Here’s a game that can get you arrested: Killer (1981), from Steve Jackson Games.

Killer is the first publication of codified rules for what is known as Assassin, a folk game that developed and spread mostly through universities in 1966 (the same year of the founding of the Society for Creative Anachronism, oddly enough) and inspired by the 1965 film The Tenth Victim. Despite a vast number of variations, the game is pretty simple: using mock weapons and general cleverness, players proceed through their days “killing” each other as circumstances permit until one player – the winner –  is left alive.

The weapons can be anything from a water pistol to a piece of paper with the word “bomb” written on it to a bit of Tabasco sauce added to a meal to simulate poisoning. I love the idea of Killer, I’ve always wanted to get a game going and quietly murder my friends in public places. There is something devilishly fun about dropping a pillow out a window on someone and saying you dropped a safe on their head, or wrapping the perimeter of a building with an unbroken string of crepe paper to “burn” it down.

On the other hand, holy crap, everything about this game seems like a bad idea to me. It is pretty much unintentionally designed to scare the crap out of everyone not playing. People skulking around with dart guns, leaving boxes with the word “bomb, you’re dead” written on the inside. I am honestly surprised I only found a handful of news stories about dumb college kids getting arrested and not a single one about anyone being shot by a cop. It will come as no surprise that Killer and other Assassin variants are banned at a number of universities.

Despite how…ill-advised it may be to play Assassin in the year of our lord 2020, it is worth noting that it is perhaps the first live action roleplaying game, preceding the formal LARPs that were organized in the mid-70s by about a decade. That is, if you don’t count playing pretend as a kid – that’s been around as long as people.