sounds like fun, but the small number of kids and attitudes of those who are there in my former youth group and church, would kind of limit the game.

at a lock in over Christmas break, i watched a game of "hunter/prey" hide and seek. they turned off the lights and had the kid(s) who were 'it' go upstairs so they couldn't hear where everyone else was hiding, and once everyone was hid, the kids who were 'it' came downstairs and tried to find the kids who were hiding. the hiders could sneak around in an attempt to make it to the stairs - the safe zone. if they were caught they were out.

and i remember playing 'sardines' as a kid at my church... one person went out and hid in the basement and everyone else was sent out to find him/her and once you found him/her you hid in the same place too, and waited for the others to find you... the last one to find everyone was 'it' and had to hide the next time. it got pretty tight in the hiding places once you got 10-15 kids hiding there... thus the name of the game 'sardines.'

[Kawaiikneko]

I've heard of sardines, but we never had enough people to play it when I was little ^^;

[Mr. SmartyPants]

dude! i wanna play these!